NYPL knock it out of the park, again - because they had *strategy*

The library behemoth that is New York Public Library certainly seem to get things right a lot of the time. Being a massive library can often mean that you are ocean-liner like - powerful, big, but not very agile (especially when it comes to big objects on the horizon)... But somehow, particularly through their excellent use of social media (you can read about their work with Twitter in a case study in the book!) NYPL keep innovating and they stay light on their feet.

The latest triumph comes as part of National Library Card Sign-up Month, run every September by the ALA.Times are tough and marketing budgets non-existent, so of course they used social media - NYPL have a reach of more than 550,000 people via Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest etc.

NYPL decided to go with quotes - quotes about libraries and reading, given to them specifically from the project by high profile figures and celebrities. They used these as part of the campaign, and it was incredibly successful - they managed to increase library card sign-ups in that month by 35%! The levels of engagement they had for their social media postings was staggering.You can read more about it, including an interview with in Angela Montefinise, NYPL's Director of PR and Marketing, in this Marketing Sherpa article about the project.

The most popular quote

The real point of this post is to pick up on something related to the focus of the campaign. NYPL decided to go with quotes like the one above because they analysed their social media marketing (something they do every month) and noticed a trend: lots of engagement whenever they quoted celebrities. They were able to see what had worked well, build upon it, and have even greater success as a result.

I and every other library marketer spend a lot of time going on about why strategic marketing works best, and  it's not for nothing! Doing marketing as part of a cycle allows you to plan your aims, do the actual promotion, see what works and evaluate the impact. It's harder to market strategically than just to do one-off, unlinked promotion - but it works better. It becomes an ongoing process, with joined-up thinking.

Analysing what you do opens up opportunities to build on the good stuff.