Based on your understanding of your library or information agency, and your exposure to concepts presented in the resources above, outline (in around 400 words) how you could apply these ideas to develop a draft marketing strategy for your organisation.
Social media and social media websites have never been more popular than they are today. We are inundated as a society with information from Facebook, Twitter, microblogs, blogs, websites, wikis and podcasts, all with the intention of communicating information to the user (Stieglitz et al., 2014, p. 89). If an organization, such as a library has a way of harnessing this information, then it can be used for productive marketing campaigns. From social media, there is much that can be gained regarding user information (Moe & Schweidel, 2017, p. 697). Another benefit is the user provides information themselves, meaning there are fewer privacy issues.
Creating a draft marketing strategy for Dubbo Regional Library would utilize a multifaceted manner. Firstly, I would need to gather as much data as possible regarding users and social media in order to develop a plan. I would use a tool such as the IMB Content Analytics (now Watson Text Analytics), which is a tool that analysis any written or statistical data from users and shapes it into coherent and search-related information for the organization (Glanis & Kohirkar, 2015, para. 34-44).
Another form of analysis is deep analysis, which is the idea that you need to analyze information in a more complete manner, on multiple levels (Glanis & Kohirkar, 2015, para. 1). For instance, when searching through content there may be a filter on certain words (Glanis & Kohirkar, 2015, para. 5). These words would be related to sales, or, in library terms, book accesses. By filtering the terms, the information is then given to sales for them to create a marketing strategy, allowing for greater ‘funnelling’.
Popular forms of social media analysis or SMA include text mining, social network analysis and trend analysis. All three of these mining techniques have different approaches to gaining information about the user, such as using text inputted by the user to gather data, using social networks to discover keywords or phrases being used often, and locating trending words and topics and making predictions about the future (Stieglitz et al., 2014, p. 92). By incorporating these three various methodologies into a library’s social media analysis, the user data will be much more varied and ready for analysis, thus allowing for a stronger marketing campaign.
Social media is a form of feedback libraries or organizations can receive immediately from analytics. By listening to what someone is sharing about your product or service on social media, you can make changes to your programs, and immediately adjust certain marketing/program trajectories (Ganis, M., & Kohirkar, 2017, p. 72). For instance, if one were creating a library campaign for children’s books, one could include books being discussed on social media, and exclude books that aren’t.
Lastly, we need to ask ourselves what sorts of information drive our brand the most? What is going to be the social media platform, based on our analysis and research (Gonçalves, 2018, 1:00), that is going to connect with users the most? We need to be fluid with our changes based on what we see from the analysis. So the library needs to be ready to make changes based on what they discover, and make them immediately. Furthermore, training is highly important for applying changes, so staff should know changes needed to be made, and in what areas, from head management (Gonçalves, 2018, 2:00).
References
Ganis, M., & Kohirkar, A. (2015). Reading tea leaves: Discovering themes, topics, or trends. In Social media analytics: techniques and insights for extracting business value out of social media. IBM press.
Ganis, M., & Kohirkar, A. (2015). Rivers run deep: Deep analysis. In Social media analytics: techniques and insights for extracting business value out of social media. IBM Press.
Gonçalves, A. (2018). Mastering social media analytics: use data to build a business strategy [Video]. Apress. Available from: https://primo.csu.edu.au/discovery/fulldisplay?
Moe, W., & Schweidel, D. (2017). Opportunities for innovation in social media analytics. The Journal of Product Innovation Management, 34(5), 697-702. DOI: 10.1111/jpim.12405
Stieglitz, S., Dang-Xuan, L., Bruns, A., & Neuberger, C. (2014). Social media analytics: an interdisciplinary approach and its implications for information systems. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 6(2) 89-96. DOI: 10.1007/s12599-014-0315-7
2 Comments
Thanks for your informative post Sean 🙂
I like your thorough approach to designing a social marketing strategy.
The methods and tools you’ve discussed, such as IMB Content Analytics, text mining, social network analysis, and trend analysis – seem complex and interesting. I agree that some level of user needs analysis is important.
The library I work at (Western Sydney University Library) does not seem to have a formal social media strategy but instead follows the broader one for the parent organisation (Western Sydney University). Some level of deeper user needs analysis would be good for our library. I wonder if the students would like to hear from the library through blog posts. After using blogs, I think that blogs also have a lot of potential for marketing and building client relationships.
Regards,
Archana datt
I think blogs would be wonderful, Archana. I imagine users could read posts from specific libraries posting on their favourite topics/genre, and as the famous saying goes, add value to the lives of others, and trust and relationships will be build. Thanks for reading. 🙂 Good luck in your library, too.