Tag Archives: social media

Buzzwords

I was in Halifax visiting some friends last week and one of them showed me this video by the Onion. It then popped up on the class discussion board. I took this as a sign.

The video instantly reminded me of the following lines from 30 Rock episode, “Winter Madness”:

Liz: Cross-promotional … deal mechanics … revenue streams … jargon … synergy.
Jack: That’s the best presentation I’ve ever heard.

Both the video by the Onion and Liz Lemon’s use of buzzwords sum up my feelings about social media and ‘2.0’ right now. Throw in terms like “social media economy” and suddenly you are an expert. Slap 2.0 after anything (see Fundraising 2.0 below) and you are a new internet economy maven (that’s a double-whammy, right there).

Social media eliminates the need to provide value to anyone


The more we look into social media and how libraries and other information organizations are using these tools, I am even more convinced that we do in fact need librarians and information professionals who are trained to use these tools. The skills to participate and create online do not come naturally to everyone. There is a big difference between using Facebook to stay in touch with high school friends or check in with adorable nieces and using Facebook to connect with your patrons.

It is not just a matter of setting up a Facebook page and waiting for patrons to ‘Like’ your page with no incentive. The value-added is so important. The use of social media should supplement their in-library experience. While I do enjoy reading the NYPL Twitter feed, at the end of the day I find greater value in reading my local public library’s feed.

In the new social media economy you just have to keep looking like you are doing work and people will pay you for it


In my last post, I talked about creating a social media strategy in relation to using social media as part of a comprehensive fundraising campaign. I’d like to add that I think establishing a social media strategy is crucial for libraries and other information organizations using social media to engage with their patrons in any way shape or form.

I think part of these slightly negative feelings come as a result of poking around the web for libraries using social media only to find half empty Pinterest cover boards, stagnant Twitter feeds, untouched Facebook pages, and countless other neglected social media tools. Does anyone else feel the same?

Further reading:

Fundraising for Academic Libraries (a social media approach)

Last semester, I wrote a white paper about fundraising for academic libraries for LIBR 504: Management of Information Organizations taught by Guy Robertson. If you are interested you can read the document here: White Paper on Fundraising for Academic Libraries by Alyssa Feir (PDF). As we have been moving through this course I have seen multiple uses of social media that would naturally blend with a comprehensive fundraising campaign. Fundraising 2.0 is not a new concept, there is lots of literature out there about how and why non-profits should be using social media. As Wedgeworth (2000) notes:

For all potential donors, the process of creating and maintaining a relationship is at the heart of any successful fund-raising campaign (p. 536).

This idea—the importance of cultivating relationships—is often the crux of the argument for non-profits to be using social media. Social media is all about interaction. Fundraisers have the ability to connect with potential volunteers and donors through Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Flickr … the list goes on!

Libraries are in a unique position within the university setting. Students don’t really graduate from the Koerner Library. They graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in English from the Department of English in the Faculty of Arts. Students aren’t the only ones to use the library either. The library has a wide base from which to draw potential donors and using social media can help the identification process.

I created a PowerPoint slide to introduce the idea of using social media in the library as a fundraising tool. In many ways these approaches are similar to general promotion of library services, but if framed the right way they can generate gifts.

Note: The links to the social media strategy documents do not work on the slides, but they are included below.

Further reading:


Wedgeworth, R. (2000). Donor Relations As Public Relations: Toward a Philosophy of Fundraising. Library Trends, 48(3): 530-539.

Affordances

We have moved on from affordances to participation, but I have been tossing around some ideas about the language of affordance. It began with a tweet and a reply:

Now, since blogger affords me a greater space for reflection as well as the opportunity to discuss with you, my dear reader, I decided to expand on my thoughts here rather than Twitter. The term affordance was first coined by James J. Gibson, an perceptual psychologist, as “an action possibility available in the environment to an individual, independent of the individual’s ability to perceive this possibility” (McGrenere, 2000, p. 1). The term was later used by Donald Norman in The Psychology of Everyday Things (now published as The Design of Everyday Things):

…the term affordance refers to the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used. A chair affords (‘is for’) support and, therefore, affords sitting. A chair can also be carried. (Norman in McGrenere, 2000, p. 2).

If we apply to this to a social networking site, such as Google+, we can say that it affords: connecting with people, sharing interesting links, images, thoughts with your ‘circles, and getting into arguments with other users via commenting. There are many affordances—some of them are positive (connecting with people) and some of them are negative (getting into arguments with strangers). Of course, some affordances can have both positive and negative impacts on your experience with the tool.

In my initial response on Twitter, I preferred the use of ‘affordances’ over ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ because of the flexibility of the former and the dichotomy of the latter. While I still think this is true, I don’t think the language of ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ is talking about the possible uses of tool in the same way as ‘affordances’. In my mind, we can assign pros and cons to the affordances. For example, in Twitter I can immediately share a picture of my new haircut with the my friends, family, and the world (pro), but I may also be ridiculed for how bad it is (con). Another example, I can post a comment on a friend’s wall (pro), but they don’t get my joke because it can be hard to read sarcasm and as a result are offended (con). A pro is an advantage of something and a con a disadvantage, and I see these terms applying to the affordances.