Webinar Notes: David Lee King on "Facebook in the Library"

I am running a bit behind on putting notes up for things like this. Then again, my professional blogging has been running a bit slow, but I will not go into that now. At any rate, I had the chance to listen to this ALA sponsored webinar by David Lee King. The topic was "Facebook in the Library: Enhancing Library Services and Engaging Users." As my library's outreach librarian, which includes being the social media specialist, this certainly was something relevant to my work. These are my notes from the presentation which took place on November 2, 2011. My comments, if any, will be in parenthesis.

* * * * 

--Presentation began with a poll. Results of the survey of 220 participants on the question of whether their library has a Facebook page or not:

• 145/220 Have it.
• 28/220 Have it, but they do not do much with it. 
• 31/220 Do not have a Facebook page for their library.

--Question: How do we use Facebook in an organizational way?

--Libraries need to be in Facebook given that our communities are there already.

--51% of Americans 12 years old and up are on Facebook, according to Edison Research. 50% of those log in every day. This is an audience to reach via your Facebook organizational page.

--Facebook pages are made for conversation and engagement. Think of turning strangers into friends. Get to know people as you do people in your buildings.

--Some recent Facebook changes:

• Profile page changes. This his more like a "start page" now. Timeline is more prominent (update note as of this writing: Facebook is definitely implementing their "Timeline" feature whether you want it or not. For me, the jury is still out on this, so to speak). Timeline, which pretty much shows everything you have ever done on Facebook as far back as possible does present privacy concerns (then again, when has Facebook really respected or even considered any privacy concerns of its users?). 
• Status updates are becoming "stories." (And yet another annoyance since you are forced to choose between highlighted stories and recent. Either way, it boils down to what Facebook thinks you want to see. Personally, this is not very responsive to how I prefer to see the feed. For the library's page, it means having to work more on making stories "sticky" since they can get lost thanks to this new mess). 
• The "like" feature can now be a verb (I have not seen this yet). So you can "[verb] any [noun]." Like "gestures." You could now say things like "I read X" instead of just "I like X."
• Social viewing. 
• Apps. you may be implementing/adding to Facebook (or just some pesky app. that wants a permission, say if you read Yahoo! news and want to share it on Facebook using the Facebook app. on Yahoo!) will ask permission only once. You need to watch out for this (often people click through without thinking it over. Once you do, you pretty much gave Facebook permission to sell you to the app. maker and pretty much anyone else out there connected to the app.). 
• You can "subscribe" to people. This is different than "friending." A subscription allows you to select items to go to your wall without "friending." (This sounds basically like subscribing to someone's rss on a feed reader to me. Personally, if I already have someone on my feed reader, I am not duplicating them on my Facebook nor on my Twitter as a general rule. The reverse applies. If I follow someone on Twitter, I am not likely to add their blog to my rss or subscribe to them on Facebook. I don't need to see the same things over and over, and it is rare the folk who actually does anything substantially different from one platform to the next. However, for libraries, again, this boils to making good content that folks will want to read or see so they subscribe to you, since Facebook's new formula will bury you otherwise unless you get enough folks to like your content, etc.). 

--Facebook pages are changing too:

• You can comment as yourself or as your page/organization (this is in place already. I have not used the feature to comment someplace else "as the library."). 
• As an organization, you can "friend" or "like" other pages, but not individuals. 
• You can like a user and feature them on your page. You can do this instead of having a random list of people and pages displaying on your page. 
• Facebook will be cutting out the ability to send messages to fans. 
• Facebook places becomes "location." 
• Pages will have a timeline as well. 
• The feature of sending blog posts to Facebook notes automatically once you set it up vanishes. You now have to do it manually. 
• The discussion tab in pages is gone. 

-- King went over how to set up a page briefly.

--Went over some features. You can set up custom tabs (something I need to look into for our library page).

--Reminder that page administrators do need to have their own Facebook profile in order to have a page.

--You can use the page's status to post news, events, and ask questions (we do this already, so this was nothing new).

--The "call to action" feature. You can use this to direct people to do something: register for an event, comment, read something. Ask people to like something and share it. Ask questions so your users will answer. Do thank people when folks comment and interact on your Facebook page. This shows you are alive and engaged.

--Engagement is not so much about "likes" but about delivering content that persuades users to action and engagement. Need people to interact and comment so stories rise on the users' walls. This is trickier than before (due to Facebook changes, see my previous comment). You do get feedback on interactions from Facebook, including stats such likes, times shared, times seen.

--Consider "friending/liking" other organizations. Your content can appear on their pages then depending on their set-up.

--Host discussions. You can do this via your status updates.

--Educate your users, show them how FB changes and how they can make better use of it (something we work on, but we could do more).

--Post pictures and videos (we do post pictures. Videos may be coming soon now that we have a YouTube Channel).

--On goals:

• Planning is needed for a successful and active Facebook page. Who does the work? (Here, I do the work. However, getting the administration to accept and realize that planning is needed, and that managing the page is "real" work and not just I do on the side is a significant issue locally. It is part of my job, yet I often lack support for said part of the job. Yet, the administration does like to brag about the library's Facebook presence). 
• Plan how often to post. You can survey the library page's friends to see how much you should be posting. 
• Part of the planning should include how to answer any questions that come in to the page after hours as well as how to handle other "odd" questions. 
• Set goals for a year. How many updates a week? Content. How many fans do we want? (Right now, I do a lot of this "by ear." I would like to plan for this a bit more consistently, but at the moment, the support is not there due to "other priorities," some valid, some less so. I would definitely like to plan content better. I do try at the least to put content for timely things). 
• Check for Facebook plug-ins in Wordpress. 
• Facebook Insights are the analytics. You can find good statistics here. (I need to explore this more as part of the planning process). You can even see things such as were "likes" are coming from and demographics.
• A good goal can be to target audiences. This is where you use your demographic data, so you can target based on who you wish to target. 
• Something to consider is creating an advertisement on Facebook; however, this does cost money (ads, that is). 

Some questions from the audience:

• In academic libraries, you can do all of the above. The main difference is in focus. We have a known audience in academia, which can be good. Ask students what the find useful, what can be helpful, then ask them to "like" the library page. Give them reasons to "like" the page. 
• Use "hooks" in academic libraries such as freshman experience programs, etc. 
• As an academic librarian, "friending" students can be good depending on comfort levels (I have done this to some extent).
• City libraries often face bureaucratic administrations, various degrees of censorship, so on. (Actually, some academic libraries also have those types of bureaucratic administrations and degrees of censorship. I've had to deal with the campus news and information unit so they could be satisfied things would be "kosher" when I started out the library blog. More recently, they demanded to have a university representative of N&I be made an administrator in the library FB page; it's basically oversight). Tell them to see Facebook as a public conversation, like a town hall meeting. Pitch it as a public forum. Consider also having a social media policy, which can reassure the top folks (this is something I have wanted to do for a while, put something in writing in a formal way, but again, not a high priority to the top brass yet).
• On work versus personal profiles. Some have one profile. Other folks have two profiles. Facebook does discourage multiple user accounts, so use FB lists and privacy settings heavily. 
• Facebook is real work. It needs someone dedicated to it given it is a crucial communication tool (what I have been saying all along that I can't seem to get through to the powers that be). You make the connections to the users. This does include training the staff. The ROI (return on investment) is there. It is not easy to measure, but you can use Insights for some of it. 
• Taking photos in public places is legal--usually does not require permission. For a specific individual, you may need to ask. This is like a reporter getting contact information from an interview that will go on the news. 
• Set up multiple Facebook pages for library branches if branches have strong communities on their own. Setting up pages depending on services is also an option. 
• A sample goal: grow the page interactions with patrons. Keep updated with new/fresh content. 
• (For me, a sample goal would include writing a social media strategy document, also adding more staff. I would also like a goal dealing with specific community targeting).