Category: social media

Social Media for the professional – Twitter

I’ve been asked this question twice now in the last 2 days, both in a professional context.  The first was at the librarian workshare I attended at Bangkok, where so many people were saying they didn’t get the point of twitter, and then last night by a friend who is an academic who has just published a paper in a prestigious journal and was wondering how to increase her online profile without it reflecting negatively on her professionalism.

I know I’ve been harping on about Threshold concepts, but to me, twitter is a threshold concept. I truly did not get it, until I got it and now I’ll never go back again.

Twitter is a true “the world is flat” form of social media.

Step by step guide to using it on your terms:

Setup:
1. Get a twitter handle that uses your name or something you identify with (I messed this up and may have to start again at ground zero)  basically @something and register it.
2. Write a profile that is professional and makes you easy to find by people you want to find you.  Think carefully about key words.  This isn’t about finding high school friends or long lost family or someone you met at the pub (that’s for Facebook), it’s professional
3. Add a picture.  A nice professional one, or an icon at a pinch. But not too silly.

Finding your tribe:
1. Work out what are the relevant hashtags (#) for your profession.  In the case of librarians, it’s #libchat for librarians generally and #TLchat for teacher librarians.  That’s for starters. Then you can start looking for librarians in your country or geographic area.  Or cataloging librarians, or archival librarians or whatever.
2. Type the hashtag into the search field and see who is saying what on twitter.  Find out who are the leaders and the movers and shakers who are directing you to something meaningful and sort them from the people posting pictures of their breakfast. Or kids. Or flowers.  Follow the interesting ones.
3. Choose your settings – either you want stuff to go to your email or you want it to stay on twitter until you choose to see it. Or you may want some people’s wisdom to hit your email and others not to. 4. If you blog, or use facebook professionally or have a flipboard or use paper.li – sort out the settings so that your pearls of wisdom are fed to your twitter account for the edification of your followers. No followers? No problem, as you start to post meaningful things and retweet other peoples meaningful things people will start to follow you.

Asking questions:
Do you have something that’s been causing you a problem professionally?  something bugging you? A resource you can’t get hold of? Some highly erudite person you want to get into contact with? Try twitter.

I’ll give 2 examples where it’s worked for me recently.

1. After I got all enthusiastic about EWO and created a research guide and wanted some feedback (and permission) from Paul Fleishman, I found his twitter handle @EWO_PFleischman and tweeted him the URL.  Since then we’ve exchanged tweets and emails about the book and ways to use it in the classroom. Twitter created a direct line to the author and started a professional relationship.  Other famous authors who are active on twitter include Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself ) and Margaret Atwood (@MargaretAtwood)
2. The household algebra sagas continue, and I realised that once we’d gotten over the trauma of realising that “x” just stood in for a number that was unknown as of yet, the problem behind the problem was not knowing the difference between -1 where “-” was denoting that 1 was a negative number and 3-1 where “-” was denoting that “-” was a mathematical operation.
hmm I thought. This is most definitely a threshold concept. So bear with me.  I googled “negative numbers as a threshold concept” and “threshold concepts in maths” and found who was blogging on it.  Went to their blogs. Didn’t find what I was looking for. Found the twitter handle of the most likely suspect (@maxmathforum) and the hashtag of his group and @justinAion and @_cuddlefish_
got back to me with some ideas.   @_cuddlefish_  in fact sent me the link to a fantastic resource on using positive and negative numbers in context. 
Reading only what you want to read when you want to read it:
Finally – we all suffer from information and email overload – won’t twitter add to that? Not if you self select.  You can use a number of feeders to only get a digest of the hashtags you’re interested in, I use paper.li and accumulate only the #TLCHAT and #EDCHAT  into a mini-newspaper that I read once a week.

 

Meanwhile back at my other blog…

For my current course ETL401 Introduction to Teacher Librarianship I’m required to keep a blog on WordPress in their “thinkspace”.   After a couple of months of WordPress I must say I’m still not terribly good at it, nor convinced of its superiority (at least not for someone who isn’t doing this professionally) but anyway, if you don’t find anything here, I’ll be there.  They’re named the same so as to avoid any confusion. I’ve just not worked out how to double post there and here, without having administrator rights “there” so as a compromise I’ll just link the lastest posts from either blog to the other.

Module 5: OLJ assignment – Social media Marketing Strategy

Task

Read Brown, AL. (2009). Developing an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy, in Salt Lake City Social Media Examiner (30 July), then 

Examine

Josh Bernoff & Charlene Li’s post Social Technographics: Conversationalists get onto the ladder (19 January, 2010). In particular explore the different behaviours of social networkers articulated in their ladder.
Consider applying market analysis to analyse your market’s (client base) social technology behaviour.
Also view Bernoff’s recent update on the statistics for their ladder ‘The Global Social Takeover’ (4 January, 2012)
Based on your understanding of your library or information agency’s, and your exposure to concepts and strategies presented in this section of Module 4, outline (in 400 words) how you can apply these ideas to develop a draft marketing strategy for your organisation.
 
===========================================================
 
Brown (2009) itemised 7 points for an effective social media marketing strategy.  These included:
  • written plan
  • how much time
  • friend / following policy
  • target market
  • budget
  • which products / services
  • which sites used
On the other hand, Harpointer (2012) and Freud (2010) point out the pitfalls involved in engaging in social media, including when companies fail to plan adequately and don’t understand the terrain of social media, fail to see it as part of a longer term strategy, don’t engage people in dialogue but instead use it as a sales pitch or follow the wrong people.
Freud (2010) provides some interesting examples in the video below, and Carroll (2010) tells the story of United Airlines and his guitar as an example in the power of social media.  Bernoff (2012) has created a ladder categorising the differing (and  overlapping) behaviours of social networkers.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
What does this all mean for a library trying to to develop a marketing strategy? Considering the library where I work, there are three key groups of users.  The teaching staff, the students and the parents.  Our product offering, the way in which we’d like to engage each group and therefore our marketing to each is subtly different.  Between the groups and within the groups there is also a difference in how social media is interpreted and used.  Further, each group needs a different type of “coaching” in the use of the library.
 
Since the school has grown rapidly in the last few years (500 to 1500 pupils and 50-150 teachers in 3 years), not all teachers are aware of what the library can offer them.  The one-on-one laptop program in the secondary school has enthusiastic supporters in the students and teachers, but meets with quite a bit of opposition and lack of understanding amongst the parent body.
 
The social media tools at our disposal are:
Twitter, blog, website, school newsletter (ebrief) google+, google sites, pinterest, LibGuides.
 
Needs analysis:
Teachers:  Libguides, book ordering, journals, teaching, coaching, use of technology and tools for self and in the classroom
Students: Books, libguides, journals, use of technology and tools, research skills
Parents: understanding learning and research process in digital age, books and resources, “on our side”
 
Who uses what?
Parents – predominently email & facebook – (we don’t have a facebook presence) some linkedin, some twitter, pinterest
Students – moving away from facebook to snapchat and instagram, use a lot of skype chat, 
Teachers – most are very digitally literate – use most of the google tools, twitter, facebook, instagram, linkedin, pinterest etc.

We’ve started to put more information about the library in the school newsletter ebrief, and whenever we have something new, the librarian posts it on google+ to the teachers.  I’d like to see the bulk of our marketing efforts geared towards the parent body this year. 
 
========================================================
References:
Bernoff, J. (2012). The Global Social Takeover. Empowered. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from http://forrester.typepad.com/groundswell/2012/01/the-global-social-takeover.html
Brown, A. (2009). Developing an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy. Examiner.com. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from http://www.examiner.com/article/developing-an-effective-social-media-marketing-strategy
Carroll, D. (2010). Lessons from “United Breaks Guitars” [YouTube]. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Hd8XI42i2M
Freud, A. (2010). Brand Success and Failures in Social Media [YouTube]. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G_CblR8jSQ
Harpointer, T. (2012). 10 Killer Social Media Pitfalls Businesses Must Avoid. AIS Media. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from http://www.aismedia.com/press/10-killer-social-media-pitfalls-businesses-must-avoid/
Siddiqui, A. (2013). SEO depends on Social Media and just what are Social Media Signals! AGUA Entrepreneurial Solutions. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from http://www.aguaesolutions.com/blog/seo-depends-on-social-media-and-just-what-are-social-media-signals/

Social Media Frenzy (1)

I’m busy looking into various social media tools for International School Librarians for my next assignment.  And at the same time, I’m trying to resolve for myself what works and what doesn’t to manage my own ever-increasing flow of information.  Over the next few posts I’ll introduce each new tools I’ve found and give a link to what I’ve done with it.

I’ll start with what I consider to be the most successful result – using paper.li to curate information flow from Twitter.  Now I must admit, that prior to doing my research I was pretty agnostic about Twitter.  I didn’t really “get” it.  I didn’t want a constant flow of information and my weekly updates were exhausting to look through, even if it was only 140 characters a post.  And, I think Brain Pickings tweets too much so I had a ton of stuff from them.

Then, I saw, according to the social savvy librarians in my survey, that Twitter was the highest ranked social media for professional use, and in the explanations, I was led to the hashtag #TLChat.  But then when I went to Twitter, I couldn’t find a way to follow #TLChat.  So, Joyce Valenza to the rescue, as always.  She had a blogpost on how to feed twitter tags into a curated newspaper using paper.li – it’s already 2 years old, but it still works perfectly – just goes to show how badly I didn’t get Twitter.

Anyway, it works a treat, and here is the newspaper I made combining the hashtags for #TLChat, #EdChat and some other bits and pieces.  Now I need to make it all mobile and download onto my ipad.

Livin’ and learnin’

 

Library 2.0

ACTIVITY
View this YouTube video called ‘Building Academic Library 2.0’. This is part of a symposium sponsored by Librarians Association of the University of California, Berkeley Division in 2007. While this presentation is over one (1) hour in duration, there are a number of key points raised by a number of speakers, including the keynote speaker Meredith Farkas, that relate to any library or information agency that is trying to transform their library into a 2.0 Library.
Consider advice provided by one or more of the speakers in terms of a library and information agency that you know (as an employee or user). Select five (5) key pieces of advice from these speakers, and consider how these may be applied to your library to help it embrace a Library 2.0 ethos. Write up your findings as a post (of no more than 350 words in your OLJ).
 

Although the library I am working in can be considered to have embraced Library 2.0 in all of its aspects, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a possibility for improvement.  After listening to the talk, the following 5 points struck a chord with me.

1.  Use of microblogging to communicate within areas of the library – since our campus has two libraries and the college has a sister college who we co-operate closely with, also with two libraries setting up some kind of professional micro-blogging knowledge exchange would have potential benefit.  
2.  The fact that current students often turn to their parents as their first port of call.  I think we could be much more proactive in involving parents in understanding how the library can help the academic success of their children.  A few sessions aimed at parents explaining how libguides work, how the catalogue works and how to search academic articles through our journal databases and a bit on citation and social/academic bookmarking would be very helpful and possibly lead to a higher take-up.
3.  “Go where the user is” – we have started greater co-operation with subject teachers through creating LibGuides with help of their input. It would be useful to also have subject specific Diigo accounts where students, teachers and the library can all tag useful links to articles and information.
4. How do we classify? We have already separated out parts of the collection, such as playscripts, biographies, graphic books, poetry.  We are also creating special areas for the IB subjects where we keep multiple copies of “hot reads” where books are no longer purely in the Dewey System. I can only think this process will continue, perhaps to the fiction area where genres are separated out.
5. Time taken to implement.  A number of times the talk mentioned that take-up time for any technology could be in the region of 18 months.  I think we have a bit of a mentality that “build it and they will come” and perhaps we need to spend even more time on user education and encouragement to use the wonderful tools we have created.

Here is a link to a summary of the talk.

References:

Farkas, M. (2007). Building Academic Library 2.0 [YouTube]. Retrieved January 30, 2014, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_uOKFhoznI
University of California Berkeley Library. (2007). Academic Libraries 2.0 Keynote – Meredith Farkas [Blog]. Retrieved January 30, 2014, from http://blogs.lib.berkeley.edu/newdirections.php/academic_libraries_2_0_keynote_meredith_


Use of social bookmarking



I’m fairly new to social bookmarking, having only commenced using it during my Student Placement for my degree.  I’m currently using it at it’s most primitive form, i.e just as a cloud based bookmark bar, although I have used the sharing function with the librarian.

I think my use is similar to that of most people’s use of most technology.  They use it as a “quick and dirty” tool and seldom use all the functionality.  This assignment has prompted me to thinking of it in a broader sense and to exploit it more widely, particularly as I start working as a reference librarian.  I need to exploit the “social” part not just the “bookmarking” part. 

Originally our school used Delicious, but moved to Diigo as a result of the fact that it provided the following additional features that Delicious didn’t

“What can you do with Diigo that you cannot with Delicious?

Bookmark

  • – save bookmarks as private by default (optional)
  • – organize your bookmarks as a list and shown as a slide
  • – set up groups to pool resources and curate content
  • – automatically bookmark your twitter favorites
  • – keep a full-text copy of your bookmarks (Premium features)
  • – full-text search of your bookmarks (Premium features)
  • – save notes and images, in addition to bookmarks

Annotation

  • – use highlights and sticky notes as you read – do not just bookmark
  • – capture a portion of the screen and annotate on the screenshot” (Diigo, 2013)


At present we are busy preparing the Grade 11 IB students to write their extended essay.  Diigo is a useful tool to teach them and to use while conducting reference interviews for their specific essay, and also to create an area where information on common problems such as citation, accessing databases and referencing can be accumulated.  


Further to this, Library Grit has written a very nice piece on Diigo which you can access here.

=============
References:

Delasalle, J. (2013, February 22). Bookmarking websites: switching from Delicious to Diigo [Blog]. Library Research Support. Retrieved November 28, 2013, from http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/libresearch/entry/bookmarking_websites_switching/
Diigo V5.0: Collect, Highlight and Remember! [YouTube]. (2010, July 21). Retrieved November 28, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHWapAF1Txw
Garmoe, P. (2010, December 17). 17 Reasons Delicious.com Users Should Head to Diigo [Blog]. For Bloggers By Bloggers. Retrieved November 28, 2013, from http://bestbloggingtipsonline.com/17-reasons-delicious-diigo/
McKenzie, D. (2014, January 4). Day 1 – Diigo [Blog]. Library Grits. Retrieved January 12, 2014, from http://librarygrits.blogspot.sg/2014/01/day-1-diigo.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/zLvwr+(Library+Grits)
Transition from Delicious to Diigo ~ Instruction & FAQ. (n.d.). Retrieved November 28, 2013, from https://www.diigo.com/transition-from-delicious-to-diigo-faq

Social networking – the dark side

I’ve been on the internet a long, long time.  There was some primitive stuff going on when I did my first degree around the mid-80’s (that’s 1980’s) but we only really got it going at home in 1994 – and then we were living in Brazil, where and when at that time, even having a home phone line was a luxury.  I remember hours and hours trying to get things up and running with a techie mate of mine, both of us with broken Portuguese, the old black screens with green writing and lots of C backslashes.  Besides email, social media for me only started in 2006 when we moved from Spain to Hong Kong and I started blogging.   And I discovered the wonderful community you could create through blogging, but I also found the dark side of trolls and anonymous comments that didn’t add much to the conversation except to satisfy some need in the writer.   Finally, when things got too personal and my thick skin had been worn down enough, it just didn’t seem worth carrying on, and besides that we’d moved countries and a lot of what I’d written was no longer interesting or relevant or current, so I just shut it down.  But I did make some truely wonderful friends through the experience, and they’ve remained friends, so the virtual to the reality.

Fast forward to now, and I’m using Pinterest and Flipboard for my work, and also dabbling in them a little privately.  Full disclosure – I have a child with ADHD.  It’s not a secret.  I’m not ashamed of it.  So when I come across things on ADHD or related matters, I flip them into an ADHD flipboard, and I keep track of nice infographics and articles and graphics and things on it in Pinterest.    Out of politeness and in the spirit of the social side of the internet, and being supportive of other people who take the time and trouble to curate things on the matter, I also “follow” their boards if I’ve pinned something from it.

And they follow me back.  But it can be dark.  So, recently one of the people I followed on the matter then followed me back and started inviting me to all sorts of boards along the lines of domestic violence, abused people, children of abuse and all sorts of psychological matters that, while I’m sympathetic to, just doesn’t have relevance to my life.  I had one of those “oops” moments, and kind of felt like I was being stalked, or having a bible basher (sorry, value judgement) put their foot into my living room door.

Will it stop me using social media?  No.  It just makes me more aware, and maybe I won’t follow someone quite so quickly without looking at the context of their other pins first.  Am I glad it happened? Yes.  Because I’m the parent of two pre-adolescents.  And it can and will happen to them, and I’m real glad it happened to me first, so we can talk about it, and they’ll know what it is, how it can happen and how to respond to it when it does.

Reading and Weeding social media

It’s terribly addictive, I’ve just spent an hour hopping from blog to blog to Pinterest to Facebook entry and back again.  And added a couple of pretty good blogs to my Blogfeed (The Daring Librarian, and DaveCaleb).  It wasn’t all for nothing.  I had a good lesson on infographics from Library Grits, along with some concrete hints on how to get started and what to use.  Katie, our school librarian, has put down the tricks and secrets of getting stuff out of the catalogue into social media in her The Librarian Edge blog and I found a good book to pin for getting adolescents to read (Book Love) and found a cute poster on the rights of readers for my daughter.

I also decided that anyone who hasn’t posted for 2 years doesn’t deserve to be in my feed, no matter if he’s on the CSU recommended reading list or not … 2 years is a century in social media.  But on the other hand, here is a provocative new book (Writing on the Wall by Tom Standage) on the fact that social media has always been with us it just keeps changing clothes.