Hi, this is Lisa Bunker, and welcome to Pima County Public Library! I will be talking today about how our libraries use social media.

Social media is the responsibility of the Marketing Support Team, a part of the Communications & Systems Office, which is also called CSO.

From Left to Right:
■ Holly Schaffer, Community Relations Manager
Most of our official wording is based upon Holly's research and the resulting news and blog posts she writes. Holly also writes the emails that go out to cardholders, and all of our media releases.
■ Carolina Caples, our Graphic Design Specialist
Carolina works with Reneé to create our awesome graphics. You've seen her work on the lovely new designs for Seed Library handouts, and Summer Learning.
■ Reneé Bibby, Visual Marketing Manager x35612
Reneé has a big plate! She creates all of the library signage, as well as the graphics for our biggest campaigns.
■ Who? I’m retiring, so this is a placeholder for the next Social Media Manager!

Our social media presence is deliberately de-centralized, to ensure that many voices of the library are seen and heard.

Each of our 27 libraries and most of our affinity teams have either a Facebook or an Instagram page. The library is also on Twitter.

Why are we so deep into social media?

The quick answer is that it is where people are already reading and sharing news, and figuring out what they will do over the weekend.

Social media adoption in the US continues to increase.

This graph is from the 2021 social media factsheet, published by the Pew Research Center. Here you can see how high social media adoption is in the United States, and which platforms people are the most active on.

PCPL is committed to doing social media well because it is where the people are. During the shutdown social media and email became especially important as a way to send our library users updates on what was opening back up.

We believe that social media is one of the biggest opportunities for service and outreach that libraries have in the 21st Century.

Increasingly, because of eBooks and streaming media, we have users who never step into our buildings. And yet we still need to have a way to develop relationships with these folks, too. Social media, emails, and our website are all ways that we do this.

How we use social media
--Community building
--Increasing local awareness of what the library offers
--Entertainment, learning
--Customer service
--Events

This photograph is of children who were visiting our Santa Rosa Library after school. Elma asked them if they would pose for photos of them with library cards and created this fun photo. Yes, she did (later) get permission from their parents so we could use the photos.

People talk to us on social, and ask questions, just like they do at our libraries. Social media is customer service.

Events are very powerful on Facebook. Pre-COVID, this is what a year's worth of statistics looked like. The shareability of events on social media make it a huge part of why we are there.

Sometimes we use social media for teaching, too.

This is Tucson, around 1880! The street where the farms end and the city begins is Main Avenue, which was the Spanish Colonial Camino Real. The light area that runs L-R amidst the farms is the Santa Cruz River, which flowed year-round at that time. The park is now called Presidio Park.

Existing buildings from this era are the Fish-Stevens House (now part of Cafe a la C'Art / Carte Blanche Catering and the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block), and the Sam Hughes house. The elegant 2-story adobe home across from the Congregational church belonged to Barron Jacobs, a Tucson merchant, banker, and legislator. It was torn down in 1968 (photo: https://tucson.com/jacobs-house/image_757fb914-7cd4-11e5-bc12-fba28b15daf6....).

This photograph is from the collection of the Tucson Museum of Art Library.

Entertaining posts are fun for our readers, and help build our following so that we reach even more people.

Reneé, CSO, and the Social Media Manager cannot possibly keep up with all the great stuff happening at branches. We also want to show off the professionalism and warmth of our staff.

So the branch and team Facebook and Instagram accounts are all written by branch staff. They have the freedom to decide what is news, and can convey it in the way that they are most comfortable. This is an old screenshot of the Sahuarita Facebook page when Tenicia was in charge. Tenecia is very comfortable doing videos and often presented branch news this way. These were all short videos she made on her phone.

This is what community-building posts might look like. We also use social media in ways that provide our readers with a way to get creative and talk to us.

And of course we talk about books. In fun ways, of course.

Even if you don't end up writing for a social media page, there are ways that you can help.

Follow the library on social! There's a list of all of our accounts on the website: https://www.library.pima.gov/the-library-on-social-media/

Share the library's posts with your family and friends.

When you find something cool, share it with your branch's social media writer(s).

If you want to be part of the team sharing the library's stories and news on social media, please talk with your manager.