Tova Harris - Blog #3 - Kaplan & Haenlein's 5 Social Media Recommendations as it relates to Librarianship!
As a public librarian, I am learning so much already from this class in how and in what ways we "meet" our community and stakeholders by way of social media.
For Week 3, I'd love to discuss Kaplan and Haenlein's (2010) article, as it relates to the article's focus on 5 essential recommendations for using social media.
1. Be active - "social media is not a monologue, it's a dialogue."
2. Be interesting - "boring gets ignored."
3. Be humble - "don't try to be everything to everyone."
4. Be unprofessional (but only a little!) "break away from corporate tone."
5. Be honest - "transparency builds trust."
So what do these key points break down to when it comes to being an active social media-oriented public librarian? Well, I think it can translate into many types of ways of "showing up," but I would further connect these 5 recommendations to examples of how I plan to use them.
#1. Be active - I would regularly post updates, events, and book recs. polls, memes, and even livestreams like "what's new this week?" (although I'm sure attendance would be poor at first).
#2.Be interesting - I find it interesting to make my social media posts lively and engaging by skipping long, text-heavy posts. Instead, I use GIFs, stickers, pop culture, and, most importantly, memes to capture attention. I think an example of a post that not only engages teens but also interacts with them would be a "BookTok Challenge," where teens are tasked with recreating or acting out a scene from a popular YA book.
#3. Be humble - as someone who is already considered "extremely old" by most teen patrons, I would try to show up in teen spaces with respect, not authority. This would mean not lecturing teen patrons, but rather inviting collaboration. This could be achieved by establishing a "Teen Social Media Council" to help manage the library account and select weekly themes.
#4. Be unprofessional - translates to me as loosening the tone in whicch I post content; avoid sounding like a school principal, letting my personality (or cultivated online presence) show, demonstrating to my teen patrons that I am more than just "their/the librarian," and creating tiktok's that have a theme of "POV'" so that the content is from a more equal standpoint.
#5. Be honest - the most honest thing I can do as a public librarian actively trying to create ongoing criteria for creating content, is to ask for feedback from our teen patrons - I don't want to pretend to know every trend. By admitting that, I potentially open a door for patrons to "teach you" and feel comfortable and safe enough to engage with me in such a meaningful way.
With these foundations in mind, I hope to learn more about their application in everyday social media "quests," to which I am most thankful for Kaplan & Haenlein's help!
These are all fantastic ways to facilitate better relationships with teens through social media! #3 is especially important--there's an ingrained view of teens as unruly and in need of discipline, and while some teens can certainly be a handful (I'm often staffed in our very busy teen room!), talking down to them isn't going to do any of us much good. It's so critical that teens feel valued and respected--that's what encourages them to come back and contribute ideas!
ReplyDeleteThe library honestly has so much potential for meme generation. I wonder if there's room for simple posts on day to day library activities, like shelving and trying to locate that one pesky book? That could help viewers feel like they've got the "inside scoop" on what's going on at their favorite library. You'd need to strike a balance between showing off "library life" and being understandable...though it would be very entertaining to meme about trying to adjust the settings in our often aged data management trackers, like Drupal!
Hi Tova!
ReplyDeleteI love how you connected the five recommendations to real examples. It makes them so easy to imagine in action. The BookTok challenge idea is awesome and such a fun way to get teens involved. Teens just want to feel heard and respected, and the staff in the teen department at my library all strive to do that, and the attendance at programs shows it's working!
The “Teen Social Media Council” is so smart, too; it gives teens ownership and probably makes them way more excited to engage. I remember learning about this in a teen literature course I took last year, and I think it's a smart approach to actually ask them what they want to see, since the space is for them, after all. I agree entirely about loosening the tone and letting your personality shine through. That’s what makes social media posts feel real and fun, and something I also appreciate seeing from other libraries' social media and other companies' media.