Thing One - Twitter

I've signed up to do the #anz23mthings program, and I've decided to try to reinforce my learnings by blogging using my mobile. This blog was originally started during MPOW's original 23 things program, so it seems appropriate. I'm hoping that by blogging this way I will also get more regular in blogging - small posts more often.

So, thing one. I've been using twitter on my phone for a couple of years now, very much as a consumer - following interesting people in the library world and a few selected people in other areas of interest. I've only shared a little - mainly RT of article links I found very stimulating or thought provoking. 

I encouraged others in my team to do this program with me and its been great to have chats about, and be able to offer my fairly limited expertise.  And it's encouraging me to examine new areas - different apps and trying to get my head around lists are two examples. 

I'm also trying to share more - not just other people's content (although that will still be my focus) but some of mine as well. 

So far so good. Lets see what the next months bring. 

Likeable Social Media

I bought this title in November 2011, as I had heard good things about Dave Kerpen. 

It's a simple introduction for businesses/organisations using Social Media, with a particular focus on Facebook. I did wonder if perhaps it is too simple, but perhaps that is because I've done some reading and playing around in this area and am therefore not the key audience. Having said that, I did appreciate the book for it's easy to read style, it's emphasis on likeability and customer interaction (which are often overlooked in more techo books), and it's examples. 


It's main thrust is remembering to stay 'likeable' during your interactions in social media.  There are very good examples (I had heard a few before) to show how businesses are finding that this is the key to engagement with their customers - and a major part of this is to show that there are real humans involved at the other end. Be approachable. Be responsive. If a mistake is made, admit it freely and offer to make amends/provide solutions. Staff need to be empowered to be able to interact in a human way - the main thesis in the Empowered book.
Of course, you also need to know your customer, what they are interested in and how they interact in the social media landscape (including what tools they are using, and how they are using them). He encourages us to use the tools available as a customer, as well as a provider, to understand the experience better and therefore modify for the optimum experience.


Libraries have long believed that we are likeable (and our ratings amongst our customers have been pretty good in this area) but as we become more and more part of larger, highly structured organisations, our ability to respond to individuals in a highly targeted and 'likeable' way has been reduced. We need to ensure that the structures assist us in connecting directly with customers, in being approachable and responsive rather than the other way around.


Kerpen, Dave (2011) Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (& Other Social Networks). McGraw-Hill. Kindle version

Strategically Social Online Seminar

This week I had the enjoyable experience of sitting in on a Webinar presented by Zaana Howard (via QUT Information Studies) titled "strategically social. plan. engage. act." and then reviewing the mp4 a few days later (I remember better if I get to see/hear/consider again!)

For  future reference, Zaana's slide set is available on Slideshare.

I found the whole presentation quite useful for getting my head around some of the issues regarding growing a social media strategy (either in general or for a specific tool) from scratch to ensure that it is structured and sustainable. For this post (linked to my reason for this blog in general) I'm going to just dot point and then flesh out a few of the many things that stood out to me/that I want to remember and refer to again/that I want to find out more about.

• 1 in 4 businesses have a Facebook presence but this is actually less than 2009 (which was a big year for experimentation).  
• Public and private sectors using social media very differently.
• Interesting stats and comments on EU Libraries and their use of social media. Does this carry across into Australian situation smoothly, or are we different?
• UTS is a great example of a library effectively using multiple channels to reach it's target community. http://www.lib.uts.edu.au/  
•  POST framework from Groundswell. These should be considered in this order. Too often we start with the tools, but we need to first establish WHY we want to be present in Social media in the first place. Then consider:
• People - Who is the audience? What are their specific needs? (Don't assume that you know them - need to ask/observe) How would we like them to interact with us know, and in the future?
• Objectives - What are we trying to achieve? What actions do we want the audience to take? What benefits are there for the customers? For the providers?What will success look like in this sphere?
• Strategy - How will we get there? What existing services can we collaborate with? Timelines? Are there barriers to be overcome? Map them to better understand how they can be overcome. Governance issues?
• Tools - Once we have established the above, we can look at specific tools and determine which is the most appropriate. Ensure we look at where users are, and also the levels of resourcing available.
• Also looked at Buy-in - both bottom up and top down buy-in are important for success. And buy-in is not a one off event - need to build a strong, consistent, ongoing relationship.
• Evidence - where does it LIE? (Provide evidence that "speaks" to the people that you need to convince.
• Literature
• Industry
• Experience
• Need to establish roles & responsibilities (eg may be one key person, but they will need a support team especially for leave/holidays)
• RASCI for resourcing.
• Map out the first three months (slides 84-86). Make it explicit for each tool. Remember, it's about growing the audience.
• Allow enough resources. For example, initially Twitter will require one person, one hour per day until they build up their presence through regular posting of good content, and involvement in conversations.  However, although there will generally be one key person, they need to have a team behind them to find useful information and also cover when on leave etc. Also means not just one perspective and results in a more rounded account. Note, unlikely to see success with Twitter for 6 + months.
• Measurement is very key.
• Not just followers/friends/views/click throughs although these are valuable.
• Sentiment analysis – what are people saying and what emotions are they showing? There are some measurement tools available in this area but still being developed.
• Conversations and stories are the richest part of social media, but difficult to measure. 
•  Some specific tips for Twitter
• Plan ahead and know what you are going to post - don't necessarily limit to core business but consider other related information that will be of interest to the majority of your customers.
• Frequency 1-5 tweets per day (any more can be overload)
• Use relevant hash tags
• Consider who you should and shouldn't follow (don't need to follow everyone who follows you)
• Use @ replies
• Use URL shortening services - eg Bit.ly which allows you to track stats of the click throughs, etc.
• Some specific tips for Facebook
• Profile vs Group vs Page (which is indexed in search engines). Once set up can be difficult to change.
• What to post - as per notes for Twitter above.
• Admins - who, and enough in case people leave.
• Frequency of updates
• Friending 
• Events
• IN summary, a quote from Sarah Houghton-Jan "Be clear, Be there, Be Present" - paraphrased as be consistent, authentic, available.

Things that I want to follow up/find out more about:

• Bit.ly for URL shortening & tracking
• Foursquare - esp growth in Australia
• Diigo - taken over in some respects from Delicious, but more functionality
• POST framework 
• Groundswell (2008) by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li

Keeping up with the Jones's

I'm trying to catch up on some of the readings I've been doing lately, and keeping my information in the one place. So, here's another one. Thanks to Kathryn Greenhill for pointing me towards it.

Sheehan, K. (2010, August 3). Keeping Up with Keeping Up. ALA Techsource. Retrieved June 20, 2011, from http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2010/07/keeping-up-with-keeping-up.html

Very interesting article - clarifies some of my thoughts and gives guidance on what really are appropriate actions to do to try to keep up with technology and changes. It can feel so hard with limited time. And I feel like I'm really not doing very well compared with the people who's writing I follow. I need to target my work/reading/development because I can't hope to do it all (as Kate Sheehan points out clearly).
However, when I compare myself with many of my collegues (not that I intentially try to benchmark, just what comes up in conversation) I realise that other people are struggling even more than me, or have less interest/see it as much less of a priority. Again, as pointed out by Kate Sheehan.

Soooo, how will I implement this new knowledge? Well, although my current work is in Higher Education, I still have a passion for public libraries, and a growing interest in school libraries.
The areas that I find easier to keep up with and most interesting are more social networking - Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, etc. The areas that I find more difficult are the issues around DRM, ePortfolios and some of the content creation areas (Vimeo etc.). So the areas that I am less confident with are probably the ones which aren't focussed on in public and school libraries as much (although of course they are still relevant). And I do read enough to know of the basic issues/that there are issues with DRM, that there is a variety of ePortfolio platforms and software and that there are some absolutely amazing content creation applications out there.And where to go or who to talk to, to get more information. Which means that (according to Kate) I'm doing ok.

So I will leave you with my new favourite quote:

“Keeping up with technology” seems overwhelming and huge and ridiculously hard if it’s presented as a monolith that must be scaled. Keeping up doesn’t mean knowing every single tech trend that’s out there. It means being engaged with your community and knowing what your patrons are using. ... Just like the rest of librarianship – it isn’t about being an expert; it’s about knowing where to look.

Thing 18, 19 - Join Twitter, Tweet for a Week

The Twitter registration process was quite simple and clear - pity I was meant to tweet the week that I only had one day at work :) But I've been enjoying reading other's tweets, and also found out quite a bit more about some people's roles.
I also read something quite interesting:


Terrorist 'tweets'? US Army warns of Twitter dangers

Not that this is a new idea or unique to Twitter - as others have written, the whole point of many of these new technologies is to enable faster communication. Most technologies can be used for positive or negative results depending on the outlook of the users...