Stop Being Annoying on Social Media

Social media can create a unique branding identity for your library, allow you to connect and engage with patrons, and inform the community of all you have to offer! However, if used incorrectly, it could turn people off and force them to unfollow. There’s a delicate balance to using social media platforms and having a presence is great, but overstepping into annoying territory is a common error for organizations. Brush up on the following “don’ts” for social media tactics and you’ll be on the right track.

#Don’t #Hashtag #Every #Word

The main goal of hashtagging is to connect users by topic to contribute to a broader conversation. If you’re hashtagging the word “book” you can pretty much guarantee that no one is browsing that hashtag on their social media feeds. The point is, it doesn’t do any good to use hashtags unless you’re using them correctly. It is always good to do a little research before you start inserting the # haphazardly. By using a resource like Hashtagify, you can enter a hashtag and see the popularity of it and how it is most commonly used to guide your own inclusion of it. Digging deeper on what hashtags gain traction or are trending will help to focus on the groups that you really want to reach, rather than over-hashtagging and showing up on irrelevant feeds.

Don’t Beg for Follows or Likes

It can be difficult to grow a following organically, and your library may struggle with that when you’re first starting out on social media. But please…promise us you won’t stoop to begging for followers (or buying them.) It’s a desperate approach to announce that if someone follows your library, you’ll follow them back. It also looks like you’re just hyper focused on statistics or numbers on your social accounts rather than actually engaging and communicating with patrons. The same goes for likes. Don’t make a habit of telling people to like a post. Instead, brainstorm creative ways to grow through engagement. Holding a contest, posing a question for discussion, or asking for a suggestion are all great ways to increase likes, comments or followers without looking so obvious.

Don’t Crowd the Newsfeed

We all have people or brands that post so much that we roll our eyes every time we scroll past their content, or sometimes even hide them from our newsfeed altogether. Don’t be one of those brands! Your library should be posting consistently enough to have a stable social media presence, but not so much that you’re inundating followers with useless information. Make sure your posts each have a purpose. Whether it’s to inform or entertain your community, the goal of the post should be clear. It’s also important to be tuned into how posts are performing. If you’re checking social media metrics and every time you post updates about Storytime, it’s low on engagement, it might be time to tweak that content. It’s possible your demographic of followers isn’t interested in that topic, or it could just be the way it’s presented or the time of day it’s being posted. Always take time to see what’s working and what isn’t so that you can adjust your approach to social media. But please don’t take the “let’s throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” approach because you might lose the followers you’ve worked so hard to get. Check out this guide on how often you should be posting as a benchmark and go from there!