New PSA available!

Ask a Librarian has a new PSA available for you to use to promote Ask a Librarian.     You can share the video by embedding it from Vimeo (go to: http://vimeo.com/6483805 for directions) or by contacting me and I can send you the video in various formats.

Please try and get this played at local schools, on your web site and on local TV channels for your school or community.

It is already playing on the Knowledge Network and we hope to place it in a few other venues statewide.

Ask a Librarian – 2009 PSA from Ask aLibrarian on Vimeo.

This video was created by New Jersey’s statewide chat service and customized for Ask a Librarian.

New Marketing Materials Available

I am excited to announce new Ask a Librarian bookmark and posters are now available. Order them today at:

http://info.askalibrarian.org/promotional.asp

Marketing Survey – We Need your thoughts

We need your help. Ask a Librarian is working on our marketing plan for next year.

If you have not already, please take a few minutes to complete the following survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=OnEM1AYZEKt58nQ9QkxIxQ_3d_3d

We will be closing the survey this Friday (July 24th).

Making WOMM a part of every day at your library

This year’s Ask a Librarian Day was such a remarkable success that we’d love to do it again next year. Do you have any suggestions or ideas for things we can do for future Ask a Librarian Days that will make as big of an impact as the t-shirts? Let us know your ideas. We’d love to hear from you!

I’ve stressed in all my emails how important it is to make Ask a Librarian promotion an everyday thing. Sure, it’s easy to promote our wonderful service on Ask a Librarian Day, but how do we continue that the rest of the time?

Here are some tips for how to promote Ask a Librarian via word-of-mouth marketing throughout the year:

• Talk about Ask a Librarian during every new staff member’s orientation.
• Talk about Ask a Librarian at your library’s staff days. Check with me to see if Traci or I are available to speak at your event.
• Place Ask a Librarian marketing materials, like bookmarks and posters, around your library. Our marketing items are FREE and can be found at info.askalibrarian.org/promotional.asp. (Check back soon for our exciting new back-to-school promotional materials!)
• Carry a few Ask a Librarian business cards with you at all times, and hand out to customers when appropriate. Use them just to jot down your name or a helpful book title for your customer.

If you have any other great ideas for how to promote Ask a Librarian, feel free to share with the whole listserv or email them directly to me!

Ask a Librarian Quiz- Pass it on to your co-workers

You may have noticed my not-so-subtle hint at the end of last week’s word-of-mouth marketing email, where I mentioned that we might quiz your staff members who don’t participate in Ask a Librarian to see if they’re familiar with our service. One of most important parts of our word-of-mouth marketing campaign is to make sure that every single staff member at your library – from shelvers to the director – is comfortable enough with the basics of Ask a Librarian to be able to recommend it to a customer.

So here’s your chance to prove that you’ve done your WOMM (word-of-mouth marketing) duty and that your coworkers – the ones who don’t staff the Ask a Librarian desk – know what Ask a Librarian is!

Have your coworkers take this short quiz by April 30 to show us what they know about Ask a Librarian. Those who get all three questions correct will be entered into a drawing for some fun prizes. Make sure your coworkers enter your name in the proper location on the quiz, because if a person who you recommended wins the drawing, we will recognize you for doing a GREAT job spreading Ask a Librarian’s message to your fellow staff members.

The rules:

1. The person taking the quiz must be an employee at your library

2. The person taking the quiz must NOT be a current participant of Ask a Librarian. If he/she is on our agent list, he/she is not eligible.

3. Only people who have answered all three questions correctly will be eligible for the drawing

4. Please do not help your coworkers with the answers to the quiz. They can find the answers on our website, on posters in your library, or anywhere else they choose – the only place they can not get the answers is from YOU. (If you’ve done a good job teaching them about Ask a Librarian, they shouldn’t have to!)

Good luck and HAVE FUN!

St John’s County celebrates national library week….check out databaseman!

Making WOMM a part of everyday life

Now that more than a month has gone by since we asked you to promote our wonderful service on Ask a Librarian Day, have you noticed a difference in the way you speak about our service to customers? Do you mention Ask a Librarian more often? Are you still handing out business cards?

Remember, word-of-mouth marketing is a constant form of promotion that can be worked into everyday conversations with customers. You all did a fantastic job of spreading our message to the public on Ask a Librarian Day, but word-of-mouth marketing is most successful when it’s ongoing, and when every staff member at your library participates.

We’ve shared five important key messages with you over the past few months, but for now, let’s focus on just one of those messages: If you ever need help when you’re not in our library, visit askalibrarian.org (or find the link on our library’s website).

Share that key message with every customer you talk to for the next week or two, and let’s see our numbers continue to soar!

Thank you all for your enthusiasm and involvement!

Effective Outreach using The Director’s Chair videos

I wanted to share with you the experience Diane Johnson from Nassau County had while providing library outreach. She used the Director’s Chair videos (http://www.tblc.org/aal/directorschair/winners2009.shtml) to engage students. Please read about her experience below and please share successful outreach moments like this with Traci and myself.

—–Original Message—–
Traci, I wanted to share an awesome opportunity I had to use the Director’s Chair promotional videos.

I was conducting an information literacy training with a group of high school students. While reviewing the Ask-a-Librarian website, I accessed the actual winning Director’s Chair video and ran it during the class. The students were genuinely amused and interested.

At the conclusion of the training the students are “quizzed” and they were quick to raise their hands when asked about the “library on-line chat reference service.” It proved to be a great awareness raising tool.

Diane

Diane H. Johnson, Manager
Nassau County Public Library
Yulee Branch
FCCJ Betty P. Cook Nassau Center

Ask a Librarian Marketing Plan

We are working on the Ask a Librarian Marketing Plan for 2008-2009 and I would like your help.

To bring you up to speed on recent AaL marketing efforts, here is what we have been up to:

- The Director’s Chair YouTube Contest
- We mailed info packets containing information about AaL, posters, bookmarks, lanyards and The Director’s Chair flyers to every high school in Florida
- Posters, bookmarks, lanyards, The Director’s Chair flyers, post-it pads available for libraries in the toolbox at http://info.askalibrarian.org
- Movie theater ad is playing before every movie in two Gainesville theaters through Nov. 20 (check out the ad here: http://www.tblc.org/theaterad)
- MySpace (www.myspace.com/askalibrarianfl) and Facebook pages
- Business flyers (promoting to business community)
- Speaking at various statewide events
- In the process of developing next year’s brand new and FRESH back-to-school campaign geared toward high school and college students

What would you like to see AaL do to promote Ask a Librarian to your users?

Please send me your suggestions at sachsd at tblc.org or add a comment to the blog.