Library staff members air their views on their social media use

The Department of Library Services’ (DLS) Marketing office ran a social media survey amongst library staff members during 30 September to 18 October 2021.

Social media are web-based online tools that enable people to discover and learn information, share new ideas and interact with people across the world. The Department of Library Services uses the following four social media channels to promote their services and resources, share library news/events and motivate students to succeed in their studies:

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Instagram
4. YouTube

The goals of the survey was to:

• better understand whether DLS staff members were making use of social media sites to keep informed;
• find out whether DLS staff members were interacting with the library social media sites;
• hear how they would improve the social media sites;
• find out whether any of them needed training in using social media sites.

A total of 74 staff members responded out of a total of 135 permanent staff members, resulting in a 54% response rate. Every library unit was represented with the most responses (51.4%) from the faculty librarians. 71 DLS staff members indicated that they had a social media profile, with only 3 who indicated that they didn’t. Two of the three indicated that they didn’t want a digital footprint and 1 indicated that he/she didn’t trust social media.

The preferred social media channels by DLS staff members are Facebook (80.3%), followed by YouTube and LinkedIn (45.1% each), Instagram (39.4%) and Twitter (36.6%). 63 or 88.7% of the staff members indicated that they followed the above-mentioned DLS social media channels. The eight staff members who didn’t follow the DLS social media channels specified that the reason why they didn’t follow the library channels were that they either preferred to follow friends or something that interests them or they were inactive, didn’t like social media and only logged in once in a while. Few staff members followed other library social media channels, but names that were mentioned were the New York Public Library, University of Cape Town Libraries, Internet Archive, British library and Open Culture.

When asked which DLS social media channels library staff members prefer to follow, most preferred the DLS Facebook page (55), followed by YouTube (21), Instagram (20) and Twitter (20). On the whole, the content posted on the channels were found interesting with 22 who indicated they loved them all, followed by #UseYourLibrary (21), #UPResearch (20), #ResearchTipoftheWeek (18) and #MondayMotivations (17), but all the content were represented with votes. However, 29 or 46% of library staff members do not engage with the DLS content by linking, sharing or commenting.

The Marketing team was encouraged by all the positive comments:

“The library’s social media is vibrant and enjoyable”

“I think the Library's social media channels are dynamic and nice to follow. I think that the Social Media team does their best and that sometimes it can be difficult to encourage engagement on social media platforms because one can never account for the human element behind engagement with online content.”

“I think you are doing very well. Continue in this fashion!”

Rest assured that all the comments and suggestions were read and where possible, the team will try to implement them.

Lastly, 9 staff members indicated that they would love some social media training, especially on the topic of how to use these channels effectively. The Marketing team is planning to run a number of short courses next year.

Thanks again to everyone who has participated and for sharing new and innovative ideas.