UWA: Communication, Marketing and Outreach

On another day I had a meeting with Alissa and with Katie, and we talked about the Library's Social Media Strategy and the University Library Engagement Framework.

Social Media Strategy

The UWA Library currently maintains two official social media accounts, one on Facebook (only one for the library!) and one on Twitter.
There is a social media team in charge of the accounts and each member works two shifts per week. Unfortunately I can't remember how many people are in the team and how many hours these shifts last. Anyway, the team is is responsible for monitoring the official feeds daily, creating frequent interesting content (at least three posts per day on Twitter and one unique post on Facebook per day), and responding to direct messages from clients within a certain time. This team also represents UWA Library on other social media accounts, like the UWA Students page.
Most important: there is a social media activity plan, that means much of the content throughout the year is planned.   

A very good example of what to use Twitter for is to tweet about the most used/accessed document in the institutional repository once a week. We could do this as well!!!

It was also interesting to hear about an informal survey the library has conducted in 2013. This survey revealed that Facebook was the fourth most popular method that students would like to engage with the library - after email, in person and via askUWA. The survey also showed that students were interested in hearing about opening hours (84%), new resources (84%), new services (82%), IT outages (80%), research support (72%) and ebooks (61%). They were less interested in connecting with staff (33%) and finding out about library news and events (37%).

In addition, there is a YouTube account for UWA Library. You will find lots of useful and interesting videos there and we can get nice ideas for our own videos that we hopefully will produce soon!
I liked very much the video for new students that was called Information Services Undergraduate Orientation or the one about Open Access Funding Mandates and the UWA Research Repository. Just type UWA Library on youtube.com and you will see all the videos, either made by the library or the university.

Another interesting thing is that there is a "Research Week" at UWA once a year. Then the UWA Library runs a session about how to use social media.

University Library Engagement Framework 

This framework is such a useful document and I was impressed by its content. The chapter "About the Engagement Framework" of one of the first versions of the framework states:
"The University Library's Strategic Directions 2015-2010 outline the rationale for stakeholders engagement:  
Our aim is to provide innovative and relevant library services to support the University of Western Australia to be a leading global university. This will be achieved through the provision of excellent staff, services, collections and spaces and a focus on the deep understanding of user needs through collaboration and partnership.
This document  sets out an engagement framework in supporting of meeting this aim. The Library has a wide range of mechanisms and channels for engagement, and recognises that it needs strategic, consistent and systematic ways to engage with stakeholders and communicate its value on campus.
By establishing and regularly reviewing our engagement framework in the context of UWA strategies and priorities, the Library will be better positioned to communicate effectively about the Library's value and contribution.
This is an internal document for Library staff. It will be updated regularly to reflect current engagement priorities and messages. This document will enable staff to communicate key points effectively in these engagements. It is not intended to be prescriptive but to support Library staff in communicating around our wide range of services."

By working with this document all library staff will have better knowledge about priorities and key messages of the library's services and engagements. And thus the staff is able to communicate the library's value and offered services much better. 

I mean this should be a matter of course, but in real life it often is not.

I have a print version of the Engagement Framework and you are welcome to borrow it.