SOCIAL MEDIA AND YOUR CUSTOMERS

Jay Ehret, founder of The Marketing Spot, had this to say about social media on the Flooring the Consumer blog.

1) Start now. Establish a presence and get comfortable using social media. It’s not yet imperative that use social media, but it probably will be someday. You need to be ready.

2) Don’t try to do everything. Pick one thing, the most appropriate for your [library], and get good at it.

3) Don’t ignore traditional media. It’s not dead and never will be. However, look for traditional media that are innovative and also understand the new media.

4) Don’t get evangelized. There’s a lot of hype out there coming from so-called social media evangelists. I’ve seen the question asked by one social media evangelist: “Can social media save (a particular) small business?” Turns out, no. That particular business went out of business. A [library] will not live or die based on involvement with social media.

5) Do what your customers will accept, not what you want them to do. If your customers do not congregate on Facebook, there’s nothing you can do about it. Be where your customers are likely to be.

URL: http://flooringtheconsumer.blogspot.com/2009/04/social-media-series-jay-ehret-on.html

BIALL HAS AN OPL GROUP ON LINKEDIN

The British and Irish Association of Law Libraries has set up a group on LinkedIn just for solo librarians. Great idea!

URL: http://www.linkedin.com/e/vgh/1811987/

And don't forget to check their website/blog at http://biallsolos-omb.blogspot.com/

GUIDE TO SOCIAL MEDIA

The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook has suggestions for all the well-known social networking tools, such as Facebook and for a lot that I'd never heard of. If you use them--or if you advise people who do--this is a great tool.

URL: http://www.techipedia.com/2008/social-media-etiquette-handbook/

SOCIAL NETWORKING FOR LAWYERS

Social networking has even made it to the legal profession. The American Bar Association has created Legally Minded. It has news, education, jobs, resources, and community sections and is searchable. You can "find others just like you--our people map lets you connect." Recent hot topics were careers, twitter and "mobile lawyering" (look that last one up!).

Looks interesting, but does the firm really want their lawyers checking out a social networking site instead of creating billable hours? Maybe the ABA is just following the latest "neat new stuff."

URL: http://legallyminded.com/

SOCIAL NETWORKING IN FINANCE

Tip’d is a new “community for financial news, ideas, and tips.” Registered users (free) can submit news stories or tips, vote on stories they like, and comment on others. They cover business, currencies, entrepreneurship, green, private equity and venture capital, stocks, commodities, economy, funds and etfs, personal finance, real estate, and technology. There is also a blog and you can subscribe by RSS or email.

Tip’d was created by “a US-based, privately held company. The founders are Jimmy and Andy (aka Jimandi)—regular businessmen who enjoy discussing the day’s financial news.” As of mid-November 2008, there were 1760 current members, 805 articles published with another 1973 in the pipeline, nearly 24,000 tips, and over 1250 comments.

If you work in the business or finance area, this is definitely worth a try.

URL: http://tipd.com

EVEN MORE SOCIAL NETWORKING RESOURCES

I want to…, “Web 2.0 resources to help collaborate, communicate, discover, email, laugh, generate images, podcast, use multimedia, store photographs, use RSS, internet search, shop, create start pages, store information, time management, train, teach and do things with webpages and websites.” Over 450 applications, from the always reliable Phil Bradley. http://www.philb.com/iwantto.htm

Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services, a new blog from Gerry McKiernan, http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com

WHO IN THE WORLD IS USING SOCIAL MEDIA?

Power to the People Social Media Tracker Wave 3, the third study by Universal McCann, is the result of a survey of 17,000 Internet users in 29 countries. It is surprisingly current—completed in March 2008. Here are some of the more interesting results (to me, at least).

Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social, and cultural development. If you are online you are using social media.

Asian markets are leading in terms of participation, creating more content than any other region.

Video Clips are the quickest growing platform.

57 percent [of those surveyed] have joined a Social Network; 23 percent of users have uploaded photos; 22 percent have uploaded videos

Blogs are a mainstream media world-wide; 73 percent have read a blog; now 184 million bloggers world-wide; the number one thing to blog about is personal life and family; China has the largest blogging community in the world with 42 million bloggers, more than the US and Western Europe combined;

Other interesting stats:
83 percent have ever watched video clips online; 55 percent left a comment on a blog; 45 percent downloaded a podcast; 40 percent started their own blog, and 34 percent , subscribed to an RSS feed.

How many active Internet users are there worldwide? 475 million. Of those, 100 million are in the USA, 61 million in China, 30 million in Japan, 19 million in Germany, 18 million in India, 18 million in the UK, 14 million in South Korea, 14 million in Brazil, 12 million in France, 11 million in Spain, 10 million in Italy. (Australia has about 5 million.)

But what about percentages? The countries rank a bit differently when we look at percentage of all adults online. Number 1 is the Netherlands at 88 percent, followed by Australia (73 percent); USA (71 percent); South Korea, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Denmark, Japan, Taiwan, the UK, Canada, Germany (all 60-70 percent). Brazil has 44 percent, China 12 percent, and India only 5 percent.

The study’s “Final Word” says, “the key technologies that underpin the social media revolution continue their ascent. Social media is established everywhere there is an Internet connection…” They suggest creating content to establish an experience with your customers, “develop widgets applications, services and platforms that create a genuine consumer benefit and drive engagement. Be inventive in connecting with consumers. Integrate it with offline communications and use social media as link or as a story to communicate.” I like this statement: “Consumers are doing it well; well resources brands [libraries] have no excuse.”

URL: http://www.universalmccann.com/Assets/wave_3_20080403093750.pdf

MAXIMIZE YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKING

It is time consuming to send the same message to all of your social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.). Web Worker Daily has a great post on software that can automate this activity.
Broadcasting to Your Social Networks, by Aliza Sherman, describes several levels of Social Aggregation Broadcasting Tools. An active SABT is HelloTxt; ShareThis and AddThis are passive SABTs; Utterz integrates SABT features; and Twhirl, Tweetburner, and Twitterfeed are examples of narrow SABTs. Some of the 14 comments suggest other programs you can use for this purpose.

URLs:
the article: http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/06/25/broadcasting-to-your-social-networks/
HelloTxt: http://hellotxt.com/
ShareThis: http://www.sharethis.com/
AddThis: http://www.addthis.com/
Utterz: http://www.utterz.com/
Twhirl: http://www.twhirl.com/
Tweetburner: http://tweetburner.com/
Twitterfeed: http://www.twitterfeed.com/

PRELIMINARY REPORT ON NEW SCHOLARLY SOCIAL NETWORK

Ologeez! is "a scholarly site" to "connect, share, and learn from colleagues through papers, networked groups, collaborative tools and more." It is open only to those with an .edu or .org email address, but looks promising. You can look at articles from scholarly journals, see what other libraries and/or universities are doing, participate in wikis for laboratories in academia, government, or industry; non-profits, or professional societies so far; and read their blog.

I've just looked at this site, not evaluated or used it yet, but you may want to check it out or tell your users about it. It is a project of Stanford University, California, USA and is only in beta right now.

URL: http://ologeez.stanford.edu

HAVE YOU TWINED YET?

I’ve just started using a new social network called twine. Yes, another one. But this one seems a bit easier to use—there’s an applet you can put on your browser bar that let’s you add a page to your list immediately. You can even share it with others (either individuals or twines—interest-based sub-networks). I’ve added a link to this blog to my twine stuff.
There are a few library-related twines already: social networking, Web 2.0, ready reference, medical libraries, and information commons (a place to share information, not about the physical space). It would be nice if we had more librarians on the network. You need an invitation to join—it’s still in beta (but very full-functioned already). Check the home page for instructions.

URLs: http://www.twine.com/

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING LATELY

Like most of you (I hope), I still get some of my library news from print sources. Here’s some of what I’ve read lately.

Rise and Shine, by Tracey Caldwell, gives an European view of the changes in medical information. Here are some excerpts:
"Dan Penny, analyst at Outsell, identifies a number of issues that will affect the role of the health information professional. ‘The emphasis of the role will change from being purely a curator [!!!!??] to sitting on cross-disciplinary teams working with IT and medical practitioners to establish what is the best value-added product,’ he says.” [In a sidebar…] “Up and Coming in Health Information: Health information professionals and analysts tip the following trends: involvement in cross-disciplinary work and more tailored training; standardizing data input and semantic interoperability in health information systems; librarians’ taking on knowledge management; workflow is a concern of information professionals, not just content service providers; library space usage changing to reflect new roles and priorities; convergence of technologies and content in ways is likely to be reflected by supplier tie-ups; consortial purchasing of health information.” They also list technology trends not yet in the mainstream, including electronic patient records, blogs and wikis (facing reliability and trust issues), PDAs, e-books, and digital imaging management. Caldwell ends the article with, “…it is up to the health information professionals to get in at the beginning to build new models if they are to secure their future.”
Read the entire article in Information World Review (224):12-14, March 2008.

Tales of Technology Innovation Gone Wrong, by Mary Mallery.
It is very unusual for anyone to write about what didn’t work, but Mallery has put together a list of failures that we can learn from. She even says, “technology is not the best solution for every problem in a library”—what a concept! There are good sidebars on issues to consider before and after innovating. Well worth a read.
Computers in Libraries 28(4):22-25, April 2008

In the same issue, columnist Marshall Breeding has a good article, Content, Community, and Visibility: A Winning Combination, on operating “in a dual existence, divided between in-person and online services. Excerpts: “Content is a natural area of excellence for libraries. It’s what we do.” But that’s not enough. On community, “it’s no longer only about serving up pages of static content but also about engagement, community and participation.” “It’s not that I necessarily expect the library Web presence to ever displace social networking hotspots such as Facebook of LinkedIn, but we do need to ratchet up our social engagement a notch or two….” He also writes about the importance of location, findability and measurable performance.
Computers in Libraries 28(4):26-28, April 2008

You should also read the column by Terence Huwe on “understanding fun and its crucial role is an important skill for digital librarians.” (pp. 33-35), Janet Balas’s list of resources on social networks and the library community (p. 40), and the tech tips for every librarian column on Optimizing In-House Internet Experiences (pp. 46-47). And don’t miss one ad (sponsored content): Robert Berkman’s Twenty Years of Changes in Information, Online Technology, and Research. Berkman is the editor of The Information Advisor and the two-page article (pp. 44-45) covers 1988-2013—that’s 25 years, but who’s counting.

Thanks to Information Today, Inc., publishers of The New OPL Sourcebook, for free subscriptions to these journals—but this does not influence my reviews—I read a lot of other not-free journals, too.

SOCIAL NETWORKING FOR LAWYERS (USA)

“LawLink is the first online network exclusively for licensed attorneys.” As of mid-September 2007, there were over 1500 members. It is free, of course, and you can put up announcements, personals, job openings, and even a brochure.

URL: http://www.lawlink.com/