Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Library Tweets (or Dithering about Twittering)

Tip of the Day: Border's is going out of business. :( Buy out their inventory at reduced prices so that they don't have many returns to publishers!

A couple years ago, two fellow librarians at BML and I thought it would be a good idea to have library Twitter accounts to post about our programs.

Two years later, I still use the account (@bmlkidsteens), but have never heard of a patron who came to a program because they saw a tweet about it. In fact, most of the first people who followed my account were from Brighton, England (I'm in Brighton, NY). Now some authors, illustrators, and other publishing pros follow the account because I follow them, which is fun and makes BML seem like a hot library! :)

I do have fun tweeting about books I love, and those are the ones I get responses on.

So my question is: If you don't already have a "fan base" on Twitter, can you build one there? If so, I know it takes time (retweeting, replying to tweets, etc.), but how much time per week do you think needs to be invested? *I am thinking about this as an author.*

And finally, is there any situation that would make you follow a local library's Twitter account and actually come to advertised events? What would you like your local library to tweet about? *I am thinking about this as a librarian.*

Deena, Miss Subbing for Pubbing

2 comments:

Kate Fall said...

I follow my local library's account and definitely appreciate getting the information there. But there has to be a vector between me being on Twitter and the library having posted recently. If I'm being proactive, I'd just go to the library website. I think you'd have to post pretty often as a librarian. As a writer, I have no idea. That seems to be more of relationship building thing than a news flash thing.

DeenaML said...

Good point about going the library website. :-P I guess the twitter follower would have to be madly watching their followed tweets in order to see that a movie is being shown at the library in the next hour.