Future-Proofing Libraries: Storytelling

Opening Keynote: The Story of Telling: Future Proofing Libraries

Brendan Howley - Cheif Strategy Officer, AnalytUX (ALA's Fit Libraries are Future Proofing)

The presentation opened the following questions to consider:

“Who the community is…”

“What the community needs from us”

“Excavate the community’s stories”

These questions are essential in establishing an organization’s social media brand and connection to the community through storytelling.

HOW WE SHARE STORIES TELL US WHO WE ARE

The notion that shareable stories have the ability to go viral through inciting action is a virtuous circle  (of interacting with the stories) that propels recursiveness.

A STORY’S SHARE-ABILITY

1. Relevancy: Why should I (the user/patron) care?
2. Currency: Why is this story important to me now?
3. Intensity: Does this story about your library (programming, service, etc.) have legs?

Why do these three things matter?

BECAUSE...

The results showed the average human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000, or around the time the mobile revolution began, to eight seconds.Goldfish, meanwhile, are believed to have an attention span of nine seconds.

- The Telegraph 

WHEN YOU ARE STORY-MAKING

Start with:

1. What?
2. So What?
3. Now What?

These questions need to be addressed or at least considered during the creation of stories and:

1. Best stories are not ONE-OFF
2. Best stories are organic, interconnect, and non-linear
3. The stories are not about YOU. They are about your community and patrons ( so do we have to portray the information differently? Instead of “Join Us” - It “Enrich yourself” “Celebrate with your family”)
4. Complex narratives that interweave overtime (i.e like a series perhaps like LIVE & LEARN or SRP)
5. Complex narrative do not need to be overtime or long (i.e. they can be a 47 second car commercial)

WHY DRIVE STORY SHARING

Simple: If it is answers a or the “why.”

THE WINS

• Create a clear, powerful DIGITAL brand for libraries
• Tell the story of your library “totally cool and relevant cultural destination”
• Increase rate of borrower/cardholder and foot traffic for programs
• Drive earned media coverage to uncover your library’s “hidden reputation”
• ID key influencers (topics, trends, ideas, etc.)  for future library programming
• Process interactivity/media/target audience behaviors for on going deployment in successor initiative (done it once - do it again)
• Establish the library experientially rich for all coming

EVERY STORY WE CARE ABOUT IS ABOUT TRANSFORMATION

CHANGE PROPELLED BY COURAGE

STORYTELLING or CONTENT MARKETING

• People don’t buy the advertising spin anymore.
• They don’t care about you but only themselves.
• EMPATHY is the goal (advocate for your community).
• Change the world. People will support your brand in droves.
• Tell stories from an unique POV (community) not as if you are convincing or persuading.
• Publish consistently - don’t miss deadlines (don’t become a DEAD platform).
• People will stop reading.
• Go with the flow
• Go with good content far more consistently  than perfect content on Friday.
• Community relevancy and content  - timing is everything  (like - right now would be good)
• Audiences want to love you..give them the reason.
• Think snack-size. Think what folks will see on their phones.
• Prune and simplify. Rinse/Repeat
• Clearly ID brand champion(s) -  someone who own the success of your library’s brand  (this is critical Howley stated)

RECURSIVE AGILE PHASE

• Fail as fast you can and figure out what your audience likes and dislike.
• This inspires creativity through coherence - we have given permission to fail.
• TEST>FAIL>REASSEMBLE>RETEST
• Turn the process inside out and being able to induce our audience to “Co-Create Media” or “User-Generated Media” with the library (i.e. comment, share, like, etc.).
• This further propels the community oriented stories

OUTLOOKS & OUTCOMES

• Personalized library brand tailored to target audience
• Create clear and powerful digital brand
• Brand communication
• Improves patrons interaction with library through digital presence
• Look beyond the web, it is about every expectation a user has.
• Measuring UX is the best future-proofing

TAKEAWAYS

There is NO MAGIC STORYTELLING FORMULA TO WIN THE HUMAN HEART. There are concerns that posting information or stories on different social media platforms will be missed out on or even overlooked. Howley assured us that (with a daughter working at Facebook) that while the younger demographic is dropping a bit - "good content that speaks to people" will be found:

IF THE CONTENT IS GOOD ENOUGH, THEY WILL FIND YOU…

In other words...

This keynote presentation was very exciting and was great way for me to start my heavily UX session day. I felt that the ideas presented will be a catalyst for improvement on the social media fronts becoming more of storytelling avenues about the community and not all about "us." It will be interesting to see how we can integrate this style of future-proofing at our organization.