LMCC24

John Cotton Dana Award-winning Delaware County District Library reinvested their winnings to create a brand new mascot for the public library system. Percival Unicorn - or Percy for short - made his magical debut to the people of Delaware County in the Spring of 2022 and was an instant hit.

In this session, attendees will take away lessons learned for staff buy-in when developing any marketing campaign (but especially one with a friendly blue unicorn!), a unique approach to community engagement with a Pre-K audience, and Percy's next adventure as a spokesperson for kindergarten readiness!

Giveaways can be an engagement opportunity on social media – rewarding existing followers and attracting new ones. However, the success of these promotional posts can vary. I will review the performance of our library’s giveaways, the lessons learned, and share best practices to replicate our successes and avoid our “failures.” Whether your library has hosted giveaways in the past or is planning to do so in the future, I will share my insights as far as logistics, opportunities, and challenges. Overall, this presentation will be a critical analysis of giveaways and their potential role in the library social media strategy.

Would you rather write a strategy document from scratch for your library’s social media presence on various platforms or be dropped onto an island with a couple dozen strangers to brave the elements, compete in grueling challenges, and endure backstabbing and other generally stressful shenanigans? If you picked the latter, this is the session for you! Learn tips for outwitting the doubts (of leadership and yourself) and barriers, outplay the development process with helpful strategies and resources, and create a social media strategy for your library that can outlast institutional changes and even your own tenure. Survivors (aka library marketers) ready…go!

This session will explore the FIRST Values Framework, a conceptual framework designed to foster empathy-driven marketing strategies within library contexts. This framework was introduced in the book "Empathy by Design: Empathy-Driven Marketing for Libraries" and aims to foster empathy-driven library marketing. It also helps to build meaningful connections with diverse library audiences. We will discuss how the FIRST Framework can shape marketing strategies, enhance user experiences, and provide actionable insights. The goal is to empower attendees to create impactful library marketing campaigns. This session will equip participants with actionable insights on using the FIRST Framework to cultivate empathic and inclusive library marketing strategies. The session will provide a platform for interactive learning and collaborative exploration of empathy-driven approaches in library marketing.

Your Voices was a project at the San José State University College of Professional and Global Education that supported inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) in graduate library and information science and applied data science programs. The project culminated in a final report and best practices guide highlighting the project’s successes for further expansion of student engagement and empowerment in its second iteration, Students: Amplifying Your Voices (SAYV).

This session will detail Your Voices and its results, highlight the best practices guide for organizations interested in replicating Your Voices, and share plans for SAYV.

In this session, an academic journalism librarian at the University of Florida - whose research and instruction statistics have increased nearly every year since 2013 - will outline how she markets and frames these services in a way that generates interest from a wide variety of audiences – even beyond her liaison area. She will also describe how she has “sold” public and academic library research services to former students who are now practicing journalists, and to other groups outside academia. Tips and tricks (and lessons learned) will be discussed along with how these approaches can be applied to multiple library settings and sizes.

Navigating change can be challenging—especially for beloved, historic institutions like libraries. If you’ve struggled to get staff or community buy-in for a change, this is session is for you. Learn strategies for navigating transitions in the library landscape. Explore practical approaches to guide your team and community through internal and external changes alike. See examples from one public library that has transformed their internal processes and digital presence in the three years since opening their first dedicated marketing position. You will leave with actionable ideas and renewed inspiration for managing change within your own institution.

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