Twitter: teeny, tiny blog posts

Twitter is a free messaging service allowing people to send and receive short messages (called Tweets) via the web. These short messages are limited to 140 characters (including spaces) and are generally public. Careful crafting can convey a lot of information without taking a lot of time to read or write. Millions of users allow one to connect with people interested in your institution or area of expertise.

In an ideal world my goal is to connect to and engage with my library’s users and the library community where they are, whether that is in a physical space or online. As a librarian, I want to capture the power of Web 2.0 tools to do a number of things:

·         market my library

·         engage in discussion with my library’s patrons

·         engage in discussion with those who support my library

·         promote the core values of the library profession.

Ultimately, my objective is to add real value to both library services and patron experience and Twitter is a tool that fulfills all those objectives when used properly. According to Solomon, social media is “incredibly easy to learn but can take a long time to master” (2011, vi). According to this infographic, I am truly at the “learning” stage (thanks to Alana for sharing this nifty tool and encouraging me to try others like klout). Mastering my presence in Twitter is going to be a long battle, but one I think will be worth it for my library, my patrons and my profession.

Vancouver Public Library has been a leader in the use of Twitter in a public library environment with the most popular Twitter feed of any Canadian library and the tenth most popular library Twitter feed in the world (Cahill, 2011, 265). Their example is certainly one to emulate. Some of their successes pointed out in Cahill’s article include:

·         Word-of-mouth marketing – retweeting by loyal followers broadcasts their message to an audience much larger than their original followers.

·         Customer service – allowed them to rapidly respond to customer service comments.

·         Community engagement – VPL used photographs (via TwitPic) to generate excitement about a new branch.

·         Solicit feedback – when VPL launched their new catalogue, Twitter was used to share the link and solicit feedback.

Along the same lines, Circle (2009) lists speaking directly to customers, immediate feedback and loyalty as reasons to use Twitter.

We can learn from VPL’s mistakes, too, such as this one that allowed them to learn what tone and approach to use.  Following an incident in which

… a full week’s worth of event notifications were posted to the feed in one batch, Twitter followers grumbled that the library was spamming them. The Web Team requested more feedback, and learned that the event information users wanted to see on Twitter was very current, for example reminders about events happening the same evening. Once this was taken into account, and events promoted accordingly, the complaints stopped (Cahill, 2011, p. 266).

Twitter is a very informal venue, and accordingly, VPL has endeavoured to keep their Twitter feed friendly, personal and approachable. The informal approach has led to some spontaneous conversations with followers like this one:

pdot Picking up my love affair with @VPL again . . . I’ve missed you.

VPL @pdot Welcome back! We’ve missed you, too.

pdot If this had been back in my childhood, it’d be like Santa writing back!:) @VPL

sylvia_tan @pdot OMG, the book fairies wrote back to you. That tweet from @VPL is the

cutest ever.

Perhaps not an enhanced library service, but a great example of how the few seconds it takes to make a Twitter post can create an incredibly positive experience (Cahill, 2011, p. 266).

Success on Twitter:

VPL considers its’ Twitter best practices to include:

·         Maintaining a friendly, informal tone

·         Updating at least once a day

·         Posting content that is varied, timely, and inclusive,

·         Responding to all incoming user questions and feedback (though not to a guaranteed timeframe)

VPL is years ahead of me in the use of twitter and has benchmarks in place to measure the effectiveness of their use of Twitter including feedback and retweets. Using some of those measures, CamroseLibrary1 has:

·         64 mentions

·         14 retweets

·         we are being followed on 5 lists (three of those are classmates. Thanks Jen, Alana and April!)

·         130 tweets

·         46 followers

All this since we CamroseLibrary1 started on September 5, 2011. Is that good? Let me remind you that I am a beginner!

Milstein (2009) has many other suggestions for quality use of Twitter including:

·         Treating Twitter as a conversation by replying to people who send you messages.

·         Actively search for mentions of your library in other conversations and manage your reputation.

·         Follow everyone who follows you. Their following you is an indication that they want to have a conversation with you. Use direct messages when privacy between you should be maintained.

·         Post one to six times per day; don’t be silent and don’t overwhelm people with too many posts.

·         Interact with your followers. Ask for opinions and feedback.

Twitter wants its users to succeed and has set up very helpful tutorials to help with that. You can access tutorials on the following:

·         Getting started

·         Learning the strange language Twitter and symbols uses

·         How to change your profile picture

·         How to follow others

·         How to promote your Twitter Profile

And so much more by using their help menu.

Hashtags:

Hashtags (#) were developed to create groupings on twitter and can be a powerful tool if used correctly. Agreed upon hashtags and their correct use with keywords allows Twitter users to find information on a topic and allows Twitter to organize that information. It is recommended that you do a little research before developing a hashtag to see if there is already an established hashtag on the subject. Some of the hashtags I love to follow include: #canlit, #CanadaReads, #BookerPrize, #MasseyLectures, #PlankADay and #FF.

Promotion:

Promotion is an interest I feel I need to pursue more actively and doing so using Twitter has been mandated by my board. As a result, I followed Twitter’s suggestion and set up not one, but two lists: one for authors, and one for libraries I follow. It will be interesting to see if our Twitter account experiences a significant jump in numbers following the set-up of these lists.

Other promotional tips include Solomon’s (2011) suggestion that linking social media profiles allows one to synchronize profile updates and allows others to find you (p. 26) and using custom backgrounds and your library’s logo to make your identity clearly stand out (p. 27). Our Camrose Public Library Facebook page was set up by a board member months before I started there and I share responsibility with four other administrators. I was pleased to see that the synchronized profile updates had already been set up between the two allowing us to update in both places at once. Milstein (2009) suggests filling in your account’s settings with the name of your institution and its URL and using the 160-character Bio field to let people know who you are; this is also suggested by Solomon (p. 28) as part of being transparent.

Is It Worth It?

I don’t think value is something that can be determined by numbers in the case of Twitter. If you are providing your patrons with a means of communicating with you, meeting them where they are so to speak, then you’re providing them with a valuable service. Do question the value fairly regularly, though; determine how you know you’re failing, learn how to correct the failure and be prepared to stop using the tool if you decide that is the solution.

Finally:

Follow me on Twitter!

Blogs discussing Twitter:

·         Twitter itself has a blog to update you on the newest Twitter innovations.

·         Andy Burkhardt is an emerging technologies librarian at Champlain College and writes here about how libraries can use twitter.  

·         The Libsuccess wiki site lists dozens of libraries who use twitter.

What I Read:

Barr, B (May 2009). How to: get the most out of Twitter #hashtags. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2009/05/17/twitter-hashtags/  

Cahill, K. (2011). Going social at Vancouver Public Library: what the virtual branch did next. Program: electronic library and information systems, 45(3), 259-278.

Circle, A. (2009). Marketing trends to watch. Library Journal, 134(16), 26-29.

Milstein, A. (May 2009). Twitter for libraries (and librarians). Retrieved from http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/may09/Milstein.shtml

Solomon, L, (2011). Doing social media so it matters. Chicago: American Library Association.

Thomases, Hollis (2010). Twitter marketing: an hour a day. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley.

Post Script (If you read this far)


Oh lookie lookie lookie! If you go to your "your tweets, re-tweeted" and click the little arrow (there's an arrow... hover for a bit, you'll see it) it tels you WHO tweeted it! Now isn't that the coolest thing.