PVLD Director's Blog

Getting the Word Out

After yesterday's post I don't want anyone to think that I am anti promoting the library....of course we want to let people know what we offer.  That said, I'm not sure traditional approaches to marketing, promoting, branding, etc. will work in the Web 2.0 world. 

As the blogs and articles referenced in yesterday's point out....in an era of "cheap, ubiquitous interaction" one of the goals is to "do something worth talking about" (worth talking about positively of course!)

Another goal is to find ways to get yourself into the conversation.  That's why having a presence in online communities is so important.  We still haven't had a good opportunity to get PVLD onto Facebook, Ning or some of the other social networking sites, but we re taking steps to get ourselves out ontp the social web.

We're now on the new LibraryThing Local, which allows us to make people aware of our libraries and our programs via the popular LibraryThing social catalog (and, by the way, mark us as a favorite, subscribe to an RSS feed of local events including ours,  or add comments to the "comment wall".

I'm also pleased to see that we now have 9 reviews on  Yelp.com - with an average rating of 5 stars.

Ways of getting into the conversation...and they didn't cost us a dime!

Marketing vs. Doing

While I was battling the forces of chaos at work and at home last week I missed a couple of great posts by Jeff Brooks on the always insightful DonorPower blog.  Both make the point that it's what you do and how you do it, NOT how good you are at marketing that determines success.

In Advertising Can't Buy Me Love Jeff has a link to this post on Ron Shevlin's Marketing Whims blog, which makes the point that "You cannot advertise your way to greatness." 

In the library world you often hear people say that one of our problems is that we're just not very good at telling people what we do and why they should love us.  That's why I thought Jeff's comments were particularly relevent:

"It's a common delusion in brand advertising: That you can -- through superior creativity, some elbow grease, and a lot of media spending -- become loved and admired.

Maybe it used to be possible. Back when there weren't very many brands, there was no easy way to find out what other people beyond your immediate social circle were experiencing, and the average person had a pretty weak BS-filter. Now, people see right through your claims, and can find out the real truth in a few minutes online.

The only way to get people to love you is to be consistently lovable, and to do something worth talking about. And the only way to be "iconic" is to stay that way for a long time. Advertising hardly helps at all. And when it reeks of BS, it only makes things worse.

So take that creativity and money you might have spent on advertising, and use it to actually become great. Then you won't need advertising."

Jeff followed that post with another challenging the orthodoxy that "branding" is the key to success. He quotes a recent Harvard Business School blog posting by Umair Haque on The Shrinking Power of Brands about how in a web 2.0 economy "characterized by cheap, ubiquitous interaction... the very economic rationale for orthodox brands actually begins to implode: information about expected costs and benefits doesn't have to be compressed into logos, slogans, ad-spots or column-inches -- instead, consumers can debate and discuss expected costs and benefits in incredibly rich detail."

As Jeff points out on DonorPower - "If you want to have a powerful brand, you need to do something very cool, very useful, and very worth talking about."

Do libraries need to pay attention to the fundamental blocking and tackling of marketing and promotion - e.g. getting our events into the local papers, telling our story in the community, and making people aware of our services - of course we do.

The challenge for libraries is to do things that are, to re-quote Jeff, "very cool, very useful, and very worth talking about ".  Recent experiences here at PVLD would support this theory -

• Our Meebo instant messaging reference service was rolled out with no PR the day before thanksgiving and was immediately discovered and used
• The online homework help service has been largely promoted via flyers in the library and a few presentations to PTAs and school groups...and we now routinely exceed 300 tutoring sessions/month

If what we offer isn't cool, useful, and worth talking about then no amount of marketing will make it succeed.  If it is, it will succeed even if we don't market it well....

Permission Marketing for Libraries

Thank you to Nancy Dowd of "The M Word - Marketing for Libraries" blog - http://themwordblog.blogspot.com/ - for pointing me to this fascinating video of Web 2.0 marketing guru Seth Godin speaking to Google staff.  I'm a fan of Seth's and regularly read his blog - http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/ - but this is the first time I've seen him speak.

The video is a bit long, so I suggest grabbing a coffee or some lunch before you start watching, but it is worth the investment of time!

While Seth is obviously directing his comments to Google, there is a lot that libraries can glean as well.  All to often we say that libraries need to do more marketing.  I think many "library people" think that marketing means "selling" - telling people why they should use us more often and more creatively.  What Seth's video makes clear is that it is not about blasting out more messages, it's about providing something that people want to hear about, and telling them about it when they want to hear it.  If you do that, they will likely also talk about it to their friends and that is how your business grows.  In that context it is not surprising that use of our Tutor.com online homework assistance service is growing by leaps and bounds despite the fact that the only promotion we have done is by talking to students, teachers, and parents.  It delivers a service people need when they need it...and once they've tried it they tell their friends.  What other services could libraries design or offer that do the same?

One other comment that I found particularly thought-provoking was the statement that people don't really "surf" the web - they poke it.  They do a search, click on a link, and if that's not what they want they click something else or try another search.  Through this process people assemble clues until they have enough information to allow them to take action.  This can be a frustrating and inefficient process and Seth share his opinion that success in Web 3.0 will ultimately go to to those who develop systems that put enough clues in one place that in one second I can get enough meaning to enable me to take action without poking around further.  As we redesign our systems at PVLD we should be aiming for this!

Finally, I thought the story of the Hallmark Christmas ornament program was a fascinating example of the power of "permission marketing" - getting people's permission to tell them about things that they are interested in.  We libraries do this on a limited basis through things like our "opt in" email newsletters and notifications but there is potential to do so much more.  What if we were able to take what we know about people's reading habits and library use and send them (with their permission of course!) targeted emails that said "Susie, I know you enjoy John Grisham's novels so I thought you might want to know about this book by a new author of legal mysteries.  If you would like us to reserve it for you, click here"?  OR "John, thanks for attending our last foreign film at the library.  We wanted you to know that we will be showing xxxx movie next Thursday at 7PM and we hope you can join us"?

But enough of what I think.   Watch the movie and tell me what YOU think!