Marketing Strategy (Don't Fall Asleep Yet!)

It sounds odd to think of marketing in a school context, although perhaps less so to those of us working in the Independent sector, where many of the parents already view themselves as clients and can have demanding expectations. I don’t work in Admin, but I’m pretty sure that my school has a marketing strategy, and would be surprised if it’s not written down somewhere (they love that stuff!), but does it include social media? I don’t think so. At least I don’t see much evidence of it.

Now, what about the library? Well, it has a blog, but I don’t think anyone knows it is there. They could definitely do with some kind of policy for their social media marketing, but what should they do exactly?

Well, Brown’s (2009, http://www.examiner.com/article/developing-an-effective-social-media-marketing-strategy) first tip is to actually write something down. What’s the point having a blog if you don’t plan how you will use it? Just getting something down on paper would provide the beginnings of a concrete plan of action.

The best place to start would be to consider the client-base. Who do we want to communicate with? In this case there are two distinct groups with different expectations. On the one hand there are the parents, and on the other the students. We need to consider their preferred methods of communication. Is a blog the right way to go, or should the library set up its own Facebook page or Twitter feed? It is quite likely that the parents have different preferences to the students in this regard. I would recommend a survey to gather data on this.

We also need to consider the categories of user, as demonstrated on the Bernoff/Schadler ladder ( see http://forrester.typepad.com/groundswell/2012/01/the-global-social-takeover.html). What are we aiming to achieve with our social networking? Do we expect students to be engaging as conversationalists or simply checking out what we have to offer as spectators. Obviously there will be a range of internet user types within the client-base, but we need to set ourselves some targets, even if it is simply to be viewed a certain number of times within a set period. This will then allow us to plan for improvement and growth.

Finally, there are the practicalities to consider. This is Brown’s number two tip: set how much time will be devoted to this. Life may be hectic in the library, but nobody will know unless you find the time to keep them informed, and your network will flop unless you keep it regularly updated, so we need to set a regular amount of time aside each day/week to maintain our social profile, and this should be clearly recorded in the policy.