Graphics for Social Media: The Exciting FOPL Project

In my role as the executive director of the Federation of Ontario Public Libraries we do a ton of stuff.  I thought I’d summarize our latest initiative here (but they’re also blogged as individual blog posts at FOPL.ca too).

Our provincial government has a huge number of important and exciting consultations going on over the next few months.  The Ontario government is widely consulting Ontarians and our sector about the Ontario Culture Strategy and Ontario’s Community Hubs.  They’re also reviewing the Municipal Act(s) which govern our local governments.  All are very important opportunities for public libraries to show their role in our cultural and community lives.  And our Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport is supportive and public libraries are in their mandate.  They even provide some funding to public libraries and provided some support recently by opening up the public library statistics as open data and some funding to analyze our data longitudinally and learn more about our sector.  We even did a big professional public opinion poll in 2015.

(We’re also eagerly watching the federal agenda as the new Trudeau government takes office with an agenda that considerably warms up the social sector and other issues like First Nations issues and the reinstatement of the long form census that are important to our libraries.)

We are embarking on a plan to share social media images about libraries in the context of culture, sport, and thriving communities.  Libraries in Ontario can share these freely on their social media accounts.  FOPL plans to share these images widely throughout late 2015 and leading up to Library Day @ Queen’s Park (our provincial legislature) on November 25, 2015.  Our plans are to meet with dozens of Members of the Provincial Parliament and senior staff in a single day and to follow through in the coming year.  We’ll be in the legislature that day to be introduced by the Minster of Culture, Michael Coteau.

Anyway, here’s what we have visually so far:

Here’s image #1 [This image has been optimized for Google+ but you can use it anywhere.]:

 

Here’s image #2 [This image has been optimized for use on Instagram but you can use it anywhere]:

Here’s image #3 [This image has been optimized for use on Facebook but you can use it anywhere]:

Here’s image #4 [This image has been optimized for use on Twitter but you can use it anywhere]:

Here’s image #6 [This image has been optimized for use on Twitter but you can use it anywhere]:

What’s the Most Popular thing that Ontarians Visit (entirely COPYRIGHT FREE version) [PDF]

Here are the slides again.

We had our PPT of the the role public libraries play in culture, sports and as community hubs translated by one of our board members. (Thanks Claire!)

 

Here are links to three Sway presentations #8

Sway Presentations

There are three presentations created in Sway, the new Microsoft presentation tool. The content is exactly the same (save for one different cover image) – the only difference is the way in which one navigates through them, and the visual style.

You can either simply share links to Sways on social media or embed them on any website or blog (which works really well).

1. Vertical scrolling Sway: https://sway.com/-ZuUClA7yBqlZOn4
2. Horizontal scrolling Sway: https://sway.com/PlJ-bmJAeZvmn72X
3. Slide-style Sway: https://sway.com/t7uMZpy26an8mgBM

#1: Vertical scrolling Sway

#2: Horizontal scrolling Sway 

#3:  Slide-style Sway

Here are links to a Prezi presentation #9

Prezi Presentation

As with the video, this Prezi takes the big reveal approach and doesn’t mention libraries until the end. It’s currently on our Prezi account: https://prezi.com/urmejlx4akoc/what-do-ontarions-choose/ where you can get the embed code.

As with the Sways, the Prezi can be shared as it is or embedded anywhere you choose.

Video

There is a video made in PowToon which takes the ‘big reveal’ approach – libraries aren’t mentioned until the end. It’s currently available on PowToon itself – but it will be on YouTube too.

We’ve got a few more things up our sleeves, but you get the idea.

Special credit is due to Ned Potter in the UK, an awesome library marketing dude who helped us develop this first set of tools.

This is the kind of thing that public libraries can do when they invest in and collaborate with each other through an organization like the Federation of Ontario Public Libraries.

More to come!

Stephen

Comments: sabram@fopl.ca