TechBits

More on Pinterest & libraries

Before Pinterest offered business accounts, many libraries signed up with personal accounts. If you did, you can convert your personal library account to a business account.

1. Log in to your existing personal account
2. Go to http://business.pinterest.com/
3. Click on "Convert your existing account"
4. Follow the steps and complete the process

Warning: Once you convert your personal account to a business account, you will not be able to switch it back to a personal account.

If you're thinking about using Pinterest Web analytics, make sure your account is converted to a business account before you do the verification. Otherwise, you may end up doing the verification twice!

Why convert your library's account to a business account?

• To comply with Pinterest's Terms of Service
• You can use your library's whole name as it should be (no more needing to split it between the "first" and "last" name fields)
• Within its business site, Pinterest is adding educational materials specifically for businesses to learn how to market themselves.
• Pinterest is working on a whole new set of features exclusively for businesses to help them expand their reach and understand their Pinterest audience

Source: Social Media Examiner - "Pinterest Business Accounts: The Definitive Guide to Getting Started"

Interested in more information about using Pinterest for your library? Check out the February "Know More" webinar with special guest Joy Schwarz talking about "Pinterest and Libraries"  (30-min archived program). It was a great overview of Pinterest and had lots of ideas about how you can use Pinterest for your library. For example, did you know there's a Pinterest widget builder for business accounts that you can embed on your library's website to invite people to follow your boards? I didn't!

Already using Pinterest for library-related purposes?  Please take a few minutes to fill out a short survey about how you're using it!

Facebook Page Insights

The librarians I know love to count things and keep statistics.  "we circ'ed 1,051 items today," "we had 246 wireless sessions last month," "we received 372 red delivery baskets last week"... sound familiar?

If your library has a Facebook page, you have access to all sorts of lovely stats about that page. Just take a peek at the "Insights" section of the admin panel (click on the photos in this post to view them full-size).

What will you find?

• Overview - gives you 4 metrics to help you quickly understand the size and engagement of your audience, with indications of whether these numbers went up or down. There is also information about your page's posts and what sort of response they've received from Fans.
  
• Likes - demographic and location information for your audience, and information about how you acquired, reached, or engaged them. (Looks like 78% of SCLS' fans are female and 20% are male!)
  
• Reach - information about who you reached, how you reached them, your page views over time, and how those views break down
• Talking About This* - demographic and location information about people talking about your page and information about whether they were talking about your page or being reached by someone else talking about it
• Check-Ins* - info about people who have checked in at your place and how they did it (mobile device? through the Facebook website?).

Nifty.  Now what do you do with this data? Probably the easiest things to do are to:

• see what's popular, and
• use that information to plan posts.

Take a quick peek at the SCLS page's Overview:

Interested in more in-depth information about Facebook Page Insights? Facebook's 15-page PDF will help you "understand the performance of your page, optimize how you publish to your audience so people will tell their friends about you, and learn more about your audience." (It also includes much better explanations and details than we can provide here on TechBits!)

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* Demographic and location data for these features is only available when 30 people did this activity in the 7 days preceding the last day of your selected date range. If your page is busy, you'll see this info. If not, you won't.

Historical library pictures

Do you have historical pictures of your library? Here are 2 great ways to share them! 

Historypin 

Historypin is "a project that allows people to view and share their personal history in a new way, created by the social movement We Are What We Do in partnership with Google."

Users can pin photo, audio and video content and tie it to geographical locations -- map meets content! Anyone can add descriptive or narrative text to photographic, audio or video content that has been "pinned" to the map.

Users can also create "Tours" which lead you step-by-step through a series of pieces of content via a narrative that links them together, or "Collections", which are clusters of content around a particular theme.  See Historypin's FAQ for more specifics about the site.

A few of our libraries already have historical pictures on Historypin courtesy of the Wisconsin State Historical Society.

• Arabut Ludlow Memorial Library in Monroe, WI (circa 1905)
• Sun Prairie Public Library (from around 1935-1945)
• Madison Free Library (from around 1914-1918)

Facebook

With the arrival of the "Timeline" format for Pages, libraries now have the opportunity to add milestones (key moments they'd like to highlight) to their Facebook pages. Historical milestones will extend the little timeline on the right of the page.

What type of milestones might you add? Check out this post, "Creating Facebook Milestones: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words" for some ideas. Photos definitely liven up milestones--- just sign in to Facebook and click on older timeline dates for the New York Times or Coca-Cola to see some in action!

Looking for examples from other libraries? Aaron Tay has a nice description of what his (academic) library did with milestones and historical photos in this post on his Musings About Librarianship blog.

 

What do you do with historical photos of your library?

Is your library ready for Facebook's Timeline?

From what I've been reading, Facebook Timeline is coming to all brand pages (whether you're ready or not) on March 30. Is your library ready?

Here are some links to posts that talk about Timeline for pages.

• TechSoup - DIY Your Library Facebook Timeline
• HubSpot Blog - The Complete Guide to Setting Up the New Facebook Page Design
• ReachLocal - Facebook Timeline Checklist for Business
• Musings About Librarianship - What are library Facebook pages using for cover photos?
• Mashable - Facebook Brand Timelines: 6 Big Changes Every Marketer Needs to Understand
• Mashable - Timeline for Brands: How to Prepare for Your Company's New Facebook Page  

Prefer videos?  Try Facebook - New Pages:  Customizing Your Page , which covers cover photos, profile pictures, the "about" section, links to other parts of page (photos, likes, etc), pinning posts to the top of your page, and creating milestones.

Have you already transitioned your library's Facebook page to Timeline? What do you think of the new layout and features?

Everybody Let's Jump (For Your Library)

Ran across this great example of a library using social media for fundraising and advocacy! Too cute not to post (and share, and talk about, and donate), right? Nicely done!

Watch the video on YouTube

Q & A about communications

I saw this request in one of the Library Visit reports:  "We would like to see a Communications tab or icon that links to everything - blogs, wikis, etc."

We have this!

On the main http://www.scls.info webpage, up near the top, there is a link to "Blogs, Wikis & More".

 

What will you find there? A list of links and descriptions for SCLS blogs and wikis, as well as links to Continuing Education recordings, the SCLS and LINKcat Facebook accounts, photo albums, and more!

Everyone's (P)interested!

Everywhere I look lately I see Pinterest...  on Facebook, on Twitter, and in the blogs I follow. Seems like Pinterest is going to be BIG. Even the U.S. Army is on Pinterest now!

Rose already introduced you to Pinterest in an earlier TechBits post. Still wondering what Pinterest is? The New York Times has a pretty good article about it. My 3-word summary?  --- visual, social, sharing.

Here are some more links to get you started if you're considering Pinterest for your library:

• iLibrarian - "5 Ways to Use Pinterest in Your Library" and "5 More Ways to Use Pinterest in Your Library"
• Copyblogger - "56 Ways to Market Your Business on Pinterest"
• Razoo - "9 ways to Optimize Your Website for Pinterest"
• Mashable - "Everything You Wanted to Know About 2012′s Hottest Startup [INFOGRAPHIC]"
• Stacked - "Books, Reading, and Pinterest"
• New South Wales State Library - "What is Pinterest and could my library use it?"
• Mashable - "Sorry, Pinterest Users: Websites Can Now Block Pinning [VIDEO]"  (copyright issues related to Pinterest)
• Venturebeat - "Pinterest not a pirate anymore, helps site owners disable pins"  (more on Pinterest and copyright)

(and here's a quick shout out to SCLS libraries already on Pinterest - Mount Horeb, Sauk City, and Verona!)

On a personal note, I signed up last week and have totally fallen in love with the Food & Drink category. What a delightful way to visually browse recipes and find some kitchen (p)inspiration! Now to find a personal chef who works for cheap and will make me some of these....

The Timeline for Facebook's Timeline

It's official. Facebook will be rolling out the Timeline feature to all users in the next few weeks.

• MSNBC: Facebook Timeline: There's no escaping it now

What about Timeline for your library's Facebook page?
"Not yet," says Facebook.

• Mashable: No Timeline Pages for Brands Yet, Says Facebook (12/15/2011)
• Information Week: Facebook Timeline: Will It Benefit Your Business? (1/12/2012)

Need more info about Timeline? Check out Pat's previous TechBits post about Timeline.  

Keep track of ideas with Pinterest

Pinterest is a new social networking site that calls itself an "online pinboard" to "organize and share things you love." In other words, it's like Delicious, but with pictures. Crafters, bloggers, and designers are wild about it. And librarians!

Wait, how are librarians using it? I wondered that myself until I attended the Pinterest for Librarians webinar from Indianhead Federated Library System and learned that Pinterest is helpful for finding and trading programming ideas, especially among children's and YA librarians, and for connecting with parents who may also be Pinterest users. (Of course!)

Learn more: Pinterest: A Beginner’s Guide to the Hot New Social Network and Pinterest: 13 Tips and Tricks for Cutting Edge Users, both from Mashable.

Here are a few library sources pondering Pinterest:

• Pinterest for Librarians from So Tomorrow
• Pinterest online curation pinboard with major promise from Joe Murphy
• Pinterest from Tasha Saecker

Are you on Pinterest? How are you using it for work (or play)?

Facebook’s New Timeline Format

Remember last summer when Facebook rolled out “Top Stories” and you had to reorient how to interact with Facebook?  Facebook now has something new up its sleeve as far as displaying your profile’s contents: Facebook Timeline.  Gone is the emphasis on the here and now with Timeline.  Instead, FB will autogenerate a tweakable scrapbook of what you’ve posted over the years.

 

There are 3 ways that your profile will display in Timeline format:

• Active it now (not suggested until you read the rest of this post ;-) )
• Wait for FB to tell you that it’s available and you activate it
• FB will eventually activate it for you

There are two big things that you should know right away:

1. Once it’s activated, there is no “undo” (so far).
2. You’ll have 7 days to edit FB’s autogenerated scrapbook before it’s autopublished

Below is a list of (re)sources that may be of use to you as you consider the ramifications of this:

Timeline’s look and feel

Preparing for Timeline

Additional Privacy tweaks

Discussion by analysts, professors and users

Want Timeline immediately?  Click on the "Get Timeline" button.

What do you think about Timeline, either in the abstract or after adopting it?