 All right. Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show as we are doing today, and it will be available on our website later for you to watch at your convenience. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our show archives. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries similar to other states, state libraries. So we provide services to all types of libraries in the state. So you will find shows on our topics on our show for all types of libraries. Public, academic, K-12, museums, archives, corrections, tribal, et cetera, et cetera. We really run the gamut. We have book review sessions, mini training sessions, demos of services and products, all sorts of things. Sometimes we bring on a Nebraska Library Commission staff to talk about services and programs and the things that we're offering here through the commission. But we also have guest speakers as we have this morning with us today is Susanne, I can't even talk. I'm going to talk about Macaulay, who's from the Pioneer Library System in Canada, go to New York. Good morning, Suzanne. Oh, good morning. Thank you for having me. And she's going to talk to us about how we can tweak our library social media, which is hugely important topic has been forever for a long time. But things are always changing and situations changing what's available is changing and she's going to give us some ways that we can make it work even better for our libraries. So I'll just hand over to you, Suzanne, to take it away. Sure. All right, so thank you everyone who's joining us today. I'm going to be just talking a little bit about the ways social media has kind of changed over the past couple of years and just simple tweaks that you could make to your social media, the way that you're posting or the accounts that you're posting to to hopefully get a little bit more engagement, a little bit more reach. And for many of us, it seems like we're just sort of like yelling into the void right now. So hopefully you'll be able to get some takeaways from this today. Oh, let me just. There we go. Okay, so a little bit about me real quick. I am the deputy director of the Pioneer Library System but actually as of five o'clock today my title will be changing to program director, and we just rechartered and we're going to be the owl library system again, a future thing. It's a lateral move and it's a recharter but it's still the same organization that I'm working with we just have like a dual identity work sort of getting rid of so. So congratulations or just. Yeah, it's all exciting stuff yeah it's just like social media these are just the things that sort of changed with coven you know and so. So that will be an update but right now since that didn't happen officially yet I'm like I kept my old stuff up. But at the Pioneer Library System we partner with 42 small and rural libraries were across four counties, Ontario, Wayne, Wyoming and Livingston. Most of them are classified as small and rural and I'll show you on the next slide. And the things I do here is I do coordinated outreach youth services consultant so I liaise between our system in the state on a lot of things like state aid for library construction. I organize the continuing education and workshops for our member library staff social media and communications I talk about donuts a lot all the time on all of our meetings I think that we have. And I also co chair ourselves marketing and communications committee and that's the association for rural and small libraries. And this is a little bit this is where our library system is I'm originally from downstate on Long Island but now I am upstate and we're sort of sandwiched between Syracuse Rochester and Buffalo which are sort of like some upstate major cities. But our libraries are small we are smallest one serves 325 people our largest one serves 25,000 most of them fall in the two to 5000 range so when I'm presenting on social media. A lot of that information is targeted towards those libraries so if your library is bigger than that. Sometimes the things I'm saying you might have to scale up a little bit but it's really for those libraries that you know maybe they have one person that works there the solo library and or one full time or or there's only maybe there's a team there but only one person is doing social media. So a lot of it is like geared towards stuff that like one or two people could reasonably do and we'll talk a little bit about capacity. And these slides. And I have presented on social media a lot in the past couple of years. This is I think a sampling of the social media presentations I've done I've written a couple of articles on it, but everything is changed right so I feel like all those presentations I can just kind of like throw in the garbage I think a lot of the content from the past couple years is really not relevant if you've seen me speak on social media before and I do recognize a couple names from my system that are in the attendee list so thank you for coming. You'll see a lot of stuff that I am going to say today goes against previous stuff I said and that's okay we're always changing. I'm not going to tweet that I really like but you know it shows that like you could have your social media like you were super dialed in and you had a plan and it worked and you knew it hashtags and you knew what time to use to use social media and what time to post. But now it's like I don't I don't even know what's happening I don't know it works anymore and you know I don't know what to do and so today I'm just going to present I think a couple ideas that could maybe help and help you tweak your social media a little bit. So what we're going to do about all these changes that are happening in the world around us really absolutely nothing like they're just going to change things are going to happen we could not have predicted anything that was going to happen to us. But again we can make slight adjustments to how we're using social media, and how we're trying to reach our communities, and then hopefully, you know we can start to get some of that engagement, you know back a little bit. So things that we do know over the past 24 months social media became the go to place for news information entertainment and human interaction. So people that hated social media before we're almost like forced over like the course of the pandemic that's where they had to go they you know especially if you weren't a place that had really strict lockdown we were in New York, everything was shut down for a really long time we couldn't go anywhere so where are we going to go we were going to go on social media. I mean we even bought our, my youngest a phone during COVID and the other two didn't get them till today were teenagers and she was 10 at the time but that was like the only way that she could interact with her friends so a lot of people that didn't use social media, suddenly we're on social media, and we're going to talk a little bit later though how that made social media super crowded and now it's kind of hard. I think a lot of us are getting lost in that like information overflow and experts predict that while time spent on social media may eventually dip it's going to remain higher than pre pandemic. You know as of right now, especially you know I know where I am things feel like they're getting finally back to normal things are on the calendar and they're staying on the calendar they're not getting canceled. You might have less time for social media but it's not going to go back to where it was people are still online, more than they were. So social media has changed will continue to change libraries have changed and will continue to change and library users have changed and will continue to change. Things are always going and moving and evolving and the way we use social media, even six months ago 12 months ago isn't really going to work for us anymore. Another thing that I think we do know now is that social media users typically have limited attention spans I know the way that I use social media now is very different than I did before it's really hard to like I'm just scroll scroll scroll scroll like I don't really like look at what I'm looking at I'm just kind of like I don't have the attention span to read a big paragraph of text like I just need to like scroll and look at stuff and it's got to be something that grabs my attention. And then our small rural libraries which you know these presentations that I do are typically geared towards have limited time personnel and budgets. So those are the things that we do know. And now we just need to decide, you know, as a library what is your goal for social media what are you trying to accomplish by using social media. What does your audience want or need from you and what can you reasonably start and sustain. I know during coven when all of our libraries were you know we were working from home and you know we all started YouTube channels and we were all doing programming virtually and I don't think that we should drop all that together, but can we sustain doing that level of programming online and mixing it in person programming so where is that balance going to be. If you started like a tick tock and a Pinterest and like all these other accounts like, can you sustain those now that things sort of our schedule sort of seem to be going back to the way they were and balancing now that in person and that online presence. So just thinking about what you can do. So you have to kind of interact directly with the community members, you know, by using social media, but, you know, again, balancing that with people now are coming through your doors again. So you have to have that outreach on a shorter to a long term basis, especially there are still homebound patrons, whether those are temporarily homebound they're still not comfortable going back out into the community, or these are a long term homebound situation. You know being online does help keep the library relevant we'll talk a little bit about that you demonstrate the libraries continued value, and you can inform your community of upcoming events and programs so these could be some of your goals and these are all valid reasons to use social media. So you just have to like pick and choose wisely. And then you have to find out what the patrons needs and wants and when I go out and visit our libraries. Something I hear over and over again is like we just don't know what the patrons want anymore we don't know what they need. And, and so that's it's hard it's hard to figure out what you're going to be offering online and what you're going to be offering in person, and, you know, just finding out what you can do for your community So some of the ways you can find out is why I call like low key social listening there are social listening tools. I think those are very time consuming, especially if you are the only person that uses social media for your library so you don't have to invest in all that but just kind of poke around on social media and you know if there's like neighborhood groups or community groups or school districts groups just kind of like see what they're talking about what are their concerns what are they're saying that they need, because sometimes, you know, you'll pick up on something it's kind of like mining for ideas right like you'll pick up on something that someone says you like oh, actually the library can provide that thing that this parent was talking about on the school district Facebook group. So just kind of like monitoring what those conversations might be online, not necessarily on the library's page or any groups that you offer on Facebook or other social media sites but what they're saying and those other groups that are adjacent to your library. And what you know and what conversations is your community having what other group, what are other groups providing in your neighborhood are there ways to sort of partner like we've noticed here at the system that one of our counties it's in Wayne County they've been really great about getting back out into community offering services and then so we found that way to partner with them so we were able to connect with a lot of people we've been going to our drive through food pantries. They had a program at like a dentist office recently that we were at so just like what are other groups providing and then maybe you can find avenues for partnerships and then tap into what the patrons need and want. So if you want to find engage your power users, chances are even if your door counts have dropped off and have not yet recovered post COVID or like coming out of coven. I'm sure at least one or two of your power users have returned to the library so engage with them and ask them, you know, what do you need what are people saying why aren't people coming and sort of try to get them to tell you what's going on in the community, and then we can also you know help you get people back you can say oh if you come to story time please tell your friends please tell someone from your playgroup please tell someone from your preschool group. So sort of like help those power users that have come back like find out what other people need and help them maybe draw some help have them help you draw some people back into your library. Don't be afraid to ask like be direct like what do you need from us what can the library provide for you you're not my readers you're not expected to be. So just go ahead and ask those questions. And I know we've had some multiple libraries in Nebraska, who had mentioned about telling the community what's going on and what's happening at the library now and what's changed that even after libraries have reopened. You know either minor smaller services or just anything. Some people still thought they were closed from way back in like early 2020. And it's like months later six months later a year later and he said oh we didn't know you'd reopened. We've been doing things for six months now we've had story, you know and you know with you know all the precautions but you need to talk you need to reach out to anybody who can help you spread the word because you'd never know if you're what you're getting where you where you need to be. Yeah and I think and sometimes it's like well we posted on social media that we're back open, but a like not everybody's on social media but be social media again is so crowded right now. You know, a lot of times your stuff's not popping up in their feed like it used to and which social media there's so many different services out there and different people may be looking for you on different places. You have to figure out where are your patrons. What are they using, are they using Twitter, are they using Facebook, are they using Instagram. Are they using all of it and oh my gosh I don't even want to. Right and then you know then then you really have to decide like all right what's going to be like the biggest return on our investment like your time investment like. And I've always recommended just doing, I mean if you can only do one social media than just do one that's fine but maybe do two or three and just do don't do 10. I think I especially just depending on your size that's just, it's not sustainable for most most library workers. Okay, so during so this kind of shows the shift in social media at the onset of COVID and how things changed and this is what the experts are saying it's still kind of like this and it's still going to be like this and you know things may dip and may shift back slightly the other way. But, you know, you could see how much everybody was on Facebook but then you could also see like that increase for tick tock and we'll talk a little bit about why there was that big increase in tick tock. In a second, but you know this other one shows like again the average number of minutes we were on social media every day in 2020 and again as we start to resume our normal activities these numbers are going to dip but they're still really high and people are still online, and I used to say all the time that Facebook was king if you could just pick one, pick Facebook. I still kind of feel that way but I don't think I would call Facebook King anymore. It's still I guess top dog, but you know like tick tock is gaining ground and like Twitter people a lot more people on Twitter. Instagram is still kind of a weird place for libraries I feel like. In my experience I feel like it's libraries following libraries and supporting libraries like it's less community members but that's okay too. And then and then there's Snapchat so. So during so this is me during COVID, you know it was like I would spend so I had I had my at home work desk, and I would have on one monitor I was working on the other monitor, it was pretty much the live screen stream of our governor, like his daily update so it was like Cuomo all day long and then I had a small TV setup where I was watching CNN all day so it was like this constant and then I had my phone where I was doing all my socials and it was this constant like, what's going on what's the update at the end of the day. I just wanted to sit and watch tick tock and so the post on the left, the caption on this is from my Instagram but it said this is my new tick tock watching chair because we're having worked on the house that was the new room on the house. And then that was me three hours later still in that chair watching tick tock. And I think a lot of people sort of got a little addicted to tick tock because it was fun. The videos are so nice and short they're engaging they're funny they're mindless, like it's not like it wasn't like the heavy news that was like in our Twitter feeds in our Facebook feeds it wasn't CNN it wasn't, you know, the governor like it was like a nice break from everything. And I think people really appreciated having like this space where it was just fun. And I know like I definitely would get sucked into it I was like, I'm going to watch I'm going to just watch like nine nine videos I'll just you know or 20 minutes. And then next thing I know it would be hours and it was just because it was like a break from everything else. And I think that's a big explanation for the big jump in and tick tock and why tick tock is still, you know, really relevant because the news still isn't super great all the time and people do need a break so this could be a place where you're like one of my patrons need and want they want to have fun like maybe we were thinking about starting a new social media account maybe this is where tick tock comes into play for your library so that's just something to consider, because what are the patrons needs and wants a lot of times they're exactly what you need and want like I needed like that space that was just fun it was mindless it was entertainment it was a break from the news cycle it was really heavy and tick tock was that for me so what do you need chances are your patrons need the same thing so it's not. Maybe all that much of a mystery when we're trying to figure out where to go with our social media and how we're going to communicate with our patrons. Next couple slides and they all start with the letter C like the things that I think patrons need to want that wasn't to be like clever or funny they all just ended up being C so. So the first one is care. So just be mindful of your content, be careful like what you're posting is it. You know is it going to be something that's like a little like too heavy is it like you know is it going to cause people a little bit of stress like people are still recovering there's still really fatigued from everything. So I just think put an extra layer of care something that you would have posted before just may not sit super great with people now and and if you're not sure always ask someone like do you think this is okay to pose like I'm not quite sure and. You know everyone's while there's that post that like you can't quite put your finger on but it doesn't feel super you're like I don't know if this is cringe it might be cringe so don't post it so I think just that like extra taking an extra beat when you post certain things now. It would be really helpful to people. You know like why are you posting like what is the purpose of this post. Does it inform entertain help guide educate raise increase awareness, is it relevant, accurate useful and is it easy for people to understand. That we've all seen those posts where you're like I don't understand what's going on here, and that goes back to people being really tired to like they don't want to have to decode what you're trying to say, like they just want to like look at your post and be like cool new large print books like they don't want to have to put a lot of work into reading your social media posts because all day every day is a lot of work now and we're still being bombarded with a lot of information. So you should make what you are posting really easy for people to get and for them to understand. Because you can post it should you post it. There are times that like I will see things that are not just from libraries but like other like organizations that I'm like maybe that would have been better on that person's personal page and not posted on behalf of the organization like certain sometimes like yeah it's kind of funny, but is it something that should have been posted from a library from like I don't know like a school from something like sometimes certain things, maybe just stay on your personal account and some things go on the library and you know and especially like certain jokes to like it's kind of funny but I don't know like just be mindful again it goes back to that like just because you can should you is this going to sit well with everybody in your community. You know we're all tired we're all a little bit sensitive right now. I just want to make sure that your social media content is making your patrons feel good like digital burnout is a real thing. And people I think are really starting to assess like the content that they view online and how it makes it feel. You know that like I have gone on like huge unfollowing sprees like because you know it's almost like the Marie Kondo thing like if this doesn't bring me joy on Facebook on Instagram on Twitter I'm done with it I'm you know I'm going to unfollow and you don't want to be that for somebody like you don't want to post something. People like you know what like the library is not making me feel super great. And you know this could be maybe not lecturing people on how to use the library or not lecturing people like, you know, all caps like do not put donations in the book drop like I get it we don't like that that is like a really annoying but maybe instead you're like oh we have a new policy for donations click here and then you have a link going to your website and then that information's on the library website, but like not like scolding people so much on Facebook and I do sometimes see it from libraries there's a little bit of like finger wagging at patrons and some like all caps and. And I understand we want to try to get the word out we want to try to educate but people are digesting the information on social media a different way now and. If I like was like why is my library yelling at me at all caps like that might be an account that I don't really like want to follow or engage with anymore so good vibes only on your social media. Yeah, I know I get caught up in the, the, the cliche of the doom scrolling that everything is coming out is bad and if I get too much of that I just like shut down completely like I don't wait and hope or maybe something good will come up I just closing Twitter I just can't. And, but if there had been more positive things in between all the doom and gloom. Like, hey this libraries and this whole thing this libraries going fine free, or our story time to this or we had these you know this animal wrangler woman come and bring you know birds or whatever you know that go that's nice it's a little light in between all of the, the bad. You should try that should be like that's a great goal like why what is your purpose for using social media like, you know, to be like that one moment of like sunshine in somebody's feet like you don't want to be the final screw straw that makes it down like you would. Like, oh, there's all this garbage and then the library so great so yeah maybe that could be like your goal when you are posting like the purpose here is to make someone smile today. All right, so consistency, so this is going to be like a little bit different from what I used to say and so I used to say that you should post, especially to Facebook, every day, four times a day and I used to post religiously at nine one four and seven. And at the peak of COVID in New York, where last like, you know, March 2020, April, May, I was posting up to five or six times a day and at that time, it was needed because we were telling people where they could get food like for food distributions like there was a lot of community that we were pushing out at very high volume like mental health resources like just any updates we were getting from like schools and so, but that is not a great strategy anymore I think again social media is really really crowded. So now I feel like you know once a day is good, but if you only post a few times a week that's good too like you know it doesn't have to be the volume that it once was because your information is just going to get lost. So throw out what I used to say and like scale back what you're posting a little bit. You want to avoid those rapid fire posts like I find and this is like pre pre COVID to like I would like if I'm scrolling. And there's like, you know, an organization that like post like at nine, 905, 910, 915 like that used to drive me crazy and then I used to hide them in my feed, and now they were never going to reach me ever again because I hid them in my feet. Avoid that rapid fire post that's why I used to schedule, but don't ghost your audience like don't post you know I'm saying scale back but don't scale back where people aren't hearing from you for like two weeks either it's just like kind of finding that balance kind of finding that sweet spot. You know maybe right now what really works well for your library is posting Monday Tuesday Thursday Saturday at 9am like that maybe that works really well for you now so just trying to find that balance between like, you still want to communicate with the community, but people are overloaded with information right now because again like if you were posting too much everyone else is also posting too much it's just getting lost out there. It's something to experiment with and see when are people responding to your posts to see when is the best time like when do you get the most somebody notice and hit a like or something or a share on one of your posts. If it is always first thing in the morning, then you know their eyes are on event, but if nobody ever, you know, there's no reactions at that time of day, try a different time of day maybe and see if that's when everyone's looking. Yeah, and then what works sometimes in some communities doesn't really work and others like sometimes that nine o'clock is a great spot because it's like right when everyone's hitting their desk and no one really wants to work yet so they're on social media, but maybe another place it's like oh after lunch a lot of people are online scrolling and you can look at those. You know, I mean it's if you have food sweet or even the back end of Facebook like you can kind of look at those and I glance I don't really spend too much time looking at the metrics behind the scenes I think I could get a pretty good feel just based on how many likes and shares that we had. So if you don't have the time to do those deep dives that you know don't sweat it too much just kind of, you know, see like, you know how much how much do people like it in real time. So consistency so a regular posting schedule let your patients know that you are there for them. That's really helpful this way you don't forget, but be really flexible I think with your scheduling now you don't have to be quite so rigid like I said I seven days a week. You know, nine one four and seven and it was like and even if I was going to go on vacation I would schedule like the two weeks out like I was always scheduling and it was like I was super rigid about it. Like some stuff can like happen right like and then now you have some scheduled out and the whole world changes overnight. And I, and you might have to adjust what your posts are going to be or you might want to take something down that you had scheduled. So this is the post that we had scheduled after January 6. Like last year so like this huge you know the thing happened in DC, and then like the next day our posts is like are you feeling burned out and it just seems sort of cringy, because it was like, people are feeling a little bit more than burn out today like it just like it just was like like the post came out we were all just like, oh I can't believe it like. So, make sure if something huge happens and you have your stuff scheduled, go into Hootsuite maybe reschedule it maybe take it down because like even though this isn't terrible. It just seems slightly off given the events of the day before you know so you know what everything. Yeah, you need to be aware of what's going on outside of your library and understand you know what we can wait a few days to push this, this is not does not have to go out that day. Yeah, yeah, and it was like you know I mean and then maybe that day is a day that we didn't post anything and that's okay to like because you don't have to post just to post, but you know it was like, oh this was like this thing that was happening and so it was just a little cringy. So just make sure you're keeping on top of that if you do post schedule post out. So, we see we did care we can do consistency so now we have connection. And it's I think it's important now more than ever to give your audience a personal touch when you're posting to social media. The biggest thing is avoid stock photos and I do see kind of this a lot like you don't have to use stock photos of books or stock photos of people like if you're doing a program like say you're doing a program on resume writing. You don't have to use a stock photo of people in suits at computers because like I know that would not be reflective of my community. And like so that photo doesn't really connect with my community instead maybe you know I'm not going to ask maybe my picture like can you pose for this but like maybe fan out like your books on resume writing on a table and then like use that to connect so it's still your library still your collection you're connecting to your program. I think stock photos don't I mean they look super nice and polished, but you know what like are kind of like mediocre iPhone photos are fine because they connect with people they're showing their lives they're showing their library. So like when you're going to post like even your staff like pictures like these. They connect with the patrons more because they're like I recognize that person I know that person Oh that's my library that's a book I read and so I just think using pictures like this, even though they're not perfect. Like, maybe they're a little blurry maybe they're a little crooked but it just shows like your community your people your staff your collection. And I think they don't have to be perfect I think these connect better with people than stock photos. So I you know use your displays take pictures of your displays, even just like you're unboxing your Baker and Taylor just take a picture of that like people are so excited and you're like, you know it's just a box with a pile of books in it but people like yeah look at my library is getting so just those little tiny things I just think form those tiny connections. After being isolated for so long or disconnected from people like having that touch point I think is really meaningful for people. So, shift away from like those stock photos and never use clip art and try to like find or create pictures inside your facilities post and create original content so that's sort of related to it. Too much of a good thing. I love memes. I am like a such a meme like me me me me like all day long like I love it and however there can be too much of a good thing. So I think memes are are really great way to be like haha we're funny at the library. You know, like with the Bernie Sanders with the mittens and you know with the word and also that library on the right like work me library, their Twitter is phenomenal so after this go give them a follow. But you know just sort of like if you know it's a great way to be like we're funny. It's a great way to enter the conversation it's a great way to sort of be timely. And these are ones like these these two were not posted to our social media but they're ones I used in the presentation in the fall. So just kind of being like oh you know like we're on top of memes too. But don't please use these memes anymore. These are really really dated and every time a library post one of these. Somebody who I haven't spoken to in 10 years will send me like a Facebook message with like the library cake and be like lol thought of you. And then I have to politely be like lol libraries are so funny. But I'm like I have seen this cake 5000 times stop sending me the cake. But you know it's just sort of like done and it's overplayed and I think this is where it kind of your. Yes it's funny but it's not really keeping you as relevant anymore so if you're going to jump in on memes kind of do like whatever is trending, but like don't dig out the memes from like 2019 to post to your, your Facebook feed anymore would I think it gets lost in the noise and it gets sent to me also so so don't send those. And also canva if you have seen me present in the past. I am a huge canva stand I love it. However, everyone is using canva right now. And if you're take a look at your feet if it sort of looks like this it's like canva square after canva square after canva square. Is that really creating that connection with your community if all they're getting is sort of like this social graphic created, and then that's it like so but make sure you're, you're mixing in those personal touches like it's not just canva canva canva canva because everyone else is canva canva canva canva right now like you know I scroll through my Facebook I can you know all these squares that pop up like that's canva that's canva that's canva that's canva. And it doesn't really make your stuff feel that original it doesn't make your stuff really stand out from anyone else either and that's kind of like the problem right now is that social media is very crowded. Using like outdated memes and jokes, just relying 100% on canva graphics, like that your stuff is just going to kind of get lost because I know, like the way I use social media now I'm always on my phone which is why I have like this little like my thumb hurts all the time. And I'm just scrolling scrolling scrolling and I don't even stop it has to really catch my attention, and I'm just scrolling past like these graphics squares constantly. So you just want to make sure that whatever you're posting I'm more likely to stop on like an actual picture of people now, and I still will look at social media graphics created on canva and I still create them on canva. And I think they have been a little bit overdone so again just maybe make sure that your feed and what you're posting it's like interspersed with other things and square after square. Yeah, mix it up canva is great for people who say, I'm not a graphic artist I have no idea how could I possibly ever do something that someone who's like profession this is can do, and canva can make you be that kind of person, but get creative with it, use your own, like you said don't use the stock photos or things in there, use canva to make something that look pretty, but use your own photos of your own, you know, the previous ones you were showing there yeah, but definitely mix it up. But it'll give you a lot I think if people out of confidence that they can create something a little fancier than yeah, yeah. I have definitely like I started to go the way of like, all of a sudden, all of our posts were things that I created on Canva. You know, and I was just trying to promote like different collections that we had. And then but I did notice that the more that I was posting and they looked and I thought they looked really great. But I was getting less likes on them and less shares on them as it went on. And but and then so kind of like well why is that happening why didn't people like this I thought this was, I did one about like promoting ebooks in our in our overdrive collection that were sort of like well if you liked Bridgerton like you know here you're like these and I was like what is happening like no one really likes this one. And I just think that it just sort of got lost in the crowd I think you know it. I just didn't really stand out from maybe every other post that we were posting so just yeah I think we are creating wonderful things on camp and it has given us like that confidence in those tools, but that can't be the only thing that we're doing and I know for me it was the only thing I was doing and I definitely saw our likes our engagement our reach going down by over relying on those. Yeah, you need variety. Yeah. So the other parts of connection is to try new things and have fun. You know, yes we want to be professional yes we're libraries were educational institutions but I think we're also fun. Let me see maybe this will play I hope this will play so this is the Livonia public library, they're located in our system. In 2021 they were the Rochester regional library council library the year. They are a fantastic library but I think part of it is they really know how to have fun and that includes the director who is in this video but they're always making these little silly videos. And I love every single one, their video that they posted when they went completely fine free was a little too long for this presentation. But I highly recommend if you go to Livonia public libraries Facebook page and you know just click on their videos it's like right up towards the top and like it actually gave me like sweaty eyes like it was so good I was like so touched by this video so this is just all about creating that personal touch that connection and showing like we like to have fun. So that's like their director on the back left and he participates in all these videos. So and he's just a lot of fun and he has fun with the staff. Nice. Yeah. I'm just going to get to the part where he does the kid and play and then I'll turn it off. Nice. So I think that's just like a really great example like you know we're a library we're going to provide these materials is information these resources but like we can also like really have fun to and you know and and that includes the director who's creating like a really fun welcoming space for everyone. So I think that's just something that we could do like we're serious but we don't take ourselves too seriously. So another safe capacity but this relates a little bit more to the staff and not necessarily what the patrons need. And we did mention this before but like what can your library your library staff reasonably sustained. So if you started all of these socials during COVID and now you're doing a lot more in person stuff. What is that balance going to be do you need to scale back do you need to say goodbye to something. Are you posting you know maybe to Snapchat but that's not really working for you it's okay to let it go it's okay to say goodbye if something isn't working for you know social media is always changing what your patrons need is always changing what your staff can do is always always changing. So it is okay to say like you know what we can't sustain this anymore we're just going to keep our story times going on YouTube we're going to keep our Twitter and we're going to keep our Facebook or you know what we're really going to focus on TikTok for like our teens and young adults and Facebook like so scaling back if you need to is is okay like give yourselves permission to be like this is what I can reasonably sustain I wanted to do like one or two accounts really well then try to do five and like you're just like not it's not working out for you you're not posting consistently the content isn't great nobody's really engaging with it. Like then that return on your investment. Is it really there. Just remember like you can't be everything to everyone all the time and that's okay. So it's like well we have to reach the seniors on this site and the teens on this site and the families are on this site and like sometimes you can't do that for everyone you try your very best but like just focus on like what you can do and where maybe like that highest volume is the highest engagement and then maybe eventually you can expand out and increase what you're doing on social media. Sometimes you just can't and again totally okay. Make sure you're setting personal and professional boundaries. You know I am a very strong believer in that you maybe really shouldn't be personal Facebook friends with your, your patrons, because like it's really I mean it's hard when you live in that town I get it. Like, you know, then on a Saturday night at 10 o'clock you have somebody messaging your private Facebook account like hey do you know if my holds are coming in. Hey are you getting this book. And it's like Sunday morning and it's like can you renew these for me, like those lines start to get blurred a little bit and you know again we talked about that like digital burnout like that could happen to you too. And I think it's really important that you have those boundaries so like when you want to engage with patrons. You're on the library account and then when you're using your personal accounts like you have notifications off or you have an away message set up so it says, you know somebody messages the library it says we'll be happy to help you when we're back at the library Monday at 9am like making sure you're kind of giving yourself that space where you are not always working and always representing the library I you know I understand with social media you kind of every, even on the weekends or when you're not working you do have to check in and see if things are going well like all of a sudden like, especially like if you post something it will sound like there's a lot of comments you're like what's going on did this go off the rails or is this a good thing and you kind of have to check in. But I just think it's really important to have those boundaries between like this is the library account and this is my personal account and they really should not overlap at all. I just think it's healthier for you. Don't get discouraged I know sometimes like will I'll talk to libraries and they're like oh this library they just do like tick tock so well and we tried that's okay like what works for one community is not going to work for you are yours necessarily. Don't get discouraged just keep plugging away and you'll find that sweet spot of what's going to work and things do change over time so maybe something didn't work before and it will work for you now or you know maybe you're like oh you know what like we tried this and that and didn't work but like Pinterest like we really took off with our craft program so just don't get discouraged you just try new things and and you just see what happens for you but don't try to be another library or another library social media account. So it comes back to work harder and it works harder not harder. What can you streamline are you duplicating things. I know another way that I've changed the way that I use Facebook is I no longer look at events at all. So if somebody posts like an event on Facebook I don't look at them I used to look at them I read them I used to RSVP I don't look at them at all. So are your patrons really looking at your Facebook events to like so are you creating your events on LibCal then creating a paper calendar and then you're creating the events on Facebook like can you streamline that like maybe like you're just doing LibCal now and then you're posting the link to your Facebook page and instead of creating a whole separate event so like what can you do to just sort of like streamline your workflow and then just like have one thing do all of those for you. So again like what features do your audience no longer use or pay attention to and like for me it's definitely like events but even when I think events were big on Facebook how many times did you have like maybe 50 people. Click that they were going to attend your story time and like one came so like you know I don't know that Facebook events really was doing anything for us other than people were like oh cool they're doing that but they never really had an intention of going. So again where are you duplicating work so just like kind of see like what are you doing in house what are you doing online and is there a place where that workflow can kind of meet in the middle. So and then you know along with capacity and audience and goals like what you need to do is like take all those things and I keep mentioning that sweet spot finding what's going to work for you what's going to work for your library what are your people want what can you do. And then like finding that intersection and to me right now that's quality versus quantity social media strategy. So and we'll talk a little bit about short form content, but I really think like less is more right now posting better posting smarter posting less but it's like quality posting is really your best bet that's what's going to get people looking at your stuff engaging with your stuff instead of just scrolling past it and kind of like not even looking at it and having these like glazed over eyes like how I scroll every single night. So short form content is what I like to call like your fun size content and you have your little bit of a writing you have like your original you peanut butter and your almond. But it's like short, it's fun it's different each time it doesn't take a lot of time it doesn't take a lot of work. You know it's like, and this is what saw a massive rise during the past few years right like those TikTok videos I mean they're so super short they were really fun. Another way like with Instagram. A lot of times I don't even scroll my Instagram feed anymore I just watch everybody's stories and it's like these short stories and it's like, oh look they're petting a cat. Oh look they're drinking a beer. Oh look that's their morning coffee. And it's just like and they just play for me and I'm like you know drinking my coffee and I'm just enjoying everybody's stories. So that's just a different way that I'm using social media and it's I just like that short form content I like stuff that I could watch and I'm like oh that's nice and I don't have to think too hard about it. And I do think that this short form or like fun size content is going to continue in the future I think it's a little bit more engaging because people don't have to work for it. So they're fun sized content it communicates a single message. It's not too heavy on your audience. It doesn't take too long to consume. So like, I think like gone to those days are those long brick paragraphs on social media like people just aren't going to read those. And if I see a paragraph I'm like nope and I just scroll past it even like an email I'm like semi bullet points. It's just like we've been inundated with so much information that was like really hard to parse out for two years like all this like health information So like library information needs to be easy at this point it needs to be light it needs to be quick it needs to you know communicate and just like a really consumable way. So like, if you are tempted to post a block of text like maybe that's something that it's information that goes on your website now and you just link to it so they like, you know learn more about our construction project and then you link to it and then the update is on your website. Again quick and easy to create so like quick little videos and mobile friendly I think that's really important to remember when you're designing. I have like what I'm looking at off to the side here is my big, big, big giant monitor, and I love my big giant monitor and things look so good on it and then on my phone it looks very different so just be mindful that most people are looking at stuff on their phones or maybe a little bit of people aren't looking at like a monitor the size of a TV that you may have on your desk. So when you're designing. Remember, it's going to be shrunken down to a teeny tiny square. And I just think that's important if it's hard for people to look at because it didn't translate well to mobile device they're just going to scroll right past it. Use text sparingly I like to do everything Twitter length even my Facebook post so like what I'm doing when I'm scheduling through Hootsuite I like if it's too long for Twitter it's too long for Facebook for me and like this way like I know like I'm not getting too wordy it's not going on too long and people are more likely to stop and read it. I also read everything out loud before I posted and if I'm going on and on and on for a really long time I know like I need to take some stuff out here this is like too much information. You make sure you're using bright quality images nothing grainy pixelated stretch blurry watermarked etc. And again those that bonus points use real photos with faces of people at your library in your community. And I know like with your library with patrons like depending on your policies you might need photo releases or whatever but like if your staff is comfortable you know using your staff but again, your book displays your new books your collections like your post your stuff your building your library. And then try short fun videos you know you can do Facebook live reels Instagram stories tick tock. These don't have to be professional like that's totally okay like people like the one from Livonia like you know I mean they put music to it but like, you know they didn't have a camera crew come in and film this like they did it on somebody's phone, which also means that vertical videos are now acceptable because I remember a couple years ago if you posted a vertical video people like how could you do this like that is not how people view videos. But now it's like everyone knows like you have your phone you make a video you post it like totally acceptable. So you know you can experiment and have fun, it does not have to be perfect. It just has to make a connection. Basically, less is more when it comes to your social media and it's okay to dial back the words that you're using the number of posts, the type of post like scale everything back and just really focus on finding that like that quality content and that sweet spot. So some final thoughts that I have borrow inspiration from accounts that you like make sure you're giving credit though and credit is due. You know, it's really if you see a library did something great, either. So I've done this a couple of ways, I might say like, I think that post was great, can I share it and give you credit, or I might say like depending on what it was I be like can I do like can I create something similar for my library. But if I share it I'll just write like oh our friends at the wood library did this great thing and like you know and I always kind of give credit back. So don't completely like 100%. Like, you know what we borrow we borrow we libraries we don't take so. So just make sure you're kind of like checking in with people have a flexible plan when it comes to scheduling when it comes to content when it comes to when you're scheduling things are changing all the time. I'm sure maybe like an hour from now some of the stuff in this presentation will be irrelevant with social media so it's okay to do things differently than you did them a month ago six months ago 12 months ago just you know go with the flow. Again, consider consider how people consume information what are they looking at it on it are they looking at it on a phone are they looking at it on a tablet. So you just want to be mindful of that when you are designing which is why when I do stuff on Canva I like to make everything that square size the Instagram size, instead of like the long vertical because even on an iPhone on Facebook the Instagram size looks the best if it's like flyer size and it's on Facebook. Sometimes you have to kind of go up and down to read the entire flyer and you kind of do this weird scrollie thing but that square. So just kind of, you know, consider how people are looking at what you post and create. Remember that not everyone is on social media so you know, being like but we posted on social media like maybe that's not the only way you should be communicating that way. And right now it is still the primary way but you know maybe if you have a population with a lot of older adults who do still like to read the paper, you know, maybe you still need to use that as a way to communicate. I have a books by mail program that I run here and almost everybody that it's enrolled is a senior, and I would say, probably like more than half, I don't know, maybe 60% do not have an email address, and like which can you know, and even that even surprised me I was like, they don't have a like I expected to see maybe like some like a wells and some hotmail but they don't have any email address at all so, and that was really eye opening for me and I think we just take it for granted that everybody is online, and not everyone is online so just make sure that yes social media is important, but depending on your community and the demographics, you can't abandon the other ways to communicate to your communities. And I just think it's really important to have a social media policy or to you can have an internal and an external one or you can combine that into one policy, especially if you're doing a lot more stuff online or doing story times like it's just important that you have, you know, like an acceptable use like what are your expectations for how people are going to interact, but then also maybe having that internal policy like power is your staff to use the organization social media. I have samples of that that I can send out to people if you're interested. You know, and I can actually I can conclude links I've links to them on Google Docs but they're just like templates but I think that's an important policy to have, just like you would have your meeting room policy or your code of conduct like social media is now another place that our patrons are gathering. Yeah, having that policy is definitely important, especially when people your community or anyone out there because it's it's your social media is totally public not just your own people seeing it. You never know who's going to be responding and how are you going to respond to undesirable things, whatever, don't go into it unplanned. Just like any other sort of place where you may receive complaints or comments to the library you want to have that same policy, something in relation to your social media as well. Too many libraries I've seen have gotten caught on, you know, by surprise and they just don't know what to do and they do the wrong thing they block the person or stop the comment. I've done more of an interaction and you know you just got to think to get through just like all the other types of comments and complaints you may receive at the library. Yeah and having having that policy really does back you up because, you know, depending on what type of library you are. You can't just go and delete something just because you don't like it, you know, it has to, you know, like you can't. It's like viewpoint discrimination so someone's like the library is a bunch of jerks. Unfortunately, you kind of can't delete that, you know, like so you have to have this policy in place that defines like what will be moderated and what is and what the procedure for that is and, you know, and then also just learning to to maybe ignore some stuff and we're having like a canned response either like please because if you a lot of times if you type like oh, I'm sorry you feel this way please call me I would love to discuss it or please call the director loves they will never call you like. But you've made the professional adult response to the troll or the person you know that's just like ranting whatever yeah. Yeah, they just want to be a keyboard warrior and like once you invite them to like have a conversation with you they'll just kind of fade away to but but making sure though that all the staff that uses social media is trained on these procedures to and they know what your policy is and they know how to handle that like you know do they know what the canned responses or does anything that gets a little testy does that go right to the director and kind of bypass the rest of the staff so just making sure that all the staff is on the same page with social media use. So, and also you got this. So, I think social media is complicated it's been weird, but it's still where we all are and it's changing and like I said just go with the flow and just post and see what happens and have fun with it, and you know and make changes where you can get in touch with me. If you have any questions. That's my Twitter, my personal one I post some library stuff, a lot of not library stuff but you're welcome to follow me there my LinkedIn. And then, if you wanted to follow our system right now it's like with the right now it says like pioneer library system our libraries it's like that we are dual identity so it's a little confusing but that's how you can get in touch with me if anyone wanted to get out any questions from today. And what is all the acronym for now, are going to Ontario, Wayne, Wyoming and Livingston County. Those are our four counties so like they're the owl libraries and we're the pioneer library system so like explaining that so now we'll just be the owl library system it makes more sense to everybody. And then we get to change our email addresses so they're nice and easy. And I just I have seen the owl stuff and there's a nice little owl low you know you have a little mass cat now mass. So it'll be fun it's a good change but this, this is one that we had started prior to coven and it got put on the back burner so it's really exciting that it's finally happening for us. All right. So, thank you so much Suzanne, anybody have any questions. No questions came in while you were talking. That's okay. But if anybody just want to ask anything or share anything they've done in their libraries, or issues they've had. You can go ahead and put your screen back up there. Okay. Yeah, for now, my contact. Yeah, sure. Yeah, we'll just leave that up for now I'll work or wrapping up for a bit here. Go ahead and type in your question section ever go to webinar interface. Let us know if you wanted to know about something else specifically, or from Suzanne, or if you have any tips or tricks or things you've encountered in your libraries, dealing with social media and how that's all, all worked. So this was a great session I think we are all, you know, a lot of these services have been around for years and years if you look at people, Twitter is now pushing out things so like people when they've reached their Twitter anniversaries. How long they've been on it. I think my most recent was like 13 years, but things do change. Yeah, and I, it's very interesting I think Suzanne you're talking about how we used to tell people how to do social media, and how it's different now. And I think that people just need to roll roll with that roll go with the flow of what's going on with it. And the key is there's not one size fits all each community and this I try to get our libraries thinking about a lot here. The smallest libraries are looking for just give me guidance tell me what I should do. And unfortunately, what you should do is find out what your community wants. It's going to be specific to each community and all of I think a lot of all of these tips and resources and things that Suzanne mentioned is what you just need to do in your community there isn't the one way to do it see what your people want see where they're at, see what they're responding to shift gears if you need to it's okay. There's not a here's the one guide on how to do everything. It's there's all these different things you're going to have to take into consideration, and some of them will apply to you and some of them might not. And that's okay, just you know try it. Yeah, I mean even the stuff I talked about in today's presentation like, you know, you could be like actually no we're not seeing that in our community people are still doing it this way but oh that other thing yeah that kind of actually makes sense like so not even everything here is going to be like a blanket like this is all the changes in social media I mean this is what I've read about this is what I've experienced but that's not going to be across, you know, not even across our 42 libraries here but then if you factor in like across the country. So, so it's just kind of like maybe being aware that there maybe are these bigger social media trends, and they may be happening in the community might want to look into it and see yeah. Yeah, and see if it are going to have all right. All right, so it doesn't look anybody has any desperate questions or anything I want to ask or share right now that's fine. There is Suzanne's contact information if you want to reach out to her. The slides that she used here will be available afterwards when we get the recording up as well. I think you said you had something in a Google Docs for policies. Resource I can make like a quick resource that will link out that has example policies and some other stuff that probably our reference today I'll pull something together to and I'll add it on as a last slide. Okay, great. Yeah. Yeah, so send me those slides afterwards usually takes a day or so for together recording all ready to go up anyway so not a problem. All right, I am going to pull presenter control back to my screen here. There we go. And wrap things up so thank you everybody for being with us today thank you Suzanne for doing this for us. For our small rural libraries and every size of library resources of course but we just like in your area in New York here in Nebraska. It sounds like a description of our library is the little ones that we are here for. So, that will wrap it up for today. I go to our main and compass live page. If you use your search engine of choice anywhere. You will and just search for and compass live the name of her show that's the only thing that will come up. Nobody's allowed to use that name. Here are upcoming shows and I said I would show you in here right underneath this link to our archive shows. Most recent one at the top of the page. This is one from last week. So today's will be posted up here. Like I said within a day or so. You should everyone who attended today show and registered today show will get an email from me letting you know when the recording is available. We'll have a link to the video recording on our YouTube channel and a link to Suzanne slides you have that for your reference. While we're here I'll also show you you can search our show archives if you want to see if we've done a show on a particular topic you may be interested in. You can search the full show archives or just most recent 12 months you want something very recent. That is because this is the full show archives for encompass live and I'm not going to scroll all the way down because if you look over here this is a huge list. This goes back to the. So which encompass live premiered in January 2009. So we are like what 1012 something years into this. So just pay attention if you do watch a recording to the original broadcast date to the all the data on there so you know when it first happened was first broadcast. Some of these shows will stand the test of time the information will still be useful and relevant and correct and perfectly fine but some things will become old and outdated some products or services may have trained automatically or may even no longer exist links and resources may be broken. So just pay attention. If you are watching any of the shows to that date. As librarians do we do keep things for historical purposes and as an archive and we will as long as we have a place to host them will always have all of our show archives out there for everyone to watch. Speaking of social media, we do have a Facebook page for encompass live I've got links on each show page and link here I've got to open over here so you can see. We post reminders here's a reminder to log into today's show meet our presenters when our recordings are available. Anything that we think may be of interest to libraries. So, if you do like to use Facebook give us like over there. We have Twitter and Instagram and we have a hashtag for the show and comp live little abbreviation, so you can keep track of what we're doing elsewhere using that link. Oh, somebody's liking our pictures right now hey face our social media in live live live and working. So that wrap it up for today's show we've got our upcoming shows here. Keep on our schedule and I'm confirming some other shows for May. So keep an eye on what that will be coming up. And our next week show will be starting a board game club at a small library. Susan Nelson is from our Scott's Bluff Public Library or leave Scott's Bluff Public Library on Western Nebraska, and he's going to be talking about how they started up a board game club at their library and they are a smaller library so definitely sign up for that and any of our other upcoming shows we have. So, thank you everyone thank you Suzanne it was good to see you this morning. And hopefully we'll see everyone join us on a future episode of encompass live. Thank you.