A little while ago, I read an article about oMbiel‘s mobile app for universities, CampusM. I’d hear about it on Twitter, and the University of Sheffield’s recent implementation, but the article in Talis’ Panlibus magazine gave more context into just how much information was available in the app.

I thought I’d find out more, and was able to get a copy of the app from the App Store on my iPhone. Of course, I’m not a member of the University of Sheffield so many of the features I cannot use, but a brief overview of the features are shown on the homescreen:

The Directory, Course Details, and Library sections require a login (understandably!), but I’ve been able to access the Locations section (useful if you are visiting a University – can see potential here for use on Open Days), and I was really impressed by the functionality. Not only can you view a zoomable map within the app, you can also view each building on the campus map, on a Google Map or even get specific directions (again using Google Maps). You can also add a building as a favourite, which could be particularly useful if you are on campus a lot and need to use computers, as one of the killer features for me was being able to tell how many free PCs are available at any one time directly from the app (see screenshot – earlier this afternoon there were 37 PCs free in the Library!). You can also check printing facilities and again find where they are located either on the map within CampusM, or on Google Maps.

Most of this data was already available from the University of Sheffield, and is not difficult to implement, but what’s really great about CampusM is that it brings all that data together in one neat, easy to use application. I’ve watched the YouTube video demoing the key features of CampusM, and I wish I was a member of the University of Sheffield so I could give it a go! The library section looks particularly easy to use, which is promising for future app development.

There seems to be a lot of interest in developing mobile apps for Universities, MIT recently released an iPhone app which includes GPS tracking of campus buses, something I’d be particularly interested in as I use the campus shuttle buses to get to and from work every day! I believe oMbiel are currently talking to a number of Universities about developing a CampusM app for them (I noticed mention of a further event earlier today), so I hope to see more in the future, I do love mobile apps!

Yesterday I attended my first CILIP West Midlands branch committee meeting at Birmingham Central Library (where I must investigate sometime, can’t believe I’ve never been in before!). I’m the new Marketing Officer for the branch which I’m really excited about.

Marketing in the library and information sector is becoming increasingly more important at the moment, particularly with budget cuts, and I know from my own experience that many in CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals) are unaware of some of the benefits available to them as members. There is also a large number of information professionals who are not currently CILIP members, and although some of these people I know have perfectly valid reasons which I respect, I’m sure there are others who just aren’t a member through lack of awareness (either of CILIP itself or of the benefits of being a member).

At both a national level and a local level, I’m finding out more and more about how you can get involved in the profession and benefit from CILIP activities, even if it’s just an informal chat with like-minded people over a pint (or an Archer’s and lemonade in my case!).

I’ve taken over responsibility for the marketing from Katharine Widdows (now newsletter editor), and it’s a tough act to follow – her and David Viner (current chair), along with the rest of the committee, have been developing the use of social media in a big way over the last year or so. This has certainly contributed to an increase in my own understanding of what the branch does, and has inspired me to volunteer my time to join in helping to spread the word! We discussed some marketing ideas at the meeting; it underpins so much of the work of the branch (no point doing all this work and organising events if no one knows about them or what we do!).

I’m going to work on a strategic marketing plan for 2010, building on the work Katharine did as Marketing Officer last year. I’m really looking forward to this new challenge and can’t wait to get going with some marketing activities.

Last night I attended a free webinar hosted by SirsiDynix on marketing libraries. The speaker was Nancy Dowd, who writes The ‘M’ Word blog and recently authored Bite-sized marketing: realistic solutions for the over-worked librarian.

I was particularly interested in the webinar due to my interest in marketing and my (proposed) dissertation topic, and I also hoped to see if there were any ideas I could use either at my place of work, or for my new role as CILIP West Midlands Marketing Officer.

The webinar didn’t disappoint – Nancy gave an excellent presentation and concluded the event by answering some of the questions that had been submitted. The software seemed to work well – it was browser based which is particularly beneficial for people who cannot download software to their PCs (having said that, for those of us in the UK it was evening here so anyone watching was probably at home!). This was the third online webinar I’ve attended, all of whom have used different software – yesterday the software enabled us to vote, and submit questions although I have to say I did miss the ability to chat to others attending the webinar (a feature of Wimba classroom which was used for last year’s 23 Things Summit).

So – the content:

Nancy talked about funding cuts which are prevalent across many libraries at the moment or likely to occur in the future. She stressed the importance of bearing this in mind when considering marketing, and also dealing with current general perceptions of the library. Many people still think of libraries as the traditional, musty smelling, silent libraries whose primary purpose is for academic research. There is obviously still a need for this (well the research part anyway!), but we need to have a consistent message of what the library is about (is it about lifelong learning? books and information? a community centre? empowering personal success?), and use that message to market the library. It needs to be a simple message, and should be conveyed in everything the library does to reinforce the brand. If we don’t brand ourselves, our perception will be based on other’s (possibly outdated) perceptions and that of the media. This seems particularly relevant at the moment with Seth Godin’s post about the future of the library and numerous subsequent posts responding to his comments (I’d definitely recommending reading these and other posts if you haven’t yet).

Nancy also touched on the evolution of marketing which is something I think libraries really need to start considering if they haven’t already. The way marketing works is changing and the most successful marketing campaigns nowadays (particularly for B2C markets) are those which utilise consumer advocates to spread the message. Tim Fishburne’s cartoon demostrates this well (reproduced with thanks to Tom Fishburne: this one time at Brand Camp, an excellent marketing/branding blog):

Nancy thinks many libraries may still be at the TV admen stage, and sadly I have to agree. All too often we try to sell our “stuff” (also mentioned at the CoFHE event by Terry Kendrick), rather than just letting our brand show and enabling users to act as advocates. Word of mouth marketing is a big buzz term in library marketing at the moment, but I can definitely see why; I know as a consumer myself that this method is far more likely to change my habits than any number of emails, leaflets, fliers etc.

Nancy then introduced what she called the Lone Ranger Marketing Mix:

• Need to have a defined goal
• Determine your target audience
• Listen to what they are saying – use Twitter, blogs, social networks etc. (If negative feedback, don’t defend library, use it as an avenue to find out more about audience)
• Create communication channel (select appropriate tool for target audience)
• Begin the conversation
• Measure
• Evaluate

She discussed the positive and negatives of many possible marketing communication channels such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Listservs, Email, LinkedIn, SMS and MySpace (you can see more on this in her presentation), but the main points to take on board are to choose the appropriate tool depending on your target audience, and to update content regularly. She warned against setting up numerous avenues of conversation channels if there is no time to commit to keeping them up-to-date (however, many can be linked togethe to help in this – e.g. blog posts being fed into Twitter accounts). She also emphasised the importance of focusing on the content rather than the marketing element – it’s no good just cramming a blog with keywords to try to improve SEO if the content is not relevant or interesting – this is not going to be of any interest to your target audience.

Other points covered included using volunteers to support the work (particularly where people have skills that library staff may not already possess, and could benefit from expanding their portfolio), enabling online sharing if using Web 2.0 (e.g. using ShareThis tools like at the bottom of my blog posts), and having a good online PR presence with information for journalists to use (e.g. key quotes, relevant contacts, photos and videos for press to use).

I’ve embedded Nancy’s powerpoint below for anyone interested, and you can listen to the audio if you wish at SirsiDynix Institute.

I really enjoyed the webinar and would definitely recommend the software – there are a number of other free webinars you may be interested in, and Nancy is hoping to do another later this year.

The time has finally come – I just can’t put it off any more! I’ve been taking a break from studying whilst I settle into my new job, but I can’t really use that excuse anymore as I’ve been in this job for over a year now.

I’ve been researching ideas for my dissertation for a while now, and have been spending a lot of time reading, researching and thinking – now it’s time to do some real work. I’ve been talking to lots of people about my ideas; I must mention special thanks to Sarah Oxford from University of Worcester who I visited in the summer (for a totally different reason!) and really inspired me to start properly thinking about my dissertation and continue research in a similar area to her own.

I have finally narrowed down my topic to marketing in HE libraries in the UK, although I’m still refining the methodology. Having worked on a part-time basis with my boyfriend and his marketing business, I am interested in the strategic marketing side of things, as I feel libraries should probably be doing more of this. I’d like to find out what, if any, market research UK academic libraries are currently involved in, if they have a marketing strategy, and who holds responsibility for the direction of the marketing.

I’m also interested in innovative marketing methods, and hope to do a case study approach for a few of these. I would like to know more about how academic libraries in the UK are currently using social media, so one of these may be good as a case study (e.g. a successful library blog/Facebook/Twitter account) but from a marketing point of view rather than a technical point of view.

I submitted a dissertation proposal earlier this month but haven’t heard anything back yet. The working title is “Marketing UK Higher Education libraries: a current perspective”. I imagine there will be some alterations and suggestions for improvement, but I hope the research area is agreed in principle and that I can be assigned a dissertation supervisor soon. I have to be honest, I have found distance learning difficult – it’s great to be able to work at your own pace and when I was really keen to work through the Diploma everything was fine, but it’s been isolating at times, especially when home life or work life takes over and you lose motivation for studying. I went to the research study school to prepare for the dissertation in September 2008, which seems like a lifetime away now.

Hopefully I’ll be able to start work on my dissertation properly next year, and if you work in a UK academic library (and particularly if you have responsibility for marketing!) I may well be in touch begging for help!

This may well be my last blog post before Christmas – if so, Seasons Greetings to all readers and I hope you enjoy the festivities whatever you get up to.

I was pleased to be able to attend CoFHE Mid-West/UC&R’s recent event “Tell us what you want (what you really, really want…): Library surveys and promotion on a shoestring”. The morning session looked at ways of getting user feedback through surveys and focus groups, and the afternoon focused on marketing initiatives to promote academic library services. Despite an interesting journey (Kassam Stadium is very hidden and not easy to find from the bus service out of Oxford), I managed to find my way there having found other delegates on the same bus!

Following tea, coffee and biscuits (and allowing time for presentations to be converted to the correct Word format!), the day began with a presentation from Anne Rowlands and Stephen Cullimore from Barnet College. They shared their experiences of using surveys and shared some good practice about the structure of a questionnaire, when and how to do it, and the types of questions to ask (e.g. open, closed, free text). At Barnet College they were interested in getting user feedback about their Learning Centres and devised a short 4 question survey which automatically loaded when users logged onto a PC (once for each user). Using this method they gathered 2600 responses; a higher response rate that the general student satisfaction survey at the college. Some of the data may shape the future of the service, although Anne stressed the importance of using a trial period (e.g. if students request longer opening hours) to assess and evaluate whether the change is feasible and if real use reflects the views expressed in the survey. Anne and Stephen hope to further their work to ensure they reach a wider audience (their current feedback was only from those who used the PCs in the Learning Centre in a certain period of time which could have skewed their results). They also hope to use the data to feed into “You say, we say” displays to demonstrate the importance of user feedback.

The next presentation was about focus groups, by Jan Haines from Oxford Brookes University. Jan’s talk was particularly interesting for me as I’m interested in learning more about how focus groups can be used and how to run them. She discussed the advantages of a focus group – qualitative, subjective feedback where the group can build on other’s ideas and are often more willing to talk than in an individual interview. Jan recommended using focus groups when you require in-depth information on a particular area, and using a group who share something in common. She went on to share some advice on the who, what, where, and when of planning and focus group as well as some advice on publicity and promotion, what to do on the day (before, during and after), and how to analyse the data and provide feedback to users (both those involved in the focus groups and those the decisions may impact upon). Unfortunately, despite all this research and forethought, Oxford Brookes still struggled to get participants for their focus group, highlighting how difficult this methodology can be (this issue was also raised recently at Middlemash, where Owen Stephens and others shared their experiences of lack of interested participants and no shows in their own focus groups). Jan’s presentation was really interesting and certainly gave me a lot to think about in practical terms of using focus groups.

We broke for lunch at this point – excellent variety although sadly a lack of labels (people are always interested in a food report so wouldn’t want to miss out that important point!). The afternoon session was handed over to Terry Kendrick, who was previously a librarian and now combines consultancy work with employment as a lecturer in marketing. His credentials certainly made him appropriate for a marketing event about libraries, and he didn’t disappoint.

Terry began with some basic principles of marketing, and a particularly eye-opening task. He asked us to think about the last time we studied for a course and asked it to think about the main reasons for doing it. He separated us into two groups; those who were passionate about the subject and just wanted to learn more, and those who were interested in the subject but mainly did it to get a qualification. Needless to say, the majority of the room (including myself) moved to the latter group. Terry then pointed out that if libraries market themselves by talking about all their “stuff”, our message will only interest the small minority that are incredibly passionate and always want to know more. If we want to reach the other group, we need to tailor our messages for their needs – being able to save time for example, or improve grades. This message really stuck with me and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since – as both an undergraduate and postgraduate student, I didn’t use the library that much. I use electronic resources, and as an undergraduate I spent a lot of time in the library to use the PCs (in the days before internet access in halls of residence!), but I didn’t take advantage of many of the library services that were no doubt available to me. I’m now analysing our marketing far more – how would I market to someone like myself?

The afternoon was packed full of lots of activities and sharing ideas for marketing initiatives, with a particular focus on word of mouth marketing. Terry stressed the power a good testimonial can have in terms of marketing, particularly if the message is from someone that users see as having similar needs to themselves. We need to give our users a reason to talk about the library and build active communication channels to enable these interactions. One such example of these is the frequently seen “Share this with a friend” type features on the web (for example, I use ShareThis on my blog – but can you do this on your library website and online catalogue?).

Another key message I took from the afternoon was the importance of how we contact users, with what message, and when. This is something I am particularly interested in – I support the work of my boyfriend’s marketing business two days a week, and it leads to some interesting conversations. I come from a more service-based environment, mainly B2C (business to consumer), whereas my boyfriend mainly works in the B2B (business to business) market, primarily supporting products rather than services. One of the things we agree on (yes, despite these differences a lot of our ideas about marketing are fundamentally the same!) with regards to marketing is the growing importance of relationship marketing. Terry emphasised elements of this by pointing out that if the library sends mass emails, people may well see this as an intrusion, and if it is not relevant to them at that particular moment (highly likely!), they will begin to think of the library brand as one which is an irritant to them and not very helpful. Over time, this can have a massive effect on the brand perception of the library, and we therefore need to think very carefully about the messages we convey, how, and when. In particular, we need to make sure they are relevant and timely.

As you can probably tell, I got a lot out of the training event and would thoroughly recommend going to one of Terry’s sessions if you get the opportunity. A lot of the areas covered have stayed with me and made me think critically about our own marketing efforts. The morning sessions were also very interesting, particularly as they each focussed on a certain technique common to library marketing research. I also met some fantastic people – the table I sat on had some fascinating conversations, both from an FE and a HE perspective, and it was really interesting to share our thoughts and experiences and discuss new ideas to improve marketing within our institutions. Many thanks to CoFHE Mid West/UC&R for organising such an enjoyable event!

A couple of weeks ago I attended my first CILIP Branch and Groups (BNG) event on behalf of CILIP West Midlands branch. The events are held throughout the year by Kathy Ennis and Lindsay Rees-Jones from CILIP Membership Support Unit. This event was titled “Marketing: getting your message out”; many of the delegates were responsible for marketing within their branch/group.

It was my second visit to CILIP HQ, although I still needed my Google Maps app to navigate London and find my way from Euston station! There were around 15 delegates, and it was good to have the opportunity to discuss activities within their branches and groups as well as in their day jobs, which represented a wide range of sectors and roles.

After a quick drink and opportunity to network, we moved upstairs for a brief introduction to the day from Kathy and Lindsay. The day began with a keynote speaker, Elizabeth Elford, who currently works at the British Library. She presented an overview of marketing essentials and shared some innovative marketing campaigns, and is happy for her presentation to be shared – I will update this post when I get a copy. UPDATE: Elizabeth’s presentation is now available online.

Elizabeth presented us with a useful acronym when planning marketing activities – RSVP (Relationship, Strategy, Value, Professional). The main points to bear in mind are to get key people on board in developing the marketing strategy to focus marketing efforts to specific audiences, use powerful, simple messages, and give a professional edge by using designers, writers and photographers where possible. She also recommended Robin Williams’ The Non-Designers Design Book when budget or time doesn’t allow for this!

We then had the opportunity to work in small groups to think about the branches and groups we represented and what our main marketing message is. This was a really useful exercise – a lot of ideas emerged through talking to others and it helped refine our marketing strategies.

Elizabeth also discussed online social marketing and shared some examples of successful online marketing campaigns such as Obama’s presidential campaign which utilised social media, combining marketing, PR, branding, customer service and the web. She discussed the benefits and risks of online social marketing, and demonstrated how library services and related organisations are currently utilising social media.

The presentation sparked discussion on marketing methods and we moved on to share our experiences, both good and bad. It was a really interesting discussion and was evident that there is no right way to market something – it depends on what you are marketing and who to.

We broke for lunch along with the opportunity to network and discuss the day so far, and then it was time for some practical work. The afternoon activity involved us working in groups to market an event such as those held by CILIP branches and groups. After choosing our key markets, we needed to decide on a main message, key points to convey, and which methods to use to achieve this. We were given magazines and carrier bags to inspire us, and it was great to do some creative work! The activity reinforced the importance of group brainstorming to develop marketing strategy, messages and methods.

Throughout the day Lindsay and Kathy were actively involved and shared some great ideas as well as keeping us informed of CILIP developments and the support available to branches and groups, including some of the features of the new website. It was an excellent day – a great opportunity to share experiences, meet other CILIP activists and learn about how to support the work of your branch or group.