Using a blog and social media promotion as a collaborative community building marketing tool for library resources

The purpose of this report is to explain the process of how Booth Library developed an online WordPress blog to market physical and electronic resources in the library’s collection. This report looks at specific tools that are used to maintain the blog and sample topics that the blog covers.

WordPress software was installed on library servers, making the blog a cohesive part of the library’s website. A PHP script called “List It!” was developed to produce book lists with cover images from a list of scanned library barcodes. After the book lists are inserted into blog posts, social media tools such as YOURLS and Hootsuite are used to schedule tweets and Facebook posts.

Since its launch in September 2014, Ref News has received a total of 6,180 views and 3,835 unique views for 88 posts. On average, users are spending two minutes and 44 seconds on a page or group of pages. Less measurable benefits include greatly expanded website content, booklists that can be reused and repurposed and a sense of ownership and increased morale for those who help curate book displays and write blog posts.

This report shows how a free WordPress blog can be used as a versatile and collaborative tool to market library resources and connect with users.