Librarians offer plenty in a social media world
Congrats! The Internet has made you an honorary librarian. Since writing that post, I’ve been thinking about what's the purpose of credentialed librarians when social media enables many of us to fill some of their roles.
Steph, a librarian in Melbourne, Australia, feels that the Internet has made her a better librarian. She states:
In many ways the Internet has made me a better librarian. I am able to answer questions more quickly and efficiently. I know that there is more to what’s available than a search engine or Wikipedia can provide. I love the fact that there are cool databases available through university libraries with hundreds and thousands of amazing articles that I can search!
Like her, I feel that the Internet makes librarians more useful and needed. Here are some ways that credentialed librarians and information professionals help us in a social media world:
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The Internet has turned you into a librarian
The stereotypical librarian is a bespectacled lady who goes around shushing everyone. Having completed the University of Maryland Master of Information Management program through which I took classes with Master of Library Science students, not only have I learned that librarians are typically anything but quiet but thanks to the Internet more people – maybe even you – provide library services. Librarianship is not just for the bespectacled!
Here are some social media trends that allow the Internet to turn you into a librarian:
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Crowdsourcing for Conferences:Pros & Cons
You’ve got a ballroom, VIP badges, t-shirts emblazoned with sponsors, a distinctly clever and useful Twitter hashtag, and even check-in locations for your Foursquare-loving visitors. By all accounts, you’ve got everything you need for your big industry conference. However, there’s one thing missing from this picture: content. And that is exactly where all of those hard-earned conference attendees would love to help you out. Crowdsourcing, using the internet to gather ideas, actions, plans, money or just plain help from the online community, has been used increasingly in recent conferences for event planning, content selection, and even logistics.
There have been great successes in crowdsourcing’s history (i.e KickStarter, the online giving community which has launched millions of crowdsourced ideas) and sizable failures (i.e the White House being inundated with un-answerable questions every time it’s offered crowdsourced forums) However, crowdsourcing principles can easily be applied to industry conferences and tradeshows. These events gather large groups of people focused on the same or similar topics, most of whom probably want to know more about one specific issue. Gathering opinions from the people who are going to attend your conference about what they actually want to see at that conference is a win-win situation: you get to know exactly what your target audience desires, directly from them, and your audience gets to see only the product that they have the most interest in.
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5 Great Social Fundraising Platforms
Social fundraising is on the rise and these 5 sites are a great place to get your feet wet:
1. Crowdrise
About: “Crowdrise is about giving back, raising tons of money for charity and having the most fun in the world while doing it. Crowdrise is way more fun than anything else aside from being all nervous about trying to kiss a girl for the first time and her not saying something like ‘you’ve got to be kidding me.’”
Pricing: Free accounts with no monthly charge and 5% + $2.50 transaction fee
2. Stay Classy
About: “StayClassy is an on-demand social fundraising solution for Nonprofit organizations. Our web-based platform allows Nonprofits to receive online donations, organize fundraising events & campaigns, manage donors across social media, and access our real-time reporting and analytics engine. ”
Pricing: Freemium accounts have no monthly charge and 4% + $0.99 per donation ticket
3. First Giving
About: “We partner with nonprofit organizations to allow them to plan, execute, and measure successful online fundraising campaigns. For individual fundraisers, we aim to make the process simple, effective, and even fun! Above all, we want nonprofit and fundraisers alike to meet and exceed their goals of raising money for important causes, building awareness, and expanding the world of giving.”
Pricing: No monthly charge, 5% First Giving fee and 2.5% transaction fee
4. Razoo
About: “Razoo is a movement of people who want to make generosity a part of everyday life. Generosity is win-win. Not only does it make the world a better place, it also makes us happy and fulfilled – especially when we give to the people and causes we care about most.”
Pricing: No monthly fees and a flat 2.9% charge per transaction
5. Causes
About: “Causes is the world’s largest platform for activism and philanthropy. We empower individuals to create grassroots communities called “causes” that take action on behalf of a specific issue or nonprofit organization. Since our founding in 2007, Causes has brought together”
Pricing: No monthly fees and a flat 4.75% charge per transaction through Network for Good
The best Facebook advertising you can’t buy
Before Jimmer, the “Mexican” restaurant Café Rio held (and still holds) a special place in the heart of many current and former Jello-O Belt residents, and for good reason since it beat Chipotle, In-N-Out Burger, Chick-fil-A, and Pei Wei for the best Quick Service Restaurant in 2011. Today, the restaurant is opening a new location in Olney, MD here in the DC area – its first east of the Mississippi River.
Yesterday Inside Facebook detailed three new advertising opportunities that organizations can use to turn ordinary posts from people into ads. While these are interesting developments, I argue that these are not the best tactics for advertising on Facebook.
So, what does this have to do with Café Rio?
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