We talk a lot about library marketing at Mosio. Being that marketing is one of the most important needs in the success and continuation of a business, we believe it’s the same for libraries. From what we’ve seen in the industry over the past few years, those libraries who are great at marketing are doing well, financially, in their communities, etc. There are always exceptions, but it appears to be the case. I was just speaking with someone in client services and they told me about a recent email conversation they’d had with a Text a Librarian customer.

Her question, which is a great one, was:
“Is there anything that you would like us to emphasize, that you wish everyone would do/get?”

His response:
“I think that the best advice that I can give a library is this: Focus on getting the info on how to text in on your patron’s phone as soon as possible. It doesn’t matter how much training you do, if your patrons don’t know how to text in or even that you provide the service, you won’t get any questions.”

Go Live, Make Updates
Nearly every successful company in the software as a service industry is known for pushing things live, then improving upon them after customers start using them. If you wait until everything is perfect, you’ll always be waiting, putting too much effort in areas that have nothing to do with getting it out into the world. We do our best to make responding to questions as simple as possible, within 1 minute of logging in you can figure out how to respond. It might seem like a hidden business pitch, but it’s really the truth.

Focus the “training” on how to educate and market your Text a Librarian service to patrons and you’ll have a great reason to learn the workings of the system.

I hate to waste great content, so I’ve pasted the rest of his advice typically given to academic libraries, below. Our biggest usage at academic libraries comes from libraries who show students how to text them during orientation, literally by having them pull out their phones and text for instructions.

In his words:
“So at academic institutions we’ve seen a lot of success with libraries that pull all of their students aside during orientation and say, “pull out your phones and text (keyword) to 66746.”  Obviously the library can substitute their own keyword.  When a student does that they get the intro Text for Instructions message to their phone.

This makes sure that when that student has a question on their phone 2 weeks later they don’t have to remember the keyword or the shortcode (66746) because it’s already on their phone.  That’s my 2 cents.”

Mashable’s post today, “Why Mobile Users Aren’t Checking In [Infographic]“, caused some mixed feelings around the office. Some of us were surprised to find out only 17% of mobile users “check in” to Foursquare and Facebook Places, others weren’t surprised at all. Should libraries implement a mobile technology strategy that appeals to less than 83% of patrons? It’s not really for me to say, but this report and infographic on the “reality behind the hype” is definitely eye opening for any organization deciding what to spend resources on in staying relevant using mobile technologies.

Random Four Square Fact (the real game): This year on February 25 and 26, 15 students from Manchester College broke a world record by playing Four Square for 30 hours. (via: Wikipedia)

We now have video tours / tutorials of Mosio’s Text a Librarian available on the Text a Librarian website. They were made as a way of showing how the service works for those unfamiliar with it, but also as a video training guide for new customers. You’ll also notice two new features coming up soon that are part of regular Text a Librarian packages. We’ll be announcing them officially soon enough, so for now you can watch and see if you can find them.

The first one, showing how to receive and respond to incoming patron text message questions is below or you can view all of them at www.textalibrarian.com/video-tour.php

The hype surrounding QR codes is T–H–I–C–K! In libraries and even more so in marketing and advertising. It makes sense that everyone is excited about them. QR codes fairly easy to create, time making them is the only cost and even though one cannot track how many times they’ve been scanned (a big bummer in my opinion), there has to be some success with them or the excitement wouldn’t be there.

People with smart phones are pulling them out and scanning them when they see them, right? Do you have a QR code scanner on your phone? Did you scan my code above when you saw it? So are they worth it? I’m still not sure. Some would say “it’s better to have them so people have the option” and others would disagree.

Here’s what I definitely know: on my iPhone (3GS), I have 3 QR code Scanner apps. After being frustrated with two others because they wouldn’t read the scan properly, our CTO told me to get Optiscan because you start scanning and it just stops when it gets a scan rather than making you take a photo that might not be a good read. I’ve scanned less than 1 dozen QR codes total.

Here’s a presentation from this year’s SXSW about QR Codes and how they are everywhere. Below that I’ve embedded a cool Pet Shop Boys Remix video using them. Enjoy!

In preparation for the upcoming holidays, the Mosio development team has been hard at work improving the Text a Librarian experience. Today we’d like to introduce a simple but helpful new feature: Holiday/One-time Auto Responders.

Everything is explained below as well as in your Text a Librarian microboard (click on New Features in your Quick Links module on the right side).

Text a Librarian Holiday/One-time Auto Responders

Description:

Holiday/One-time Auto Responders enable you to set up auto responders for any days that differ from your normal weekly hours (holidays, special events, etc).

There is a screen shot below showing you the auto responder creator screen; setting them up is incredibly simple. Note: You must be an Admin to add/edit Auto Responders.

Here’s how you set them:

1. Log in to Text a Librarian
2. Click on Auto Responder in the Microboard Administration Module on the right
3. Next click on the New Holiday Auto Responder link
4. From here, you can enter your message, along with the starting date/time, and ending date/time

You’re done! There’s no need to disable any of your regular auto responders since the holiday responder will take priority.

Screen shot…

Let us know if you have any questions.

Best regards and Happy Thanksgiving!

The Text a Librarian Team

————————————————————

Text a Librarian
Text Messaging Reference Simplified
www.textalibrarian.com

As we gear up for another ALA Annual the company has had some interesting discussions on new announcements and our directions in the world of library software.

A couple of weeks ago I had a great meeting/conversation with one of our partners and the discussion of library customer service came up. At the end of our partner meeting, someone said “we can give patrons access to all of the data in the world, but if we aren’t there for them from a customer service standpoint, it won’t matter.” Very true. Andy Woodworth’s blog post “Why Closing More Public Libraries Might Be the Best Thing (…Right Now)” [link below] came up in an internal company meeting, specifically his two points about customer service and advocacy (from the comments it seems the post got a lot of people talking).

The idea of improved customer service, whether at libraries or businesses in general, will continue to be a significant function of an organization’s success in the information age. Aaron Tay’s recent blog post about regularly scanning Twitter and the web for feedback is great (he gives some tips on how to do so) [link below], obviously taking a page from what many companies are doing as part of their customer service: listening to social media mentions for good and bad comments. Neither are the first to talk about the ongoing need for pro-active/reactive customer service in libraries, but both are current and relevant.

So what does this mean for Mosio and Text a Librarian?

We’re still very new to libraries and we LOVE working with them. Frankly, we’re just getting started. While we have friends who are librarians and have a handful of amazing people advising us, we’re not librarians ourselves, nor have we ever pretended to be. In many ways we see this as a distinct advantage to building our product: we cast aside any preconceived ideas of how things should be done and focus instead on simplicity, usability and feedback from our customers. We also know the inner workings of mobile technologies, enabling us to offer reliable (and certified) mobile services to libraries. We recently made an announcement that Mosio’s Text a Librarian is being used by over 500 academic and public libraries. It’s something we’re very proud to have accomplished in such a short amount of time, but we could not have done it without listening to the people who matter most to our success, the librarians who use our software with the benefit of communicating with more patrons on-the-go. The combination of our expertise and passion about creating an amazing library service will continue to be the keys to our ongoing success.

Text Messaging: It’s Not Just for Reference Anymore

In the same announcement we also mentioned that Mosio is now offering our full list of mobile services to libraries. Text messaging can be used for so many things beyond virtual reference and we’re set up to offer additional services to the benefit of our customers. We’re thrilled to be able to continue working with new and existing customers in offering technology solutions that will help us fulfill our vision for our library software: Patron Relationship Management.

Patron Relationship Management

We truly believe this is going to be one of the key tools libraries will need in the future to maintain great patron relationships and relevance in the community. Two comments we hear often are “I wish we could answer all patron questions this way” and “I wish everything could be in one place.” One of those comments we take as a compliment, the other we are taking seriously as a wish list item. Our goal for Text a Librarian was always to start simply, create web-based software that’s easy to use, reliable and certified by the mobile carriers, then grow additional features, elements and uses to continue giving more patrons access to libraries on their mobile phones. You can expect to see more from us in the mobile technology space, but every new product or service we add will have patron communications and relationship management in mind.

Links

Andy Woodworth: Why Closing More Public Libraries Might Be the Best Thing (…Right Now)
Aaron Tay: Why libraries should proactively scan Twitter & the web for feedback – some examples
LISWire: Mosio’s Text a Librarian in Over 500 Libraries, Announces Add-On Mobile Services

Today Mosio’s Text a Librarian goes live with OCLC’s QuestionPoint.  Libraries who are customers of both can choose to have text message questions show up and be answered in QuestionPoint.

Librarians who are staffing QuestionPoint will be able to immediately answer text questions, noticeable by a “TXT MSG” prefix and a new answering interface.

Text message questions and answers will be included in QuestionPoint’s reporting.

Of course, all of your Text a Librarian functionality still works too.  Patrons can still text for instructions, autoresponders will be sent when the library is closed, and message footers will be added to promote library events.  Messages will be threaded inside of QuestionPoint as they are in Text a Librarian, so you can easily carry out a full conversation.

TAL marketing materials are still available from your login, so be sure to promote your service!

As lead developer at Mosio, I want to send a big thank you to OCLC’s team for helping us make this happen. They were all a pleasure to work with.

If you’re interested in learning more, sign up for our weekly webinars.

From the Steve Krug’s new book, Rocket Surgery Made Easy

We’ve added a simple, but very effective feature we call “Text for Instructions.”

Simply stated, it means your patrons only have to text your keyword to 66746 for instructions on how to use your service.

What happens next?
1. Your patrons get an auto-responder with instructions on saving your keyword and the number 66746 to their contacts for when they need to ask you a question. The instructions include a link to a mobile web page with detailed instructions in case they need them.

It acts like a registration system that gets them started with your service without having to have a pressing question or message on-the-spot. They save your info in their phones for later when they do.

2. The Mosio system assigns the phone number a PatronID associated with your account, so after that all they need to do is text their question to 66746.

That’s it!

Note: The old way of texting your keyword + their message to 66746 still works, no problem. But this way patrons can see your poster (example below) or promotional materials, text for instructions, then save everything in their contacts when they need it later.

If you’re a Mosio / Text a Librarian customer and want more specific information about it, like how you can customize/edit the instructions, it’s listed in the New Features section inside your account.

Use the Buzz to Build One

Google’s new microblogging service, is getting a lot of, well, buzz. “Hello World!” has literally been replaced by “Buzz! Buzz!” by new people trying it out. If you’re not familiar with it, here’s the best way to explain it:

It’s all of the elements that one could think of getting out of Twitter (more than 140 characters, the ability to post videos and photos) packed neatly into your gmail account. While there are still some kinks to work out (you get an email every time someone you’re following posts or comments, which could get really annoying fast), Gmail’s built-in active user base of 176 million users is making it a clear force to be reckoned with.

In comparison, Twitter claims to have 75 million users and about 25% of accounts are reported to be inactive. Foursquare, known by some as “The Twitter of 2010″ is similar in that you “check in” using GPS on your phone and has been building momentum in it’s growth. David Lee King recently had a great post about it called “Foursquare and Libraries – Definitely Something There!” And I would agree, but it seems Buzz might be hot on the trail as it has the same built-in GPS/Geo-Location features and it works directly with Google Maps. Granted, it’s currently missing the fun “Mayor” game element Foursquare has, but this is a numbers game and Google definitely has numbers.

Library Marketing Tips for Using Google Buzz

If you have any other ideas or thoughts, post them in the comments.

Happy Buzzing!

Update: Someone just Buzzed me this great post from AEXT.net entitled 12 Undocumented Tricks for Google Buzz, worth a read.