Community Building Over Marketing - Beth Wolf Blog Post #10

 After finishing the readings this week, I think more than ever I am convinced that libraries, especially public libraries, should consider viewing social media as a community building strategy over a marketing strategy. Most of the strategies thus far have been ones that are very applicable to the business world: you have a product you are trying to sell and you can do it on this platform, here's how! But this week was the first time where I finally felt like "ah yes, here is where I find the library's mission without looking too hard! Building community!"

When people feel like you're trying to sell them something, or that you want something from them, the odds of engagement are probably very low. This is why I found the four components of collective action from Net Smart so intriguing. Commenting on a blog (or a Facebook post) is very low commitment, but so few do it. And so few libraries and companies take the time to comment back to the people that take the time to comment in the first place. 

However, as an example, I use this cute little app for daily habit tracking called Finch. It is also a great reminder to prioritize your self-care throughout the day. I started following them on Facebook because their graphics are cute and they post motivational quotes every once in a while. The other day they shared a graphic with the title "How Scorpios Use Finch." I happen to be a Scorpio and related to almost every point so I commented "Don't call me out like that" with a laughing face emoji. The company commented back to me! And even though all it said was tagging me and then "hehe" with the same laughing emoji, it made me feel seen and like they were laughing with me. Almost like they made that post for me! How simple of a comment they made but how big of an impact and it brought a huge smile to my face!

The post in question from Finch's Facebook, in case you were curious!

And yet, sometimes when we post on social media, it almost feels like we are just screaming into a void. I've made posts that I thought might get some engagement (a cute cat, book recommendations) and get absolutely nothing on it. Likes are easy, reactions are quick, comments are a little bit of effort. But very little people have a conversation anymore. Even less people actually progress to the Coordination, Cooperation, or Collaboration stages anymore. I am in a Facebook group of people who like books and they like to play a lot of gifting games. And, steadily over the course of time since I joined, the gifting games slowed and then stopped. I'm not immune to what is going on in the world so I know people are struggling but it is crazy to me how they seemed so active when I joined and how steadily things have declined since I joined just over a year ago. Almost like the community aspect went away.

Going back to libraries, I was also struck by the first table in the Young and Rossman reading about changing their university library's goal of using social media for community. I think part of the success of their plan was this table in and of itself. Laying out their purpose in the first place and establishing that they wanted to inject "presence and personality" into their posts on Twitter changed the how as well as the why, and both can be just as important (2015, p. 23).

Table from Young & Rossman (2015, p. 23)

The authors shared that after changing their strategy to match the above table, the "student user community grew by 366 percent and the rate of interaction with our community grew by 275 percent" (2015, p. 32). That is a huge increase and marker for success if you ask me. Interaction can lead to the community gaining trust in the library and understanding what they could use the library as a resource for even more than before. And at the end of the day, who doesn't want that?

Citations:

Rheingold, H. (2012). Net Smart: How to Thrive Online. MIT Press.

Young, S. W. H., & Rossmann, D. (2015). Building library community through social media. Information technology and libraries, 34(1), 20-37.