Continued Online Community Engagement

This session was a series of related presentations.

Continued Community Engagement: Keeping up the connection – Rebecca Ranallo from Cuyahoga County Public Library

Over 1,000 employees, 28 branches, Union organization/change difficult
Marketing vs. IT/Webteam vs. Staff

Control what you can
Branch (Message over and over again)
Public Website
Opportunities for practice
Best practices online
Content management system/staff work with webtools (200+ people add content)

Let go when you can
What is tied to your brand?
What needs to be a systemwide project? (Preserving systemwide message, train staff so they can provide content)
Where can you let go?

Trust
Trust staff
Give guidelines (example: protocols for use of library Flickr page, Branch twitter pages)
Provide opportunities to learn

Engage a community
We trust staff to engage our customers
Transfer that trust
Rhetoric in action (examples: Their LibraryThing local page, a Facebook page with info about an upcoming proposed local levy)

Evaluate
Honestly assess performance
Find right person for job
Accept that it will take time
Accept that there will be mistakes
It is a learning experience

Social Media monitoring: Clyde Miles, Chief Strategist, Optiem

What are your marketing objectives for social media?
Brand buzz, reputation buzz, programming and PR…
Google alerts
Technorati
BackType (monitor comments, conversation)
YackTrack (social comments)
BoardTracker (search discussion boards)
Twitter and Twitter search
FriendFeed (aggregator)
Flock (Browser with imbedded monitoring of social network tools)
…and more sophisticated tools like SM2

Continuum of Engagement--Jennifer Peterson, Community Programs Manager, WebJunction and Susan Colon, Teen Services Librarian, Princeton Public Library

Civic engagement = Pull open the circle

Digital stewardship. Help the public navigate it, then hand it over to them
It is the public’s library

Levels of participation
Explore
Connect
Respond
Personalize
Consume
Contribute
Collaborate
Facilitate
Lead

Presenters recommended Technology for communities

What does community want?
Put together mission statement for partnerships and projects

Build a team.
Library staff -->
Interested community members -->
Facilitators/Contributors/Advocates/Presenters/Mentors/Champions