Cresting the waves: promoting the role of the teacher librarian

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Cresting the waves promoting the role of the
teacher librarian

• Janine Schmidt
• University Librarian,
• University of Queensland

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Overview

• The art of promotion
• Why do it?
• Who does it? YOU!
• With whom? Well, almost everyone.
• When? Start NOW!
• Where? HERE and everywhere!
• How? Tips and tricks

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Promotion defined

• Activity, especially in advertising, designed to
  increase public awareness of, and hence the sales
  of, a product

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When I think of promoting, I think of
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• Selling yourself, products or services
  Schmoozing, Sucking up
• Communicating, Collaborating, Consorting
• Doing breakfast, coffee, lunch, cocktails, wining
  and dining
• Brown-nosing, hob knobbing, fraternizing
• Working a room
• Making friends - in the right places
• Marketing (relationship), Manipulation?

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Relationship marketing

• Mutual interest
• Longer term
• Emphasises satisfaction
• Interplay
• client
• internal, external
• supplier
• referral
• recruitment
• intermediaries with influence

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Why promote yourself?

• Communicate what you do
• Stay in step with your clients and understand
  their needs
• Discover new opportunities and gain new ideas
• Understand the organisation of which you are part
  
• Deal with your personal and organisational
  vulnerability
• To succeed and to survive!

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Vulnerability

• Cost pressures
• Value for money
• Physical use dropping?
• Political pressures
• Competition from other external/internal
  providers
• Googleisation

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Why promote yourself?

• You are not an island - build new relationships
  and friendships and nurture existing ones
• Increase your knowledge, expertise and skills
• Be in the inner circle
• Find out what is going on
• Get a job, get ahead, gain promotion
• Get things done, achieve your goals

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Why promote yourself?

• Connect and refer others
• People dont always know what a good job you have
  done unless you (or someone else) tells them
• Build morale your own and your staffs
• Increase understanding and use of your products,
  skills and services
• Gain new clients
• Carry out market research

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Who? Yes YOU!

• Know yourself first and feel comfortable with
  yourself
• Brought up to be nice, non-intrusive, passive,
  blend in with the wall
• Taught to be fearful? Fear rejection, being
  thought aggressive, not good enough?
• Taught to be influential rather than powerful?
• So youre shy? get over it!
• People who sit and wait end up sitting
• and waiting

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Good promoters are made not born!

• There are skills that can be learned
• Practice makes perfect
• Watch how others do it and imitate
• Maintain the networks you create
• Take a course on selling, advertising
• Read a book on the topic
• Look the part gestures are important
• BUT it is really all in the MIND

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Looking the part
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Making an impression ?
Perception is everything!
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School Personalities
The Canteen Supporter
The Little Gossip
The Super Intelligent
The Expert
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To whom?

• Principal, support staff, careers adviser,
  teachers
• Students
• Parents
• Suppliers, booksellers, former students?
• People who matter and people who dont
• Targeted individuals
• Use the OBN (Old Boys Network) and develop the
  OGN (Old Girls Network)

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Remember

• You need others more than they need you
• If you neglect others, they will neglect you
• Some people are just like you others are not
  understand them
• Be positive, not negative
• Adapt your style and approach
• If at first you dont succeed, dont give up
  try, try and try again practice makes perfect

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How?

• Be interested in others genuinely
• Assess yourself and your services first
  honestly and change yourself and your services
  if you need to
• Listen closely and observe You have two eyes,
  two ears and one mouth use them accordingly
• Enjoy people, particularly young people
• Ask questions, find out what people think
• Do your research and let people know you have
  done it
• Act like a host not a guest
• Take risks

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How?

• Form advisory committees staff and students
• Involve clients in recruitment, collection
  development, planning
• Work upwards and sideways as well as downwards
• Choose your timing
• Plan ahead if you have key points to make and
  then make them
• Communicate clearly Badging and branding

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Badging and branding

• Retail store identities
• Colour
• Black houndstooth David Jones
• Green and yellow BP
• Macdonalds universal
• Signage
• Letterhead, publications etc.
• Naming (Library becomes the Cybrary)
• Badge databases and e-products as being delivered
  by you

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Signage
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Badging and branding

• Name badges for staff
• Uniforms
• Unique selling proposition
• Publications same look and feel
• Website

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Unique selling proposition

• Oh what a feeling
• Toyota
• The fresh food people
• Woolworths
• Mystore
• Myer
• Australias first bank
• Westpac
• We link people with information
• UQ Cybrary

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And the website?

• Website is key marketing tool
• Target key clients
• Analyse use of website
• Analyse telephone enquiries
• Respond to suggestion box themes
• Task-oriented, crisis-driven
• Speedy access, instant comprehension of link
  words, clarity, conciseness, standard layout,
  minimal graphics

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How?

• Join people for coffee, lunch or drinks after
  work
• Wear a name tag, always carry business cards
• Get others to help
• Be persuasive connect, convince, create
  credibility, common ground, be dramatic, build
  teams, stand tall, speak up
• Store up bits of information to communicate
• Be open and flexiblebut not wishy washy

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How?

• Get yourself known and talked about
• Publicise your successes and results
• Present conference papers, write articles
• Participate actively in conferences
• Get on to the planning committees for conferences
  and seminars
• Think of others first

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How?

• Provide incentives (ice-creams?)
• Provide tours
• Use students as guides and mentors
• Produce memorabilia
• Library bags
• Bookmarks
• Biros
• Lollies
• Set up a Friends group

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How?

• Use school newspaper, local newspaper,
  advertising/advertorial/brag develop key
  messages and stories
• Respond to all complaints/suggestions promptly
• Pinch good (commercial) ideas
• Maintain regular contact with key clients
• Hold events/displays/launches/expos
• Fine notices? Date due slips?
• Name badges/uniforms

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Source of ideas

• http//www.ala.org/ala/pio/campaign/schoollibrary/
  schoollibrary.htm

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Where to promote?

• Get out of the library
• Anywhere social occasions, sporting activities
• Parents nights
• Where people eat or drinkWithin your library?

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Tips and tricks

• Be honest, be yourself!
• Make eye contact
• Have a good handshake
• Leave your comfort zone
• Lose your fear
• Push your boundaries even if just a little!
• Get involved!
• Adopt a "make it happen" attitude
• Have fun!
• Smile!

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Yet more tips

• Phone, write letters, particularly thank you
  notes
• E-mail?
• Be part but remain apart
• Be prepared
• Follow up
• Respect cultural differences

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Absolute no nos!

• Dont lie
• Dont over-promise and under-deliver
• Dont use people
• Dont say one thing and do another
• Dont apologise unnecessarily but admit it when
  you stuff up
• Dont be silent
• Dont be insincere
• Dont expect overnight success
• Dont make excuses

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Learn from others

• Watch politicians communicate
• Line of the day
• Stick to the message and say it often
• Use media techniques
• Pause, ask questions, show concern
• Emulate those whose success you admire

Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald
behind. Bulgarian Proverb
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Case Studies prepare promotional strategies for

• The arrival of a new history teacher at the
  school
• A group of students looking for material for an
  assignment on the Australian goldfields
• The beginning of the school year
• The Olympic Games in 2004

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Thank you for listeningand beginning the
promotional journey