10 top tips to take your organisation's Twitter account up a level

My current column for Library Journal is all about taking a Twitter account to the next level. It's hard to keep organisational accounts progressing - a lot of them plateau after a while - so there's 10 golden rules to get you past that point.  

The 10 golden rules in brief, are:

1. Only tweet about your library one time in four
2. Analyse your tweets
3. Tweet multimedia
4. Tweet more pictures
5. If something is important, tweet it four times
6. Use hashtags (but don’t go mad)
7. Ask questions
8. Get retweeted and your network will grow
9. Put your Twitter handle EVERYWHERE
10. Finally, avoid these pitfalls .

Read the full article with expanded information about each rule, here.

This Thursday (free) WebJunction Seminar on Marketing Libraries

Just a quick heads-up that on the 29th of August, I'm running a webinar for WebJunction and my hope is it'll have a lot of useful information for anyone interested in marketing their library successfully. Details below - click the pic to go the website where you can sign up. Places are limited to 1500 and believe it or not we've already got 1300 people registered, so hurry!

I'm really looking forward to this - I've been doing a LOT of stuff around marketing with new tech / social media recently, and even though that's my favourite area, it's nice to get back to some marketing basics with this webinar. It's about marketing principles and marketing actions - as always I try and keep it jargon free and low on waffle / high on things to actually DO when you leave. The focus here is on what the traditionally not-for-profit library can learn from the big businesses (there's plenty); I'll be referencing Apple, Honda, Hellman's Mayo (of course...). I'll also be covering word of mouth marketing, strategy, a bit of websites and social media, and bringing your team along with you in your marketing efforts - here's a sneak peak at a slide on that subject:

So if you think this sounds like it may be useful to you, go to the WebJunction site and click the button to register.

I've always found Web Junction materials really useful - particularly when writing my book - so I'm excited about doing something with them, particularly something that anyone with an internet connection can come along to. Hope to see some of you there.

Ridiculously excited to be interviewed in SLA Information Outlook

I love being a member of the SLA - although the word 'Special' in the title implies that it will be solely aimed at legal or business librarians, it actually has a large percentage of its membership coming from academic institutions like mine. Part of membership includes getting the magazine, Information Outlook. This is a really good trade mag - there's a lot of useful, intelligent, grown-up content there. My favourite part of it is the member interview section, 10 questions with... I've learned a lot from it (and loved reading Bethan Ruddock's one when she did it) so I was ridiculously excited to be asked to participate in it. I've done a few interviews now but, with the obvious exception of Circulating Ideas, they've all been via email. This one was a proper telephone conversation with Stuart Hales in Washington, which was taped and then transcribed. It was exciting doing it this way. I got a copy of the questions in advance, although we went off on different tangents in the conversation itself (Stuart told me a great wedding-crashing related tale which you should force me to tell you should we meet at a conference or in a pub...). I was a little bit apprehensive in the lead-up to it because the questions seemed slightly passive-agressive in a weird type of a way, but Stuart wasn't remotely like that in the actual conversation, so I think I just got an incorrect impression from them on paper!

We talk about marketing, the SLA itself (more on that below the interview), the Buy India a Library project, professional development, new technology, and taking a step back. (Whimsical tales of my ability to lead a walking tour of York are greatly exaggerated. :) ) Anyhow, here it is - it specifically says at the bottom of this page that it's for personal use only and not for reproduction, but I've got proper permission to use it, I promise...

Ned Potter Information Outlook Interview by thewikiman

If you're an SLA member you can read the whole July-August 2013 issue from which this came by logging-in here.

On the subject of the SLA, at the weekend I read this absolutely brilliant post about the organisation and the annual conference, by Penny Andrews. It articulated things I value about being a member which I didn't know I knew... It certainly seemed to chime with a lot of people judging by the Twitter response, so particularly if you're not an SLA member but have wondered about it, have a read.

I'm a member of both CILIP and SLA, and will continue to be so. I get different things from them - in some ways I feel that CILIP helped me more as I was growing up (which is partly why I'll keep paying my membership fees; I owe them) and SLA helps me more now I'm grown up. The SLA is / are a confident bunch, and very positive - perhaps this is partly because they are under less obligation to 'save libraries' than CILIP or the ALA, so there's a lot less hand-wringing. (Incidentally, I LOVE Penny's comments about MOOCs and gamification in that article!) There's a lot of money in the organisation (they work hard to build and maintain relationships with corporate sponsors) and quite honestly it's nice to be part of an organisation that can afford to do things with style and without an ever-present sense of worry about finances. The downside of this is that it is if you don't like wearing suits for work-related things, and aren't going to do so just to fit in (*raises hand*) you can feel under-dressed at the London SLA-Europe events! Penny talks about being treated as an equal at the conference in the US, regardless of the status of the person you're talking to - I'd agree with that, but if you start mixing with the sponsors in London, expect at least a couple of them to be baffled that dressing in a suit and schmoozing isn't your number one priority...

What the SLA does (in my view) is focus on making us into better, more effective information professionals. They can afford to focus on improving us, and let others worry about the Latest Big Library Crisis besetting the profession. Part of the way we can endure in libraries is to be really brilliant at our jobs - it feels like the SLA addresses making a practical impact in a very hands-on way, all of the time, rather than being side-tracked. The conference itself remains the greatest experience of my professional career - I'm over the moon to be going back, to Vancouver in 2014, to give a few talks and see everyone again, and generally drink up the atmosphere of niceness and happiness.

Here's the link if you're thinking of joining; I wish I'd done so earlier. I didn't sign up to the SLA previous to winning the ECCA which gave me a year of free membership, because of the cost. To spend a big chunk of money on something work related, especially after already paying for CILIP membership, is daunting. But it's based on a sliding-salary scale so you pay less if you earn less, and now as a proper fee-paying member from my point of view (and from that of all the members I've talked to), it's worth it.

Librarianship can be tough these days, but the SLA makes you feel good and gives you confidence - that's not a trivial thing.

How we made a (pretty nice) virtual Library Tour video for almost no money

NB: This post has been in my drafts folder since September 2012! I never got around to finishing it, but I've done so now because anybody who wants to use a similar approach, there's probably just still time to get your video ready for the new academic year if you start right away... Last year at York we launched our virtual tour of the Library - a new video to replace the physical tours we used to do. Here it is:

(This on my YouTube channel because I don't want to artificially inflate our Library YouTube Channel's viewing statistics by sharing that version on here.) I found doing this video one of the most stressful, tiring and rewarding things I've done in my job... This post is all about how we went about it.

Before we go any further, the first thing to say is the video went down extremely well with students and staff. We got great feedback on it, so I think this method works.

The principles

I watched every single virtual tour video I could find before planning this one, and this gave rise to quite a firm set of principles in mind as to how we'd do ours. There are some really goods tours out there, but every video I saw had at least one element I felt I wanted to avoid... So ours was based on the following:

• No scripted scenes. This is a video aimed at students - they can be a cynical bunch, and I wanted to avoid any kind of construct or fakery that might annoy them. For example, the camera just 'happening' upon a reference-interview type situation at the desk, or wide shots of people walking to the next part of the tour - you know these are staged, and it influences the way you perceive the film. Our video would be delivered straight to camera, with people telling the viewer how things work, and showing them directly.
• No librarians on camera. Librarians can be quite bad on camera but that has nothing to do with this principle - we just felt it would be better to have students telling their peers about the Library, rather than us. It's a stronger and more relevant connection.
• Professionally shot, informally delivered. This was a really hard blend - it had to look professional but it needed to be as informal as possible. So the informality comes from the script, which I encouraged the students featuring in the film to change if need be, so it was more like their natural way of expressing themselves.
• No big theme, attempts to be funny, or over production. We wanted to avoid anything that would date quickly, or fall flat, or leave us open to accusations we were spending too much money on videos and not enough on resources...
• No barrier to watching the film. I saw some tours which were QuickTime vids or more sophisticated things than video, but often they needed to be downloaded, or didn't work on certain platforms, or were otherwise tricky to access in some way. This would be a YouTube video, pure and simple. It means we can embed it anywhere, and it's discoverable online.
• Benefits not AND features. Normally I'd advocate talking about the benefits of something rather than the features - it's marketing rule 101. But in this case, we really do have to tell people about the features of the library because that's what a tour does - so I at least tried to add in some benefits too, hinting at the recent studies showing students who use the library most get the best grades, for example.
• Short and to the point. I ideally wanted the video to be under 5 minutes - in fact it's around 6-and-a-half because there's a lot of library to cover and we didn't want to sacrifice usefulness for the sake of hitting a particular figure in terms of timings. But it is as short as we could possible make it. .

The people involved

We employed a Marketing Intern specifically to make videos for us (a genius idea by Michelle Blake!) - he was with us for 3 months, working 2 days a week (the maximum allowed). His name was Balam Herrera, he was a Production Postgraduate in the Theatre, Film and Television Department here at York, and he was absolutely brilliant. I managed him and the video project - as well as the Virtual Tour, we made around 15 short films too (more on that in a future post).

(By the way here's Balam's website: www.balamh.com - I can't recommend him highly enough, he was great to work with.)

We also employed students from the same TFTV department, to present. They had camera experience, and knew how to get a lot done in a short space of time - this was vital to the success of the project in my view.

The camera equipment we borrowed from the University's A/V department.

I no longer have the figures to hand (the perils of not finishing off a post for 10 months!) but basically it cost us under £300 to do, between the intern wages and the student presenters. (That excludes my time setting it all up, but we'd be paying for that anyway...)

The process

Putting together this video happened approximately like this. I wrote a script for what I wanted to be said, and sent it round various senior managers and marketing people for approval and changes. I asked the Chair of TFTV's Board of Studies to send round an ad recruiting for presenters on my behalf (more credible coming from him than from the Library). I watched a lot of YouTube videos as a method of auditioning those that applied without taking lots of time out to meet them all, and chose the three presenters you see in the film above. We set a date. I gave Balam the script. He turned it into a proper shooting script - I'll embed it below, and when you see it you'll realise how important it is to have someone who knows what they're doing with film-making! Then Balam did as much of the filming as he could beforehand - all establishing shots, external time-lapse stuff - anything without the students in, essentially.

Then we filmed it, and edited it, and promoted it A LOT.

Filming it

We filmed it in a day. Even though we did it all between 9 - 5 it felt like the longest day of my life! I was completely wiped out by it - but it was fun too. Here's our shooting script - hopefully gives you an idea of the level of planning that went into this:

Library Tour Shooting Script

If you watch the video and compare you can see how things evolved on the day - we didn't stick completely strictly to the plan.

Generally speaking we got things within a few takes - there were no long sections so the students were able to briefly check their scripts before each shot, then deliver their lines. A lot of time was spent re-shooting the same scene from closer in (we only had one camera), or waiting around for people to stop doing noisy refurbishments which were going on in the Library at that time. In the end we got one student back to reshoot a scene a month later because our catalogue changed - 10 points if you can spot the scene in which he's wearing a different top because the one he wore the first time was in his parent's linen basket back home!

Editing it

Editing it took a LOT longer than filming it - Balam did that on his own, and at great speed, but it still took several days. We had, in total, 120 gig's worth of footage! I tried so hard not to be one of those incredibly annoying managers who makes people change tiny things at great length so it was perfect, but I'm afraid that's pretty much exactly what I was like. We had about 4 drafts in the end, but I was completely delighted with the results.

I wrote the music as a temporary measure until we licensed something proper, but then we ran out of time so had to use mine! We also meant to do a separate version with text on the screen, but ran out of time for that too - all of our other videos have text on the screen so they can be watched without the need for sound, but this one just has a link to a transcript, which isn't ideal.

Promoting it

Although a video is in itself a piece of marketing, it still needs to be marketed. So we tweeted about it (and by the way, tweeting a link to something once does not constitute marketing - if it's important, you need to tweet about it at least four times at different time of the day to catch different audiences) a huge amount, we blogged about it, we embedded it on all of our subject-specific libguides, we embedded it on our 'welcome to new students' pages, we played it in Induction sessions, and we emailed key people within departments to ask them to promote it. It's had, at the time of writing, over three-and-a-half thousand views - the stats tell us in real terms it's had 10,700 minutes worth of viewings. It's hard to imagine any other way of getting that much targeted library information into our students! Around 60% of people watch it on YouTube itself, 30% on embedded version in various places around our website, 8% on mobile devices, which is lower than I'd've expected.

If you want to try something similar…

First of all, start soon - now if at all possible! Tap into the local talent - if your HEI has a film studies department, then you have a pool of talented and willing people to help you do this. Prioritise the key videos you want to do and shoot them first. If you can't afford expensive software, Camtasia is really good for live-action stuff as well as screen-capture. Oh and this guide to marketing with video may be useful.

It's really, really important to promote the heck out of your tour. It's so much effort, you can't risk not getting any reward! Promoting it does not mean putting it in the VLE and mentioning it in the news section of the Library website - it means raising awareness as to the video's value via several media at once.

Good luck!

Any questions, leave them below.

Running sessions on Web 2.0 tools for researchers

Edit: This post has been sitting, completed and tagged, in my drafts folder for over a month - it was meant as a direct follow up to a previous post (linked below) but then the gender and digital idenity thing came up (which is now EVERYWHERE in the media - glad the issue is getting proper coverage) and after that my second daughter was born, so it all got pushed back... Anyhow, here it is. I recently ran a suite of 3 workshops, collectively entitled Becoming a Networked Researcher. I've put all the presentation materials elsewhere on the blog, so check them out if you're interested. This post covers the approach, what worked, what didn't, and general stuff about librarians getting involved with running researcher events that cover new online tools.

It's definitely time to do this

I've been wanting to do workshops like these for years... I run workshops for information professionals so I know how valuable it can be to learn about these tools - and blogs like the LSE Impact Blog show that in Higher Education generally, more and more people are finding Web 2.0 essential. As info pros a lot of us have this knowledge, so why not share it with an academic community who will be grateful for it and will benefit from it?

Previously some people may have thought I was something of a stuck record on this topic - just banging on about Twitter because it was what I knew about, when actually the Library should be focusing more on the traditional things we do with Researchers. (No one directly said this to me so I may well just be projecting!) But the thing about stuff like this is it opens doors - it positions the library or librarian as expert, and gains us respect. It means researchers become more open to the other things we have to offer.

Anyhow, demand for these sessions was huge. We're going to be running them twice a year from now on as once isn't enough. So if you have expertise in this area, try and make something happen!

What to cover?

I'd previously run an 'Enhancing your online reputation' workshop for academics which mainly covered blogs and twitter only, due to time constraints - I still see these as the big two. They're arguably the two most important platforms or tools, and they're definitely the right foundations on which to build a useful presence.

I also ran a taster session on online tools for academics which covered no less than 9 different things - interestingly, lots of them put in their feedback forms that of all the tools we covered, they'd want more training on Prezi. So I put Prezi into the collaboration and dissemination session, but actually it needs its own bespoke training really - it's too big to cover as part of something else.

I put in Academia.edu because I think it's actually quite useful, I put in LinkedIn because everyone else TELLS me it's useful, I put in Slideshare because I think it's the great underrated secret weapon of communicating ideas. I left out ResearchGate because I'd heard they're pretty aggressive in emailing people once they sign up, in a way which is annoying.

Anyhow, the Blogging session and Twitter session were much more successful than the other session, so I'd advise starting with these, and adding more if there's demand.

What worked

• Collaborating with RDT. The Researcher Development Team are nothing to do with the library, but thankfully they're open to collaboration. I managed to meet up with Russell Grant, who runs a couple of social media courses anyway, and suggest the suite described above to build on what he'd already done - in theory, an academic could have attended his two workshops and then my three workshops and they'd have all worked together, building knowledge and understanding. I really like working with departments outside the library generally - not least because then the events aren't 'Library events' that no one shows up for, they're University events which happen to be delivered by a librarian
• They What, Why, Examples, How method. I try do this in most of my training. You have to introduce a tool and tell an audience what it is - but it's vital to then go on to why they might want to use it before you go into the detail of how it works... With relevant examples if at all possible. Lots of the feedback suggests people really value this approach.
• Enthusiasm. I'm really enthusiastic about these topics, and that always helps...

What didn't

• Doing the workshops with only one-day gaps between them - I felt like it completely defined my week and didn't leave much room for anything else
• Not enough example - I tried to put loads in (academic examples specifically) but I could always use more
• The Collaboration and Dissemination session tried to fit too much into the time. We're splitting it up in future (see below)
• I can't make LinkedIn sound exciting... I know it's important. Everyone says it's important, researchers particularly. But I can't seem to convey its value well
• Some logisitical stuff to do with rooms and timing, with which I won't bore you now...

Future plans

We're running a tweaked programme in the next academic year, and it's going to be different in a few ways.

• It'll be run twice, once in the Spring and once in the Summer - the Autumn term is just too crazy for everyone concerned
• It'll have one session per week. Last time round I did all three sessions in a week and I'm not sure that really benefited the participants much - it just made me feel like I was having a crazy week
• There'll be a blogging session as before, a Twitter session as before, but the Collaboration and Dissemination session we're splitting up into two. We're doing a Prezi session, and then a 'social networks for researchers' session - I've asked a colleague from the Researcher Development Team if he can do the latter, because I think he'd be better at it than me
• I'm splitting the blogging and Twitter sessions into a 'PhD and Masters researchers' session and an 'academics' session - there's 90% crossover between those two groups, but the other 10% I found it frustrating only giving examples that worked fully for one or other group. Seeing as the sessions were over-subscribed anyhow, we may as well provide targeted workshops for each group
• So what this means is, in consecutive weeks we're offering an Introduction to Social Media (talk, given by my colleague Russell Grant), Enhacing your Online Reputation (workshop by Russell), Blogs (workshops, by me - one for postgrads and one for academics), Twitter (workshop, by me - workshops, by me - one for postgrads and one for academics), Social Networks For Researchers (workshop, by Rusell) and Prezi (workshop, by me). All one and a half hours except the Prezi one which needs to be 3hrs - I've tried teaching Prezi in less but it doesn't really work... .

Exciting stuff!