Hi everyone thank you so much for joining us today
Todays webinar is Getting Students Reading through Social Media. My name's Nahomy and I am the Sora social media specialist. I'm so excited that you are all here with us today
And yeah so excited for you all to hear more from these lovely ladies that are educators and influencers in the in the space and they're gonna
Tell you for bunch a tips and tricks and all that
Couple of housekeeping items for today before we jump in
Just so we can
Get the most out of our time together here today. First of all we are recording today's session. You will be receiving a follow up email around this time tomorrow. That email will contain information about how you can watch the recording and more valuable resources
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Finally I did see that some of you have already turned this on. We do have closed captions of via live transcript transcription for today's live webinar. Should you wish to adjust this please click the show captions icon in your zoom meeting controls. Depending on the size of your screen you might find this on the more menu on your toolbar
There
Like I said my name is Nahomy I am the so the Sora such media specialist here at OverDrive so I do all the social media on the channels if you do follow us there. I am so excited that
The ladies on the screen are joining us today in talking to you all promoting reading to students on social media is so important as it's
Platforms that they are on regularly every single day. And these lovely late ladies do a wonderful job at fostering a culture of literacy and providing diverse literary resources to their students. So I'm sure that they're going to tell you a lot more today. So yeah I'm gonna have them introduce themselves in order from the screen and then we'll get started with Melanie
Hi thanks so much. I'm Melanie Wood I am an elementary librarian in the St. Louis Missouri area
Hi I'm KC Boyd I'm a middle school librarian in Washington, DC hopefully the fifty first state
Yay
Hey everybody my name Amanda Hunt I am a middle school librarian in New Braunfels Texas which is in between San Antonio and Austin
Alright so I'm first. So we will just jump in. So when I was asked to do this presentation they talked about how do I promote social media or promote reading through social media. I thought it would be interesting take to hear from an elementary school librarian because my kids are not on social media but my parents are. And so this is my second year in the library and I'm coming from the classroom. In the classroom you know it's so important to have those really personal connections with not all your students but your families. And so this is something that I felt really strongly about when I moved into the library setting. But with 375
Kids and family as I was thinking it was going to be pretty hard to reach them. So that's when I kind of
Amped up my social media game rather than just projecting to my twenty kiddos parents. Now it was how can use social media and leverage this to reach all of our parents in our school and our teachers because then they can help me continue to promote reading. So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about that journey that I do im in my space. If you follow along on Instagram I'm @Melanie_In_The_Library that's kind of my professional learning network. And then my school account (if you could go back to the last slide just like it's the really quick) @HighcroftRidge_Library is my school Instagram so you can actually see like the live content that I'm pushing out to families and teachers there things
So one of the things that we want to think about when we're posting on social media to promote literacy is we really want to be aware of our audience. And like I said as an elementary person it's important to know that my audience is my parents and my care giver and my teachers in my principals and other librarians in my district. So I want to make sure that what I am posting as tailored to those people and their needs. With my primary audience being parents I want to keep that length short and sweet because you know. When you're on social media and you're scrolling you want small bite size pieces that you can take and do something with. You know this is the place to send an email or give a big long flyer. The information they need, bite size pieces that we can
Take home and get our kids reading with. Always and most importantly you want to make sure that you're following privacy
Expectations in your district. Making sure kids are
Being shared in an appropriate way. But one of the things with sharing to
Primarily parents is getting kids involved in the pictures in the post. Because there is nothing that parents love more than seeing their own student highlighted. Especially online and to get a peek at what they're doing at school so
Moving on thinking about best practices. I always really like to make what I post interactive. One, if you know much about social media you know that if people don't
Interact with your
Content that they stop seeing your content. So anything I can do to get parents to like or comment, post you know. I'll even say something like leave a comment below with your favorite book if we're talking about a sport. Or leave a comment below with your favorite sport just to get people engaging in the
In the material that we post. And then we want to make sure that were celebrating reading and milesstone. That's a big thing that's another place to get parents involved. "Oh my gosh! Yay, so excited for so and so." They leave those comments or they'll congratulate teachers. Any chance that I can do to post something that kind of has that action item is really helpful when we're talking about social media. The other piece I want to point out is the value. Remember that parents they care a lot about their child's education so we need to make sure that when were posting to a parent audience that the value is therefore them. That they're getting again those bite size pieces that they can take back and use with their students. So "Hey, we've got this new resource. This would help with xyz, check it out." And then we kind of
Hit them where they're looking for information so that they can take that back with them and then
Another really important piece to this all is consistency. So you don't want to board them where their feed is just nothing but you because then they get a little fatigued. And they might even mute you or unfollow you. But you want to make sure that you're kind of spacing at your content to keep them coming back for more. One of the other things that are I'll do a lot is I'll post like "Stay tuned for... more information on..." and it kind of brings them back to our page. The the thing to think about is best times. For me as an elementary person I have found that most of my parents are scrolling on Facebook at 6 AM or 9 PM. It's really funny because you think that that seems like not a very opportune time to post something. But when I post at 6 AM and 9 PM, that's when I'll get the most interaction. And I have to believe that's because the kids are still asleep or they just got them to sleep and they're finally decompressing on the couch and catching up on the day. So really working on those like best practice pieces to get yourself started
Is a great place to start. I also (I didn't put this in my slides) but really focus on if this is something that's brand new to you, think about one platform that you feel like you can be successful with. Or find one platform that your community is already using
Just because
It's hard to get people to learn a new tool and interact with you and follow long. So if you can meet them where they're at, I know my parents are on Facebook and Instagram, so that's where post my content.
And then we will get into where I create my content. I am a big Canva girl. So if you are into Canva it is a great place to just get started. One of the lovely things about Canva is that they have free accounts for educators, so we get all the premium features. I really like that they have these ready made templates. I just got ready to launch some St. Patrick's Day stuff. So in Canva I could literally type in, "St. Patrick's Day Instram book post" and they give me something that I can then tweak to match my audience.
I like Canva too because I can build stuff from my computer. Use my mouse, my keyboard. But then I have the Canva app on my phone so that when I'm ready to post my content I can easily and quickly download that content from the Canva app on my phone and then get that onto Instagram. Everything you see in front of you was made on Canva. It's also nice because you can save it and then adjust it. For example my fifth grade book club post that you see there, we do this once a month. I can post the kids having book club. I have that same kind of heading every month, I just change out the title, change out the book. And then we kind of get this branding vibe to our Instagram where everything starts to mesh and flow together and look consistent. The other cool thing, speaking of branding, is on Canva you can create your own branding template. And so you can start building out your own color scheme, your own fonts, so that every time you post you're using consistent pieces and elements.
And then another question that often asked a lot is, "Where do you get ideas on what to post?" Again parents love to see their kids online. So any time I can tie a kiddo to a post to a book that's usually when we have the highest engagement. That first picture in the top left was a huge hit. This was, I had reached out to families and I said, "Does your kid have a sport or hobby or a talent and if so can you send you picture of them?" So what I did is I took sweet little Lilah and I removed the background and then I found all of our ballerina books that matched. And this was actually a Sora display and so I had these all linked. So not only was it posted on
To or Instagram but I posted it where share stuff with my students and they could click all those books. So if you like to dance like Lilah you could read these books like her. This was huge like I said. I had a baseball one I had a dog lovers one. And again when the kids get to see themselves connected online with books they just get so excited about reading
I had a student who went out of town and got Alan Gratz to sign a book. So again like we have a student, we have an author, we got it signed, so that was another big exciting moment to share online. One of the other things that my community really loves is I just to make these little, at the bottom right, we do like all those silly holidays or the starts of whatever season. So the first day of hockey season, here is all our hockey books. And you know I'm posting it to the parents and the parents are not the ones that are coming to school and checking out the books. But if their scrolling on Instagram at 9 AM then maybe tomorrow when they're getting breakfast going for their kiddo they go, "Oh my gosh, Mrs. Wood just posted all of these hockey books. Tomorrow when you have library you should look for them!" So the parents kind of help me make those connections with their kids. I also look at curriculum connections I try to just keep an ear around what our teachers are doing and how can I promote it. Like I said holidays those goofy holidays are really fun to post about.
Big talking points
So these are just a couple of the things that I do from the elementary side of social media. Like I said you just really need to know your audience and then
Tailor that to them. And it takes a bit of time. Your following will grow slowly but steadily as long as you keep at it and you'll see the impact on your community.
Thanks Melanie
Hi I'm KC Boyd, librarian middle school of Jesserson Academy in Washington, DC. Let me just give you a little background about my school and my journey. This is my twenty fifth year working in school libraries and my seventh year working at Jefferson Academy which is located in southwest DC. It's a very large space we have a lobby. This is the first time I've have a lobby in my library. And it gives me the opportunity to really display a lot of books
Which I love doing and I flip the displays every month you know to celebrate holiday and special occasions and so forth
I will say this about my students. I have only 408 students in my school. It's a middle school that ranges between six through eighth grade. Two thirds of my population has an IEP or either 504 plan so it's really interesting. I have kids that are reading second grade level and I have kids the reading late middle school. So it's a wide range of reading. And then I do have
A bunch of kids that are either reluctant or struggling readers. So I stay extremely busy every day
Getting kids encouraged to read and engaged. One of the things that we have at my school that's important as a culture for our school is that all the students must have what's called an IRB which is an independent reading book. Now some of my students get really slick. They check a book out at the beginning of the year and they still hold on to it for months. It drives me nuts. Especially when they have a lot of my graphic novels and anime books that other students want to check out.
Thats a struggle because I'm trying to get the kids to bring those books back. So with all of these things that are taking place how do I reach the kids and their parents is through social media. I've been on social media roughly since 2004. My first form of social video was a blog that I had. And now I'm up to participating on multiple platforms to really get kids engaged. So you can connect with me as you can see on the bottom of the screen as we progress on in the presentation (next) where you can you know follow me or to see some of my content
As I mentioned earlier yes
I'm on a bunch of sites. Yes I'm still on Twitter, otherwise known as X, and I will always stay on Twitter for this main reason. My district is still on Twitter or X.
Hard habit to break right? You want to continue to say Twitter. My district is on X so there's no way I'm gonna move off of this platform
If my district and my school and other community agencies and support agencies are still
Engaged in that site
I really use these sites very heavily in different ways. And I'll share with you, you know, some of the ways that I use. Now one of the main things in terms of usage is that I want to tell my story! I want to tell the story of what my students are doing. And thats how you also draw in the students and their families because they get a big kick out of seeing their child. Like for example that picture, you know, in center in the top of the page of one of our reading activities where we we had kids silently reading in the lunchroom. The entire sixth grade for twenty minutes. And that was like drop everything and read. It was something just really really short to do one afternoon. But we did it and parents really got into it. And they're like, "What is this twenty minutes thing?" You know and that opens up another conversation with how you could turn off the idiot box (which what we used to say about tv back in the day.) But we can also turn off those gaming activities and those phones and just for twenty minutes read. And that's tough.
My posts are always short and to the point. Short and sweet
And I always recommend this when I'm telling people to use social media to really build their library program, to build their reading program as a whole. Is that how important it is to check
And recheck and check again the images that you place online. I'm very fortunate. I work at a school where my students sign of on the image of their use on social media and also just period in posting and marketing. We have about thirty kids in the entire school that
Don't participate. The parents did not opt in
As a result of that, when we know this and so you know these kids usually step out of the way when I get ready to take pictures you know, and I know them so
I try and stick to a specific time to post. My time posting is anywhere between 5:00 and 5:30 AM. That's my time when I get up and I'm doing a little reading, you know. And just having a quiet time before you get the hustle and bustle of getting ready. I will post again in the evening. And just like Melanie said some of our parents are actually scrolling around that time. And they see the posts and I see the likes on there. Or either their, I'll get the direct messages (DMs). I give more DMs than likes.
From my parents, you know. And they're like, "Oh I like this!" I'm like, "How can I get my child to get more engaged?" "My child is not reading Ms. Boyd, we need help." you know. So I'll get those message from parents. Next slide
So
That's my social media. You could connect with me on all of those channels. But let's talk about my recommendations when it comes to social media. You know, I use a lot of different platforms. Just like Melanie I love Canva. Canva is super easy and it's on my phone. I do a lot of work on Canva. I'll do the work on my cell phone and then I'll come home because nine times out of ten I'll have classes. I'll come home and I will double check for all, you know, inconsistencies, grammar, error, typos, and everything. And then I'll push
That particular post out. I use social media to inform, define, and promote my reading program to get not only my students and my parents engaged, but sometimes coworkers. Because sometimes, you know, we have tried as librarians to reach some of our coworkers and it does not work. I have found sometimes by connecting through social media
It works! And their like, "Oh, I didn't know that you were doing this with the kids. Well you know what, maybe I need to bring my class down." Sure, bring the kids down! So we can work together to tackle your kids who are struggling with reading or either connect the books in the collection to something that you're teaching. I always group any of my messaging you know in
In student achievement and LIS (library information science) excuse me best practices, because I just don't want people to think im pulling what I'm staying out of the clean clear blue sky. It's rooted in truth and research that has over thirty years of research tied to it. I use a newsletter, I love Smore, and I believe and investing in myself everyone. So I know you're probably thinking, "Dang, this is going to be expensive." But you know what? When you invest in yourself, you have these wonderful tools to use, you know it just helps you become just a stronger librarian and service your kids better. I share newsletter posts and with parents, teachers, community members, the politicians, and school partners. Anybody I can get an email address or either Twitter account I'm sending that information there. And I'm showing a look at our children they are reading. So that is my goal. And sometimes when the kids see all this effort is being made and then they see you online and then some of them start coming around slowly
You know some of them do. And then they shyly start asking for support and help. And that's what I'm here to do, support and help. I'm a big advocate for tutorials and I have a tutorial that I could shoot out in a minute
Through a text message through informative
Through the Remind app
I can do a lot of that
And the beauty part about it is we're heavy text
Cultured school. We have
SLCs which are student led conferences coming up. I will just send the text that morning to all the teachers and say hey
When your parent comes in for the conference, you know, reference talking about checking out books and twenty minutes of reading a day. And then send them the tutorial because you know the student is not going to send to the parent. So send it to the parents so the parent can work with a child at home. So this is an example on the far left hand side of the screen of once you followed my tutorial to get online, I gave you a big sign. You're in! Now you could start reading
You know and enjoy. I do a lot of cards at different events. The one that says, "Read ebooks at home!" that's like a little half sheet card and I put it on card stock. And we had different events. I hand out or either I leave it on a table and parents will pick it up you know.
Love doing memes and you know and just pictures of the kids around the building. You know, of them reading so that other students will get more engaged and to and participate. Next slide
So my slides are really busy because I am extremely busy so excuse me if it's a lot of writing and pictures on my pages. But when I connect with a student's family, one of the things I try and do is use all front facing district apps, websites to promote independent reading. So what do you mean, what do I mean by that? We have a Canvas page. Every teacher is allowed to have a Canvas page. One of the things I do is I use the Canvas page and then link it to the teachers Canvas page so that there's always that connection back to the library and
The parents for the front facing page they don't necessarily need
The students log in to just view the page. They can view the page
Then
Then after they read the front you know facing page then they'll ask that student
To sign in for them. So it's not a total block out. It's like that they're able to see
Before they actually log on, if you know what I mean. I like using QR codes, flyers around the water fountains. I started doing the signage in the teacher's restroomns to remind them about they're certain books in the collection that the kids will get excited about. I haven't broughten it down to the student level because I know they're going to tear it down. Let's just keep it, I'm going to keep it real, their middle schoolers. But I do use my electronic digital board in the lobby of my library so that they see pictures of their colleague, their friends and teachers reading and then I also post the front
Cover of books and it's just just a continuous loop on that monitor in my library lobby. Listen, you get like a fifty dollar computer six seventy five dollar computer
From Walmart, you know, off brand and it's worth the price. Because I take my cord, hook it up to a computer that is not so pleasant looking, you know, it's one of the older ones. And just have it looped. And it is continuously loops on Canva. So that's one other way to I make use of the kids idly sitting in the lobby just kind of chilling. They end up looking at some of the books and they'll say, "Hey, that book that was yellow that had the green font on it, where can I find that book?"
You know that's one way to get them excited
I also love doing theme and curated book lists. I hope I'm not going over time. So if I am please let me know in chat cause I'll talk forever.
I love using Kristina Holzweiss wonderful planner because she has a lot of ideas for different activities
Every single month. So I take those themes and then I try and create book lists on top of using my districts book lists that they create. You know, for like women's history month for example. They have a wonderful book list is available right now. Okay now you have to understand your students and where they're coming from. I have a language program that
Many of those students
Come to our school so in understanding that
I know that it's important for me to have some dual language books that are spanish in the collection. Because they had spanish social studies spanish english
You know and so they're coming
From that type of curriculum so I have to have some materials that they are familiar with using. So it's really something to see Dog Man in spanish and kids going for it and checking it out like crazy
I also connect with the elementary school parents through civic and community based organizations. Right after this meeting I'm going to a middle school forum. And this is where a lot of my elementary school parents that are considered sending their child to my school will be. And I, you know, I always give a slide in this presentation that my principle will give. You know, so this is an easy way to really talk about we have a very solid reading program in our school. Aand I also want to make a point
About Sora. Is that Sora has that wonderful app that kids can read on their cell phones. Because just about all my students have cell phones at my school. And my thing is is that if you can load
Crunchy Roll and all these other apps on your phone and Instagram and other social media sites, you can put the Sora app on your cell phone to and read and have access to books at all times. Next slide
So last but not least celebrate your students! I love celebrating their achievements on social media. They love seeing themselves celebrated as well. Sometimes we do a little more internally and sometimes we do it really big. Oftentimes I will send pictures of celebrations of the kids and I'll send it to the schools Instagram page and you know the parents really love seeing their kids in the library and getting honored for various reasons. I'm just so proud of my students because as I said some of them are on level, some of them are not, some of the are above level. Sometimes I struggle to find books to keep them excited
But so far we have read 7,435 books. That's pretty doggone to say we only have 408 kids in the school! Last year we read over 10,000 books. I think we're well on our way to breaking the meeting the goal of reading over ten thousand books again this year if we keep going and get the rate that we're going so
Thank you very much, just diving into my world and learning about some of the things I do to really promote reading
Thank you!
Awesome. Hey everyone my name is Amanda Hunt like I said at the beginning and I just want to kind give you a little bit of back story. I noticed in the chat we have some high school people here. So I am going to take that approach even though I do work at a middle school
Because my account is not associated with my campus. When I first started using the Instagram platform for this particular cause of promoting libraries and things like that and what were doing, I was using my school account. And it was my school name library. But during the pandemic there was a lot of things going on with LGBTQIA+ rights and Black Lives Matter and the stuff that I was wanting to talk about on my platform I felt like I didnt want to represent my particular school or my library. Right? So what I did is I changed and I rebanded and I am @thenextgenlibrarian across all platforms now so that I let people know that I'm speaking from just a middle school librarian, from my own perspective. And that it does not reflect the vision of my campus or my district. So I will kind of take that role because 95 percent of who follows me are students. I am sure that some of their parents might follow me but it would just be like if they happen to come across it somehow. But because so many former students followed me before
So we can go to the next slide
So I feel like Melanie and KC did a great job of talking about best practices for social media. Obviously you want to follow your district or your city if youre in a public library in regards to social media. You want to make sure that any students you use in your videos of your photo have permission to be photographed. And then you want to make sure what you're doing, I always think before I post, if my principal sees this would they be okay with it? And thats kind of what I always kind of just keep in my head as just a check for myself. I am gonna suggest branding your account. One it makes it easier to follow across all platforms. And two, if there is something that you feel like you want to speak out about in regards to potential maybe book banning or censorship or things that are happening in the library world right now, that you're protected and not associated with your particular campus. Again just do want to follow that whatever your
Social media guides are for your district. So Be Real is one that I used pretty frequently. My kids last year were obsessed with it. And a lot of kids follow me on it and thats totally fine because believe me nine times our of ten my Be Real is going to look like this example right here. Where I am just sitting on my couch in my living room working or reading. So not very interesting but again the reason I really got involved with social media big time during the pandemic was because if my students were going to be on apps like TikTok and Instagram and other big Snapshot then I wanted to have a conversation in that too. I wanted to be part of their conversation. When they are scrolling they need to see my face. So I know Melanie was like maybe don't show your face a lot because they'll get tired of it. But again, my audience are my students. I want them to recognize me and be like wwait, that's my librarian. You know and like what is she saying? And I dont care if the call me cringe, honest I could care less if they are calling me cringe and they see me in the hall
When they see my account and see what I'm doing it create that conversation with the two of us when they come in. "Hey, I saw you recommend this book. Do we have it in our library?" Why yes we do. So it's great to kind of create a like relationship between me and students without having to actually go talk to every single 970 kids I have on my campus. Because I just can't do that. I see them every three weeks in a rotation for reading and there is some that are quiet that I will never have a conversation with. And this kind of breaks that barrier for some of them. The other photo or image that was moving a second ago is a Snapchat. I use my Snapchat account to do six word book talks on. I'll find a filter that matches it. This one I think is In the After and it's about zombies. So I found a zombie filter and I did a quick little six word booktalk. Make a sound then they come. So and then it gets kids interested it gets them talking. I will say most of my students are going to be on Snapchat nine times out of ten.
Next slide thank you. So whenever I talk to people about starting social media for the first time it can be very overwhelming. Like Melanie and KC I do use a lot of apps. Do not start with all of that, that is super overwhelming! I make myself, or I only do a five minute promise. Five minutes a day pick one app that you want to get more familiar with. You can be scrolling during that five minutes. You can maybe film something, some content, keep it in a draft. Post it when you feel more comfortable. Learn what the audience is that you're trying to get. Learn what
You want to feel comfortable with. So many people come up to me like, "I could never show my face on social media." Great, don't! There are plenty of ways to advertise books, advertise literacy, without ever showing your face. I have many librarian friends that are very active on social media and they hat being on camera. so definitely find what fits your personality and then just see as you get better on it if you like that one. You may find that Instagram is not your jam and maybe you want to be more on Facebook or what have you. And then also kind of see where your audience is most of the time. I personally hate Snapchat but I do use it because that's where my students are
So I have no problem spending time on there for that reason. On the left hand side is a my TikTok. It's one that I recently filmed with Kellyl Yang. She and I were both at Librarypalooza in San Antonio two weekendends ago. And she's a good friend so she was like, "Hey, let's film some content." cause she is on. Like if you and do not follow Kelly Yang you are missing out she is everywhere too. So these are just some favorites. I love Instagram on the right. Like how Melanie talked about branding your content. I do at least one book review a day. I read at least one book a day in my life. And that is not a recommendation, I do not recommend that. That is just me. And so I always post on Canva, you gotta love Canva. I also love using Adobe Express both of those are great for creating content that you want to use to push out book recommendations. As you can tell I love doing
One book and I have a background the kind of matches that with my brand at the bottom corner. And then will do with summary of the book as well as what I thought about it the age recommendation things like that. Because my students will be like, "I dont want to read young adult yet. Is this middle grade?" And so I want to make sure if they are seeing these that they see that it is definitely in the age range that they need to be on. If I'm creating content, I started doing tech appetizers on a YouTube which are two to five minute tech tips once a week on a particular app because we're so busy right? So I want to make sure that everyone can see all of the things that I'm creating. Including, I do mood reader boards and I have those on a revolving screen in my library like how KC said. It's a great way for those kids that don't want to come up and ask me for a book recommendation for them to watch the screen and watch the videos go by on our Apple tv. As well as look at the flip books. Melissa Corey created a great template
If you like Dune, read these books. And I just you know, I take it, I see what's popular, and I find recommendations that we have in our library for that. And those are posted everywhere in my library as well as on social media. I'm also a Canvas user on our campus. So I have a Canvas course for the library specifically and I'll push out all of those including all of my Sora ones. So I also have, "If you like the Summer I Turned Pretty, here's a bunch of other titles that you can access in Sora in ebook or audiobook format." So I definitely want to make sure kids have access to that we are one to one ipad district and have been for going on almost fifteen years now. So it's something my students have been familiar with so or an kindergarten. So they are using that they're also using a personal device to access all of these things. So yes KC was one hundred percent right. You have a phone, put the Sora app on it! And they for sure have to Sora app on all of their ipads. It's the first thing we do and we start
Next slide
And then when you are making content. If you end up finding that this is something you like, this is your jam. You're getting a lot of student interest or parent interest, I highly suggest I just use my iphone. I barely even have a tripod or ring light. But I did put that on there if you are considering being all like high tech with it. I always like to have books or the cover at least posted if im doing a book review or a TikTok on something like that. And then again Canva and Adobe Express are great for creating graphics. And like Melanie said Canva has great choices for branding that I highly recommend. I set reminders for or I started setting reminders when I first started this. But now it's so engrained in my daily habit that I don't need a reminder anymore. My students are active on social media
All day but honestly the most that their active is gonna be like your 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM time and so that's definitely something that
That you can consider as finding out when you're
Patrons are the most active and can be available. That's when I want to push out content. So I definitely do that towards that time. I set goals for myself. So like I said I do the one book review a day. That's been hard sometimes. That's why sometimes if I read like three books on a day on Sunday because I didn't have any time, I had all the time of the world, but then Monday and Tuesday I work a ten to twelve hour day
Then I have some in my drafts backed up right. CapCut's great for Tiktok. It puts a section of a video or something like that in your background and it easily switches and does all the editing for you, I love it. And then I share my content on multiple platforms. I used Threads, Blue Sky, X (Twitter), and Snapchat, I'll put it on Instagram. I just kind of push it out everywhere so if they're only on one particular platform they'll see it. I use Twitter and X and Blue Sky for mostly professional. So other librarians like yourselves, if you wanted to get ideas or you wanted a tech tip or something like that, you could grab that content from there if you are not on say Instagram for example. I love to browse because it gives me ideas. I learned so much from these women, KC and Melanie, as well as just all of my people that I follow because everyone has great ideas. So we need to be pushing that out sharing them with the with the world in the community. And then just have fun with it. I always make sure that i'm trying my best to include diverse
On my feed because I do have a lot of adults that follow me but I always put adult read at the top so that no one thinks that I'm recommending adult books to eleven year olds. So wanted to make that very clear. And then just make sure you are being diverse in your reading and that you're reading lots of different genres and lots of different ages. So those are some tips
Tricks that I have. This last slide is pretty self explanitory, I mostly put it in so that y'all can have something to follow. What if you get really good, into it? I will say the algorithm is so important. TikTok it pays attention to the things that you like, the things that the people you follow. So be careful if you are logging in and you are a school library and you're going to represent your school library
Be carefully of the people that you follow. Don't necessarily make that decision from a personal stance. Make it from your school library stance. So if you want to follow the American Librarian Association, great. Then that's the kind of content you're going to see. Follow other educators other librarians. And then just maybe how a separate account for things that you want to follow separately like maybe the NFL or your favorite rapper or whatever. And in that way you won't be seeing all of those things. Same thing with clicking on ads, be careful with that, that's what it's going to show you in between videos or posts when you are scrolling. So just going to be aware that algorithm is paying attention. These apps are getting smarter and smarter to see what it is that you are putting out there and what is also being pushed out there to your audience and beyond
That's basically it for me
Thank you so much that was
So great
Now we have a short section here for live Q&A if anyone has any questions. I did write some down that I've seen in the Q&A. I did see a couple people answer but I would like them to be answered live for everybody else that is not following on the chat. So yeah if you have any questions please lead them in the Q&A section now
But yeah some of the questions that I saw, I think Melanie answered this in the chat but I would like it
From all of you guys. So the question was how often do ya'll post on social. I think Melanie you said that you try to post daily. What about you Amanda and KC
I also post daily. I think like I said I used to set an alert to help you remember because we're all so busy in our lives. This is like adding one extra thing to our plate. But definitely like I said with that five minutes. Think about your, you can look at your insights on Instagram and TikTok to see when you have the heightened activity on your page and that would be a great time to start posting some content just to give you an idea of. What do you think KC
Yeah I'm shaking my head and agreeing. Mmmhmm definitely
I don't set an alarm, it's just that it's just part of, for me, it's part of my morning
Routine and I am posting daily. But I don't post, I'm gonna be a clear, I don't post on every platform
But I'm posting on a platform every day
Can I add something to that too? One thing to think about when your at school, and something I try to do at first it was really overwhelming to think about like I took a picture. Okay I need to post it right now because I just did it and I'm in the moment. But it's okay. I know Amanda kind of talk about this. Like take the picture. You could even start drafting the caption now and then save it for later. Or just, sometimes I just snap random pictures all day long with absolutely no idea of what I'm gonna do with them. But then later I get home, I sit down, I go through my camera role, I delete probably fifty ridiculous things I don't need. And then I find the thing to post. So part of this is really just like getting used a just snapping pictures all day long and then the stuff will kind of come to you. But there's nothing worse than going home and being like, "I don't have anything! I didn't take a picture of anything today." Then that's where you're scrambling to make something fun on Canva to get out there
Cath in the chat just now asked, "Does anyone involve students in content creation?" I think KC you might have mentioned that you do. Do those post regularly, and your guy's opinion do better
Or just the same
How do ya'll feel about that? I think it does a little better because the kids talk about, "Hey I created this and she's gonna post it." Like I haven't done this yet.
But my students made a crazy video today. Like I guess it was they called it a sensory video
Okay and I'm going to post it on my stories. But knowing them they're gonna tell their friend group and they're going to say,
"Watch out, it's gonna post!" And they're going to have, they're just gonna be so thrilled, so yeah. It's nothing for me to give my phone, I have a second phone, to my students and have them go around and take pictures
You know. And I always say just do it from your perspective I want to see your eye
You know
Thats a good point and I, you know, I work in the town that I grew up in. And I went to the school that I currently work at. So I grew up with a lot of my students parents. So for me when I have like, I have library aids, library ambassador, whatever you want to call it. I know their parents and I know that they are fine with me, or which ones are fine and which ones are not so fine. So I am really aware of that way when I use my students. I try it to do it a whole lot but yes those videos do do better because they want to see their peers. They want to see each other talking about the library. Especially if it's like you know something cringy I made them do because in the, or, they offer! They offer. I do not force children to do videos. But if it is kind of silly or cringy they think it's hilarious so
I would just say I did something, I did a Canva project with some of my kids. And then they started, you know, you teach them a skill and then they want to make that project into their favorite rapper. And then their like, "Will you post this?" And I'm like no, that has nothing to do with the library. But what if I give you this book? And what if you make a promo of this book. And they were like, "Well what, would you post it?" And I was like, "Of course I'll post it." So now I have this group of boys who wanted nothing to do with the library coming down. They are my, I told them they were my social media team and we talked about, you know, what it means to be an influencer, and they just think it is the coolest thing. They're running around school. They're actually promoting it now to all my teachers. Like, "Do you follow our library? You should! We just posted a video, it goes live on Tuesday." So if you can get some your older kids to, I have them make content on Canva, send it to me, and post it and again
I feel that's an internship right there, they should add that to their resume
We had somebody else ask if y'all use any anything like HootSuit, Sprout, anything like that that you guys schedule posts ahead of time? Or is it always organically
In the moment
If you find them useful or not really
I'm so unorganized I don't even use any of those things. I wish I could
I dont either, mainly because every single platform requires something different to get the engagement that you want. So like Blue Sky just recently added hashtags and I'm still waiting on Threads to add more than one hashtag. And then the different hashtags I use on TikTok and on Twitter are different. So I just, I just do it all. But the more you do it the faster you get at it. So if you wanted to do that five minute thing it really doesn't take me very long
I will add I stick with just Instagram and Facebook and now that Mark (Zuckerberg) bought Instagram they talk to each other really nicely. So you can connect the two platforms. So I usually do most of my posting on Instagram and then it just automatically connects to my Facebook. Sometimes I have to go back, if like if an author that I tag is only on Instagram and doesn't have a Facebook platform, it doesn't do that pretty blue clickable tag. Which is kind of annoying and I'm a perfectionist so I go back and I undo it on the other platform um
And you can schedule stuff now with Instagram and Facebook so thats kind of nice. Like they have that HootSuit feature kind of built into their own platform. And I know Amanda talked about this, but these apps are evolving so much. Like every day you login and I feel like theres a new future. If you're an iphone user (and I dont know about android, I'm sure they have a similar feature) but something I did is I used the keyboard shortcuts because I always want similar hashtags. So I know I always want #elementarylibrian and I always want #librariansofinstagram I always want like those big hashtags that pretty much go with everything. So I trained my iphone that when I type in three hashtags it automatically fills in like my top ten hashtags so I'm not having to write them out each time. I know that's like a super nerdy skill. But again like you find these quick little time saving things that helps you connect
I think we have time for one more question. Someone in the chat asked if you all recommend following students back on social media. Whether it's like the library or the school library
Social or I'm not too sure about ya'll personals
I do but let me just say, I feel like I need to say, I grew up here. So like some of these kids I've known since they were born. So like for me in that case I will. But yeah I totally understand that fear. You don't want to be scrolling and see something you shouldn't see. So don't feel pressed to follow the kids back. They can follow you and that can be the end of that whole situation right there. So it's definitely personal preference
I agree with Amanda. I allow them to follow me because their parents are following me
And I'll follow the parents back
But not the kids. The other concerns I have is the
The DMs
You know, and sometimes kids can still get around and they can DM you and I ignore it
And I constantly say it, you know. I don't do DMs at all you know because I feel like that that could be
Pretty tricky situation that the liberians can get into. Having a conversation with a kid that's not
You know out
You know and seen by others, you know what I mean. So that's just something that I do and just do not do
I was gonna add to that I don't even
I dont follow the families back, I do follow my teachers because I like to what their doing in the classrooms. But I've had parents, they'll like message me on Facebook like, "Sorry I missed my volunteer shift." And I'm like, "Listen, when I'm at school I don't have time to be like quickly checking DMs and Facebook messages. And once you set up page accounts, they also kind of run a little differently where all those DMs are and their a little more cumbersome to get to sometimes. So if I'm communicating with someone I have trained my community like let's just do it with our school district email just
Because it's easy for me and that's my preference. It's just I don't want to have to feel obligated that I missed somebody's communication in one of the various platforms. So I don't even follow a parents back
I think that's all the time we had for the Q&A portion. I'm sure anyone that's watching us can go follow Amanda, Melanie, and KC on social if you have any more questions. I'm sure that they will open your DMs. Really quickly I just want to talk about the resource center at OverDrive. So our research center has a whole bunch of free resources including marketing and outreach materials so please always check out our resource center. We have even more webinars and trainings just like this one. So there's always how to videos and stuff like that over there. Even some of the graphics for special holidays like St. Patrick's and stuff like that you can grab them from our resource center. If you're just getting started and don't really know how to start with content, we always have some content over there on the resource center. And we also want to mention
Really quickly our school stars contest. So for school starts this year
It is happening right now and it closes on March 29th so all the categories from the screen, so best community engagement, best in social media, visual display, best student submission, and best of Sora in the classroom. So just snap a picture that you think that would quality for any those categories in your classroom and you can enter. So some of the prizes. So we have a grant prize of $2,500 USD in Sora student credit. You can always go to our resource center, check out our blog from last year and see some of the winners from last year. But yeah, reach out to your Account manager to learn or discuss more about your submission. So yeah we hope to see your submissions for school source this year. So you have about a month to enter our school stars for 2024
And that is it thank you all so much
Thank you for joining and Thank you Amanda, Melanie, and KC for all of your wonderful insights. We hope that you all found this session super helpful. Like we said this is recorded so you'll be able to watch this back, most likely on our YouTube channel, and you will be getting an email tomorrow. We would love to hear from you, so there is a post webinar survey. It'll just sick a minute or two to complete so you can follow the link in the chat to complete it now. As a reminder you will receive an email from zoom tomorrow with the link of the recorded session, a pdf the presentation, and a link to the survey if you don't have time today
And that is it. Thank you all so much!