We’ve all seen those posts on Facebook of a kid holding a sign that says “If I get 1,000 likes, my dad will take me to Disneyland!” or something along those lines. These type of posts almost always reach the number of likes requested. Well, I wanted to see if we could make this kind of post work for libraries.
I grabbed a couple of coworkers, we made a sign, took the above photo, and then posted it via the library’s Facebook page. It has been our most successful post to date (we’ve been on Facebook for 3 years and I’ve been page admin for about a year). While we didn’t reach our goal of 1,000 likes, we did come close and over 7,000 people saw our post. That’s a lot of free publicity for our library!
Overall, this experiment reinforced a belief that I already held – that people are visual. If I had posted “Can we get 1000 likes for libraries?” as a text status, it would not have garnered the same amount of attention. Combining a visual post with text seems to work best for us and our patrons engage more with these kinds of posts.
Right now, I’m considering expanding on this idea. I really like what OverDrive is doing on their Facebook page. They are posting pictures of their staff holding signs with questions like, “What is the first book you remember reading?” and “Who is your favorite literary villain?“. This seems like a great way to showcase library employees’ personalities while establishing a rapport with patrons.
What are some interesting ways your library is using Facebook?
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