Do you ever wish you promoted and marketed your library more? I certainly do. I feel there are so many opportunities I miss to promote the libraries services and resources. All those things I want to do, whether it’s update our digital screens or send a staff email with resources or host a drop-in session. But before I know it, the term has disappeared and I’ve hardly managed to make the school newsletter deadlines (and to be honest, I miss some of those as well).
So, I’ve decided to be a little bit more organised and strategic about my marketing this semester. Creating a plan that outlines what sort of marketing forum I’ll use and what I’ll be promoting, focusing on a variety of things that align with our strategic plan. I can’t guarantee that I’ll make the newsletter deadlines, but at least I have a plan.
Being strategic:
I started by reviewing our strategic plan, goals and objectives. These are all long-term goals, so I narrowed them down to things I want to achieve this semester. This helps me to know what I want to focus on. So, if my larger strategic goal is to promote and encourage reading, I might focus for the semester on capturing the attention of my Year 7 and 8 readers and engaging them with our new fiction.
Picking my mediums:
I also needed to have a list of the different mediums and forums I can use to reach my audience. These include school newsletters, emails to staff and students, posters and flyers around the school, posters and displays within the library.
Being realistic
I know how busy each day is and I didn’t want to create a plan that is unrealistic. It’s important that this plan is actually achievable, so I know I needed to do a few things.
First off was to set a realistic goal. I can tell myself to write an email each week and post each day on social media and create a new flyer each week….and never do any of them. Or I can set one goal for each week, give myself plenty of prep time and maybe hit most of my targets. My goal is to send two emails to students and two to students each term, meet the monthly newsletter deadlines, update our digital displays every 2-4 weeks, and have one to two physical displays in the space.
Consider the audience
When selecting each format and content item, I needed to consider who I am targeting and why. The newsletter targets families and emails are pretty good at reaching staff. While library lessons that I have with year 7 and 8 students each fortnight are a better way of reaching the captive audience of these groups (who are notorious at not reading their emails).
Creating the plan
Then it was time to start planning. I started with a bit of a calendar – not date related but weeks. Week 1, Week 2, Week 3. That quickly became overwhelming, so I switched it to just outline the term-based deadlines: newsletters, emails and displays. This gives me a bit of flexibility and allows me to switch things around easily if I need to.
For each content piece, I set one activity or goal. This outlines who I’m marketing to, how and what I’m focusing on. It doesn’t involve content just yet. Having an overview like this enables me to see how frequently I’m targeting the same groups in the same way. I can also see how my content might be spread or focused. Am I focusing on all the different aspects of the library? Or am I focusing on the target areas I’ve identified?
Here’s an example of my plan
Term 1:
Email 1 – Students – What’s new in the library.
- Feature new books, upcoming events this term and a reminder about library opening hours and clubs.
February Newsletter – parents – 3 resources for assisting students with research
Not going it alone
I can’t do it alone, so sharing this plan with my team and actually constructing it with my team is super important. It gives them a say in what we are marketing, helps them to understand how we are marketing and promoting our services and resources and gives them an opportunity to contribute to the creation of the content, making it far more likely this plan will turn into a reality. It also makes this far more visible for the team, so they know what otherwise might be invisible, if I’m the one creatingn
Tracking impact
I want to know how impactful this marketing is. That means I need some data. I want to capture data before I use my marketing strategies and afterwards, so I have a comparison. This might include loan statics around reading promotion, LibPath view stats after promoting online research guides, website views after placing a link in a newsletter item and surveys before and after sending an email to staff or students. Then I can adjust my plan, using the strategies that have a bigger and better impact and cutting those that don’t.
How will it go?
I’ll report back and let you know how successful we are at enacting our marketing plan for the semester and what has the most impact.
How do you market and promote your school library? What’s your favourite way of planning your preparations?
Further reading: