Trends
Virtual communities are an important complement to in-person, “actual” communities, and libraries must participate thoughtfully and intentionally on social media platforms so that they can be valuable members of these virtual communities. Librarians and other information professionals can and should learn from their own experiences on social media, as well as familiarizing themselves with the current trends and issues that exist in virtual communities. Effective strategies already exist to maximize social interactions, and libraries should implement them, as well as think creatively and boldly about possible future roles for libraries in these spaces.
The key to building a successful virtual community is to authentically interact with patrons, community members, and other community organizations. Certainly, marketing and outreach messages can (and should) be included in your library's social media presence, but they must be caefully balanced with other interactions, or else they will be ignored as blatant advertising. The standard that most social media experts recommend is an 80/20 split. Twenty percent of your messages can be marketing, but the vast majority - eighty percent - should be interactions that do not have a marketing component.
The giants of social media - Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, et al - are well known to most, but librarians must stay current with new platforms, especially if part of your mission is reaching out to young people. Twitch and TikTok are particularly popular with young people, and present new (and challenging) modes of communicating and interacting. Additionally, trends suggest that individuals are beginning to move away from public social media platforms to private (or semi-private) discussion forums, like Slack and Discord.
Image by Kelvin Han from Unsplash