How to Use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at Your School Library

Maintaining student interest in the library can be a challenge as students get older, but by encouraging student engagement and promoting awareness of the books and services available at the school library, the library has the opportunity to greatly enrich their lives. While class presentations and newsletters can work to keep students aware of what’s going on in the library, a far more streamlined and fun option is social media. Social media platforms allow students and the community to view your library’s shared content on or off campus, see highlights of your new promotions and books, and refer to reference and literary information.  In this blog post, I will be highlighting the top 3 most popular social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Facebook has been one of the most popular social media sites for the past decade. At this point, almost everyone in the family has a Facebook account (even grandma!), which, in turn, makes it less appealing for a younger generation. From my experience, Facebook has declined in popularity amongst teenagers over recent years, as they turn to trendier, newer social media platforms. While students may occasionally come across your library’s Facebook account, I would guarantee that your school’s parents, faculty, administration, and community see it much more frequently. With this in mind, the content on your library’s Facebook page should be professional and geared to both students and adults. Facebook is an awesome way to give parents the information they need to feel confident about what’s going on at the campus library and encourage them to get involved in their child’s education. I follow many different school libraries on Facebook to get ideas for my future library, and I, for one, am often struck with information and data I was unaware of. 

For instance, on the Mission High School Library Facebook account, they shared information from a Huffington Post article about the correlation of ACT scores and parents reading to their child. As a parent, this stopped me in my tracks and is always in the back of my head when I am tempted to tell my son I’m too tired to read another book at bedtime. I also saw posts on that same account with advice on how to encourage their children to read during the summer, their popular titles and new books every week, and the literature the faculty recommends. Mission High School is just one example of a campus that is utilizing their Facebook account to enrich their students learning. While the possibilities for engaging educational sharing is on Facebook, there are a few drawbacks. Privacy can be an issue, especially at the elementary level or with students in special populations. It is always important to verify that the photos you post with students in them have parental permission to be published and don’t contain any personal information about students. Another issue that is rampant on social media is online bullying. Comments can be made on a school account that are aimed to bully students, but this is where it is important to familiarize yourself with the security features of Facebook. There are many new features that enable safeguards to protect against bullying, like an account administrator filtering any words of their choosing so they can screen the comments first. While there are some issues to be cautious with, the benefits of connecting with the community and students greatly outweigh any drawbacks.

My personal favorite social media platform is Instagram, which has been rapidly growing in popularity. On Instagram, users post photos, which create a collage on their pages. The photos on there are of anything you can image, and I am often in awe of the beautiful and interesting images I see. This is my favorite social media platform because I find it to be the most positive and calming site. To me, this site is all about capturing beauty, inspiring others, and creating happiness. School libraries are joining in on the fun and creating truly wonderful Instagram accounts. I am constantly seeing artful book covers, powerful quotes on the importance of reading, fun battle of the books’ brackets, engaging bulletin board displays, and charming book fairs. Seeing these images get me excited to visit the library, and it will have the same effect on students. Posting fun, engaging photos of your library will inspires student to visit it more often. Another fun feature Instagram as added are stories and story highlights. Stories serve as a way to post content for 24 hours on your page. I really love story highlights because you can save any content you see on Instagram and categorize them, like bulletin board and new releases. See the image below to get an idea of how a page is structured. 

Visit my Instagram page (JackieChirinos930) to see examples of how to utilize this site in your library. 

Another useful social media site is Twitter, where people communicate in short messages, or tweets. These tweets are sometimes considered microblogging. Twitter is a great place to learn from and engage with a wide array of people, such as authors, teachers, publishers, literary organizations, and librarians. My favorite thing about this site is how you have you access to the thoughts and insights of experts in any field or interest you can think of. Tweet topics can range from current events, to opinions on issues, and to musing and random thoughts. While Twitter can be an incredible source for your interest, it can feel overwhelming at times, as the more people you follow, the more information there is to see. It can also feel confusing with the more links and images added to a tweet, where to click or read more about the topic you are reading about. While it can take time to adjust to the Twitter format, there is so much potential on this site to learn from experts in the library field and for outreach and marketing opportunities for your library. I follow so many librarians at all levels of education and I am constantly seeing the incredible work they are doing. They also frequently post questions about best practices within school libraries and receive practical, real world advice from people who have dealt with the same issues. I also enjoy the books others share and recommend, some with testimonials of how the students enjoyed it. The possibilities for learning on this site are endless! Visit my Twitter @JaclynChirinos to see examples of ways to engage your library’s audience, as well as interesting people in the library world to follow.