Recently, I’ve been reading several articles on the benefits and pitfalls of using social media as a form of community outreach. It seems to be an intuitive notion that social media should help with reaching patrons outside of the library, as it is very popular amongst people of all ages. However, some literature that I’ve read touched on many issues that needed to be addressed before actually using social media in a professional way. Some of the concerns are highlighted below:
Do I even want to follow a library?
One of the biggest issues that librarians are faced with when it comes to using social media is that they feel as though their work is all for nothing (Chu & Du 2012; Connell 2009). There isn’t much of a response from the patrons, and this may cause motivation to decrease amongst librarians who are using social media. Dickson and Holley (2010) found that social media pages tended to have several new users “liking” their main page, but most users did not retain interest and did not continue to interact with the posts.
Image indicating the first step to following a page on Facebook. Taken from http://www.privateschoolreview.com/articles/201 [Creative Commons licensed].
Stop spamming me…
Another issue that librarians have encountered was that they would try to promote events or services and end up posting too many messages. Connell (2009) found that patrons tended to get frustrated with receiving too many messages or postings on a page that they were following. They would end up defriending or stop following the library’s page.
“Stop Spam” Sign taken from http://pixabay.com/en/road-sign-attention-shield-stop-464655/ [Creative Commons licensed].
Where’s my privacy?
Sometimes, librarians might be seen as part of an academic institution and people do not want their personal information being linked to what they believe to be an authoritative figure. Then, there are instances where librarians try to “friend” students as their way of reaching out to them. This might give off the incorrect impression that librarians are trying to invade students’ privacy (Connell 2009).
Image showing privacy being taken away and erased as taken from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Facebook-_The_privacy_saga_continues_(4638981545).jpg [Wikimedia licensed].
Questions: What can be done about these issues? What are your thoughts on this topic? Have you ever seen anything implemented in order to help resolve these problems?
Follow
These are really important considerations for social media use by information organizations, Phoebe. I think both your questions really highlight the importance of using social media sparingly, for high quality and engaging content. I am particularly interested in how information organizations can use social media to create community engagement and connections, which likely would lead to greater interest.