Social Media in the Springtime...A Blog Post In Three Parts

Sounds like some sort of high-tech musical, doesn't it?

With Summer Reading just around the corner (next week for some of you!), it's time to consider your social media game plan. It's not just teens who are on Facebook, not just 20-somethings that are on Twitter and you'd be surprised at the library users who are embracing social media.

Here are some Social Media tips to help you freshen things up for the Spring Time!

Twitter
If you want to send Tweets out at consistent times/days, consider Hoot Suite -http://hootsuite.com/ - a great tool to help you preschedule tweets and even measure your tweet effectiveness.

Do you try to make story time a "kids only" event? Or want parents of teens to know what's going on at activities? Tweet photos of what's happening so they can keep track of what their child is doing - and have something to ask their teens about when they talk to them next! (It depends on your teen/parent crowd if that's something they'd be in to!)

"Jimmy, what did you did at library gaming night?"
"Nothin'."
"Really? Because I heard you were playing the drums like a wild man in Round Two of the Rock Band tournament..."
"Oh, well, yeah, there was that..."

Here are some photo sharing sites to get you started:

Twitpic - http://twitpic.com/
ImageBay - http://new.imagebay.com/
SnapTweet - http://snaptweet.com/
Img.ly - http://img.ly/
Yfrog - http://yfrog.com/

Facebook
I have a confession. Sometimes...I'm still confused by the "new" Facebook. So, let's help each other on this one; I know we can get through it.

I'm not going to reinvent the wheel here - there's a great article from Smashing Downloads that talks about the 10 tools and applications to enhance your Facebook Experience

And the lovely folks at Mashable posted a great article about top business tools on Facebook - some of which are very library friendly.

So the curtains will now close on this act of "Social Media in the Springtime". Stay tuned for more info coming soon! And be sure to friend us on Facebook and Twitter (Evanced)