The New York Public Library (NYPL) describes how they achieved success with social media to reach new audiences and public engagement. Starting out with Twitter and Facebook, then developing a social media strategy which entailed setting SMART objectives(based on KPI’s), achieving internal ‘buy-in’, governance model (‘hub and spoke’), finding the ‘right’ member of staff for each social media platform (e.g. tweeting, blogging, video) and building in mechanisms to track analytics. NYPL took part in social media week, developed a partnership with foursquare and used Socialflow to draw attention to the blogs being written by library staff.
Key tools NYPL created:
1. A calendar (an excel spreadsheet as a Google Doc).
This is where NYPL put in our major initiatives, content opportunities and on a monthly basis what needed to be done. This cuts out the ‘Oh my God it’s 2.15pm what am I going to put on Facebook’.
2. 'Monthly marketing dashboard' , to mine data. NYPL use:
- Google Analytics
- Convio
- Provider
- HootSuite
- Facebook Insights
- Social Flow
The single biggest reason that social media stalls is because people have no idea what to post; this helps you without eliminating the opportunity for spontaneity.