Bloggers! Be aware of this new (?) comment-spam technique...

I get a lot of spam comments on this blog - Askimet protects me from around 2000 a month. (The most recent was from 'Luxury Car Makers' who attempted to leave a comment on a post I wrote ages ago entitled 'Why the BL e-books announcement is really important' and which consisted just of 'I hate Lady Gaga'. #fail) But a new one on me has just occurred, twice in two days, so here's a warning in case they try it on you.

The comment consists of effusive praise, stuff about how well written the post is and how astute it was etc, written in decent English. There are no links in the comment at all and - this is where it differs to previous spam I've had - no link attached the name, either. Most spam comments either try and get you to go to websites by clicking on a link within their comment or by clicking on their name - in the same way that if I commented on your blog, your readers would be able to click 'thewikiman' next to my comment and get back to this site. So these new comments have no such link - hence Askimet not flagging them as Spam, and them making their way through to my comment approval queue.

On this blog, if you've commented before (and enter your details the same way again) your comment is automatically approved, but if you're a first-time commenter I have to approve it. So the only agenda I can think of for this new type of spam is to flatter the user into approving the first one, and THEN commenting about a gazillion more times with proper spam, full of links to dodge stuff, before the blog author can do anything to screen them.

So, just a quick warning in case it happens to you - make sure you don't approve that first flattering comment!

- thewikiman

Marketing libraries in a web 2 world

Marketing academic libraries in a web 2 world

View more presentations from Ned Potter

Above is an edited version of a presentation I gave at Oxford Social Media 2011 yesterday. It's primarily about marketing academic libraries, but actually most of it applies across the sectors.

There were some great presentations and I had a great time - check out Jo's slides on marketing yourself, and I'll link to Michael's slides on public libraries and social media when he stickes them online.

UPDATE: All the presentations are now uploaded in one place, check them out here.

- thewikiman

How to turn your blog into an app for iPhone

Wow! Less than an hour ago I saw this tweet:

... and 50 minutes later I have an app for this blog! Amazing.

The low-down

www.bloapp.com is a new site which allows you to create an iPhone app out of your blog. The crucial things to know are:

• it's free
• it's incredibly straightforward
• you retain your intellectual property
• it works .

Get my app!

The way Bloapp works is that you download the Bloapp app, and then subscribe to blogs within it that have been 'apped'. (That's not a real word, I just invented it; I mean registered with bloapp, basically). A bit like the Stitcher radio app works. So, you can download the Bloapp app from iTunes here, and then you can subscribe to this blog either by searching for thewikiman or, more excitingly, scanning this QR code within the app itself! (By the way, if you scan this QR code outside of the app itself, it just takes you to the normal mobile version of this blog).

The details

You register for the site, and give the URL of your feed, name of your blog etc. Then you get to some very good customisation options - firstly you choose a visual theme. Here's one I didn't go with in the end:

Then you get to tweak it - the header appears at the top of the page, and the logo appears within the Bloapp app when you're choosing which blog you want to read:

As you can see, it previews the header on the right so you know how it looks. You can then edit the fonts (both style and size) and the background image.

Once you've sorted all that, you need to add a meta-tag to your blog's html. (It supports wordpress, blogger, tumblr, posterous and the rest, incidentally.) Then that's it, your blog is registered and available via the app. You're given the QR code with which to publicise it.

When you then go into the app on your iPhone and scan the QR code within the app it looks like this:

...and once you've done that, it goes into your bookmarked blogs, and that's when the logo comes in to play, like this:

The home-screen of the blog displays your 3 most recent posts, and the posts once you go into them look great:

You can tweet links from within the app too, which is nice. And you get statistics from your Bloapp dashboard as to how many people have bookmarked your blog in the app.

Use in libraries

Making an app is incredibly expensive and / or incredibly expensive. I looked into it once before, and found a site that looked great and was known for being good value. I was excited right up until the bit that said 'packages are available from just $250 a month!'. Wow. So this, if it continues past the beta stage, is a fabulous opportunity for libraries to get on-board with new technology at no cost or really any hassle at all. My advice is to go to www.bloapp.com and set your library's blog app up (and your own blog, of course) - if you're worried about the fact that it's beta, you don't have to publicise it yet.

People are reading more and more on phones. You know all the stats already (all phones will be smart phones by the end of the decade; we'll access the internet more on phones than on PCs by the end of next year; people are preferring to read on apps than on mobile sites more and more, etc etc) so this has come along at a great time. Unlike the standard iphone widget you can install on wordpress.org blogs, this retains something of your blog's visual identity, too.

Do it! And when you've done it, let me know so I can subscribe. :)

- thewikiman

Why patrons are like marathon runners, and librarians need to serve refreshments on the hoof...

Library marketing guru Terry Kendrick describes the modern world as everyone rushing from A to B with their head down, and marketers having the near impossible task of trying to divert them over to come and talk about product X for a while. So for us as libraries to market successfully, we have to show these busy people how we, as a library, can get them to B faster or better - and we have to do it without slowing them down in the meantime.

I'd extend the analogy to a marathon runner running past the refreshment area - at the moment libraries are standing behind (metaphorical) tables shouting about what orange juices they have and what vitamins these contain; what we should be doing is running alongside people with a tray, telling them that our orange juice will help them reach the finish line quicker. (This encapsulates marketing rules 1, 2 and 3 from the previous post: market the service, not the content; no one cares about the how; and and market what THEY value, continue to do what WE value.)

- thewikiman

Three simple marketing rules all libraries should live by...

... but which so few do!  

1. Market the service, not the content. Telling people about content puts the onus on them think about how they can integrate that content into their lives; many people simply don't have time to analyse what we're offering in that way. We should be making it explicit how we can help them so they need no imagination to understand it - and that comes from marketing services. To paraphrase the awesome Sara Batts, Content is, Services do. Doing is more useful to people than being, so when you have a very limited time in which to appeal to people with limited attention span, market to them what you can do.
2. No one cares about the how! Can't stress this enough: libraries are seemingly process focused, but the the rest of the world is focused on results. When marketing a service we should concentrate on what people aspire to, not the tools which will get them there. A classic example is databases: we say things like "we subscribe to X databases which you can access via the library catalogue" or, even worse, we name them individually. We market the features; what people want to know about is the benefits. Like Mary Ellen Bates says, the way to market databases is to say 'we provide you with information Google cannot find'.
3. Market what THEY value, but continue to do what WE value. The SLA's Alignment Project unearthed some fascinating truths about what we as libraries and librarians think are important, and what our patrons and potential patrons think are important. There are marked differences, I'd urge you to read about it for yourselves. (To sum up, users put the emphasis on value-driven attributes, we put it on functional attributes. This is, essentially, points 1 and 2 above, mixed together.) But the key thing is this - it doesn't mean the stuff we value isn't important, it just means that it isn't as valued AS highly by other people. So we continue to DO all the important stuff we value, we just concentrate the marketing on promoting the stuff THEY value. .

You don't need to be a genius to do this stuff, or to have huge marketing budgets, or even loads of time. It's just a case of reconfiguring our existing efforts to acknowledge some simple rules.

Any that you'd add?

- thewikiman

p.s There is a part two of sorts, for this post, here.