What Does This Mean to Me, Laura?

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Social networking is here to stay, in form or another. I think we all get it now; this stuff can no longer be considered a fad, but is now an integral part of our culture. But that doesn’t mean that some forms or services won’t fall out of favor. Or that you won’t throw up your hands in frustration over the influx of daily minutia you might be consuming. At some point, you will likely feel the need to scale back, retool and/or disconnect from a service altogether. In this post I’d like to offer some guidelines about how to do that.

However, before doing anything, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions and to be brutally honest with yourself:

What am I running from? If you’re considering leaving a social media service entirely, you need to understand why. Are you tired from trying to keep up with all of the stuff your friends/followers create? Are there specific people you’re trying to avoid? Is the service not what you thought it would be? Before you leave and cancel an account, be sure there isn’t an alternative solution, such as dropping some friends/followers. Remember, even if you haven’t been the most active person in that service, you’ve still built some credibility and some social capital by being there. Consider carefully before you pull the plug. Rebuilding social capital can be a long (and sometimes impossible) process.
Were my expectations in line with what is possible to get out of it? If you were expecting hundreds of friends/followers after several months, the answer to this question is likely “no.” It’s not just a matter of time; if you rarely updated your Facebook status and never tweeted anything of interest that got re-tweeted or replied to by others, you weren’t putting in the work required to get all those friends and followers. Social media is just that–social. If you’re not being social (constantly, yes!) then you flunked Social Media 101. Be honest here–did you participate fully? Do you plan to in the future?

So, now you’ve decided you need to do…something. Here’s some first steps:

Take a hiatus*. There’s nothing wrong with taking a break from social media. Simply announce to your friends/followers that you’re taking a break for a week or two, and not to worry if your feed goes quiet for a while. Re-evaluate how you feel about things after you come back.
Scale back what you see. Everyone likely has Facebook friends that they friended well…just because. Not because you necessarily wanted to know the intimate details of their lives. Maybe you just didn’t want to offend them. Did you know that you can actually hide people’s updates in your Facebook timeline? Paring down what you actually see in FB can make a huge difference. You can also do the same for Twitter. Someone posting out of a conference every 2 minutes and you’ve had enough? Put them on Twittersnooze. These methods are low-to-no-guilt and give you a little peace.
Scale back your friends/followers. This is a more drastic step, because you risk offending others and/or losing social capital**. Unfriending people on Facebook is a tricky proposition. Although the unfriended person gets no notifications, chances are that they are not stupid and are going to realize fairly soon what you’ve done. If you’re planning to pare down Facebook friends, it might help to explain that you’re only keeping immediate family and close friends and not work acquaitances or some such, to minimize the backlash. Many people have mixed both work and personal lives in Facebook; sometimes this can cause discomfort later. Separating out your lives is a valid reason for paring down. That doesn’t mean you won’t offend anyone, unfortunately. As for Twitter–it’s a little easier to stop following on Twitter. Overall, Twitter followers are more ephemeral and less likely to have a close connection to you. If you stop following someone on Twitter though, be aware that it is likely that they will return the favor.

Canceling a social media account is, undoubtedly, the last resort. If it’s a personal account (for you, not your library), it’s probably better to just let it lie unused. Everyone kind of lags on keeping up with things, and if you come back to it later and pick up the pace, people will understand. Better to let it lie fallow than to burn the field.

If this is a library’s account, it’s not as simple. If the only friends/followers you have are other libraries/librarians, the account wasn’t doing what it should have been doing anyway–reaching out to the public. If you have patrons, then you have to decide if the account is worth reviving. Could your library be doing more with this account? The answer is almost always “certainly.” But do you have the time to invest in it? Social media is time-intensive. To pretend otherwise is self-delusional. If there isn’t staff time to maintain it, it might be best to let it go.

However, with a library account, under no circumstances (that I can think of) should it ever be canceled. Why? That namespace is priceless. If you let that account be deleted, then someone else can come along and grab “XYZ Library.” This is why I tell libraries to get social media accounts, even if they never use them. Protect your library from brandjacking whenever possible. If you don’t plan to maintain that account, post a message to that effect and give folks info about which social media services you are maintaining.

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*Those of you who know me on Twitter and Facebook know that I attempted to take a social media hiatus a couple of weeks ago, before the whole Ohio library budget thing happened. Then my life got eaten by social media. Timing is everything.

**One of my next posts is going to be on social capital, I promise. It’s an extremely important part of social media. If you don’t have it, you’re just about dead in the water.

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Twitter has finally hit the mainstream (If Oprah isn’t the mainstream, then I don’t know what is). So we’re finally seeing more and more public libraries putting their feet into the Twitterstream. This is generally a good thing; however, I am also seeing more and more libraries just dipping in their toes without really understanding what direction the water flows or which bathing suit to wear.

(Ok, enough with the water analogies. Let’s face it: some libraries are not using Twitter to its fullest or are making errors that will prevent them from actually reaping the benefits of the work they may be putting in. )

In order of importance, from least to most important, here are my top 5 ways that public libraries are failing at Twitter:

Failing to use current terminology. I was caught out on this one myself recently; thankfully, it was in an email and not in an actual tweet where people could see it. But the verb form is “to tweet,” not “to twitter.” Using the wrong term is like putting a big pic of your library online with the word “newbie” scribbled across it.

Failing to post a picture. Not posting a pic/logo/icon/avatar/gravatar/picture/something is not only a newbie error, it is a sure way to ensure that your library doesn’t engender any trust. Use your library’s logo not just to lend credibility to the account, but to emphasize your comprehensive branding efforts (because your library has those, right?)

Failing to actually link to the Twitter account when promoting it. Your library’s account on Twitter has a special URL you can use to send people there directly. The syntax is “http://www.twitter.com/YOUR_USER_NAME_HERE” Be sure to use it and not just tell people on your web site that you have a Twitter account. Chances are, nobody is going to go looking for your Twitter account later. Give them a direct link.

Failing to follow back. No, your library doesn’t have to follow everyone back. But if you can identify that someone is from your service area, at the very least follow THEM back. It’s a courtesy. Not following anyone back is a clear sign to potential followers of your library that you’re not on Twitter for the right reason (see the next point).

Failing to engage in conversation. This is the most important thing about Twitter. Twitter is a two-way application. It’s not just a matter of shouting into the ethernet void. Viewing Twitter as only a broadcast service is not only failing to utilize Twitter properly, but is a virtual slap in the face to the people who follow you. Nobody wants to talk to a wall! Almost certainly, they want to ask you/your library questions or make commentary. They will assume that is why you’re on Twitter–not just to make announcements, but to interact with them. Learn about using the @ symbol in replies and talk to your followers.

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(Thanks to Don Yarman for suggesting this topic–I’m always on the lookout for new fodder. Send your ideas to meanlaura@oplin.org.)

I have to assume that, by now, your library has finally jumped on the Twitter wagon. (See here for additional info about Twitter for libraries.) If your library is doing Twitter correctly, then you are courteously following (most of) your followers back. (And if it’s not, you should be and I think I’ll chat a bit about that in a future Mean Laura post.) You may have noticed some followers using words in their tweets preceeded by the pound (#) sign. These are called hashtags.

Why use a hashtag?

Hashtags are used as an easy way to designate certain topics when using the Twitter search. For example, a couple of weeks ago, I attended the Computers in Library conference in Washington D.C. The official hashtag for the conference was #cil2009. If you use(d) Twitter search with that hashtag, you would be able to get a fascinating real-time picture of what people were saying about the various sessions, and even conversations being held asynchronously via Twitter.

Do they have any effect?

The past several days, we’ve seen the true power of the hashtag with the AmazonFAIL fiasco. Customers have found all kinds of ways to use social media to demonstrate their disapproval of Amazon.com’s move to make all LBGT literature “adult.” (Read the last link to see the gory details.) But on Twitter, the #amazonFAIL hashtag not only identified people’s contributions to this large-scale conversation, but as of this blog post, the topic is actually the most talked-about on Twitter. Clearly, people are very unhappy with Amazon.com and they are not only making it known on an unprecedented scale, but they are doing so at an incredible speed.

What does this mean to me, Laura?

If your library tweets on certain topics regularly, ,it may be helpful to use a hashtag, such as #bookdiscussion. Note, however, that these are called hashTAGS for a reason–just like regular keyword tagging, there is no authoratative source for taxonomy. Just make up a hashtag and use it consistently.
As the Shifted Librarian, Jenny Levine, found out, hashtags seem to have a limited lifespan in Twitter search. Read her blog post for how she gets around this.
Certain events and happenings have “official” hashtags, such as the #cil2009 and #amazonFAIL tags, above. If you’re attending a conference, find out what the official hashtag is before you start tweeting. Sometimes people don’t do this, and you’ll see variations on the tag, rather than one consistent tag. As you might guess, this is less than ideal.
On the other hand, if you go to a conference and the conference folks haven’t set one, be the first to make it up and promote it. People will often use what they see first.
Hashtags are primarily intended for Twitter, but you will also often see them in action on blogs. If you search Technorati, for example, for “cil2009″ (no hash/pound sign), you’ll get a ton of hits.

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