Social Media Collection Promotion Part 2

I’m in a weird time right now where I have a ton of (virtual) programming coming up to share with you all over the next few weeks–sometimes two virtual storytimes a week, sometimes a full week of Pokemon programming, sometimes a special Elephant & Piggie storytime, plus the weekly graphic novel book club–but I’ve been spending most of my work time preparing for those things or other future projects that I don’t want to write to you all about until they’ve happened.

So, I’m revisiting a project I wrote about two months ago, Social Media Collection Promotion through Instagram stories. I’ve continued this project since we’ve closed with a daily Instagram story advertising an ebook, series, ebook website, or virtual program.

When I started this project, I rotated through age ranges and formats more carefully–about 40 days into making Instagram posts, I stopped being as careful and just grabbed content that felt relevant and appealing. I still try to select titles that are either immediately available through Hoopla or do not have long hold’s lists through Overdrive or Cloud Library. Even though we have opened for curbside, I am still focusing on ebooks.

Some things I’ve learned:

Posts get about 200-250 views a day no matter who I tag, use of hashtags, popularity of materials, etc..
Engagements, profile clicks, and responses (and, from what I can tell checkouts) only really occur with materials that are already very popular–I got a stronger response when I shared that Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is free to download on Overdrive and that the new Hunger Games prequel is available on audio via Hoopla.
Honestly? I don’t know how much of an impact these are having. Part of my personal goal for the year was to create a long term plan for social media collection promotion, and frankly I don’t know if it is worth it, at least through Instagram stories. Most of my viewers are library staff. I’d like to potentially try less frequent posts in a different platform–even an Instagram post once every two weeks–but that wasn’t an option before the pandemic, and I know social media has a different purpose at the moment as we start to reopen.

Instagram Stories – Picture Books: