Both @ALIANational and @ALALibrary are Twitter accounts run by and representative of Australia and America’s Library Association bodies, respectively. As such, they have a lot in common, from the content they produce to the audience they attempt to appeal to.

A brief perusal of the contents of their tweets reveals that the content they ‘tweet’ or ‘retweet’ is related, and can be generally organised into three broad categories:

1. 1. Content relating to the continued running and public actions of the Association, including announcements about upcoming conferences and professional development opportunities; official recommendations or statements to other national and/or state bodies; and business deals/agreements.
      

      The American Library Association (ALA) Executive Board released the recommendation for libraries to leave Wi-Fi on during closures. Read the entire statement below. https://t.co/Q8apcXXU4M

      — American Library Association (@ALALibrary) March 23, 2020

   2. Content for and relevant to the work of information professionals, particularly those employed in libraries. These are often retweets, rather than original content produced by the Association.
      

      The Public Library Data Alliance is seeking applications from librarians, library data analysts, researchers, state data coordinators and others interested in public library data collection and use. Apply by April 10. https://t.co/8t8kI941zt

      — American Library Association (@ALALibrary) March 9, 2020

   3. Content for members of the public who are interested in the broad related ‘fields’ of the Association, i.e. libraries, books, authors, and increasingly — technology.
      

      Announcing a special online event on Wednesday 1 April at 7.30pm! Join our special guest speaker, positive psychologist Dr Lea Waters, for a timely presentation on taking a strength-based approach to COVID-19. Register now for your chance to participate: https://t.co/NE9VcVcW7O pic.twitter.com/IeSiRdU2Uf

      — Geelong Libraries (@geelonglibrary) March 30, 2020

In tweeting (and retweeting) such content, ALIA and ALA  are first and foremost attempting to reach their primary target audience, who consist of individuals employed in the information industry and other related fields, i.e. public/academic librarians, archivists, museum curators, publishers, etc. These individuals may be paying members of the Association, or conversely, have a vested interest in the work of the respective Association. To a lesser extent, these tweets are meant to appeal to members of the general public. These individuals may be regular patrons of libraries or have a broad interest in the work of the Association.

The appeal of these accounts — and the clear discrepancy between the success of each Association — is evidenced in the amount of ‘followers’ for each account, as well the engagement expressed through ‘hearts’, retweets and discussion/comment on each tweet.

A brief analysis of the engagement on ALIA’s last 10 tweets reveals that they received, on average, only 0.5 comments, 3.8 retweets, and 6.6 likes, per tweet. In these 10 tweets, the most popular one was a retweet from Yarra Plenty Library, which offered to print and post essential documents free of charge (2020, March 30). The people who liked this tweet were mostly librarians employed in the Melbourne area, as evidenced by bios.

Meanwhile, data from ALA’s previous 10 tweets revealed that they received, on average, 0.9 comments, 19.2 retweets, and 43.5 likes, per tweet. Their most popular tweet was a link to a NY Times article about how artists were responding to school closures, which received more than 130 likes and 62 retweets (2020, March 28).

The discrepancy in this engagement could be explained by any number of things. It could be simply because ALA reaches a much wider audience (205.8K followers) compared to ALIA’s (10.9K). I also observed that ALA used #hashtags more frequently than ALIA, meaning that interested people following particular hashtags were more likely to find ALA’s tweets than ALIA’s. What is interesting to note is that ALIA has tweeted a lot more frequently than ALA, with 29.1K tweets compared to 24.2K respectively.

Overall though, ALA far outperforms ALIA, reaching a wider audience and demonstrating more user engagement. It also proves that sometimes it’s quality (i.e. hashtags) over quantity.

Reference List

American Library Association [@ALALibrary]. (2020, March 28). School closings are a drastic change for kids at this challenging time, so authors are stepping up on social media to keep them engaged [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/ALALibrary/status/1243692027897880577.

Yarra Plenty Library [YarraPlentyLib]. (2020, March 30). Printing and posting services [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/YarraPlentyLib/status/1244451232283906048?s=20.