Social Media and Passive RA - Book of the Day

 Outlets like NPR , The Guardian, and the New York Public Library (and on NYPL Twitter) feature a different book every day. Titles for any audience, fiction and non-fiction, are selected. Your library can copy this idea for your own social media. It's a great way to market your backlist and to introduce titles they may have missed to your patrons. 

This is a perfect ongoing campaign for your entire staff to become involved with. Don't exclude anyone who wants to participate. As I have said before, everyone in your library is an expert in something and they may bring out titles that you are unfamiliar with. Please make sure that staff are using titles that are in your physical or digital collection. You want to draw people into your library to check out the titles you feature!

It will take some planning to keep going every day. Set up at least a week in advance. Repeat the call to your staff to submit their ideas monthly so that you can obtain enough content. The posts can be as simple as a picture of the book with text providing a quick synopsis. You can include a link to the title in your catalog or eBook collection. These are the sort of posts that you can mirror on all of your library's social media, providing content when you don't have anything else planned. 

You may want to expand the program to have patrons submit their options for book of the day. They will need to be told that submissions will be vetted by your professional staff and that not all submissions will be featured. This should help should anyone suggest a book that isn't what your library wants to feature. 

Finally, rotate the books chosen around your collection so that every part gets it's chance to shine. It may be necessary to send out a call if you don't receive enough varied submissions. Social media is wonderful for quick bursts of readers advisory. Use this program to jump start your RA efforts online! 

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