1. 15 Ways to Spice Up
Your Library’s
Facebook Page
Jamie Matczak
Nicolet Federated Library System
Green Bay, WI
2. Why (Still) Have a Page
- Helps Deliver Better Customer Service
- Promotes Your Library
- Personalizes Your Library
- Drives Traffic to Website & Events
4. Facebook Stats
A recent JP Morgan analysis of Comscore data
shows that the average U.S. Facebook user
spent more than 27 hours on
Facebook and Facebook Messenger last
month, of which 21.5 hours were on
smartphones.
5. A recent JP Morgan analysis of Comscore data
shows that the average U.S. Facebook user
spent more than 27 hours on
Facebook …
but are they seeing your page?
29. 7. Engagement: Show Leadership
- Who manages your page? Is the director
“present?”
- Library Birthday/Anniversary
Director or Mascot to read messages.
30. 8. Engagement: Customer Focus
- Humans of New York
- Site started in 2010
- Daily Photos of New Yorkers
- Over 15.2 million fans
31. "I got married a few
months ago. I mean, she's
my everything and all. But
I'm just trying to get used
to having someone else's
opinion around all the
time. She doesn't like my
beard so she's making me
shave it.
Today. At 6:40 PM."
32.
33. “I was twenty-two during World War II.
First the English invaded us from the
south, then the Russians invaded us from
the north.
They had a lot more men than us and the
city completely ran out of food. I saw
many horrible scenes. My job was to
distribute bread from the bakery. Crowds
would gather and wait for the handouts.
One winter night I found a mother sitting
against the bakery wall, nursing her child.
I went to give her a loaf of bread,
but only the child was alive.”
(Tehran, Iran)
56. 15. Consider Buying Ads
1. Inexpensive
2. Great Targeting
3. Lots of customers
4. Easily tracks Data
5. Gives You an Edge
57. Resources
What Will Facebook Look Like in 2022? http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2012/08/05/what-will-facebook-look-like-in-2022/
Facebook stats: http://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/
Best Facebook pages: http://www.inc.com/ss/20-best-company-facebook-pages
9 Unusual Pages…: http://www.postplanner.com/9-unusual-facebook-pages-to-like/
Best Facebook Pages: Top 15 Timelines: http://socialmediasun.com/best-facebook-pages/
An Interview with Dan Kim: http://www.paytronix.com/resources/interviews/dan-kim,-founder-of-red-mango,-on-loyalty-and-his-customer-centric-marketing-
strategy.aspx
6 Ways to Improve Your Facebook Page Results: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/improve-your-facebook-page-results/
Keep Facebook Videos Short and Sweet for Best Engagement: http://www.reelseo.com/facebook-videos-engagement/
5 Reasons Why Your Business Must You Facebook Advertising: http://www.koozai.com/blog/social-media/facebook-social-media/benefits-of-facebook-
advertising/
What is Facebook Edgerank and Why Does it Matter? http://mashable.com/2013/05/07/facebook-edgerank-infographic/#NeXp.ut6Cuq_
58. Take Aways
470
X
470
1. Basic Maintenance
2. Customer Response
3. Powerful Posting
4. Engagement: Humor
5. Engagement: Contests
6. Engagement: Feature BTS
7. Engagement: Show Leadership
8. Engagement: Customer Focus
9. Use Targeting Options
10. Use Links Correctly
11. Use Video
12. Cover Photos
13. Profile Photos
14. Post Photos
15. Consider Buying Ads
59. Comments? Your Ideas?
Jamie Matczak
Nicolet Federated Library System
jmatczak@mail.nfls.lib.wi.us
Facebook, Twitter (travelingjamie)
Slides:
Notas del editor
So, it’s not going away. It might change, expand, but not going away.
Why is it still important for libraries to have a page. It shouldn’t just be because it’s fun or because every other library is.
right off the bat, let’s look at some FB stats. These are users from late 2008 to mid 2015.
It just keeps going up. The number on the side is in millions.
So if you look at 2012, FB users surpassed 1 billion. That is up to 1.28 billion in 2014, mid 2015 up to 1.49 active users.
Personally speaking, in my job, I don’t have statistics on this, but I would say 7 out of 10 times I get responses more timely on FB than I do with email.
Simply put, it’s where people are. It’s where people spend their time. Probably too much time.
August 2015. Pretty recent, pretty steady
People are spending
Argorithm that FB uses to determine what posts and where they are posted show up in our feed:
We can’t see everything.
Affinity: relationships
Time decay: how old
One thing it’s based on is weight: the more who like, comment, share….better weight, higher ranking, show in more feeds
Knowing this, We need to make sure we’re doing FB as best we can, spice it up, keep it interesting. Doing it well.
get more likes, get more engagement, get more attention for our libraries, more results, higher rankings
#1: Basic Maintenance:
Worst thing on any social media page is inactivity or sitting idle. If you haven’t updated your Library’s FB page since 2013, and you don’t have the resources for someone to keep it up to date, get rid of it. It’s not doing any good sitting out there.
This is true for not just FB, but any social media site your library has a presence.
Basic info needs to be on there and complete. Address, phone, website.
Call to Action button rolled out a few months ago.
I was in Ireland 2 years ago. Read about this place. Sounded awesome. wasn’t getting all the info on their site. Found them on Facebook. Posted a question. Roller skating in Limerick, Ireland
Over 10,000 fans
Lessons and Open Skating
Here is a snapshot of my conversation. I highlighted certain areas.
Go through what she said.
I think this is great because This person responded to EVERY question. This person could have easily blown me off. I don’t even live there. What do they care if two librarians from Wisconsin patronize their skating rink? I read a stat that 70% of questions on social media go unanswered.
Can you imagine if 70% of the people who came to our reference desk or check out desk were just ignored? It’s hard to imagine that.
Make sure questions or comments are being answered. If it’s something you don’t know, say you’re looking into it.
How often:
1-2 times a day is fine, or 5-10 times a week, during the week day. I wouldn’t worry as much on weekends. Libraries are closed on Sunday.
Studies show that anything more than twice a day is just ignored. Pinterest is about 5. Twitter is 3. Facebook 2.
How Much should we be writing? Short and sweet, 100 characters. nothing more than 250.
What time? Back in the day it was morning, noon and night. In 2013, FB introduced FB insights for fan pages which gives you some good data on
Fan demographics, where they are from, what time they are online
Snapshot of my traveling baker fan page. It’s my own. Under “posts” it shows me when my fans
8 am is the peak time, at least for me and my fans. The morning is when I tend to post.
In Insights, under the tab “People,” this shows more demographics.
So you can see, more of my fans are women, 18-24 range.
I have a lot of fans in Morocco.
How can we improve correspondence with our patrons by the way we engage? How can we spice things up a bit?
Several examples of what other businesses are doing well on FB.
Old Spice made a comeback several years ago with the "the Old Spice guy" commercials by posting them on Facebook and allowing fans to comments on them.
What they really well is appeal to their demographics. They’re funny. If you look at this post, it has NOTHING to do with an Old Spice
product. But look at the likes and the shares. If you look at their page, several of their posts have memes or photos that do very little with their products.
I think this is great because it’s showing that people behind the product have a sense of humor.
I would encourage you to take a look at what you are posting. Not EVERYTHING has to relate directly to the library.
For a lot of people, Facebook/Social media is a form of entertainment. There is nothing wrong with being entertaining.
Look at what’s happening in your community. Events or things that are humorous. Share those things, too.
Most of you know they are our pro baseball team
They do a lot of player and fan features, really big on Instagram.
Any player or coach who has a birthday, it’s acknowledged on SM.
One thing they do is a contest leading up to opening day. I believe they start with 100, encourage fans to submit photos for the day before.
This was posted on January 14, Using the hashtag #SeeUApril6. The winner is entered into the drawing to win a 10-pack of tickets.
“The best part of waking up is knowing you’re one day closer to opening day.”
Opening Day is so close, you can almost taste it.
238 shares, 1.6 million likes
Amtrak stresses good service. I read that Amtrak as a company has a good personality, and it really comes through on social media. I recently rode my first Amtrak. I thought the service was great and the staff was very energetic, and funny.
On one ride the conductor got on the loud speaker because someone in the bathroom hit the emergency button instead of the flush button, so he was asking the person to turn off the button, otherwise someone would have to come in the restroom. But the way he did it was humorous and not condescending at all.
One way they show this personality on FB, Amtrak does something similar that the Brewers did with their photos in that they do a photo of the week, tagged by AmtrakPOTW.
It’s different in that they feature 3 and fans vote for their favorite. 41 shares and almost 300 people voted. #1 seemed to have the most votes. And then they feature the photo on their page.
I think this is great because contests and competition is a great way to build engagement. Great a way to gain new fans, because you know that whoseever kid that is in the bottom right corner. Mom and Dad are going to share this contest with everyone under the sun so you can vote for little Timmy.
Maybe you don’t do 50 days. You do 10 days.
It’s so easy to take photos and for people to submit them.
Contests: Sandwich making, a song, gives kids 30 legos and see what they build and then vote.
And make people vote solely on Facebook, because again, if little Timmy’s Mom doesn’t like the library’s Facebook page already, she will now, so she can vote for little Timmy’s lego structure.
BTS = behind the scenes
Fortune 500 companies who use FB say “openness” is a top strategy for naturally growing a FB page.
One company shared its team trip to Africa, one of their top posts.
Did you get new RFID equipment? How are your books sorted? Did you uncover some machinery in the storage closet from 1950?
Did you celebrate the 30th anniversary of a staff member?
Founded by Texas, by a man named Daniel Kim, started in 2006
Daniel Kim - founder, stepped down as CEO, but he controls most of the content on the page.
He does that to show that he’s genuine and to connect
Red Mango grew from a single location to 150 in about 4 years.
D. Kim: I attribute 100% of our growth to the strategy of connecting directly with our customers. He said when they started, they didn’t have a huge budget, so they used SM and esp FB as that bridge to get to potential customers. That is why I think it’s a great idea.
Here is something they did to engage fans. They were approaching their 30th birthday, so they
invited fans to tag bday messages. Encouraged people to sign in and see if the actual Burt read
the message.
I think it’s great because it shows the face behind Burt’s Bees. Puts a face with the name. Shows he cares, his leadership.
Makes fans/customers feel more connected.
Libraries typically don’t have huge marketing budgets either. FB allows us to bridge gaps .
Who manages your page? someone in marketing? If you’re a small library director, you are probably doing it. I think that’s actually great. If you directing a larger library, you need to see what people are saying, what is going on. How often do you look? I would try to look once a day? Every other day. Contribute to the page. Write a post. Share a video of yourself. Show your presence. Be more like a Daniel Kim and be present. Not hog it, but be there.
Does your library have a birthday or anniversary? Invite fans to send it well wishes. maybe your director or mascot could read them.
wouldn’t even have to do it live. You could record this on an iPhone and then post it.
Humanities page.
Brandon and I began Humans of New York in the summer of 2010, shortly after leaving my job in Finance. He thought it would be really cool to create a catalogue of ppl of NYC. so I set out to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers and plot their photos on a map. He began to interview my subjects in addition to photographing them. And alongside their portraits, he includes quotes and short stories from their lives.
worldwide audience with daily glimpses into the lives of strangers on the streets of New York City.
Here is a snapshot/feature from Tuesday of this week. Look at the shares.
There were over 160 comments on this photo.
I love the idea of this website, and I love that these are posted on Facebook to broaden their audience.
Keep your promotional content to a minimum. Promo content, events going on, book collections
Some experts suggest 80/20 – Posting non-promotional content 80% of the time and promotional content 20% of the time.
How could we relate this idea to the library, of being more customer-focused or patron focused?
Find a patron/customer/user and feature him/her. Why do they come to your library? What’s their story?
Remember, Facebook doesn’t have to always be about your events, your collections, your programs. What about the people who visit? Who make it what it is?
This a great way to showcase your customers and be more customer-focused.
Use Target Interests to direct your updates to a narrow group, and in return (one hopes) receive greater engagement. This tactic works best, of course, when you’re intimately familiar with your fans’ demographics. Settings area
When you use the Post End Date option, you predetermine your post’s lifespan in the news feed. When the end date passes, no-one will see the post in their news feed, even if it remains on your page. This is an effective way to promote events and other time-specific posts.
There are 2 ways to share links: Simply put the link in and people click on it
2) Link format, where you post the link and it populates the title or a little bit about what you are posting.
Does it matter? It turns out, it does. Viewers generally prefer this type of link because they get more info.
Also, remove the actual link so it looks cleaner.
According to Social Baker’s 2014-2015 analysis of 670K posts on 4,445 brand pages, average organic reach for image posts is now at just 3.73%. Their research suggests that the most effective post types are now videos (8.71%)
Photos can still be engaging and powerful, but we should be incorporating videos too.
How long should your video be? From 2014
Videos we take ourselves and upload directly to FB do even better
Have the right dimensions!
With the timeline format, and you have the cover photo option, which, you should be changing.
Change once a month, twice a month
Photos should be clean and bold, it’s where our eye is drawn
McDonalds does a great job with cover photos: Clean, bold. Sept 1st
Pepsi’s latest, bold and bright and clean
Pepsi’s, June 8th.
Nostalgia can be a great tool
Collages can be neat
PicMonkey and Pic Scatter both good collage makers, and they are free.
Library buildings as cover photos. I see this a lot.
Nice photo. Should be somewhere, but the cover? There’s more to your library than your building. To me, this doesn’t speak to what a library is. Thoughts on this?
This is from January. Like this better, personal with the library card.
Other ideas: Kids laughing at a story time, get permission. Something dynamic.
Training last spring. I like it, because it conveys action. Conveys what we do as a system.
This is our current one
Logos are great.
Keep it pretty stagnant because it shows up in our news feed, comments, replies.
What do you use for profile photos?
With that many photos, we know FB is doing some major shrinking and manipulating.
When you upload an image to the timeline, a thumbnail is generated automatically to fit within a box that is 470px by 470px. So if you want to use the maximum space allowed, upload a square photo at least 504px wide.
Collages can be great tools. More than 10, create an album
3-8-ish, use a collage tool. Be Funky, app.
Pic Monkey
Photos from a recent event.They should be natural. The ones of a donor handing you a check is fine and it makes the donor happy, but it’s not very interesting.
Kids laughing, staff hanging decorations, face painting, getting pics of people reading
How many are buying ads for your library’s page?
As little as $1 a day, you can buy a
4. (Impressions, the number of different people who saw your ad (Reach) and the average number of times (Frequency)ads for your library. You can control your daily budget and edit it as you want.