Branding & marketing 2.0-style

Jeff Scott of Casa Grande Public Library made some good references to presentations from Internet Librarian 2008. He particularly highlighted Greg Schwartz's Branding: not just for cows anymore and Digital Marketing from Aaron Schmidt & Sarah Houghton-Jan.

As we become more dependent on technology not only to provide service, but to make people aware of services, we need to be attentive to the many strands of the web that connect to our libraries.

We have opportunities & skills to influence how people see us online, and the responsibility to engage our communities. Jeff highlights some points...

From the Branding presentation:

• Have a Homebase
• Own your username
• Aggregate your lifestream
• Join the Conversation
• Follow what others are saying about you (Twitter)
  
• Be Authentic

And from the Digital Marketing presentation:

• Make your library website two-way
• Show up in searches whether they are library directories, search engines, wifi finders, community sites, library thing local and community sites.
• What are people saying about you? Search social sites to look for reviews.
• Find Local Blogs and intereact in a human way.
• We're experts too, library staff can show up at answer sites.
• Push the information out: newsletter software, email addresses, etc.

There are some real confluences in these two presentations. This seems to me to create opportunities for a lot of staff to be involved. Marketing needs all hands on deck. So one other presentation caught my eye: Organization 2.0 from Rebecca Dysart. Noting that "Collaborative & connecting technologies are changing the entire concept of where an organization starts and stops", Dysart explores some of the impact of new technology on organizational structure: how we get the work done.