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Maintaining Multiple Social Lives

I’ve found that when it comes to social networking, it’s easiest for me to focus on just one platform at a time. To be honest, this isn’t surprising as I’ve never been the type of person who could foster or maintain more than 3 close friendships at a time. Despite being an extrovert and garnering energy from social situations, I’m the type of people person who likes to really focus on the person. This is perhaps why Facebook has always been my preferred social media network by far. It allows for so many different types of interactions that I feel as though I get to know the person behind the profile better. Through status updates, photo and video postings, the new “live” feature, links and shares, “reactions,” comments, and messaging, the user is able to express themselves in so many different ways allowing for so many more facets of their personality to show through.
While Facebook is by far my preferred social networking platform, I have used others as well. The only other one I am still remotely active on, though, is Instagram. This platform allows for storytelling through a combination of photos, videos, and text, but the emphasis by far is on the photo or short video. This requires the user to put a significant amount of thought into the photo or video they use, since they need that image to catch the audience’s eye if they want them to take the time to read the text they’ve paired with it. As someone who has always relied heavily on verbal communication, I find this to be an interesting challenge as it engages a different kind of creativity.

With so much going on at all times in libraries, social networking has become a basic requirement of any library wanting to reach as much of their patron base as possible. Library professionals can use Facebook, for example, to share information and events, and then the patrons who see those posts can share them to reach people on their friends lists who may not have "liked" or "followed" the library page yet. It's the best free advertising available, and one of the best ways to garner patron involvements. Many social networks also allow for cross-posting directly from within the network the user is in at the moment. This means that when a librarian creates an Instagram post, they can simply check a box to simultaneously post the same thing to their linked Facebook account. Another way to make their social media presence more efficient is to create an account on a content management system such a Buffer or Hootsuite, so they can plan and prepare their posts for multiple social networks at once, and then set them to post to those accounts at the times they'd be most viewed or best received.

Some of the many ways public libraries can utilize social networks are by:

  • Linking their website or blog to their social networking account. They can do this by adding a link to their website, blog, or OPAC in the "About" section of their page, or by sharing specific updates to those webpages such as updated events calendars and new blog post announcements as posts to their social networking account. Below is an example of how one public library shares new blog posts via Facebook.

  • Announcing and sharing opportunities for giveaways, programs, contests, and other patron involvement opportunities. They can invite patrons to share their thoughts and wants through an online survey, direct them to where on their website they can sign up for summer reading programs and popular programs, and even announce winners of drawings from various programs they've run. Below is an example of how to encourage patron involvement by sharing a digital survey.



  • Sharing photos and stories from programs, community partnerships, new additions to the collection, and interesting things spotted around the library. This includes making use of Facebook's "Memories" feature, or digging through photos from previous posts to create a throwback post, garnering nostalgia and reminding patrons how popular a certain program or event was the last time it was offered as a means to generate more signups and higher attendance this time around. These tricks aren't exclusive to libraries, either. Here's an example of IUPUI using the same method to announce their Carnival:

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