Author: Robin

Categories
blogging business socialmedia

Content strategies

My previous post about the editorial calendar is sort of related to something I read last week about developing a content strategy. The information wasn’t really suited to libraries, but there are some points that I felt I could take and run with, even at a non-profit, B2C sort of place.

1) Identify trending topics
2) Meet with marketing regularly
3) Evaluate and refine

1) I keep a pretty close eye on our web/social sites stats. I’ve noticed, over the course of the last month or so, that mentioning any sort of e-materials (our Overdrive service, e-books, iPad and Nook tutorials, etc.) makes the stats for our blog jump pretty significantly. I’ve also tried to keep an eye on what people are searching for when they come to our site. This can show me what people are interested in right now so that I can go out and solicit content from our staff on that topic. That’s how I do the identification part.

2) I work just a few feet from our PR person and we have a pretty good working relationship – so she feels free to come to me with stuff she wants emphasized on the social sites and I have no problems going to her for help with promotion of the sites themselves. It’s a symbiotic relationship – and we work on keeping those lines of communication open so that I know what is important to her and she knows what is important to me – and we can each try to focus on those things.

3) This is where I fall down – like I said, I spend a lot of time perusing stats and I use them to inform my content decisions, but I don’t do so well at going back after the fact and determining what wording worked for what program. This is something that I need to work on in the coming year. I’d like to start out by actually creating *purposefully* different texts for Twitter/Facebook/Blog posts and see which ones get more responses. That would help me create more effective posts for everything, I’m sure. It’ll go on the list of “stuff to do”…

I have a social media strategy that includes some content strategizing within it for my library, but we could use a better articulation of what sort of content we’ll be promoting as well as what kind of content we’ll be asking for from our patrons (Flickr pictures of the library and/or library events, just as an example). This is something I’ll be working on – have any of you done anything like a formal content strategy for your sites? Wanna share?? 😉

Categories
Web 2.0

Free stuff and pitfalls

The fairly recent announcement of Salesforce’s acquisition of DimDim – the formerly open source web conferencing product – has shaken some folks up. It’s a lesson, though, in the fragility of using free services on the web. While I’m not going to say don’t use them (and I’m certainly not going to stop using them myself), you do have to consider that free services (Ning, DimDim, possibly Delicious and more) have a strong possibility of going away altogether or just becoming a service that requires payment (as both Ning and DimDim have done). Either way, for libraries or other folks with very small budgets, the result is the same. The service is no longer available for them.

DimDim - no longer a free webconference option

This applies to every free service – from powerhouses like Facebook to more niche products like the free budgeting and personal finance tool I use, Mint. Anything that you use that you are not specifically paying for (and things that you are paying for, even) can be pulled at any time. Really, paying for a product or service doesn’t mean it won’t go away – it just means that it may be less likely and will (hopefully) offer better support in transitioning you to a new service.
One thing I keep in mind with any service I use is that if I’m not paying for it, I’m not a customer – I’m the product. If the service can’t stay in business selling me and my data/habits/eyeball attention, they won’t be around for long. For services that have no paid option, this can be scary! The best thing to do is to make regular backups of all of your data (that you can!) on these free services and be prepared for service interruptions or unexpected loss of service at any time. Have contingency plans in place and know what options you have if that service becomes immediately unavailable to you.
Not the easiest thing to do, I will grant you, but a bit of preparation in advance can save hours of panicked “crisis-mode” activity in the future!

Categories
Web 2.0

The week in Tweets

  • Looking at Facebook Deals for MRRL. We already reward Foursquare mayors…. this might be interesting! #
  • Should I work for free?—a flowchart http://ff.im/wvQ9G #
  • Configuring ASA and PIX Security Appliances – Training Resources – Cisco Systems http://ff.im/wvQ9I #

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Web 2.0

Web operating systems and the cloud

I blogged – a long time ago – about the use of web-based operating systems that patrons of public Internet access spots (such as libraries) could use. Things have changed since then. Most have been eclipsed by services like Dropbox – which requires you to have a computer to store stuff on, unlike the cloud-based web OS’s I’ve talked about. One web-based OS that has caught my attention, though, is iCloud. It offers a mobile site, iOS and Android apps and features easy uploading of files in exactly the same manner as Dropbox – but to your cloud-based computer, not a physical one.

This all seems very cool and is something worth taking a look at – the free version gives you 3GB of storage, but you can buy more, of course, and the apps appear to be free (at least the iOS one is). This may very well allow patrons who have iPhones or Android phones but no computer at home to do all kinds of very cool computing tasks from their phones – then come into the library to print and manage things that might be a bit difficult to do on a phone.

links for 2011-01-12

Categories
Web 2.0

Telementoring book announcement

Just thought I’d post a short note letting you all know that I’ve written a chapter for a textbook called Telementoring in the K-12 Classroom: Online Communication Technologies for Learning. My chapter is on using Web 2.0 tools to communicate (between telementor and telementoree), since I don’t know the first thing about actual telementoring – but I do know a little bit about using Web 2.0 to make communications easier…

Anyway, just making note of it here so I have a record of it somewhere for my future use…

Categories
blogging Web 2.0

Blogging calendar

I have created a blogging/social networking theme for my workplace for the next 12 months. Not every post will be strictly tied to the theme, but I’ll try to work in several posts over the month that have something to do with it. Some of them are big programs that we do (see the Capital Read months, both adult and kids), others are just timed to the holidays that fall in those months. One is completely random because I can’t think of a thing that I could focus on in March. Spring, maybe? New beginnings? I’m doing that this month (January), though, so maybe not. Hopefully one of my creative and wonderful coworkers will come up with something that I can use…

I’m making sure I remember the theme by adding in the theme as a draft post on the calendar (that is provided by the WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin for WordPress – very handy tool!) on the first day of the month. That way I’ll see, every month, what I’m supposed to be focusing on for the blog. For the rest of my social media outlets, I’ll just have to remember. I considered adding it to one of my Google Calendars, but they are so crazy full of stuff I’d just miss it, I think.

Anyway, I had mentioned that I was going to do this late last year, so I’m posting here the list of months with their respective themes so that you all can see what I’m doing and maybe take it, improve it and let me steal it back!!

January – New year, new services, new stuff

February – Love and family

March – Random because I can’t think of anything…

April – Love your library (Nat’l Library Week)

May – Capital Kid’s Read

June – Summer Reading

July – Freedom and Government

August – Summer Vacations

Sept – Passport to the world (get a card)

Oct – Capital Read

Nov – Thankful

Dec – End of year, holidays

Categories
Web 2.0

The week in Tweets

  • @hbraum To store recipes and knitting patterns so that they are available from anywhere – very handy!!! #
  • data [pic] http://ff.im/wkxLN #
  • @mstephens7 Kind of. It's difficult on the Nook, but works beautifully on the iPad… see http://bit.ly/gGvfac #
  • Just finished my first GTD weekly review in a LONG time. I think I know what I need to do now. Now I just have to do it… #

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Training

Self-motivation and staff training

Last week, David Lee King posted a note on his blog about your boss being you and it got me thinking about staff training and the “will to learn” by library staff. I like to think of myself as fairly self-motivated. I learned HTML, XHTML, CSS and PHP without taking any classes – just reading some books and playing. I have picked up on the social networking stuff without doing any formal training, too. I actually like taking classes (that aren’t even for credit…) and learning new things without anyone standing over me requiring that I do so. I still – even with those things in the positive corner – don’t think I spend enough time and effort keeping up and learning new things. I feel behind at times and am occasionally rather down on myself about what little I know (though I have moments of validation – I had a MORENet tech come in to see what I was doing wrong with our firewall and he couldn’t figure it out either, I felt a bit better about my networking skills after that, such as they are…). For staff members who don’t take the initiative to stay current on basic skills, though, how much more lost must they feel?
This year, I’ve asked the department heads to take a quick look around their departments and send me a list of the skills (computer-based, generally, but I’ll take anything and see what I can do about it) that they feel their departments need to work on in 2011. Armed with those lists and some excellent core competency lists that I have stolen borrowed from libraries and librarians across the country, I’ll be focusing on getting staff up to speed on the things that they and their managers feel they need to work on. What I’ll also be working on this year, though, is to really stress to people that these skills are not “extra” work – being able to manipulate a Word document or understanding how to edit a patron’s record in our automation software is not stuff that “might be nice” for staff to know. These are core skills that will make them better employees – here and elsewhere – and that it’s stuff they should probably devote some brain power to. Hopefully, the training this year will not only provide some hard skills in these areas but it will also give staff the motivation to learn some things on their own, without someone standing over them with either a stick or a carrot.

Categories
Web 2.0

Asking for help

When asked what a weakness of mine is in a job-interview like situation, what comes to mind immediately is my utter inability to recognize when I’m in over my head and need some help. Jenica Rogers, an utterly amazing woman who is the Director of Libraries at the State University of New York in Pottsdam, just posted a Lessons from 2010 post at her blog. One of her “lessons learned” was the fact that she occasionally needs help. This is an amazingly capable woman who is making the effort to realize that she needs help sometimes – and it’s inspiring me. From little things like hitting the button at the circ desk when I get overwhelmed (we have a door ringer that sounds in the back office and sends someone out to help when the lines get long at the front desk) to admitting that a particular project requires more time/talent/persistence than I have to give, I need to work on not waiting until it’s too late to ask for some help.