Library Marketing Professional Development Award

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Ashley Granger
University of Missouri

The University of Missouri library marketing team does a multitude of tasks, but one of them is to maintain our social media accounts, including Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.  Because the library wants to focus on different branches of our main library, and to highlight what our various departments do, the marketing team made the decision to have “reporters” create posts on a schedule to make sure there was a variety of content.  This was my introduction into social media marketing.

My favorite posts would probably be classed as “bookstagram” posts: memes, book covers, and posts of that nature.  This helps to tell patrons what new books we’ve received and provides both serious content and fun book-related posts for our followers.  We also have people from special collections who post technical information, posts about user experiences, and reposts from students who have tagged us.  Our library Instagram was even featured on a Buzzfeed article about the best library accounts to follow, and featured a picture of one of my posts, which led to an increase of followers.  I found myself increasingly enjoying the social media aspect of my job and brainstorming more ideas of content that could be posted.  But where would I start?  I had little experience with marketing and what would work best for our followers.

I saw an email about the Library Marketing Professional Development Award through the Network of the National Library of Medicine that provided an application, open to staff and faculty, to receive a grant to attend the marketing conference in 2020.  I applied and received the grant.

The conference was, to put it lightly, incredible for me.  I took pages and pages of notes.  I googled software and websites and book titles that were mentioned, my LinkedIn account was flooded with invitations, and I was even able to connect with someone who was co-authoring a book about social media in academic libraries, and I submitted a case study about our library’s Instagram page to be included.  I learned about the best color/fonts to use on posts, how many words should be a on post for the most impact, and even how long it takes a person to become engaged in a video. As a paraprofessional cataloger, I never expected to be published anywhere, or have this kind of knowledge available to me.

The grant also included a mentor, Jim, who I meet with monthly.  Jim helped me narrow the focus of my project from pages of notes and ideas to a focused plan to post a weekly “tip” about our library to get more information out to our Instagram followers on a regular basis with the same hashtag to provide consistent content that is under a common theme (and hashtag).  This will allow the marketing team to view the analytics and track the traffic for those posts to see if this is valuable content, or if our marketing efforts would be better spent on something else.

I found the entire experience to be incredibly helpful and rewarding.  It provided me with information, the chance to network with others, and a way to take an idea of mine and put it to practical use.  I learned how to approach others with my ideas in a concise and professional way, and how to shift gears when something wasn’t working.  I have never had a formal mentor before and wasn’t sure how helpful it would be, but my meetings with Jim have been invaluable.  I could not have done this project without him.

While my project is still ongoing, I am excited to have had the opportunity for this grant, and to have met the people I did, and to gain the knowledge I now have.  I highly recommend this grant program and the conference itself.  I’m not a marketing librarian, or a social media librarian – just a paraprofessional library employee who posts on Instagram, and I still found it extremely relevant.  If your job includes anything with social media, accessibility, or marketing, I guarantee you will learn something new at this conference.