Social Media: can you tell it’s working yet?

NW ARLG event: 1^st July 2016, Manchester Central Library

This was a half-day event that I attended at the beginning of July.

The first part of event was presented by Sarah Mallen and Michelle Bond. They both described their own experiences using social media within their particular services (a careers service and a university library). Whilst interesting, they both focused on a narrow user group (seemingly 18-24 year old students) and tended to pose more questions than answers about whether anyone could tell if “it” was working yet.

The second part was presented by Tom Mason who was a social media coordinator, working in the Communications & Marketing department at the university of Manchester. And this was the “how to” part. Quite a mind-blowing presentation and since he wasn’t a librarian gave a different focus to the discussion. He suggested thinking about content in terms of planning campaigns to achieve an objective; and collect stats regularly so that they can be reviewed in the context of the content delivered; thus helping you to analyse what does work.

The final part of the day was group discussion. We were encouraged to think about what our library service social media framework would look like and share experiences of how we have used it and ideas for the future. Thanks to the librarians from the Race Relations Resource Centre at the Manchester Central Library who made the discussion so informative.

So, what next…

Social Media Framework

I’ve formalised my social media framework. It has highlighted a few discrepancies in the branding that needs to be addressed.

Screen-shot of social media framework

Social Media Monthly Calendar

I’ve started a calendar to record what “campaigns” can be planned.

The big events occurring this year will be the start of new NHS staff from August onwards and the start of new students from October onwards. So I’ve decided on three themes to cover August, September, October and November:

• What’s at the library? – what the library provides; anything from opening hours to relaxed study area to exam book collection. These messages are aimed at all users to help them to learn more about the Health Library and be encouraged to visit and join. They can be repeated regularly.
• Support for New NHS staff – how the library can help NHS staff and specialist resources to encourage NHS staff to join the library and use the resources provided.
• Support for New Students – promote university resources and training support to encourage students to use these resources.

Monthly Statistics & Analysis

I’ve decided to take Aug 1st as year zero to start collating statistics. At the moment I’ll collect what I can and then try to determine what will be the most useful. I’ll need to analyse this in relation to the subject content being used.

Screen-shot of initial stats to collect

It may be a bit difficult to complete the analysis on a monthly basis – maybe 3 monthly? I’ll just have to see how it goes.

So I may not know if it works but hopefully I’ve now got a bit of plan looking at how to find out.

Update 19/07/2016
You can now find the slides from the event online.