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Digital Marketing & Social Media at a Distance College
Heather Shalhoub, Empire State College Library
[email protected]
About Empire State College Library
The Empire State College Library currently has:
In 1971, Empire State College was chartered within the
SUNY system as a distance-learning college for adult and
nontraditional students.
Until 1997, our students relied on other SUNY libraries for
research and learning support. In 1997, the Online Library
and Learning Resource Center was established and has
continued to grow since then.
Social Media
The library blog
• A Facebook Page
• The library blog, Library News and Tips, is
geared towards student readers.
• We use WordPress for the blog which is
used college-wide in an area called the
Commons.
• A Twitter Account
• A YouTube Page
We now have four full-time librarians and a well-rounded
collection of e-books, online journals, reference resources
and databases of images and videos. Our collections are
entirely online and our services are delivered to our users
wherever they are by Internet, telephone and even mail and
UPS.
The library is part of the academic technologies group
within the Office of Integrated Technologies.
How do students find out about the library?
With the library being 100% online and students spread
across the state and globe, how do students find out about
our library?
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Postcard Mailings
Orientation
Instructors and Mentors
The College Website
Not all students are exposed to the library through these
sources or they might forget by the time their coursework has
started and they need to do research so we have also
attempted various forms of digital marketing.
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The Library News & Tips Blog
A library Facebook Page
A library Twitter feed
A library Google+ Page
Submissions to the Student Connection
Online Presentations via Elluminate
Another challenge is that many of our students are returning
to school after quite some time. An online library can be very
unfamiliar and new to them. Promotion and marketing has to
be done while keeping this in mind. Our audience had a
wide range of research & technical experience and
abilities.
• Posts are written at least once per week to
promote research tools and library
resources.
• Most of our posts are based on trends in
reference questions or new resources in
the library.
• We also use the blog to publish any library
announcements about maintenance,
holiday hours, technical issues, etc.
• The library blog has recently been changed
to an accessible design. It has a crisp
clean look and feel while being accessible to
all of our users.
• Library blog posts can be seen on a feed on
the library homepage. These are populated
within an hour of a new post being
published.
• All new blog posts are also posted on the
library facebook and twitter feeds.
• Users can subscribe to the library blog via
email or RSS.
• Blog posts are written to be as simple and
clear as possible, using both images and
text to provide user friendly basic instruction
for how to find and use library resources.
• The library blog has 1 editor, Heather
Shalhoub, but all librarians are able to
publish posts.
• A Google+ Page
Our most successful social media use thus far has been
through Facebook and Twitter. We have a steady
following that grows each term with new students.
Google+ has been used on a trial basis and our audience
seems to be more broad and not from our student body.
All blog posts are posted on these accounts so our
instructional posts as well as announcements reach as
large an audience as possible.
While the blog and social media accounts are geared
towards students, we seem to reach many faculty
members this way as well.
Reaching Out to Faculty
• Conference Presentations are a consistent way for
librarians to meet our faculty and staff and promote the
online library. We also do distance presentations via
Elluminate, our online live classroom platform.
• On the spot reference consultations via phone, email,
and chat allow faculty to reach us instantly with their
questions and concerns about library resources, broken
library links in their courses and general library questions.
• Academic Technologies Blog is a blog that the
librarians participate in along with faculty instructional
technologists and media development staff. This blog is
geared towards faculty and staff and discusses news
ways to integrate emerging technologies into course
design.
• ESC Exchange is an online source for weekly news and
events promoted to all faculty and staff at the college. We
post library news there when we have a new webpage or
resource of interest.
• Emails to Area of Study Groups are sent out on a term
by term basis to keep faculty and course developers upto-date on the library. They are written with a focus on
saving faculty time & effort; and getting better
papers/assignments from their students through library
resources.
Possible Future Digital Marketing Projects
• Reach out to the CDL Connection Student
Blog: The Center for Distance Learning Online
Newsletter. Start promoting library resources
directly to students at CDL.
The Student Connection
The Student Connection is an
online student newsletter
published bi-weekly that can be
accessed on the MY ESC page
which is the area where students
access their online courses and
other most used links at the
college.
Submissions can be made online within selected guidelines.
New posts are readily available once published and all
previous posts are kept in an archive. The library has
regularly been promoting services and new features through
this newsletter successfully.
• Weigh the pros and cons of continuing on with
Google+
• Consider a social media management
system that allows all of our accounts to be
updated, tracked and maintained in one place.
• Look into the possible use of Pinterest to
promote library resources, new items in our
collection, library workshops, etc. Link this up
to our Facebook and Twitter accounts to add a
more personal feel to these pages. Each
librarian can pin reading lists, subject related
resources and research information.
• Create a schedule for promoting specific
resources in the Student Connection and
library blog. For example, promote library
workshops during the 1st or 2nd week of each
new term.
• Look info the possibility of publishing an online
library newsletter on a regular basis.
Investigate technology available and marketing
tools to get this to students and faculty.