Monitor your brand

June 15, 2009 · Posted in Free Tools, Reputation, Social Tools · View Comments

Carie Lewis has a great guide to monitoring your brand using iGoogle, it’s easy, free and most of us already have a Google account, plus it pulls all the information into one place.

She includes 5 different categories:

Brand – mentions of your name, including acronyms, misspellings, etc

Current – issues that people are talking about that involve you right now

Detractors – people you know don’t like you but talk about you

Competition – people in the same space as you

Staff – prominent people in your org, like your CEO

And includes a great list of places you should monitoring:

Google Alerts – I hope you know what they are and are already using them!

Filtrbox – a paid monitoring service to make sure we catch everything

Tweetmeme – tells you the most popular tweets about a subject

Twitter Search – shows tweets containing a certain keyword (we don’t use this anymore because we use Tweetdeck separately)

Technorati – shows blogs that mention certain keywords

Blogpulse – another blog monitoring tool

Digg – shows most popular articles on the web

Boardreader – shows forum posts by keyword

Some additional readings

Tags: <brand, company, competition, competitors, customers, issues, monitor, monitoring, patrons, Reputation>

We’re barely treading water, what will keep us from drowning?

March 25, 2009 · Posted in Digital Services, Librarianship, Libraries, Video · View Comments

Start with this, I did

Now think about this – How do libraries fit into this picture? As far as I can tell the technologies we’re struggling to adapt to and implement might very well be outdated by the time we’re ready to start using them. That’s not good. Right now technologies are running by and we’re still crawling to keep up. What does it mean? Maybe we can’t keep up, maybe we should stop focusing our energy there, at least temporarily. Let’s face it we’ve been talking about the next gen OPAC for how many years? Would our time be better spent elsewhere? Maybe we need to look at changing our organizational structure and mindset first. Then we’ll be better equipped to keep pace. Perhaps becoming more fluid and ready to adapt much more rapidly to change as it happens? Because right now I see two problems

The level of online service and interactions patrons take for granted is not being met by libraries. Not even the most cutting edge, front line, tech savvy ones.
The technologies and trends the most cutting edge, front line, tech savvy libraries are preparing may not longer be relevant by the time they implement them or become obsolete soon there after.

We’re barely treading water here people and I don’t think another blog post about how your library can use Twitter or an article about website usability is going to keep us from downing. We’ve got to change, and I mean really change.

Flickr – the other side of social networking

November 15, 2007 · Posted in Social Tools · View Comments

This week has been a bizarre, if not ironic, clash of work and personal life.

I love social networking sites, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr etc. In fact I teach my coworkers and patrons at the Library about them. I present to other Librarians about them and why they should do them. I spent a lot of my personal time on Flickr and blogs. I have a pro Flickr account, but a couple of weeks ago I made the choice to move a LOT of my pictures to private due to some weird comments and emails. Then Monday Robin points me towards this article about Library Flickr accounts and polices regarding them. I read it I think about my Library and our policy and how I will write it the policy, becuase that’s my job. I think about what I’ll do if someone “favorites’ a picture of child and when I look at their pictures or profile it seems inappropriate to me. How will I write a policy that address freedom of speech and expressions and interests of the individuals and at the same time protects the children and patrons of my Library. I’ve been roughing this all out in my head and have yet to put pen to paper (or fingers to keys).

Then this happens in my personal life. It was nice this weekend, nice enough to wear flip flops, so I take a picture of my feet in my flip flops to post on my blog. I put it on Flickr and leave it public and tag it “feet” and “shoes” because I tag, I organize, if I ever want a picture of my feet I’ll be able to find one. Then something else happens – it gets viewed. A LOT. Then someone I don’t know comments. Then someone else marks it as a “favorite” and they have a lot of feet pictures in their account and as favorites. It’s funny, sort of, in a creepy and weird way that I’m not completely at ease with. Then tonight someone else adds it as a favorite. Now I am uneasy. These are only my feet, but I’m disturbed by these strangers taking such an interest in them. There is nothing scandalous or sexy about them. But because someone else has taken such an interest in them I’m almost hesitant to share the picture here. A picture of my feet, boring.

So while my business side was busy writing a policy for my library where I was concerned about the freedoms of everyone, my personal side feels very uncomfortable.

Tags: <Flickr, issues, Policies, social networking, Social Tools>