Identifying Brand Advocates for Libraries

Here are highlights from the June Panel presentation by Silicon Valley American Marketing Association chapters.  The event was titled:   “The Next Step in Social: Beyond Listening and Engagement”.  I'll try to relate this marketing discussion to library advocacy.

Moderator: Chris Arens [Catalyst s+f], influencer, author and marketing/ad agency veteran

•         Chris is revising his textbook on advertising 101, Contemporary Advertising.
•        His company, Mindtime, is focused on understanding the drivers of consumer behavior.
•        He says now is the Age of Enlightenment II, with major institutional changes in several big industries: Music, Photography, Publishing, Personal computing, Advertising & Marketing. Librarians are well-aware of these shifts, especially in publishing and personal computing.
•        There is a fundamental shift in our world, thanks to 3 revolutions: technology revolution, data revolution, and transparency revolution.
•        Companies now need to think of individual people, not market segments or groups.  People have brand relationships, so businesses need to learn about individuals, especially brand advocates.
•        Brand advocates self-identify themselves, go out of their way to recommend products (like book recommendations) or businesses, and they move business!  Learn how know who the advocates are because 90% people buy based on recommendations from people they know; 70% buy based on consumer opinions posted online.  It is about building lasting relationships.
•        Give your advocate a platform from which to address people.  [CSLA Bestsellers, CCfSSL supporters, FRIENDS of the LIBRARY members need to be given a platform so they can passionately advocate for libraries.]
•        Tenets of good relationships: RESPECT, trust, honesty, accountability, and support.

Panelists: 

Maria Poveromo, Director of Social Media, Adobe: Her goal is to identify the most passionate Adobe advocates.  In PR, she used to identify gatekeepers and journalists, but now she brings in the voice of the customer.  Adobe has a CS Ambassadors group on LINKEDIN.  CS=creative suite, the name for its suite of design products including Illustrator, In Design and Photoshop.

Laura Messerschmitt, Senior Marketing Manager, Intuit: Brand advocates are in the company’s “Intuit Inner Circle”.  They identify brand advocates via their Net Promoter Surver, where the key question is “On a scale of 0-10, how do you feel about the product (QuickBooks)?” Anyone who scores 9 or 10 gets followed up and asked to post a recommendation to Amazon Reviews.  This is a popular and easy way to identify top advocates and give them a specific way to advocate for the product.  Survey membership each year, invite members to use your advocacy tools.

Recently, Intuit pre-briefed their brand advocates before an ad campaign so they could help defend the company if needed.  In the old days, the company used to only pre-brief journalists. Library associations could pre-brief members about upcoming news releases; Public libraries could pre-brief FRIENDs or Donors, give sneak previews of upcoming events or news.

Rob Fuggetta, Founder and CEO, Zuberance:  - Apparently his company is very well respected as a company that studies and tracts social media.  Uses R.O.A – return on advocacy (media value) rather than ROI.

Susan Etlinger, Consultant, Altimeter Group: – Her paper on how to measure softer metrics, like relationships (social analytics) is about to be published.  It will be on the Altimeter website and available via Creative Commons.    She says a lot is measurable:

1. Brand health
2. Marketing optimization – cmo person
3. Top line revenue – are we getting benefit from Facebook, Twitter
4. Bottom line operating efficiency – people “sell” to one another via social networking
5. Customer experience – was customer happy?
6.  IDH – innovation, crowd sourcing ideas 

__________

Other/Observations:

           Do not “brand” your advocacy program and urge people to “JOIN”.  Better to say something like “If you like libraries and librarians, let us know” or “If you like libraries and librarians, here are tools for you to help share our message."  or "Say "YES" to libraries!  Read how you can add your voice...."

·      

      Give brand advocates tools so they can better advocate for you.  A tool could be an online forum, a way to submit comments.  It could be key messages and research findings.  How are you helping your library brand advocates?

·      Brand Advocates go out of their way to recommend.

·      Don’t just focus on ROI (return on investment).

Questions:

·      How to identify brand advocates for strong school libraries, the Campaign LIBRARY STORE, or any library?  Survey?  Put you thinking caps on.

·      CSLA and CCfSSL site and FACEBOOK pages – what do visitors get in terms of an experience when they visit the page?  Is it rewarding, interesting, engaging? How to turn Facebook “likes” into something more.  "Like" is not necessarily a recommendation, let alone an indication of a brand advocate.

Crisis Webinar: School Libraries

Lots of school librarians across America listened to the"Crisis Webinar" (live or archived), featuring Christopher Harris of School Library Journal and infomancy blog and Buffy Hamilton, the Unquiet Librarian.

Chris' says school librarians need to OWN digital technology and translate information into knowledge. His Top 4 Scary thoughts: cuts will happen; don't be an easy target; It's probably too late (this year's cuts are already decided); and increase student achievement. School librarians need to actively market themselves and their libraries, not just seek others to advocate for us.

Buffy says TLs need to 1) Make what librarians do transparent. Use new media. Create monthly reports with links. 2) Create a participatory learning environment. 4) Tap into the larger learning community via new media. 5) Embrace the librarian's role as advocate for literacy, standards.

Change Agent - Librarians' Badge

Came across several "change agent" badges from a library advocacy program by Metropolitan Group. The badge is more like an old West sheriff's badge, so it might be of particular interest to California and Western U.S. librarians. Given this is is a major time for change in our world and California, this might be an excellent time for librarians to wear a "change agent" badge.

Building BUZZ - Word of Mouth Marketing

I enjoyed reading "The Power of Word-of-Mouth Marketing (WOMM)", an article by Peggy Barber and Linda Wallace in the November issue of American Libraries. The focus was on empowering public library staffers to ask patrons questions like "Do you know we have the Tumblebooks Site" and demo those sites or databases. It is simple, fun, and strategic on many levels. It creates a buzz. It is something like a fast food store asking all customers if they'd like fries with their meal -- it makes customers think about it, often add that item, and stimulates sales.

How would this work in school libraries? Is anyone doing something like this now? Would it be a fun experiment?

• Select a book-a-week for teacher librarians, library clerks, and/or student library aides to promote? Upon book check-out, ask something like: "Have you heard about X book by Y author? It is very popular -- check out a copy on the book display table". Effectiveness could be measured by how many times each of the recommended books gets borrowed over the semester or year. This could be a school-public library collaboration too.
• Select a library database or public primary source database (like Calisphere.org) to promote once-a-month.

Peggy says: "WOMM can definitely work for school libraries and we included an example from a middle school in our book [Building A Buzz]. Basically we suggest that every library have a marketing/communication plan that includes two-way communication-- finding out what the people served want and need.--- Then goals and measurable objectives based on what is learned, with WOMM as a useful strategy for making the plan work. (Golly....I do start preaching!) A library staff team can develop the plan, and all staff can make it happen. In our case study, a school district library recruited two people from each school to be advocates--both listening and telling colleagues about library services....and they had bunch of practical ideas --like "eat lunch with teachers and make the librarian accessible." Bottom line...the ideas you suggest sound good, but they'll be great if they are part of a plan---- organized, focused, consistent."

free2(fill-in-the-blank) Library Advertising Campaign

The Bay Area Library & Information System (BALIS) launched its Free2 library advertising campaign statewide and invites other California libraries to join.

Joining Free2 gives a library access to the Free2 intranet with the style and messaging guide, BBMG visual language and brand book, and many samples of materials produced by participating libraries, such as bookmarks, vendor information and specifications for mouse pads, stickers, posters, tee-shirts, just to name a few free2 products, as well as support and ideas in using free2 successfully. Contact Terry Jackson for how your library can join.

Think of the promotional freedom: free2Vote, free2Create, free2Give, free2Podcast. The list goes on and on. How about free2Borrow'N'BrowseBooks or free2READ.

Top Choice for Online Public Library Descriptors: Internet Access

Over the past week/weekend, I had a mini-poll on my blog. This is NOT in any way statistically significant or elaborate, but... when librarians considered the list of key descriptors I used for my blog poll, all agreed with "Internet Access" as a top descriptor. I agree, and in fact when I point that out to non-library-going workers in the business world it is an "ah, ha! -- makes sense -- hadn't thought of libraries as a place to go for Internet access."

• Internet Access or Wifi (90%)


• Books and More to Borrow (75%)


• Literacy Programs (35%)


• Business Research (30%)


• Childrens Books (20%)


• Library Cards (20%)


• Book Clubs (15%)


• Geneology Research (10%)

Of course, many librarians let me know that there were words that they would have used that were missing from the list. Other descriptors that were recommened included "teens" or "jobs" or "resume writing" or "online databases" -- the list goes on. Regular library users know or should know that these many things are available at the library, but the point of adding these descriptors to online directories is to help people "stumple upon" their own local library as a solution to their information needs.

Top 10 Public Library Descriptors

When members of your community are looking for local services -- like plumbers, doctors, specialty stores -- the phone book is the #1 choice for Baby Boomers, but the Internet is where our younger generation looks.

How are public libraries defining and marketing their services? And, how are they reaching out to the community online? I've started asking public librarians for their key word descriptors. Do descriptors vary by state or region? I wonder. My goal is to identify a "Top 10" list of descriptors. This weekend is the annual California Library Association Conference, so I should get some new words to add to my starter list:

• Book Clubs
• Internet access
• Business Research Services
• Childrens Books and Storytimes
• Genealogy
• Project Read
• Assistive Technology
• Wireless Internet
• OTHER?

Once a library identifies its key word descriptors -- for each of its branch libraries -- then it is time to add them to local online directories. Here is how to add to the YellowPages.COM. Share the "how to" with other public libraries and help build a common set of search terms for public library services.

Adding key descriptors for permanent programs is also a good strategy for your local businesses, so this is a good tip to promote in your Business Reference section.

Book-A-Librarian

Fayetteville NC librarian Sana asked a question on the PUBLIB listserv about evaluating one-on-one computer training sessions in the library. At her library, the sessions are called "Book-a-Librarian" -- how clever and appropriate.

I love "Book-A-Librarian" -- I'll have to think about how I could use that at work. It is shorter and more fun than "engage an Education/Library Advocate."

Back to School -- University Library Videos

It's August. Students are headed back to college. It looks like a number of academic libraries are prepared with wild and wacky, young love drama, and other themes to their "introduction to the library" videos. Here are a few examples:

• Fairfield University’s DiMenna-Nyselius Library (drama) - Connecticut.
• University of Tennessee - Chatanooga Campus Library (way too cool)

Bet we'll see many more. This will be a treat.

Library Avatar Slide Show!

Redwood High School Library Media Teacher Tom K introduced me to this fun slideshow maker. I immediately created a slideshow of a bunch of California school librarian avatars. It would be just as easy to create a virtual library tour, slideshow of Celebrity READ posters, promotion of summer reading program or banned books -- check it out!

Extreme Research - Marketing Your Library

Instruction Librarians at the University of California, Davis campus have created a clever marketing campaign to reach out to students. "Outreachology" posters include:

• Re-search-ol-o-gy: The art and science of finding the right stuff


• Search-a-phob-i-a: An inexplicable and illogical fear of catalogs and article databases
  
• Paperitis: The cold sinking feeling that hits when your unwritten paper is due

"Extreme Research" and other posters are customizable and available for other libraries through a created commons license. Just contact the UC Davis Library Instruction Team