Digital Marketing & Social Media at a Distance College Heather Shalhoub, Empire State College Library h eather.s

1. Digital Marketing & Social Media at a Distance College Heather Shalhoub, Empire State College Library heather.shalhoub@esc.edu Social Media About Empire State College Library The library blog Reaching Out to Faculty • The Empire State College Library currently has: • A Facebook Page • A Twitter Account • A YouTube Page • A Google+ Page • Our most successful social media use thus far has been through Facebook and Twitter. We have a steady following that grows each term with new students. • Google+ has been used on a trial basis and our audience seems to be more broad and not from our student body. • All blog posts are posted on these accounts so our instructional posts as well as announcements reach as large an audience as possible. • While the blog and social media accounts are geared towards students, we seem to reach many faculty members this way as well. • Conference Presentations are a consistent way for librarians to meet our faculty and staff and promote the online library. We also do distance presentations via Elluminate, our online live classroom platform. • On the spot reference consultations via phone, email, and chat allow faculty to reach us instantly with their questions and concerns about library resources, broken library links in their courses and general library questions. • Academic Technologies Blog is a blog that the librarians participate in along with faculty instructional technologists and media development staff. This blog is geared towards faculty and staff and discusses news ways to integrate emerging technologies into course design. • ESC Exchange is an online source for weekly news and events promoted to all faculty and staff at the college. We post library news there when we have a new webpage or resource of interest. • Emails to Area of Study Groups are sent out on a term by term basis to keep faculty and course developers up-to-date on the library. They are written with a focus on saving faculty time & effort; and getting better papers/assignments from their students through library resources. In 1971, Empire State College was chartered within the SUNY system as a distance-learning college for adult and nontraditional students. Until 1997, our students relied on other SUNY libraries for research and learning support. In 1997, the Online Library and Learning Resource Center was established and has continued to grow since then. We now have four full-time librarians and a well-rounded collection of e-books, online journals, reference resources and databases of images and videos. Our collections are entirely online and our services are delivered to our users wherever they are by Internet, telephone and even mail and UPS. The library is part of the academic technologies group within the Office of Integrated Technologies. • The library blog, Library News and Tips, is geared towards student readers. • We use WordPress for the blog which is used college-wide in an area called the Commons. • Posts are written at least once per week to promote research tools and library resources. • Most of our posts are based on trends in reference questions or new resources in the library. • We also use the blog to publish any library announcements about maintenance, holiday hours, technical issues, etc. • The library blog has recently been changed to an accessible design. It has a crisp clean look and feel while being accessible to all of our users. • Library blog posts can be seen on a feed on the library homepage. These are populated within an hour of a new post being published. • All new blog posts are also posted on the library facebook and twitter feeds. • Users can subscribe to the library blog via email or RSS. • Blog posts are written to be as simple and clear as possible, using both images and text to provide user friendly basic instruction for how to find and use library resources. • The library blog has 1 editor, Heather Shalhoub, but all librarians are able to publish posts. Possible Future Digital Marketing Projects How do students find out about the library? • Reach out to the CDL Connection Student Blog: The Center for Distance Learning Online Newsletter. Start promoting library resources directly to students at CDL. • Weigh the pros and cons of continuing on with Google+ • Consider a social media management system that allows all of our accounts to be updated, tracked and maintained in one place. • Look into the possible use of Pinterestto promote library resources, new items in our collection, library workshops, etc. Link this up to our Facebook and Twitter accounts to add a more personal feel to these pages. Each librarian can pin reading lists, subject related resources and research information. • Create a schedule for promoting specific resources in the Student Connection and library blog. For example, promote library workshops during the 1st or 2nd week of each new term. • Look info the possibility of publishing an online library newsletter on a regular basis. Investigate technology available and marketing tools to get this to students and faculty. • With the library being 100% online and students spread across the state and globe, how do students find out about our library? • Postcard Mailings • Orientation • Instructors and Mentors • The College Website • Not all students are exposed to the library through these sources or they might forget by the time their coursework has started and they need to do research so we have also attempted various forms of digital marketing. • The Library News & Tips Blog • A library Facebook Page • A library Twitter feed • A library Google+ Page • Submissions to the Student Connection • Online Presentations via Elluminate • Another challenge is that many of our students are returning to school after quite some time. An online library can be very unfamiliar and new to them. Promotion and marketing has to be done while keeping this in mind. Our audience had a wide range of research & technical experience and abilities. The Student Connection The Student Connection is an online student newsletter published bi-weekly that can be accessed on the MY ESC page which is the area where students access their online courses and other most used links at the college. Submissions can be made online within selected guidelines. New posts are readily available once published and all previous posts are kept in an archive. The library has regularly been promoting services and new features through this newsletter successfully.