PASSIONATE ABOUT SCHOOL LIBRARIES

Tag: Marketing (Page 2 of 2)

Ramblings: 8 Things I Did To Advocate For My School Library Last Week

8 Things I Did To Advocate For My School Library Last Week

Advocacy is a bit of a funny word, I think. Sometimes it can be daunting. Maybe it’s something we know we must do as school librarians, facing budget and staffing cuts and increasingly challenging times, but equally something that we think we might not have time for or might be something that is too hard or too out of our reach to do. Advocacy might conjure up thoughts of national or international campaigns or perhaps having to go and fight for the job you are about to lose or the 80% cut to your school library budget or perhaps the loss of the school library space altogether. And while these things do form part of advocacy, I believe that advocacy can also be far smaller and simpler. It might also be things you are doing each and every week.

Simply put, advocacy is defined as supporting or arguing for something. And that is something we do each and every day.

Here are eight things I did to advocate for my school library and my role as a teacher librarian last week.

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Ramblings: Failed Goals

Failed Goal: Social Media For My School Library Over the Holiday Break

Have you ever fallen short of a goal you have set for yourself? I know have. Many, many times. Just recently, I set for myself a goal of increasing engagement on our school library social media account. I started using Reels and Stories and posting more often. I used a scheduling tool to post on the days I wasn’t working and to ensure we had a consistent presence. And it worked. We increased our followers over the term by 26 and increased accounts reached by 5745% to over 47,000 accounts and 3229 content interactions.

So where does the failed goal come in? I was determined to continue this over the school holidays. That’s the time the students are most likely to be scrolling on Instagram, right? It makes sense for the Library to be active then, sharing tips on how to access ebooks and promoting holiday reading. I’d even lined up a connection with the local public library so that I could share their holiday programs and collections. But. Instead, I did nothing. Nada. Not a thing. I didn’t post once on our school library account over the two week period.

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Professional Learning: Genrefication: Beyond the Buzzword

Professional Learning Genrefication: Beyond the Buzzword Webinar with EduWebinar

I had the great privilege of talking genrefication again by presenting a webinar with EduWebinar all about genrefication.

It was great to revisit my genrefication process, especially as I am looking to start all over again at my new school. It was also fascinating to revisit the research in this area and see what the current trends are.

If you would like to view the webinar, you can register for the recording at EduWebinar.

You will find my slides from the presentation below.

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Ramblings: That time I created a viral video for my school library social media

That time I created a viral video for my school library social media – well almost

I had a bit of a surprise last week. I created a viral video for our school’s social media account. I must add a caveat. While I created it, I did have some help and technically it’s not a viral video, as Google tells me I have to have over 5 millions views and our video certainly didn’t do that. But! We reached over 23,000 views and over 600 likes. For us and our little social media account that was massive. And honestly a little scary. Here’s how it happened.

I relaunched our school library’s Instagram account this year. The Library Team had created it a few years ago, but it had been sitting dormant for a few years. When I joined the team this year, I wanted to start using it again. I had a great basis from which to work – just over 100 followers, most of whom were students. My goal was to increase engagement, promote the library and connect with both our school community and the wider school library community.

I’ve been posting regularly over the past three terms and when Instagram announced Reels, I happily gave them a try. I had been reluctant to join TikTok as I thought I wasn’t so great with videos – but maybe I need to rethink that.

Book Week 2021. We’ve got lots of competitions and events planned. The week prior, I am posting to our Instagram and trying to generate excitement about the following week’s events. I grab a 10 second video of the regulars playing Minecraft. I ask them for permission to share and then for some music suggestions. They chat a bit and argue over a good song and we finally select one. I add it, add a caption about next week’s comp, hit post and off we go. A week and a bit later, we have over 23k views and 651 likes. Our usual average for Reels views is 300-600 and the highest we’ve ever hit was just over 3000, so 23,000 was a massive leap. Same for likes.

This one Reel managed to reach more people, added lots of new followers to our account and generally created a buzz about our school library social media account. The boys were pretty impressed with their fame. I was curious. Was it the music? Was it the hashtags? Was it the algorithm magic? I’ve gone back to those boys for some more music suggestions and I’m going to try to recreate our success and see if it is possible. I’m also changing the way I interact with our social media account – focusing on engagement and student-driven posts and information.

I’ll continue to share my successes and failures here.

Is your school library on social media? Share in the comments below.

Book Review: Brand Yourself

 

Brand Yourself: A no-nonsense brand toolkit for small businesses

Lucy Werner and Hadrien Chatelet

Practical Inspiration Publishing

Published 7 September 2021

♥♥♥♥/♥

 

I love learning about marketing and branding. And we all know that the best way to learn something is to read a book about it. Brand Yourself is easy to read and approachable and I have finished feeling I have a strong brand outline and clear steps I can take to make my brand stronger.

I always read branding and marketing books through two lenses – my own personal perspective as well as the branding of my school library. Brand Yourself is obviously targeted for business models, but each of the steps it takes readers through to identify a brand, would work perfectly for a library or service.

Brand Yourself is based on the work behind Wern and a quick check of their website and social media feeds shows they practice what they preach. It’s also a good example of what they are trying to show readers.

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Professional Learning: Genrefication Webinar

Professional Learning Genrefication: Beyond the Buzzword Webinar with EduWebinar

If you follow my blog or know me at all, you’ll know that I quite enjoy talking about genrefication. I am by no means an expert, but I love experimenting and reflecting on the things I have tried across a few school libraries. 

I am so excited to announce that I will be presenting a webinar with EduWebinar all about genrefication.

Join me on Wednesday, 15th of September 2021 at 7pm AEST as we talk all things genrefication. The webinar is free for EduWebinar members or $30 for non members. 

Register Now

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Book Review: Marketing Strategy

Marketing Strategy: Overcome Common Pitfalls and Create Effective Marketing – Jenna Tiffany – Kogan Page – Published 25 May 2021

♥♥♥♥

 

 

Synopsis

Tasked with creating marketing strategy? This book is for you. Learn about the most useful tools and models, dodge common mistakes, and optimize your marketing strategy success, with this practical and adaptable framework from award-winning thought-leader Jenna Tiffany.

Create an effective marketing strategy for your business with Marketing Strategy, which offers a clear, easy-to-follow overview of why strategy is important, how to create it, how to implement it, and – crucially – how to measure its success. Packed with global examples and case studies, the book opens by discussing the role strategy plays in any organization’s long-term vision. It also discusses the key models and frameworks that can be used to analyze the marketing environment, and offers information on segmentation, targeting and positioning. Importantly, it will outline some of the key challenges likely to crop up, and gives pre-emptive tools for avoiding them.

My thoughts

If you are launching a new business, product line or marketing strategy, then this book is for you. Marketing Strategy: Overcome Common Pitfalls and Create Effective Marketing is a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know to market your product and business.

The book first outlines the important of strategy and the downfall of many a marketing tactic that fails to consider strategy. The author then outlines 8 important aspects and steps in your marketing strategy, using strategy as an acronym. These 8 key parts of creating a marketing strategy then form the next 8 chapters. These are scenario, target, reach, awareness, tactics, execute, generate and yield.

Marketing Strategy is a practical book and each chapter walks you through the steps you need to take to create your strategy. Each chapter has activities, worked examples and blank templates for you to complete, so that by the end of the book you have a complete strategy and approach to your marketing. Throughout, there are many references to examples from business, interviews with experts and research to support the author’s points.

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Book Review: Far From Normal

Far From Normal – Becky Wallace – Page Street Kids – Published 22 September 2020

♥♥♥♥

 

Synopsis

Maddie McPherson is sick of Normal—both her hometown of Normal, Illinois and being the ‘normal’ sibling. But when she lands a summer internship with a sports marketing firm, she finally has a chance to crawl out of her genius brother’s shadow. Not to mention, a glowing letter of recommendation could secure her admission to her dream college.

But Maddie’s nickname is “CalaMaddie” for a reason, and when the company tasks her with repairing the image of teen soccer phenom Gabriel Fortunato, she wonders if she’s set herself up for embarrassment. Gabriel is a tabloid magnet, who’s best-known for flubbing Italy’s World Cup hopes. As Maddie works with him to develop “pleasant and friendly” content for social media, she also learns he’s thoughtful, multi-talented, and fiercely loyal—maybe even to a fault. Falling for a footballer is exactly how CalaMaddie would botch this internship, but with the firm pressuring her to get the job done, perhaps her heart is worth risking?

My thoughts

Far From Normal is a sweet and light YA romance about soccer, summer, and social media.

Maddie McPherson has landed an awesome summer internship working at her aunt’s sports marketing firm. Within ing days of being there, Maddie is presented with the opportunity to create and post the social media content for teen soccer star Gabriel Fortunato. The goal is to repair Gabe’s image, but Maddie has to decide between doing her job well enough to get a glowing recommendation letter for college and falling for the boy who is quickly capturing her heart.

Far From Normal is perfect if you are in the mood for something very light. There are meet-cutes (a bike, a dog and a soccer ball, you do the math), working relationships that cross into romantic territory, a mean-girl work colleague Maddie must contend with, and romantic meals in Italian restaurants.

While Gabe and Maddie do discuss a few things about Gabe’s life in the spotlight, the incidents he has been involved in are never fully discussed and they never have any really deep conversations about this, so the book remains on the fluffy side. Fine, if you like cute and light stories, but I usually enjoy something with a bit more depth, so I didn’t connect that much with the characters.

Despite this being about a soccer star and sports marketing, the sports side of things don’t come into the story at all, so I’ll be shelving this under romance and not sport.

A quick read, perfect if you are looking for a fun and light YA romance.

The publishers provided an advanced readers copy of this book for reviewing purposes. All opinions are my own.

More information

Category: Young adult fiction

Genre: Contemporary

Themes: Romance, internships, soccer, social media, family, college applications.

Reading age guide: Ages 14 and up.

Advisory: References to drug and alcohol use and related accidents. Drunk driving. Sexual references and references to sexual relationships.

Published: 22 September 2020 by Page Street Kids.

Format: Hardcover, ebook. 240 pages.

ISBN: 9781645670568

Find it on Goodreads

Display: Books From Outer Space

  Outer Space Display

world-space-week

This was a quick display to tie into World Space Week, held this year from 4-10 October 2016. More information about World Space Week can be found on their website.

The titles displayed are all sci-fi titles with some sort of space tie-in, whether it is visitors from outer-space or intergalactic journeys.

I included the World Space Week poster. The stars were left-over from a previous Book Week display, and the Tardis and spaceship complete this simple display. It helps that the board has a black backing. I used the font SF Outer Limits from 1001 Fonts.

Book Review: Online Marketing for Busy Authors – A step-by-step guide

Online Marketing

Online Marketing for Busy Authors: A Step-by-Step Guide –  Fauzia Burke – Berrett-Koehler Publishers – Published 19 April 2016

♥♥♥♥

Synopsis

If You Want People to Read Your Book, 
Writing It Is Only the Beginning 
There has truly never been a better time to be an author. For the first time, authors have direct access to the public via the Internet and can create a community eagerly awaiting their book. But where do new authors start? How do they sort through the dizzying range of online options? Where should they spend their time online and what should they be doing? 
Enter Fauzia Burke, a digital book marketing pioneer and friend of overwhelmed writers everywhere. She takes authors step-by-step through the process of identifying their unique personal brand, defining their audience, clarifying their aspirations and goals, and setting priorities. She offers advice on designing a successful website, building a mailing list of superfans, blogging, creating an engagement strategy for social media, and more. By following Burke’s expert advice, authors can conquer the Internet and still get their next manuscript in on time. 

My thoughts

Online Marketing For Busy Authors is the perfect resource for both new and experienced authors, those that already have a large following and those just starting out. It works with you through the often daunting process of engaging with your readers through social media, but also refines the perhaps less clear area of first setting out your goals for engaging with online markets. This book is also a great guide for anyone in the business of promotions trying to understand the methods behind this online world and designing a marketing plan to target the right people in the right ways.    Continue reading

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