LITT: Marketing
Let’s chat about promoting library programs and services. Do you create flyers, handouts, and bookmarks? Are you in charge of your library’s social media? Do you want to help more community members access your library? Let’s talk about during LITT: Marketing chats!
Our next LITT: Marketing chat will be held in March, 2022. We will discuss promoting larger library events, like National Library Week and Summer Reading.
Notes from Past LITT: Marketing Chats
Here are the highlights from our conversation on marketing bigger events:
- Toolkits can save you time and have great resources for free – we especially liked sample proclamations to send to local elected officials:
- National Library Week (2022 toolkit)
- Library Card Sign-up Month (2021 toolkit)
- Banned Books Week (2021 toolkit)
- CSLP Summer Reading toolkit – see your library’s Summer Reading Manual for access code
- Idaho Family Reading Week – has promotional art, sample posters, and more (2021 resources in link; 2022 theme is “Secrets of the Animal Kingdom”)
- Partnering with a local business or school can help you advertise your program
- If you are doing outreach at a school, don’t forget about the ICfL’s Outreach to Underserved program
- Staff meetings are a great time to communicate with other staff about upcoming events, and email can be used as a reference or printed out for staff who don’t check email often
- Advice for putting on a successful event:
- Recruit staff to help make images!
- Word of mouth works great – mention your programs to your patrons
- Have food. Or offer a free book if they return a coupon
- Start planning earlier than you think you need to!
- Plan ahead with partners for cross-promotion – i.e. promote in multiple places at the same time to reach a broader audience.
- Share it to your local online classifieds
- Ask/inform admin throughout even if you don’t need to ask so that they are onboard from the beginning.
- Have a second pair of eyes look over everything you plan or create! Others have great suggestions and can help catch mistakes.
- Check out the 2022 Library Calendar of library and book-related holidays
Finally – the ICfL will soon launch a listserv exclusively for Idaho Library marketing topics. We will advertise it on LibIdaho when its ready to go!
Here are the highlights from our discussion:
- We watched a short and very informative video about crafting library program descriptions from the Super Library Marketing show
- We learned about using the Hemingway Editor to clarify language and help with editing
- We talked about ways to improve our writing and Jennifer shared the signup for Anne Handley’s newsletter that has writing tips every two weeks
- If you need resources for using accessible terminology and person-first language in your descriptions, check out these websites:
- Storytime is one word (even though many Microsoft products don’t recognize it) – remember to always check the dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dictionary
Here are tips for creating great library program descriptions:
- Start with keywords that describe the program and build your description based on those (this will help people using search engines find your program)
- Aim for clear, not cute, writing
- Descriptions should be 100 words or less
- Highlight benefits of the program to your audience – write with your audience in mind
- Use present tense verbs and active voice
- Include a call to action (like “join us” or “register”
- Read through your own spam email to find headlines and attention-grabbing words that were sent to you from marketing professionals for inspiration
- When you are working with multiple staff members, a style guide is useful – I’ve attached the ICfL style guide as a reference
Our next LITT: Marketing chat will be in March, and we will talk about promoting larger library events, like National Library Week (in April) and Summer Reading. Also, in the next few weeks the ICfL will launch a listserv specifically for Idaho library marketing folks – stay tuned for information about signing up.
Thanks to everyone who attended this morning’s LITT: Marketing chat on naming library programs and services. We had a great discussion about how hard it is to find just the right name for library programs. Here are some general things to keep in mind when choosing a name:
- Keep it short and simple
- Try for cool and creative
- Make sure it’s easy to understand
- Make it memorable and unique
- Don’t overthink it
- Try for a rhyme
- Include learning objectives (i.e. “Learn to Sew”)
We watched this quick video on naming programs from the Super Library Marketing Show/Blog. We also looked at these three online tools to help with program name brainstorming:
- Namestation: https://www.namestation.com/
- Event Name Generator: https://copywritingcourse.com/event-name-generator/
- Project Name Generator: https://online-generator.com/name-generator/project-name-generator.php
Finally, don’t forget to check in with Donna Eggers, the Public Information Officer at the ICfL, if you need some one-on-one help with all-things marketing: donna.eggers@libraries.idaho.gov.
Our next chat will be during the week before the Christmas holiday in December, and we will discuss how to write program descriptions for print and social media.
We had a great discussion on Canva basics and covered the following topics:
- How to make a button template in Canva (see attached example)
- Using Canva for social media (the templates are sized for different types of posts)
- Using Canva for PowerPoint slides (download the Canva template and edit in PowerPoint)
- Use your own photos and logos (you can input specific colors from your organization’s style guide or Canva will detect colors from your image and add them to the color palette)
- A shortcut for inserting and editing a line in Canva is to simply press the “L” key on your keyboard
Want to learn more? The Canva help feature is really useful and check out YouTube for quick tutorials. Have some specific questions or projects that you want some help with? Contact Donna Eggers (donna.eggers@libraries.idaho.gov), the ICfL’s Public Information Officer.
Here are the documents that were shared as examples/guides:
Description: Have you ever had to design a flyer, bookmark, poster, or sign for your library? Was it a little more work than you expected? Good graphic design can make or break your library’s promotional materials. Lets get a conversation started about what successful graphic design looks like for libraries, and how you can improve your design skills. Our next LITT: Marketing chat focus exclusively on graphic design basics.
Notes:
- We discussed basic elements of good graphic design
- How to make your library’s marketing materials accessible, including making fonts more readable and more:
- We talked a lot about Canva
- Did you know Canva has a GIF creator?
- Nonprofits can get a free pro account
- There has been an update to allow more use of lines
- We shared favorite sites for free pictures and images:
- You can extract a color that you like using this tool from Adobe (you can do this in Canva too!): https://color.adobe.com/create/image
- Another color picker is ColorZilla
- Use this one to find complementary color palettes : https://coolors.co/
- You can edit graphics and photos with photopea
- Procreate is an iPad app that lets you turn your drawings into illustrations for marketing
- We got expert advice on signs for library closers (make them all at the same time to ensure consistency; try to use inclusive or ambiguous language when naming some holidays)
- Other graphic design tools that were shared:
- pexels.com
- Google fonts (they are open source)
- https://tools.oratory.com/altcodes.html – for keyboard shortcuts when making flyers and handouts
Description: Marketing library events and collections is hard work. And it may be near the bottom of your to-do list. Join other library staff from around Idaho to share marketing tips and tricks. Help each other improve the effectiveness of your library’s marketing. The focus of this discussion will be social media. This LITT chat is a great fit for anyone working in any type of library that uses social media to connect with patrons.
Notes:
Recommended Resources from Chat on 12/16:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE6_rDhy3_s
https://superlibrarymarketing.com/2020/11/09/libraryfacebook2021/
https://superlibrarymarketing.com/2020/12/14/librarypinterest2021/
https://libraries.idaho.gov/continuing-education/library-communications/social-media/
Social Media Policy Examples: https://www.webjunction.org/news/webjunction/social-media-policies.html
A good example of a cheeky account is ICOM library’s account https://www.instagram.com/icom_library/?hl=en
For social media scheduling:
- CanvaPro, also for content creation
- SmarterQueue
- ActionSprout, also for
- RecurPost
List of Social Media Platforms that Idaho Libraries use:
- YouTube
- Nextdoor
- Meetup
- Google Business
- Snapchat
- TikToc
- Twitch
- Discord
Questions or comments about LITT: Marketing chats? Contact Jennifer.
LITT EVENTS
LITT: Neurodiverse
May 20, 10:00 am - 11:00 am MDT
LITT: Collection Development – Policy Check
May 24, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm MDT
LITT: Library Makers
May 24, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm MDT
LITT: IDEA & OverDrive
May 25, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm MDT
LITT: Academic Library Community
July 26, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm UTC+0
LITT: Adult Services
August 9, 10:00 am - 11:00 am MDT
LITT: Academic Library Community
October 25, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm UTC+0
LITT: Academic Library Community
January 24, 2023, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm UTC+0
