Strategic Planning for Social Media in Libraries

Citation

Seddighi, M. (2013), "Strategic Planning for Social Media in Libraries", The Electronic Library, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 257-258. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640471311312447

We know that librarians cannot live in the past, even though some have been guilty of this, but must look to the future and anticipate what another decade may bring, and this is felt even more than before with the relentless emergence of information and communication technologies that are fueling new phenomena including the social media increasingly expected by library clients. Through paying attention to Steiner's declaration (p. ix), namely “while we've clearly made strides in entering the world of social media, we often neglect the planning phase that is so common in our other services and in the business world. We're excited to participate in these new forums, so we leap in, but we make few or no plans to target, maximize, maintain, or assess our efforts”. Because strategic planning has a potential that is not fully appreciated by all those currently working in the information profession, the necessity of publishing the book Strategic Planning for Social Media in Libraries can be understood. It includes nine chapters. Chapter 1, dealing with an overview of social media and of the basics of strategic planning, provides readers with a rationale for using strategic planning in relation to social media‐based services in libraries. The modification of strategic planning compatible with meeting the library community's needs is discussed in chapter 2. Chapter 3, “Planning”, which in fact can be considered as planning to plan strategically, concerns fundamental parts of strategic planning and the setup process. Taking an in‐house approach, chapter 4, “Social mechanics”, puts the emphasis on the importance of joining managers and staff to the programme because their early involvement in and awareness of the intent and content of it helps them to have a sense of buy‐in and ownership. Chapter 5, “Implementation”, shows how strategic planning should be started with a realistic plan considering the end‐audience, SWOT analysis, a social media policy, and internal guidelines for its continuance into the future. Chapter 6, “Marketing”, is a platform for exerting both formal and informal in‐library as well as trans‐library marketing. As a supplementary document, chapter 7, “Best practices”, offers some do's and don'ts deserving to be heard and practised for better implementation of the plan. Highlighting that “your plan is just a plan – it's not carved in stone” (p. 89), the author in chapter 8, “Metrics”, underlines analysing the strategic plan's performance. Finally, chapter 9, “Developing trends”, gives a dynamic look at the strategic plan, taking emerging future directions into consideration. Totally, the present guide has taken a flourishing stride from planning strategically to act strategically. It can be actually regarded as a roadmap reinforced with good figures, case studies, policies, and above all, the knowledge and experience of Steiner as a Social Work and Virtual Services Librarian. Generally, this logically ordered book that tries to highlight the road of theory to practice, bridges one of the gaps existing in the LIS literature from the managerial perspective. It is evaluated as an interesting and easy‐to‐read work.