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 has literally been replaced by “Buzz!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.

GoldMail announced today that they’re offering a freemium version of their audio slideshow messaging software. We’ve been a GoldMail customer for awhile now, thought of a great way to use text messaging for sales people to be able to “text a GoldMail” when out in the world and I’m happy to see them offering a free version. I think many organizations will benefit from it, definitely a great fit in sales, marketing, training or even just fun presentations. It’s easy, viral and extremely useful.

Videos grab people’s attention and there’s something about being able to easily add a personalized voice message to a slideshow (or powerpoint) that makes this technology a homerun. Add the email (or embeddable code) element and you have a product that literally sells itself. You watch a GoldMail to learn what it is, how cool is that?

If you’re in any business that needs to update content on a regular basis and benefits from a personalized message over a canned one (who doesn’t?), definitely check it out and let me know what you think in the comments.

Then and Now…

Faberge Shampoo started it all with their famous commercial from the 1970s. Peggy Barber and Linda Wallace nail it in their new article, “The Power of Word-of-Mouth Marketing” in the November issue of American Libraries Magazine. We wrote a post called “Word of Mouth: The Best Form of Social Media” as part of our Library Marketing Tips series.

I definitely recommend reading the whole article, but here are short versions of their “Why WOMM?” bullets to get you started:
1. It’s real and immediate.
2. It’s personal.
3. It’s honest.
4. It’s catching.
5. It’s customer-driven.

More Info and Articles

1. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association has a great educational section, WOMMA 101, giving some great initial information as well as their Best Practices Handbook (free in PDF).

2. A great blog post from Marketing Vox containing some stats (and charts and graphs), Real-Life WOM Beats Online by a Wide Margin.

3. About.com article Why Word-of-Mouth Marketing? by Laura Lake.

Shhhhh…don’t tell anybody.

“Here is the prime condition of success: Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun on one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it, adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it.”
- Andrew Carnegie

My favorite thing about working at Mosio is that every day we get to come into work and improve ourselves, our product and our relationships with customers. Aside from the positive attitude and action from those who work here, our business model, offering on-demand mobile reference software as a service for libraries, enables us to create, test, launch, listen and then improve upon our product in an ongoing fashion. Text a Librarian is better today than it was yesterday and it will always be better tomorrow.

What Does it Mean? Ongoing Improvements and Progress as Promised.

Since we launched in beta almost a year ago, we have added literally dozens of features and improvements to the service, all of it based on feedback from our customers and those who have commented or offered ideas for improvements. All have been taken into consideration in our ongoing development of the service. We welcome constructive criticism and feedback and in fact, we live for it. Ideas and feedback from librarians enable us to make at least 2 major feature updates per month plus a handful of user interface, usability and back end improvements to the system.

Ultimately what this means is that if you read or send a comment about our product, chances are we have too and are looking into it. Truthfully, not all ideas and suggestions are feasible: for example, we have heard “why can’t the page auto-refresh when a new question comes in?” In theory this suggestion sounds great, until you are in the middle of answering a question and the page refreshes, quickly making your answer box a moving target. Other improvements, such as RefStart, have been made based on listening to the wishes of librarians and coming up with our own solution.

Why We Do It

The simplest answer is “because we can.” Compared with any other options libraries have for mobile reference solutions, we strive for ours to be the best. Being the best means always improving, always making the system more secure, scalable, more collaboration-friendly, easier to set up, easier to use and more robust with reporting. What it means for you and your library is that by signing up for our service, you’ll always have a product that gets better and better, built by people who love hearing what you think as you use it. The biggest compliment we hear is “I wish we could answer all reference questions this way.” Our standard response: “We’re working on it.” =]

One that you can always bet on with Mosio/Text a Librarian is that in pursuit of our goal to be the best, we’ll always be looking to out-perform and out-service any other mobile reference solutions available to libraries. We’ll always be doing this through listening, taking great notes and offering a little bit of personality with our customer service. What this means for libraries is that in their pursuit of being the best, once they sign on with our technology, they get the benefit of ongoing updates and feature-adds to make their services more robust and user-friendly without having to buy or license additional services/software.

You can see a standard list of Text a Librarian features on our website, or if you are a current Text a Librarian customer, click on the New Features link inside your Quick Links module when you’re logged into the system.

A new study shows 2/3 of marketers are using social media. Indeed, it is a very important element of promoting products and services, but what about getting back to the basics?

Word of mouth is, and will always be, the best form of marketing.

Qualified referrals from trusted sources play a vital role in customer decision-making. There’s nothing like a recommendation from a friend, family member or associate to help introduce and endorse new products and services. These recommendations increase consideration and participation across the board.

New services at your library are no exception. Adding text messaging to reference services  means harnessing the mobile channel to increase outreach by connecting with patrons wherever they are. This is a cool concept and a useful service. Why not reach out to those people in your circle to let them know? Maybe they will find the service helpful. Maybe they know others who will too.

Word of Mouth 101

A great introduction to Word of Mouth Marketing 101 can be found at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association website. For this post we’re going to focus on two of the five basic elements they highlight:

* Educate people about your products and services
* Provide tools that make it easier to share information

For years, the Faberge Organic Shampoo commercial has been a great example for how word of mouth marketing works. In the commercial, a woman talks about loving her shampoo and telling 2 friends, who tell 2 friends and so on – this is Word of Mouth Marketing 101 in its simplest form.

Start Internally

When we make major announcements or launches at Mosio/Text a Librarian, everyone on the team is encouraged to tell friends, family and associates. Usually, a single email is sent internally to give quick “copy/paste” info. That way, everyone has the information bullets and can pass along in their own voice. Depending on the context of the announcement, in addition to emailing, it may also be encouraged to post online (Facebook, blogs, Twitter, Delicious, Digg, etc). It is never required and always optional, but whether or not someone chooses to pass the information along, s/he has the tools to make it easy. At the very least, now everyone knows.

Email Still Works

This isn’t to simply say “send out an email to your list and the world will show up at your door.” An effective email, even sent to your personal contacts, must have a compelling subject line, easy-to-digest content and clear main points, thus making it a quick read with defined takeaways. Those elements will not only help tell your story but will allow the recipient to easily share with friends and colleagues too.

Adding “Please forward this email to anyone that you think will find it helpful.” or something similar can work really well to extend the reach beyond your address book. It’s not pushy and lets everyone know that it’s ok, and welcomed, to forward along if they choose.

Contextual Contacts

They may not currently be in your virtual Rolodex, but establishing relationships with local teachers, student union representatives, education professionals, before-and-after school program instructors, community center staff and other contextual contacts can go a long ways to spread the word about library services. The wider net you can cast, the better.

If these groups are already on your contact list, continue to keep them updated. It can be as simple as asking them if they want to sign-up for a library newsletter to get news and information that could benefit their students, members and patrons. They might also be willing to distribute or place library marketing materials at their information desks.

Encourage the Social

Of course, the importance of word of mouth marketing through the sharing utilities of social media cannot be overlooked, but must taken in context based on any number of factors that would consider a recommendation as truly qualified. That said, the more exposure a product or service has as a result of social media sharing, the greater the likelihood that individuals will take the time to investigate to determine their own level of interest.

There are a handful of ways to make it easy for people to share information…about anything. These services give you a little bit of code to copy/paste onto your website, blog, etc so readers can easily share the information via email or a handful of other social media services. We’ve listed 3 below and use Add This simply because we have for awhile. All seem to work well and Add This claims to be the biggest. If someone is excited enough, they’ll figure out a way of telling others, but you might as well make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

Here are a few to consider:
Add This
Add to Any
ShareThis

Other Ideas

* Email Signatures - These make every email a marketing tool, are simple to update and can have mass reach from lots of sources. They can also help spark conversations with contacts that you communicate with, but would not normally send an announcement email.

* Add Footers on Your Reference Answers - You can add a footer to reference emails if you’re responding to patrons via email, or manually type out a footer at the end of an IM conversation (using a ” * ” symbol helps delineate a footer message from the body of text). Text a Librarian has an SMS Footer option that lets libraries add a small message at the end of a response.  If your library offers SMS reference, you can try something like “Tell a Friend to Text Us!” in your SMS Footer.

There are certainly many other ways that companies and organizations have successfully utilized word of mouth marketing not mentioned here, and we look forward to trying some out ourselves.

Thanks for reading. See you next week!

Ps. You may see the “Share” button at the bottom of this page.  If you know anyone that might find this post helpful, please share it with them.

I have a horrible habit of watching anything moving on a screen. Blame it on a short attention span or being raised as a latch-key kid, but if it’s on a screen and it’s moving, I can’t seem to take my eyes off of it. I’ve gotten better, now if I go into a restaurant and see TVs, I will sit facing away, making dinners with my fiancee significantly more pleasant.

The Morning News

We were very impressed and pleased when we heard that not one, but TWO, of our libraries in Louisiana (East Baton Rouge Parish Library and Ouachita Parish Public Library) had success in getting on morning news talk shows at their local television stations to talk about their new Text a Librarian service. Both had big success with this type of outreach and increased the amount of people texting them questions. This all depends on your ability to capture the attention of your local news, of course, and we found a video from University of Kansas on its KUJH channel announcing they were offering text messaging reference services. If you’ve been able to get on once, it’s easier to get on a second time and with mobile phones and services creating such a big buzz these days, crafting a great story, press release and email can prove to be quite fruitful. We understand not everyone has the time and energy to submit news to local TV stations, but we wanted to show this example. You may not be surprised to find out that both of these libraries are using other marketing methods to get the word out, contributing to their success.

The morning news videos can be found here:
East Baton Rouge Parish Library
Ouachita Parish Public Library
Update 8/17/09: The San Jose Public Library got on local talk radio news, which is getting them a lot of usage today.
Update 8/18/09: San Jose Public Library video on local television news (CBS).

So what if you can’t get on the news? How else does creating a video help you?

Besides the fact that they grab people’s attention and many people like watching videos, they are now very “viral,” easy to pass on to others. Even the White House Office of Health Reform is using video to spread the word about its policies and to dispel rumors. Simply put, they help you differentiate your message from text and photos and enable you to create a little more excitement around offering your text messaging service. Plus, they can be fun to make.

The ‘How To’ Marketing Video

The best videos show, rather than tell and have made ShamWow an incredibly successful product. Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library made a great video using actual footage of someone texting in a question and getting a response, showing how simple the service is to use.

We’ve created digital assets, copy and step-by-step instructions for our libraries on how to make a video using Animoto (over 30 seconds will cost you $3), but even without this information provided, you can make a “How To” motion graphics video/slideshow by following the information you see in the video below:

Things to consider when making your video / slideshow:

1. Keep it short (preferably under 1 minute).
2. Make it easy to share. Many of the best known services (see list below) enable you to quickly update code and share with social media sites, but also check to see that it’s easy for people to send along to others, helping the word of mouth marketing about your service.
3. Use music if possible. PublicDomain4U has a list of MP3s in the public domain that could make great music for your video or slideshow.

Easy Video/Slideshow Creation Tools:

This post isn’t an exhaustive search, but here are a few that I tried and had great success with.
One True Media – Easy to create and share via embedded links, youtube, etc. Free to use.
Animoto – Very easy to create and share. Free for a 30 second video, $3 for a longer one (worth the $3, in my opinion)
SlideShare – Free and seemingly already popular among librarians. You can create a slidecast, easy to upload from a Power Point document. Can add MP3s of the presenter talking, but no music (a drawback).
Smilebox – Fairly easy to use, you have to download to your computer (Mac and PC friendly), but once you download it and create a slideshow, Smilebox makes it very easy to share to blogs, social network pages, etc. Free with ads.

Videos and slideshows are great attention grabbers. Getting on the morning news (or any news) is obviously wonderful, but sometimes you need to create your own buzz and we hope this post has helped. We look forward to seeing yours. Thanks and see you next week!

At ALA Annual in Chicago we got a wonderful chance to meet more of our clients face to face, get some feedback, thoughts, questions and shared excitement about offering text messaging reference service to patrons.

An instruction and electronic services librarian using our service at an academic library asked if I had any suggestions or thoughts for her library to successfully promote their Text a Librarian service for the upcoming school year. Ironically, it was her library’s initial website copy/graphics that inspired us to create and add website phone graphics to the Patron Marketing Materials section of our site for all of our libraries. We now also have sample copy there and as always, libraries are free to edit, mashup or remix things to best communicate the service to their patrons.

Lisa has inspired us once again to do a weekly post in August called “Marketing Tip Mondays: Promoting Text Messaging Reference Services” where we’ll share some thoughts, ideas and successes that we think you’ll find helpful in marketing your mobile text messaging reference services to patrons. Whether or not your library is currently using our text message reference solution, we hope you’ll find it useful. The marketing tips can be used to promote any current and emerging technologies in libraries.

Marketing Tip Mondays will be posted every Wednesday in August. This isn’t a joke or a typo, we just know Mondays aren’t the best day to send email updates. Many people think Tuesdays are, but from analyzing our email newsletter statistics, incoming emails and website traffic, we’ve discovered Wednesdays are best. “Marketing Tip Wednesdays” just doesn’t sound as great.

You can either check back here every Wednesday or sign up to receive new Mobile Reference + Library 2.0 posts via email from feedburner.