LIS 9763

Web 2.0 applications allow for new ways of marketing. However, unlike traditional forms of marketing, it has a greater possibility of hitting large, geographically-scattered people rather than focusing on your target market.

Steve Campion says in his article, Building a Social Networking Environment at the Library, “At that point, we were missing only one thing: getting the word out to our patrons. We began receiving comments on our social sites from across the country and around the world, but since our library's media plan hadn't put the social web on its radar, our own patrons knew little of the activity.”

This quote highlights one of the main problems I have with using web 2.0 applications for marketing. Because they have world-wide impact, people who are viewing your facebook, blogs, or following your tweets may not necessarily be people who you wanted to reach – your own patrons.

That is why having some form of evaluation method is important. You want to make an impact and reach your target market, not just any market.

Jeremiah Owyang mentions some of the attributes that can be used for measurements and says that in the past, his report to his stakeholders (about his blogging program) included, “blog site metrics (visitors, page views, top views, top commented posts, IP locations, etc). It would also have lists of qualitative comments and discussions that needed to be answered out on the blogosphere, I’d also send alerts to teams when users were talking about products.”

So if you are able to get information about the IP address of visitors, it may help to uncover if visitors to your site are from your city or from another country. But how much information collecting or data mining is permissible? These are things I guess we must look into.

Web 2.0 applications and the knowledge of them have matured, so there is definitely pressure to harness their marketing potential.

Michael Casey & Michael Stephen in their article, Library PR 2.0, states, “The rules of marketing have changed. Do libraries know that?”

According to them, carefully worded or canned PR message no longer work and “Brands are molded and shaped by the audience—and the audience is everyone. People talk. And people listen.”

It seems that in a web 2.0 environment, marketing is more monitoring and reacting rather than just creating. Casey & Stephen says that:

PR maven Brian Solis's “Conversation Prism” identifies 22 different channels of social tools where discussions take place and stories are told. We strongly advocate that library staff participate in these discussions, answering both the easy questions and the hard ones, as well.

While I agree with Casey & Stephen’s assertion that “if you don't participate in the story, it will be told without you,” I am not sure that, “Staff at all levels should be actively involved in telling the library's story. Ad hoc marketing committees can spring up easily to promote the next big thing at the library.”

Some of the biggest problems I have encountered while working for larger organizations is with communication breakdowns. The worst type occurs when external communications or special messages are sent to the public but there was no similar follow up for staff, leaving front line staff fielding questions for things that they have no knowledge of. This ends up causing service disruptions and negative feelings among both staff and customers. Customers will come to staff wanting a certain service or win prizes from a contest, etc., and the staff will tell them such a service doesn't exist. Then a couple of says later, some annoucement will arrive after the fact to the staff. Web 2.0 applications, with their ease of use content creation, can potentially escalate that effect of publish first, inform later.

Consistent messaging is important for brand integrity. Having good information channels among all staff to establish core and shared values is important for communicating the library's brand to the public. Before thinking of ways to involve customers into the brand identity, staff must be on the same page first.