(P123) Marketing the academic library with online social network advertising

Apr 4, 2012 | 4/6/2012 (1330-1505), Technology & New Media | 0 comments

Facebook is now a ubiquitous part of the lives of many university students around the world. The libraries that serve them now have an opportunity to leverage these recently-created online social networks to promote their services and resources. 

While the use of Facebook in academic libraries has been discussed extensively in the library science literature, little attention has been given to the use of paid online advertising within this social networking site. This is a potentially important strategy, as the effectiveness of a library’s Facebook page depends to a large extent on the number of fans it possesses. It can be demonstrated that such advertising is good at attracting fans at a surprisingly minimal financial cost, and also has the potential to increase awareness of the library’s brand among students. 

Furthermore, Facebook’s advertising application provides a wealth of data regarding the performance of adverts. This information can be used quantify the impact of advertising in a way not normally possible in traditional marketing efforts. As marketing budgets for libraries are usually quite small, being able to demonstrate the effectiveness of advertising in this way is invaluable. 

This paper will elaborate upon the ideas outline above, and will also report on the results of a new Facebook advertising campaign that was conducted in the autumn of 2011 at the author’s institution. This campaign investigated the effectiveness of a particular type of Facebook advert called “Sponsored Stories”, which employ users’ existing social connections to make adverts more attractive. 

Ideas for future investigation, such as using Facebook advertising to promote specific library events and services, will conclude the paper. Some consideration of privacy issues associated with social network advertising will also be provided.

Christopher Chan
Christopher Chan Hong Kong Baptist University

Christopher Chan earned his Bachelor of Arts in Politics and History at the University of Durham (UK) and his Master of Applied Science in Library and Information Management at Charles Sturt University (Australia). He joined the Hong Kong Baptist University as an Information Services Librarian in 2008. Prior to his current appointment, he worked for several years as a librarian at international schools in Hong Kong.

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