Social Media and E-mail Advice to Ontario’s Public Libraries

Some are great and some are . . . skeletal.

Your out-of-office message is an opportunity for marketing the library’s digital services and communications during the emergency closures and maintaining the relevance of your library to your community.

FOPL recommends that you (and all staff):

1. Review your out-of-office message (if you’ve got it turned on)

2. Although many of you are rightly stating that your physical branches are closed, too many aren’t offering alternative ways to access library services.

3. Add hot links to your signatures and out-of-office messages that state:

• Visit our website for e-resources – databases, e-books, e-magazines, e-learning, whatever you have.
• Follow us on Twitter
• Friend us on Facebook
• Follow us on Instagram, Reddit, Pinterest,LinkedIn, etc.  Whatever you have…
• Maybe now is the time to start some new social media accounts and experiment for a while (from home!)   Perhaps key staff can be assigned one each as a small project.
• Another project to think about is Hootsuite and their ilk who make posting more efficient.

Also, please make sure your website announcements about closures state that your digital resources are there for them!  (I know most of you have already but it bears repeating and updating regularly).

Stay safe.  Stay positive!