Public Relations

Social media is an effective and fast way to communicate with stakeholders. Social media can be used for a variety of reasons, including:

• Event announcements 
• Sudden closures
• Drive traffic to your website
• Promote services
• Engage with the community

When crafting your social media posts, you will want to consider what your goals are. Are you promoting an event? Are you soliciting feedback? This can help you develop the content and images to go along with it. To create an engaging social media post, consider using the following guidelines:

• Include special characters and emojis 
  • These make content more eye catching 👀
  • Use emojis sparingly, every emoji should have a purpose 
  • If using emojis doesn't feel like your style, starbursts 🌟 are a good option that will draw attention without being too involved 
• Include a call to action 📣 (for example: register for a program, fill out a survey etc.)
• Tag partner organizations 
• Use hashtags 
  • If using a hashtag that is trending, make sure you understand why it is trending as to avoid associating with something inappropriate
  • Hashtags should be brief and catchy
• Use visual elements
  • Combine your text with images and photos

Below is a list of popular social media platforms. You can use some, or all. This depends entirely on your community and who you are trying to reach. 

• Facebook
• Instagram
• X (twitter)
• TikTok
• Bluesky
• LinkedIn
• Youtube

There are a couple of strategies that libraries can try to increase their reach online and reach a new audience. 

• Try connecting with a local social media influencer. They don't need to have millions of followers to have the ability to reach more people. 
• When making a post that includes a link, consider putting the link in the comments instead of the post. This encourages more engagement and causes views to click on posts more frequently.