[Michlib-l] Social Media - an exercise in frustration

[Mark Morton]

Hi Andrea,
We do pretty good on Facebook. We are doing a county wide community read
and have an author event via Zoom tomorrow night (Angeline Boulley, "Fire
Keeper's Daughter) in association with the other three Leelanau County
Libraries. I boosted that post because our measure of the event being
worth the expense of the author and moderator will be based on how many
attend, so I was hoping to build that audience.
I did an "organic" post of some pictures from a Friends event from
last week and we got a reach of 785, with 141 engagements, including
shares, comments, likes, and clicks on the pictures. For a small library
like ours that is quite a lot of interaction. I think it helped that
the pictures were such that they stood out on a feed.
I don't see many of our library posts on my personal news feed but I always
figured that is because I am one of the admins for the page.
So much comes down to the mysterious and magical "Facebook algorithm". I
have liked and followed several other libraries and whenever I see any of
their posts I make sure to interact with them (like, share, comment) since
I know the algorithm will send posts that it senses are getting a reaction
out to a wider audience, so I see that as a way to help our peers. In some
cases I can change my identity and like a post as myself and then do it
again as the library. Also with the algorithm in mind all of our posts have
at least pictures, since, as you know, pictures and videos get a much
farther reach than just text.
I think we continue to do well on Facebook because we have had a lot of
interaction in the past and because of that we get put in front of more
people right from the start when we post something. I also share our posts
with several local group's pages that have a pretty good reach also.
For us it is all well worth the time.

Mark

On Tue, Nov 16, 2021 at 2:46 PM Andrea Ingmire via Michlib-l <
michlib-l at mcls.org> wrote:

> How are your social media stats looking? I’m growing more and more
> concerned with our social media profiles all the time. We seem to be
> reaching a very small audience (Facebook stats say we’re reaching hundreds
> with each post, but we’re seeing very little, if any, interaction with our
> posts). It’s very different than in the past.
>
>
>
> Interestingly, today we found that our hours were listed incorrectly. It
> took several attempts to change this, and at some point during the changes
> Facebook created a posting for us saying that we’d changed our hours. A
> link for ‘more info’ was provided…and this link took patrons right to a
> dead paypal page. We had more engagements from this post than from many of
> our intentional posts of late. Nice work facebook.
>
>
>
> I don’t ever see our library’s posts (or any of your libraries for that
> matter) come up in my feed. If I’m not seeing it, neither are our patrons.
>
>
>
> Is it worth staff time to continue using these platforms to promote
> library services?
>
> Is anyone looking ahead and thinking that it might make more sense to stop
> spending so much staff time and energy in social media and instead focus on
> what we can control, like our website, constant contact eNewsletters, and
> direct mailing?
>
>
>
> If social media seems to still be popping for you, what platforms are
> getting you the best engagement? Are you paying for postings?
>
>
>
> Thanks!
>
> Andrea
>
>
>
> ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
>
> *[image: logo-blue -building]*
>
> *Andrea Ingmire*
>
> Library Director
>
> Peter White Public Library
>
> (906) 226-4303 (office)
>
> (906) 250-0080 (cell)
>
> (906) 226-1783 (fax)
>
> www.pwpl.info
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Michlib-l mailing list
> Michlib-l at mcls.org
> https://mail3.mcls.org/mailman/listinfo/michlib-l
>


-- 
*Mark Morton*
Director
Leland Township Public Library
203 E Cedar St
PO Box 736
Leland, MI 49654
231-256-9152
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