Rebuilding the library community in a post-Twitter world

I had an amazing experience at the end of last month. I was invited to Dublin to keynote the LIR annual seminar on mine and my wife’s 20th wedding anniversary! We took the tip together, the weather was beautiful, and the conference was great. I learned so much from the other speakers, and everyone who asked questions and shared their own experiences.

It was a hybrid event, with around 100 staff from Irish academic libraries split across in-person and online. The venue was fabulous - the picture in the header of this post is of the view of the Liffey through the window of the room I was speaking in.

I was asked to talk about rebuilding our online communities now that Twitter / X has stopped being an option for so many of us. Although the committee wanted me to touch on this from a library point of view, the main focused they asked for was actually the librarian perspective - where do we, as library staff and info pros, rebuild our networks? It’s a great topic, and here are my slides (slightly amended from the event, to work better without me talking over the top).

Below is not a transcript of my talk by any means, just a few notes on the key themes.

Part 1: The State of X

It gives me no pleasure to be spending so much time hauling Twitter over the coals, because the site has been a hugely positive influence on my my life. I joined after the New Professionals Conference way back in 2012 and suddenly I became plugged in to this network of progressive, interesting library people - I absolutely relished being able to be part of that wider conversation. It gave me incredible opportunities (the original catalyst for my keynote at the LIANZA Conference in New Zealand was a tweet from the LIANZA account about how bad the fonts were on the Library Marketing Toolkit website!), helped me get jobs, introduced me to friends, and allowed me launch a freelance career.

More importantly than any of that though, Twitter was the place that enabled me to view the world through other people’s eyes. As a cis-het white male (and you can now add middle-aged to that list) it’s vital to get an insight into how other people experience life and the world and libraries and more, or you end up in a boring, uninformed bubble with potentially damaging knock-on effects for those around you. They say you get more and more right-wing as you get older, but I’ve found the exact opposite to be true (and I was pretty left-wing to begin with): my brilliant Twitter network was vital in that.

Twitter was great because we made it great, and now it’s terrible because some terrible people have come along and set up shop there. So I get the ‘why should we have to leave?’ argument. Individuals can make up their own minds but I think from an institutional point of view, being there is a real risk, reputationally. As it says in slide 9, hate speech is up, disinformation is up, transphobia is up, misogyny is up, bots are up - and actual active (human) users are down. Even beyond the ethical arguments against X, it has ceased to function effectively as a communication tool for libraries - the algorithm rewards conflict and suppresses links, and even when you do ‘good’ tweets (like the ones in slide 8) they don’t get any reach. It’s time to go. Which leads us to the question which titles the next part.

Part 2: Where next for academic libraries?

In academic libraries we have various audiences we’re trying to reach, including not limited to undergraduate students, postgrads, researchers and academics, professional services staff, members of the public, the rest of the Higher Education industry. Of those, I firmly believe Instagram has the student side really well covered, especially if you throw in TikTok too. It’s the public and the University staff we find harder to reach now X is no longer viable.

The public remains a really tricky issue, but I believe Bluesky is really beginning to fill the Twitter-vacuum for academics and researchers. It has a relatively low number of total users (around 35 million at the time of writing; updating count here) compared with the giant social networks, but despite that it is has now overtaken X as the place where most new scholarly research is shared. The academic community is moving over there in large numbers, which is really great news for us in libraries.

My argument in the talk is that having somewhere online to follow our academic community to is great, but leading them there is even better. I’ve really proactively tried to help catalyse a shift to the platform for researchers at my own institution, writing several guides to the platform aimed at University staff and creating a University of York Starter Pack for colleagues to easily connect with each other on the new platform, among other things.

Overall I’d advocate for using Bluesky specifically for researcher-facing messages at the moment (I’m not seeing evidence of large numbers of taught students on the platform) and letting Instagram take care of your student-facing comms. It’s working really well for us, and we now have a larger and more active network for the Uni of York library on Bluesky than we ever did on Twitter, after only a few months.

Part 3: Reconnecting as Information Professionals

No one is obliged to be in an online professional network, of course. There are people who are entirely off social media and benefiting from that choice. If you do want that connection with the wider profession though, with what do we replace Twitter?

The answer depends on what specifically we need from our network. Before we ask where shall we go, we need to ask what we want to DO when we get there. I asked the audience to talk to each other about the various options on slide 31, as well as adding their own…

I’ve been forced to revise my view that LinkedIn is basically awful, because actually it isn’t - the library and HE professionals part of it has been really helpful to me, especially since I left Twitter a year and a half ago. I’ve also noticed that the total views for posts on there is higher than it is on this website - numbers in the slides - so it’s a good way to disseminate and get feedback on ideas. (Here’s my LinkedIn profile if you’re interested.)

Bluesky has for me killed two (Twitter) bird with one stone - it has become a venue to rebuild my library’s academic network, and my own librarian / info pro network. As always, I’d recommend it: if you’ve not given it a go, check out some of the guidance and maybe dip your toe in.

The key thing is, you can choose whatever platform you like as long as you’re part of the conversations you want to be having. It was really so great to be part of this particular conversation in Dublin, so massive thanks again to LIR for inviting me!

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If you’re interested there’s a video of the full talk here. It’s a recording from Teams so the audio is slightly in and out and the picture is a bit grainy! But I appreciate the LIR committee making this available, thank you.

Where should libraries go now Twitter *HAS* become a wasteland?

Or: Nomadic social media part 2: libraries in the post-Twitter age

Just over a year ago I wrote ‘Where should libraries go if Twitter becomes a wasteland?’ and this is a spiritual successor to that earlier post, a check-in on the current state of play - and also a Part 2 to this article I wrote about Nomadic Social Media for Librarians (as opposed to libraries).

Why is this the post-Twitter age?

There are so many reasons libraries need to think about a strategy for being ex-X, but here are the most important:

1. X might not even survive. Musk has driven away advertisers and lacks the discipline to win them back, so bankruptcy is a realistic possibility

2. There may be a charge for use soon. Even if it’s $1 a year and you can get permission to subscribe, do you really want your library to financially support a place where hate speech, harassment, extremist content and misinformation are all spiking and the CEO is now actively promoting horrific toxic accounts and white supremacists?

3. A senior manager at another institution mentioned to me recently that it will soon cause too much reputational harm to be associated with X to justify the potential comms benefits of being there. But that takes up neatly on to…

4. It just doesn’t work anymore. Some niche areas of Twitter are managing to plough on, but in general it’s broken. Engagement is way down. It’s a haven for the worst people, and huge numbers of library-audience-type-people have left - so replies, ReTweets, just plain views for tweets are all tiny compared to what they once were. Twitter Analytics doesn’t work. The hateful conduct policy has been adjusted to, in essence, allow more hateful conduct. Musk has changed the algorithm so suppress links to news sites or posts that mention things he doesn’t like (I saw a tweet from an account with 58,000 followers which had fewer than 1,000 views, because it was about Bluesky) - so you can be a Twitter marketing genius and STILL not reach your own users with relevant content

All in all, at the very least you need a plan for what to do after Twitter. My own library is still there for now, but the second the subscription charge comes in we’re absolutely gone, if not before. The question is, where do we go, and what is the strategy?

What should libraries do next?

There’s no universal answer to this because it varies by sector.

University and College Libraries need to focus on Instagram

Instagram is absolutely crucial in HE, and not just to libraries. All professional services and departments need to get on there because it’s the only place almost every single undergraduate is on. Almost none of them are on Facebook, hardly any are on X, if they’re on LinkedIn they’re not there to interact with the library, and even email (the one channel literally every UG should be reachable on in theory) is largely ignored unless it is super-specific and very targeted.

I wrote a thing on Instagram for the Times Higher recently which goes into all the details about why Instagram is so important, lays out out some statistics, and gives some advice on how to use it well. Rather than recreating it here, for those working in FE and HE take a look and let me know what you think.

click the image to go to the article, which is free to read

Why not TikTok? Well it’s is not a universal thing for the University demographic (but almost is for the age group below), although it is a Big Deal so if you can spare the time and resources to do TikTok well, by all means get on there. But my advice would be to prioritise Instagram first of all, for its wider appeal and simpler methods for getting key messages to users.

Public Libraries need to up their Instagram game whilst not neglecting Facebook

For all Facebook’s problems (across all demographics except 55+ people are leaving FB, but so many 55+ are on there it is still the biggest social network - and daily use is consistently falling whilst leaping ever upwards on Instagram and TikTok) it remains a really useful tool for Public Libraries. It can act almost as a branch online, and Cape May County Library in the US and Hampshire Library Service in the UK are good examples of places doing that well.

There is a BIG amount of book chat on Threads, so this may be a conversation public libraries can tap into.

However, I think Instagram is the coming platform for this sector - and at the moment some libraries aren’t allowed it or are under a lot of restrictions as to how they can use it. Eventually this will change! So be ready when you’re given the green-light.

Here are some previous posts you may find helpful:

• Making the case for Instagram at your library: 10 reasons to set up a profile

• My own library’s Instagram guidelines

• (the most read Insta article on this site) A beginner’s guide to Instagram Reels, Stories & the Grid: what to post where

School Libraries probably need to focus on TikTok, but it’s not that simple

TikTok is, by far, the most popular platform among teens. If you’re a school library looking to appeal to students in your school, then here’s a good example of a normal, successful TikTok school library account in Medford.

If you’d like an example of what can happen a school library TikTok account really takes off, look no further than GVHSlibrary. They have over a million Likes so far, Nicki Minaj has commended their vibes in a comment, and Kelsey Bogan, the librarian in question, is just generally smashing it.

I love this post: it’s about ditching Dewey (yesss! In your face Dewey you massive racist) and seeing circulation climb by 600%, and it has been viewed over 1 million times! I mean, come on.

@gvhslibrary Getting rid of the old ways & embracing the new is resulting in more #students using the #library = #win #librariansoftiktok #librarytiktok #progress ♬ Walter White Rap - Mr Cool

If you’re interested in finding out more about Miss B’s approach, here’s a good article she wrote.

So why the ‘but it’s not that simple’ in the section header? Well, not all school library social media is aimed at the students. If your target audience is the parents, then things are lot more complicated - Twitter would have been good but isn’t any longer, which really leaves Facebook as a the primary method of reaching that audience. Not great, but worth doing for now if parent-engagement is part of your strategy. (The previously mentioned book-chat on Threads means it may be useful for school libraries in the future too.)

Special Libraries - Pharma, Health, Law etc - may need to spend more time on LinkedIn

The smaller and more specific your audience, the more useful LinkedIn is. If your library service can connect with every solicitor in your law firm, you’ll get useful intelligence that will prompt useful interaction.

As you’ll have guessed by now I’m pretty sure most libraries can benefit from a focus on Instagram, but that isn’t a universal truth. I’m not sure a Pharma or Law library will have much joy there. Health Libraries have more potential as there is a huge amount of use among healthcare professionals on the platform (specifically including while they’re at work, which is of course the ideal time to hit them with useful info!) but I’ve not yet seen a health library account totally cleaning up on Intagram - that’s not to say there isn’t one though! If you spot one, let me know.

What about Twitter / X alternatives like Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, Discord and Spill?

None of these appear to be a good place for library accounts at the current time. I know of a handful of libraries and archives now on Bluesky, and I hope they make a go of it, but there’s not exactly a flood of case studies for the rest of us to learn from. (The Bodleian are also there and doing brilliantly as always, but both they and the British Library have such immense cultural capital I’m always wary of taking their success as a true indication that the rest of will also succeed somewhere…) I’ve created a Bluesky list of libraries and archives on the platform, for those already there, which I’ll keep adding to as we go along, so the rest of us can see how the early adopters are doing and adapt accordingly!

If you’ve read Part 1 of this post you’ll know I’m all in on Bluesky as the long term Twitter replacement for us as librarians, but I’m yet to see enough a movement from our target audience towards the platform to think it is ready for the organisational / institutional side of things.

I don’t know of any libraries currently making Mastodon work well (again, please let me know if I’m wrong! I’d love examples of orgs rocking Mastodon) and the somewhat chaotic effect of the multi-server the platform has means you could end up putting in a LOT of work and really only reaching your peers, not your target audience.

Discord was talked about a lot when Twitter first started going downhill, but it longer really gets mentioned as a viable alternative. It consists of several smaller, focused networks rather than one big one, so is unlikely to be suitable for a library’s needs.

Threads is an interesting one… In Part 1 I discussed the issues with it (very small active user group, not available in the EU [EDIT: since I wrote this post, Threads has become available in the EU after all]) but there are libraries making it work, for sure. Check out LMUlibrary for a great example. A real problem with it is once you’ve enabled your Threads account, it cannot be deleted unless you also fully delete your Instagram. So if you decide to give Threads a try and it doesn’t really work out, your threads account will be other there more or less forever, representing your library even though it’s not being actively used.

As part of a pilot at University of York my own library is on Threads, and we have a relatively health number of followers. Our posts get some engagement but I’m not convinced we’re nudging the needle on behaviour - fundamentally I put time into library social media because I want our users to actually DO something because of it. At the moment Threads feels very much like a classroom with no teachers - all the social media admins for brands and orgs are having a great time and producing some genuinely funny content, because no one is checking on them… I sort of enjoy this, but I also don’t want to sink any time into it because whilst I could try and make @UoYLibrary a fun Threads account that people generally like, that wouldn’t actually help me further the library’s strategic aims. That is the bottom line, and why we’re on social media at all.

Spill is an interesting site that may become a viable Twitter alternative in time, launched last year by former Twitter employees and specifically aimed at creating safety for diverse communities. You can read more about it here - at the moment it’s still in Beta and there’s a waiting list to join, so it’s hard to assess in greater detail, but I’d love this one to take off.

Have I forgotten anything important? let me know below

I always encourage comments but have recently realised my Comments box wasn’t displaying properly so no one could leave any… A short CSS code-injection later and that should now be fixed - so if I’ve left out a key issue or a key platform, I’d love to hear your perspective!

Making the case for Instagram at your Library: 10 reasons to set up a profile

Part 3 of the Instagram mini series (here’s the introductory part one, we’ll reference part two a little further down the page).

This is not a post about how to use Instagram well: this is a post about how to make the case to use Instagram in the first place. When I run workshops there are very often organisations represented that simply won’t yet allow the (enthusiastic, knowledgeable, social-media savvy!) attendees to set up a Library Instagram account… Sometimes there are librarians who are allowed to create the account but a little bit nervous about not being expert photographers, and we’ll talk about that as well.

The subtitle of this post is ‘10 reasons to set up a profile’ and rather than being the reasons I’d personally choose, these are meant to be reasons to give to senior managers who are not convinced setting up a library account is the way to go.

So here’s the scenario: you ask to set up an Instagram account for the Library, and the decision-makers say no. Or they say: maybe, but show us why. Below are ten potential replies, some or all of which you can try working into the conversation.

1. Rival ORG X do it…

Without wishing to be too Machiavellian about it, pointing to the success of a comparable institution who already use Insta can be useful. Not necessarily to provoke a sense of competition or jealousy, but more to say ‘it can be done by an organisation like us, and here is the proof’. (I don’t actually think libraries are ever really rivals!) It’s reassuring to have an example of success to look to, and evidence that there are gains to be had that make it worth the time it takes.

In particular, it’s worth pointing people towards specific posts, not just the URL of the comparable account itself. So you can say ‘this is how X tackled the issue of covid-etiquette in the library, and here’s the response they got’ for example, or ‘here is how Y promote their Special Collections’ - build your case with specific examples that speak to the strategy / priorities of the managers. And talking of successful examples, this leads us on to the next argument…

2. We can learn from your main account!

This won’t be the case every time, but a lot of libraries have ‘parent’ organisations which will already have a profile on Instagram. So for example your local authority for public libraries, or your University for academic libraries. In itself this is a useful precedent to cite, but it’s also genuinely useful as a way to quickly understand what your community responds to.

Generic advice on what to post can be really useful, but nothing beats taking an approach based on the evidence of what your specific audience likes - the parent org’s Insta will show you. If you work at a University you can say, as part of your proposal for a library account, ‘we already know what our students respond to most - they like video content that gives them clear instructions on how to use services’ or whatever it is you deduce from the relative popularity of the Uni Instagram’s posts.

A screenshot of a hovered-over Insta post

The actual mechanics of finding out what your audience already likes are these: go to the parent org’s Insta account on a PC (or Mac) rather than a phone / tablet, and hover over their most recent 15 or so posts in turn, noting the number of Likes and Comments for each (as show here). Some will be way higher than the average, and some will be way lower - you don’t need to be a social media analytics guru to spot trends and see what content types engage the audience most. Even for well established accounts this is an invaluable technique and I’d recommend it to everyone.

3. You didn’t let us do FB and Twitter either - but now you do

I’m sure there are exceptions but it seems like almost all libraries go through the same journey. In the 2000s they asked to set up Facebook accounts and were told no; eventually FB became so prevalent the powers that be changed their minds.

Leading up to and moving into the 2010s, everyone asked to set up Twitter accounts - no, they were told; stick with FB. Then eventually, Twitter became so prevalent the powers that be changed their minds.

And now in the 2020s it’s happening with Insta (and may well happen with TikTok also) - the same process, whilst risk-averse management get comfortable with the idea that Instagram is a) legit and b) here to stay (more on which later). So there may be some mileage in saying ‘history shows we WILL eventually get onto this platform so why not start earlier, gaining more experience along the way and reaping the benefits sooner?’

4. Instagram is the most engaged with social media platform

We covered this in detail in the previous post, part 2 of this series. The short version is the amount of people who DO something in response to Instagram posts (as opposed to people who passively consume a post but don’t press the Like button, or comment / reply, or reshare, or any other kind of interaction) is much greater that the amount of people who do something in response to Twitter and FB posts. Not only that, but libraries are part of the most engaged-with industries on Insta. So when you post, people react: that’s more important than, for example, sheer numbers of followers. It’s the first step to converting this into ‘off-site’ actions, like using resources, visiting buildings, or signing up for classes etc.

5. Instagram is here to stay

I personally wondered if Insta, with its meteoric rise, might burn brightly for a while and then fade. I was completely wrong. It is growing all the time in terms of sheer number of active users, and is predicted to continue to expand as this graph from Statista shows:

It’s also worth noting that the time spent on Insta each day by its users is also increasing according to TechJury, from 15 minutes per day at the start of 2019, to 30 minutes per day by midway through 2020.

All in all, then, Instagram seems extremely likely NOT to be one of those platforms where you invest a load of time and then see it all go to waste when the public moves on (like Snapchat was, for example).

6. Instagram is full of the younger demographic which is key to libraries

31% of Instagram users are aged 18-24, versus 17% for Twitter and 11% for FB - and in total over 70% on Instagram are 34 or under. There are a few library sectors not interesting in trying to get younger audiences to use their services, but not many: for academic libraries Insta is THE platform our students are all on, and for public libraries it’s populated by that key generation of potential library users who are younger than the overall average, but no longer children… Getting them to become life-long library users from the start of adulthood is a great goal, and Instagram can help with that.

7. You absolutely do not need to be a brilliant photographer or own a better camera than the one on your phone, to use Instagram successfully

For me Instagram has just the right amount of photo-manipulatability… Of course there are apps which allow you to do way more, but I don’t want EVERY option for editing; I just want some really useful ones. The combination of basic editing and flattering filters mean you can make the images you post on Insta look brilliant, even if you’re using a normal smartphone and don’t have a background in photography.

More importantly though, it is the subject of the image which matters most on Instagram, not the quality of the photograph. A brilliant picture of something prosaic will not get much engagement; a regular picture of something visually arresting will get Likes and Comments. (Obviously a brilliant photo of something really exciting is the best of both worlds, but the point is regular members of library staff can achieve success here without photography lessons and specialist equipment…)

8. You can now post from the desktop so staff don’t need a work account on their personal devices

Instagram was launched in October 2010. From then until the end of October 2021, you could not post on Instagram from a desktop: you had to use the app, unless you knew the hack.

That’s 11 long years for the idea to take hold that you need Instagram on your phone, and a lot of people don’t realise this is no longer the case (myself included until my colleague Megan told me about this the other day!). I’m delighted about this because I think some people, quite rightly, felt uncomfortable about having a work app on a personal device, so using Instagram instantly became something of a compromise, blurring those home-life / work-life boundaries. This is no longer the case: you can use it from instagram.com on your desktop, and keep those two worlds completely separate - potentially widening the pool of staff who feel happy to get involved with providing content for a library account.

9. IN THE CULTURAL SECTOR, INSTAGRAM USE IS HIGH

This means that there are LOADS of other libraries already there which we can learn from, and not only that but loads of museums, galleries, archives and other cultural sector organisations too. So many examples out there means it’s easier to find a model to suit the one your library would like to adopt, and means there are constant opportunities to learn, to develop new ideas, and potentially to develop partnerships too.

10. Last but definitely not least: we can improve the reputation of the library with Instagram

Instagram isn’t a hard marketing platform. (That’s part of what makes it fun to use.) What it does is keep the library in the mind of the user, showcase nice library locations, raise awareness of services and collections, and break down some barriers as to how people think about libraries in general. When used well, Insta will have a positive impact on the way your library is perceived, and help you deliver key messages. That’s argument enough for me on its own, but it’s not enough for everyone then there are nine other reasons to try above…

Good luck!