Week 11:
7/31-8/6
Special Topics: Social
Informatics

I realized writing up this week's post that my social media knowledge is very weak. I really didn't know that much about hashtags and ended up surveying my younger friends about how they use them and experience them. I really struggled to think through the material and wasn't really happy with the level understanding I had developed. I read the articles, skimmed through a few books on twitter and social media to get some more understanding but I will really need to spend more time thinking through the all various platforms and how they work with each other and how to plan out materials to create the best flow of messaging through the various systems. 

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One of the most valuable resources available from my local public library system is the collection of online courses that can be used to earn continuing education units (CEU) in a variety of subject areas through a course vendor named Universal Class. Accounting, business, crafts, computers skills, entrepreneurship, finance, history, DIY, psychology, real estate, science, parenting, personal development, pets & animal care, math, special teacher resources, test prep, and writing skills are some of the areas in which classes are available for professionals and library patrons to improve their skills and earn CEU credits for doing so. This an effective resources for MCPL patrons and quite likely a good recruiting tool to get more community members to sign-up for a library card and the benefits that are available to patrons.

Assuming we have all the relevant audience data before we begin our campaign, we determine that many adult patrons don’t utilize the resource because they are not aware of its existence. We decide to take the existing usage statistics as our baseline and begin designing a social media campaign to target this group and change behavior among these patrons. To that end, we develop a messaging campaign that will be tailored to the needs and messages that we think will most likely capture their attention and explain the value of the resource to their career aspirations. That the library can offer through its service a way to earn CEU and improve job skills to stay current or work toward promotions at current or new companies. Learn More. Earn More. We want to link a very simple message to a social media campaign. It is determined to use the #Learn2Earn tag for the campaign.

We determine that we will need to figure out what communication channels we have available to use. There is the physical space of the thirty-one branches and we determine to put together a poster and trifold brochure to list explain the value of the service, a list of course offerings, and a call to action. We want patrons to pose with their library card and tweet, post, email with the #learn2earn tag.

We can also use the main page of the library website to promote the learn2earn idea. We encourage patrons to visit a targeted landing page which explains the ideas of learn2earn, encourages them to spread the world and by using social media tools at their disposal.

We create a press release and contact local media channels like tv stations, radio, and community bloggers to inform them of the new program, and we make available a library person for interviews and to promote the use of the hashtag to discover more the program and the value of having an MCPL library card.

We use email to amplify the social media campaign by targeting local businesses on the value of the Learn2Earn initiative for improving the skills of their employees. We also post flyers on the bulletin boards of various community bulletin boards like coffee shops, educational institutions – high schools, colleges, trade schools and professional membership groups.

As a phase 2, as we get responses, we want to find persons willing to volunteer how learn2earn helped them or to have them express their response to the value of the program. We would extract these persons from the group and use them for testimonials comments and amplification of the message. We could post text and short video clips of the selected persons. We would also post brief video “commercials” of the course content from the classes.

The campaign would run for 1-2 months and then we would evaluate the metrics against the previous metrics and determine the effectiveness of the messaging on the via the various chosen channels and the campaign overall. This would determine if the campaign did well, poorly, or neutrally and help us determine whether to tweak the message, find a different approach or spend future resources on a different problem to solve.