مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد کتابخانه عمومی و استفاده از رسانه های اجتماعی برای بازاریابی – امرالد ۲۰۱۷

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify challenges and motivators to social media adoption for marketing purposes in public libraries and to investigate how these libraries perceive the importance of social media marketing. Design/methodology/approach – A nation-wide online survey on public libraries in the USA was conducted to carry out this study, and a total number of 470 responses were used for data analysis. Findings – This study determined a range of challenges and motivators to implementing social media for marketing in public libraries. The results also showed that public libraries perceive social media as an important tool for their library marketing and intend to increase their use. Practical implications – The findings from this study can serve as a guideline for public libraries when employing social media for marketing purposes in their libraries. Originality/value – This study assessed the current state of social media use for marketing in the public library context, a context that has been under-researched in the literature, from three perspectives: challenges, motivators, and perceptions.

Introduction

Social media has become an important, if not indispensable, channel for many individuals to communicate and interact with others. According to a recent report by Greenwood et al. (2016), for example, 68 percent of all US adults use Facebook, one of the most popular social media platforms, and 76 percent of the Facebook users visit the site on a daily basis. Social media refers to “a set of online tools that are designed for and centered around social interactions” (Bertot et al., 2012, p. 30), and the tools take on a variety of forms such as networking (e.g. Facebook), publishing (e.g. Wikipedia), photo and video sharing (e.g. Flickr, YouTube), microblogging (e.g. Twitter), cataloging (e.g. Goodreads), and curating (e.g. Pinterest), etc. Given the popularity of social media among the general public, all types of organizations have also been actively employing these tools to enhance their marketing and promotional activities. Libraries have been no exception in this respect and are constantly making efforts to increase their presence on various social media platforms (Luo et al., 2013). For instance, a survey targeting libraries in the USA indicated that the majority of the libraries use social media tools for purposes such as promoting library services, providing updates to users, and reaching out to new users (Rogers, 2009). A white paper compiled by Taylor & Francis Group (2014) reported that over 70 percent of the libraries that participated in its international survey were found to use social media tools, and their primary reason for using these tools was to promote library services and resources. A number of benefits of using social media for marketing in libraries have been discussed. By conducting a SWOT analysis, for example, Fernandez (2009) identified a range of advantages such as low cost, high efficiency, two-way communication, and proactive outreach. The white paper by Taylor & Francis Group (2014), mentioned above, pointed out several additional benefits including requiring little training, increasing engagement and interaction with users, and gathering feedback to improve user services. Blakeman and Brown (2010) also suggested a few other benefits of adopting social media for library marketing, such as increasing community efforts, developing community networks, and fund raising. These benefits are especially attractive to public libraries considering that many of them are suffering from budget cuts and facing various contemporary challenges such as competition with the internet (Miller, 2008). Thus, they are in constant need of proving their value to funding agencies, patrons, and communities. Also, as suggested in Rutherford (2008a, p. 411), some of the attributes of social media, such as providing users with a place to build a library community where they can contribute their own content and share their knowledge with others, well support the mission and goals of public libraries that put great emphasis on the importance of user participation and community building. Much of the extant research on libraries’ use of social media for marketing, however, has been conducted in the context of academic libraries, the aims and users of which are largely different from those of public libraries (Anttiroiko and Savolainen, 2011; Gan, 2016; Phillips, 2015; Rutherford, 2008b).