Three simple marketing rules all libraries should live by...

... but which so few do!  

1. Market the service, not the content. Telling people about content puts the onus on them think about how they can integrate that content into their lives; many people simply don't have time to analyse what we're offering in that way. We should be making it explicit how we can help them so they need no imagination to understand it - and that comes from marketing services. To paraphrase the awesome Sara Batts, Content is, Services do. Doing is more useful to people than being, so when you have a very limited time in which to appeal to people with limited attention span, market to them what you can do.
2. No one cares about the how! Can't stress this enough: libraries are seemingly process focused, but the the rest of the world is focused on results. When marketing a service we should concentrate on what people aspire to, not the tools which will get them there. A classic example is databases: we say things like "we subscribe to X databases which you can access via the library catalogue" or, even worse, we name them individually. We market the features; what people want to know about is the benefits. Like Mary Ellen Bates says, the way to market databases is to say 'we provide you with information Google cannot find'.
3. Market what THEY value, but continue to do what WE value. The SLA's Alignment Project unearthed some fascinating truths about what we as libraries and librarians think are important, and what our patrons and potential patrons think are important. There are marked differences, I'd urge you to read about it for yourselves. (To sum up, users put the emphasis on value-driven attributes, we put it on functional attributes. This is, essentially, points 1 and 2 above, mixed together.) But the key thing is this - it doesn't mean the stuff we value isn't important, it just means that it isn't as valued AS highly by other people. So we continue to DO all the important stuff we value, we just concentrate the marketing on promoting the stuff THEY value. .

You don't need to be a genius to do this stuff, or to have huge marketing budgets, or even loads of time. It's just a case of reconfiguring our existing efforts to acknowledge some simple rules.

Any that you'd add?

- thewikiman

p.s There is a part two of sorts, for this post, here.

How do you get feedback from library users? (Or, Beating Survey Fatigue...)

 

John Kennerly just drew my attention on twitter, to an article about how students are getting survey fatigue. (The article is in The Chronicle of Higher Education, you can read it here.)

I'm really interested in how to get feedback - not just from students in academic libraries, but from all patrons for all types of libraries. My interest has been piqued recently because of:

• Terry Kendrick pointing out in a marketing workshop that "...it's no good asking people what their needs are; they'll just come up with some guff to help you with your survey!" Think about when you were last asked about your needs. What was your main driver in answering - expressing those needs, or just making the question go away? Even those with the best of intentions may come with answers just to try and help the surveyor, rather than truly delving into themselves to try and think about what they need. Plus, needs are based partly on what you know is possible - people might not mention stuff because they don't even know it's something the library has any ability to fulfil.
• Stephen Abram mentioning at SLA2011 how much better the focus groups he ran went when he gave everyone a $5 Starbucks card and told them to spend it and bring a coffee and muffin to the meeting I can imagine a million and one purse-string holders saying "We can't afford to spend $50 on a focus group!" But actually that's a pretty good use of $50...
• The quote from Henry Ford that resurfaces fairly often On the Model T Ford: "If I'd asked people what they wanted, they'd've said a faster horse..."
• A recent revelation at work that a survey we hadn't had time to publicise got more respondents than the previous year when we'd gone all out Could be a coincidence, of course. But maybe there's something in there about the psychology of trying to elicit feedback? .

These are all interesting points, I think. So what are you doing to ascertain what your patrons are thinking? Is there something more reliable than surveys? And if you're asking them via social media, how did you find out what social media platforms they used in the first place...?

All comments gratefully received! :)

- thewikiman

The Great Library Stereotypometer!

Okay here it is... After EXTENSIVE RESEARCH (I asked people on twitter what they reckoned) I proudly present (and then immediately duck behind the nearest sofa) the Great Library Stereotypometer - a new, up-to-date, piercingly accurate and entirely NON-SERIOUS look at library stereotypes!

As the caption says, click it to view full-size. Feel free to use it anywhere. Don't take it seriously. (Seriously.)

More to add? Why not create your own! :)

- thewikiman

3 essential things to do AS SOON AS YOU JOIN twitter...

When most people join Twitter, they don’t know whether they’ll stick with it or not. For this reason, they often start following a few people before they’ve really set up their profile, and this can actually end up being detrimental to their twitter experience.

The reason is, when you start following someone, in most cases they get an email saying ‘X is now following you’ – this email includes your bio, your pic, and a link to your profile. If you don’t have a bio, your only tweet is something along the lines of ‘Don’t really understand this twitter lark!’, and your picture is the default twitter egg, chances are they won’t follow you back. And seeing as you’ve gone out of your way to identify key people to follow first of all, this is potentially a huge missed opportunity to engage with people who you’d get a lot out of chatting to.

So to avoid this, and generally get off on the RIGHT foot on Twitter, here are 3 very simple things to do right away, as soon as you join, and before you do anything else:

1. Put in a picture, preferably a head-shot. If you’re really camera shy then put in a picture of a robot or whatever, but put in SOMETHING – lots of people refuse to follow anyone with the twitter egg, right off the bat. Twitter is a personal medium – even if you’re only using it for professional networking, you really need a picture of yourself up there.
2. Put in a proper, engaging bio. Remember, people get emailed when you follow them. Oh, who is this new follower and shall I follow them back? I don’t know who they are because they’ve not put in a bio – so I won’t bother. Twitter is about connecting with people – use the bio to say something about yourself, which will make the kinds of people who you want to connect with, want to connect with you. Try and avoid ‘reluctant twitterer’ or similar as the last sentence.
3. Write a couple of tweets. I know it seems silly to broadcast tweets to no one, but you need to give people something to go on when they’re deciding whether to follow you back. Everyone’s first tweet is roughly ‘Am trying twitter out – hello world!’ or something along those lines, and that’s fine, no one expects your first tweet to be a work of 140 character genius. But follow that up with something more meaningful, perhaps about what you want to get out of Twitter, the types of professionals you want to tweet with, or maybe a link to a really useful article or piece of information. .

Just do those 3 simple steps and you’ll hit the ground running, and have more chance of developing relationships with people who matter to you.

- thewikiman

More on stuff on Twitter from this blog:

• New to Twitter? Here’s what you do
• Why I’m glad I caved in and started using twitter
• 7 reasons people give for not using twitter, and why ‘It’s a conversation’ is the answer to all of them

Why I’d quite happily never read another comparison between Google and Libraries ever again

I’m a huge fan of Phil Bradley, and a recent very eloquently written post of his added to the canon of information professionals who have compared Google unfavourably with What We Do. However, I’d really be very happy not to read any more such comparisons hereafter. Here’s five reasons off the top of my head

1. It’s not a fight we will ever win. Ever. Unwinnable fight = this.
2. However valid our arguments are for libraries or librarians being ‘better’ than Google, we are not powerful or loud enough for them to stick. It’d be like a minor royal saying he’d be better on the throne than the Queen – that may well be, but no one is listening and in any case, it’s the frigging Queen. She is literally bolted down onto the throne.
3. It’s really hard to become popular by slagging something else off. You have to be really likeable to make this approach work; it reminds people too much of politicians who only ever talk about how bad the opposition party is. From a marketing point of view, librarians saying Google is bad is a disaster, because everyone loves Google – it’d be like goldfish trying to make a comeback as a popular pet with a ‘Kittens are bastards’ campaign.
4. It’s hypocritical. Lots of librarians love Google. I love it – I use it every single day almost a bajillion times. I use it for work, in my library. I know some people don't love it and use Bing etc, but really there isn't a web user in the world who doesn't get some kind of good use out of search engines.
5. See number 1, again. .

All we can do is help people to use it better, and emphasise that we provide access to information which Google cannot find. To step up to Google and try and compete for the same market is a waste of energy.

-   thewikiman