Thing #38: Use Things to Market Your Library -- Or All Roads Lead to Facebook

I've spent some time thinking about what my top "Thing" would be if I were in a position to market a library. One thing I believe about libraries using Web 2.0 tools is that each library (and librarian) has to figure out which tools work for them -- not only in terms of their own personal preferences but also in terms of what will connect with their community.

I like to write and am comfortable writing, so if I were a library director, or the person responsible for marketing my library, I could see myself putting a lot of energy in to a blog. I have a co-worker who really hates to write though, so I imagine she would choose a different tool, perhaps Flickr. She'd come up with clever ways to market using Flickr that I'd never think of, and I'd come up with ideas and topics to blog on that she might not.

Ultimately, though, my thoughts always came back to the problem of how to get patrons to take notice of your blog, or go to your Flickr site, or subscribe to your Twitter feed. And at this point I always wind up back at Facebook.

Just last week Facebook announced that they had half a billion active users. Half a billion! And it does seem to me that people are most likely to be on Facebook, even if they don't use other social networking services. And if your patrons are on Facebook, and they find out that the library has a Facebook page, it takes very little effort for them to "friend" you or "like" you. And once that happens, you can push content to them--even content from other services like Flickr or Twitter or your blog.

So even if you are going to put a lot of your marketing effort in to blogging or Flickr or some other tool, I think having a Facebook page for your library is almost essential. If Facebook is where your users are (everyone from grandparents to middle-agers to teens) then that's where you're going to catch their eye in order to redirect it to your blog post, your Flickr pictures, etc.