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!

Universities need to get better at using Instagram – here’s how

I wrote an article for the Times Higher all about University use of Instagram. I think Insta is absolutely the most important social media in Higher Education at the moment now Twitter has become unusable, and this article sets out why that is and what to do about it.

It contains some stats, some useful links, and above all guidance on how to use it well!

The article is free to read - click the image or the link above go to the post on Times Higher Education site

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If you’re interested you can find details of my Instagram for University Departments and Professional Services here.

Nomadic Librarian Social Media in the post-Twitter age

Do you remember that feeling when Twitter first started working for you, and you were suddenly tapped into this seemingly infinite network of other people in your profession, who shared experiences and ideas and perspectives and guidance? What an amazing time that was; I absolutely loved it.

I got into librarianship in 2006, but it only really came alive for me in around 2010 when I got online. In 2011 I joined Twitter (thanks as ever to Bethan Ruddock and Laura Woods for persuading me that my doubts about it were misplaced!) and really everything changed. It led to all sorts of opportunities, but the thing I appreciate most about the platform is the sheer number of voices it has allowed me to hear - I got so many useful insights I wasn’t getting within the walls of my own institution. My eyes were opened, my knowledge was expanded, my politics moved even further to the left and I changed. Twitter changed me, for the better.

Twitter is now untenable

However, since Twitter became X it has become untenable and it is only the sheer power of the relationships I built over 12 years that has kept me there this long. There is no other brand or organisation run by a white supremacist that I would consider giving my time to; it feels deeply uneasy to be part of something so incredibly toxic, because you feel complicit.

I’m not deleting my account (yet) mainly because I don’t want anyone else using the alias, but I am officially leaving the site from Christmas - no longer logging in or posting. I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone else what to do but if you’re still there, I’d recommend at least considering getting out too.

Need some reasons to leave Twitter?

1. Hate speech, harassment, extremist content and misinformation have all spiked since Musk took over

2. Musk himself has said some abject things, including describing antisemitic conspiracy theories as ‘the absolute truth’, and threatened violence against his enemies

3. Musk has reinstated previously-banned white nationalists and whole host of incredibly toxic accounts which he’s now actively promoting, whilst deleting accounts of journalists he doesn’t like and reducing traffic to news sites

4. Honestly there’s just an endless list of things. Even just researching enough to list points 1-3 above is so bleak, I don’t want to do any more; every day there’s something else awful he’s done, just google his name and you’ll see the latest

So what happens next for libraries and librarians? Originally this one post about both those categories, but it got ridiculously long so I’ve moved the bits about libraries into a separate Part 2. Let’s focus first of all on us, the people working in the cultural orgs, which is the slightly less complicated side of the coin in some ways.

Social media for librarians, information professionals, and others who work in cultural organisations

So here’s a massive disclaimer about this section: it is VERY subjective. (The bit about libraries and social media in part 2 is far more objective.) It’s based on my experiences and my preferences. Your mileage may vary.

I have now been actively looking for and posting on Twitter alternatives for over a year, and this is what I’ve concluded. (tl;dr Bluesky is the closest equivalent to early Twitter, and I whole wholeheartedly recommend getting yourself an invite code if you can.)

Threads just isn’t quite happening for librarians

I wanted Threads to work, so I joined early and optimistically. I followed lots of library friends, plus a few larger accounts, newspapers and the like. And what I’ve found is, my feed is 90% posts from the Guardian etc and hardly any from the library people. (There is apparently loads of book-chat on Threads, but not so much library chat.)

Part of the reason for this is that Threads is unavailable in the EU. So the entirety of European librarianship, pretty much, is absent from the discussion. I love European librarians and want them in my network! [EDIT: since I wrote this post, Threads as become available in the EU! This may change everything and make Threads a viable network for librarians over time, we’ll have to wait and see.]

Threads famously became the fastest growing new social network ever: while Facebook and Twitter both took over 2 years to reach 10 million users, Threads took just 7 hours. There are now 137 million people with accounts - but that doesn’t matter. What mattes is active users. There are around 10 million active Threads users, who only spend 3 minutes a day on the app. (Obviously, 10 million is a large number - but compared with 200 million active Twitter users, or 2.35 billion active Instagram users, clearly there is simply less conversation to be had there.)

So my Threads account lies dormant, with a post basically saying: I’m putting my eggs in the Bluesky basket.

Instagram is essential for libraries but potentially less so for librarians

I enjoy Instagram but I am there as a drummer, not as a library professional. I do follow some librarians on there and enjoy their posts, but they tend to be about their lives rather than their work.

My experience has been that Instagram’s primary focus on video, then on image, and then on words, means it’s not as suited for a professional network in our particular profession (and a lot of info pros aren’t there on principle because it’s a Meta product) - but actually this is probably too limited thinking on my part. Naomi Smith is making the @blackandgoldeducation critical librarianship account work on Instagram, and points out:

There are many people, organisations who are interested / amazed by ideas of #critlib and share similar values especially younger audiences which is the main instagram demographic

LinkedIn is actually pretty good after all!

I have been so sneery about LinkedIn over the years, put off by some performative posting I saw in the early days, and the (rightly earned) reputation the platform has for being a home to the ‘I get up at 4am and have already done 3 workouts and boosted productivity in my companies by 6% by the time you have breakfast!! hashtag #stayhumble’ brigade. HOWEVER I was basically wrong, because like almost all communities, the thing it’s most famous for is not what it’s actually like for most people there.

Connect with the right people (oh hi!) and LinkedIn is a friendly, supportive place where you get useful updates about what is going on in the industry. It’s also a good place to share ideas, with decent numbers of people reading posts on there, and people actually leave comments and ask questions - posting on LinkedIn feels like blogging felt about 10 years ago!

The only downside is it’s almost all professional, and I love a little bit of personal mixed in - I want to know about who we all are as people, as well as what we achieve in our jobs. But basically if, like me, you’ve written LinkedIn off in the past, give it another go because you can be part of the good bit of it…

Mastodon is good, but it’s not quite the Twitter replacement I craved.

When I joined Mastodon I initially really enjoyed it, but several small things have meant that optimism was short lived. It doesn’t look great or feel that good to use - it’s a little clunky - and there’s well documented issues with finding people across the federated servers. There are also lots of examples of being people scolded for doing the wrong thing on Mastodon, though I’ve not experienced this myself.

More than that though, the biggest issue for me is I just find myself scrolling for a long time on the platform before I find content I’m interested in. The conversation just doesn’t quite seem to match up to what I need from a professional / social network mix - and that’s very much a personal thing so you might find the chat absolutely hits the sweet spot for you.

I had an interesting chat with a BlueSky user called Mx Vero who said Mastodon DID work better for them than Bluesky - in particular the code4lib.social server, which leads me to speculate that the info pros at the more technical end of librarianship are more likely to find Mastodon useful, because the are less likely to be put off by the technical hurdles to getting set up on the platform in the first place. So there’s a greater amount of conversation to be had in that area of libraryworld, on Mastodon.

Someone on Bluesky asked ‘why didn’t Mastodon work for ya’ll?’ and one of the answers was this:

“It felt a little like eating something because it was good for you but not something you enjoy”

This sums it up well: Mastodon has a great community but the vibe - I’m bringing out all the scientific terms now - is just slightly off, for me personally. Which brings us to…

Bluesky. I’m all in: Bluesky is the one.

I am only two months in to being part of this platform, but I really, really like it. It feels VERY twitter circa 2015 - not least in visual style as it is made by the same people who made Twitter in the first place, but just in terms of the way it feels and the conversations we’re having there.

The hit-rate of stuff I’m interested in versus total posts to scroll through is much higher than anything since several-years-ago-twitter, and there’s a real sense of a community sharing updates and ideas. It seems to have a good mix of serious and fun.

You need an invite code to join (which is part of the reason it’s not overrun by far-right people) - just ask on your other networks and chances are someone will message you with one. We all get one a week to give out to people. When you get there, say hi!

Click the image to view my profile (if you're already on Bluesky!)

I asked others why it worked for them: Alice Cann said:

“I found library and related people here on BlueSky immediately and there are a core amount of people posting quite often”

Selena Killick said:

“Ease of use and the fact that Librarian twitter seems to have moved here has helped”

…and several others chimed in with similar views. Arianne H. said:

“Once I figured out how they work, I have found the feeds to be a really useful way to keep up with library related conversations, especially Skybrarians. I like that feeds are created by users.”

Feeds are, I think, like Twitter lists but intended as a much more public-facing thing rather than a personal one. Here’s the skybrarian feed link for those already on the platform - thanks to Andromeda Yelton for setting it up!

manu schwendener said:

“Best feature for me: that their roadmap and issues are public”

…and also has some useful guidance on first Bluesky steps, including using Follower Bridge to reconnect with your Twitter contacts. It’s a pretty manual process that will take a while if you follow a lot of people, and it’s a bit hit and miss (if you follow someone called ‘Dave’ on Twitter it’ll find someone at random called Dave on Bluesky and be like, hey I think we got him!) but a good jumping off point. As always though, a reliable way to jump start your community building is this:

1) Set up your profile - bio, pic, a first post - BEFORE you start following people, so when they get the notification of the new follow and potentially click on your profile, there’s something for them to see

2) Find a librarian you like, click on the list of people THEY follow, and canabalise it

On top of all that, the way the community is building organically is really nice. Threads felt like a mad rush, with everyone joining and then almost immediately leaving (albeit not deleting their accounts because you can’t without also deleting Insta), while Mastodon felt like a party that had already been going for a while before you got there, and has certain rules and norms you’re not fully up to speed with. Bluesky just builds slowly, and because you get an invite code per week to give out, people are gradually bringing others into the fold and more and more people we all want to see there are arriving.

Here’s the real test of which social network you most identify with - which profile do you put in your speaker bio and on your first and last slides..? I’ve changed mine to Bluesky. I’m all in!

What is the longer-term prognosis for librarian social media?

The answer to this questions is of course that I don’t know, but there’s a couple of things worth bearing in mind. One is that even if, say, something else comes along in two years that we all end up switching to, two years is a long time! Two years of being a networked librarian able to tap into support and ideas beyond your institution, even if imperfectly, is so much better than nothing. But the other thing is, I don’t think we’ll ever get another Twitter. Not in terms of the sheer focus of dialogue in one place - the world and the online landscape is too fragmented now, so we’ll split off into smaller communities.

I’d love to be wrong about this of course. But if we do end up with lots of options, the important thing is not to let that put us off. Pick one, try it, and see if it’s for you. If it’s not, move on. If it is, go all in. Because we’re all better off for having a way to benefit from our professional community online - I hope you find yours!

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Read the Library-focused follow up to this post here: Where should libraries go now Twitter has become a Wasteland

Where should libraries go if Twitter becomes a wasteland?

Elon Musk has bought Twitter, he’s all but guaranteed to make terrible decisions about how to run it, and high-profile users are already leaving the platform due to the already-significant increase in hate-speech and misinformation. Of course this has wider implications for the world at large, but where does it leave libraries seeking to connect with users on the platform? Should we stay, or find a new home?

tl;dr - in a way it doesn’t matter what we want to do, we have to follow the lead of our communites. If they stay put then so should we; if they fragment then it becomes a lot more complicated.

Should we simply leave Twitter on principle?

A quick disclaimer is that I’m focusing on organisational accounts here. When it comes to us as individuals, there’s certainly an argument that we should be getting out - but this post is about libraries, not librarians.

Ultimately, my view is that libraries leaving Twitter on principle is self-defeating and too selective. Facebook is so incredibly problematic and has been for at least a decade, so if we’re leaving Twitter we should probably be leaving FB, right? And they own Instagram so we should leave that too. Which means we’re left with TikTok, which is hardly a bed of ethical roses and is especially problematic around data.

So do we leave all of them on principle? You could certainly make a case for it - but I don’t think most of us will because it would destroy our ability to interact with our communities. So if the answer is ‘no we’re not leaving all of them,’ then leaving just Twitter seems like a misstep: if you’ll forgive the extended metaphor, it’s like cutting off your unethical nose to spite your face, when the cheeks, eyes, chin and mouth are equally guilty.

What are the alternatives? Is Mastodon an option?

There are a few alternatives to Twitter and sadly I’m yet to see any of them as a truly workable solution. The one currently garnering most attention due to a record number of downloads and new members is Mastodon, which is very Twitter-like indeed. Visually and functionally it’s very similar to Twitter but the problem is, we’re not REALLY on Twitter because of the functionality; we’re there because our communities are.

Unlike Twitter’s single giant network, Mastodon is spread across several different servers with different subgroups. There are regional spaces, queer-friendly spaces, climate-activist spaces - and they all stress they welcome everyone (e.g. you don’t have to be from New Zealand to join the mastadon.nz space). The issue with this diffuse approach is no one group is especially big: so there are 5,000 people on the Australian community server at the the time of writing, versus 3.7 million Australians on Twitter. You can interact with people on different servers, but the way it’s set up we could put an enormous effort into Mastadon but not influence enough people in any one place to see any tangible rewards. However I’ve set up an account for myself @nedpotter@mas.to get to know the platform in case it becomes a viable option for the library later.

The same goes for Discord, another platform often cited as a Twitter alternative in recent days - it focuses on several smaller communities, rather than one massive one. This makes it all but impossible to use efficiently as a library.

As things stand, I don’t see a viable alternative to Twitter. That may change, and it will vary according to sector - so for example if a LOAD of health professionals join Mastodon, it could become a useful platform for Health Libraries to have a presence on. But right now, it isn’t.

If we’re staying, what should we do differently?

One of the key things you can do if you haven’t already is mute more. Go to Settings and Support > Settings and privacy > Privacy and Safety > Mute and block and finally Muted notifications. On the resulting screen you can mute default-profile-pic accounts, or unconfirmed accounts, meaning you’ll be less exposed to mass-produced trolling or bots.

Ticking a few of these will probably help

You can of course mute individual words and block accounts too, or even Lock your account - from a comms point of view though that’s a pretty drastic step to take for an organisational account.

One other thing to note is don’t conduct any kind of sensitive conversation via DMs. You can’t trust Twitter with your data, so don’t DM your users and ask for anything you or they wouldn’t want to Twitter to know - just DM them and tell them you’ll be in touch via email instead…

[Hey while you’re in Settings, why not also take the opportunity to revoke access to third-party apps that don’t need access anymore. It’s good practice to do this on a regular basis anyway. And if you’ve got the patience for it, check out this guide for getting rid of a lot really annoying things about the way your Twitter timeline currently works - no more suggested posts, woohoo!]

Should libraries pay $20 a month for the blue tick?

Hell no.

So what happens next?

The slightly frustrating truth is our next steps as organisations has to be: wait. We have to wait and see what our communities do, and be guided by them. If they move en masse, we can move with them. If they don’t, we should probably stay where we are.

In the meantime it’s worth considering things by sector.

• If you’re a law library, pharma library, or other special library, you can potentially use LinkedIn to connect with almost every relevant person in your potential audience, and ditch Twitter if you truly wish to

• If you’re a school library you can definitely get by without Twitter if you choose to

• If you’re a Health Library or an Academic Library keep an eye on the conversations your audience are having on where they might go - Mastadon may become an option worth investigating in time, you never know

• If you’re a public library… I just can’t see any sort of alternative on the horizon for now. At least Facebook is the really key platform in that sector!

If anyone else has advice, guidance, or thoughts on what you might do with your library’s social media presences, let me know in a comment below. Good luck out there, everyone.

Everyone is posting pictures of words to Instagram... and nobody should

Part 5 in the Instagram Series. Read Parts 1 - 4 are here. If you want. No pressure.

If there’s one social media rule that is universal across platforms, industries and sectors, it’s this:

Learn what your audience likes, and do more of it.

The other side of this coin is, of course, to do less of what your audience doesn’t engage with. It’s incredibly easy to follow these maxims; you don’t need pay for any tools or be an analytics guru. Just click on your posts and compare their views / reach / impressions and you’ll quickly learn what works for your community, and what doesn’t.

With that in mind, cultural orgs please, please, please:

I see it happening all the time and it never gets engagement - which means, essentially, almost no one sees the message. You know the sort of thing - photos of book covers, or motivational quotes, or graphics, or photos of signs, or ‘resource of the week’ posters. And in every single case, there’s a massive drop in Likes compared to when they post ‘captured’ images (rather than created ones) of buildings, or spaces, or interesting objects.

If you visit any Instagram profile on a PC (rather than on your phone) you can hover over a post to see how many Likes it has so you can see for yourselves. Go to literally any library, HE or museum Insta account and do some hovering. A new account still finding its feet might get 20 Likes for a picture of a building, but only 4 Likes for a Picture of Words. A really, really successful account with a big following might get 200 Likes for a Picture of Words! But hover over the captured picture of the interior of their building next to it, and you’ll see that has 780 Likes. It’s the same everywhere.

Why does it matter?

In short: if you want a message seen, it needs engagement from your followers because Likes equal Reach.

Instagram is not as straightforward as Twitter. If you follow me on Twitter and I post at 1pm and you’re online at 1pm, you’ll see my post. Instagram is a lot fuzzier, and will not just show your posts to your followers in a simple way - the more people engage initially, the more of your followers will see it.

Likes, Comments and Shares are vital as the more you get, the more people Instagram’s algorithm will show your post to. A really important message about the library closing early simply won’t reach anyone if it’s just a screenshot of the words ‘the library is closing early today’ because no one will hit Like. So no one knows you’re closed early!

Have a look at this comparison from my library’s Insta account. This isn’t quite a full ‘pictures of words’ because we don’t post any, but it’s an example of an unsuitable picture for Instagram and shows you the impact engagement has on reach. For various reasons that I won’t bore you with now, I posted a picture of a case that I absolutely knew wouldn’t get much engagement. It’s a great photo but it’s not OF the kinds of things our audience respond best to, so as a result it got a very low number of Likes. Next to it is a more regular post, of our buildings looking dramatic at night, which got many more Likes.

The heart symbol represents Likes, the Quote symbol is Comments, the Arrow symbol represents people Forwarding the post, and the Bookmark symbol is people saving the post to their Favourites.

The key thing to look at is of course Accounts reached: 392 for the case, and 834 - over twice as many - for the building. So it’s not just a bit of a shame we didn’t get more Likes for the briefcase post; it’s ineffective communication that is only getting to a fraction of the target audience.

We all have key messages. We all have things which we need our audiences to hear. Not all of them have suitable visual metaphors. So how do you get those messages out?

Use Stories Instead

Option 1 is to take the words and put then into a Story.

Words work fine in Stories, people expect them. Especially anything time-sensitive, pertaining to events that day - just use a Story to spread the news.

The more you use Stories (for the kinds of things you might use a tweet for) the more your audience comes to expect you to use them and looks out for them.

When we ask our students how they get updates from the Library, every single undergraduate - every one - says Instagram Stories.

Here the BL are using several Stories in a row for a larger narrative - most users are happy to tap through a few Stories in a row if your message is too long to fit in one screen

Remember Stories can have URLs in, unlike Grid posts - so you can post a few words and a link to more information

A classic Not That Interesting But Still Important post, which wouldn’t work on the Grid but is perfect for Stories

Use the caption

Option 2 is simply to pair the message with a good picture and more people will see it. Obivously Instagram is a visual medium but you can use the caption for detailed info if the situation warrants it - just phrase it in an engaging way!

Does the picture have to match the news in the caption? No it doesn’t. It’s better if it does, but it’s not essential - what’s essential is choosing a pic people will Like, so more people get the news you need them to hear.

Here’s an example from my library of using a pic for reach, but the caption to deliver important messaging. I was so pleased with this picture when I took it - the colours were just good that day with the bright sun and blue skies and green grass - that I didn’t post it right away, I saved it for exactly this kind of situation where we needed Reach.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Uni of York Library & Archives (@uoylibrary)

Post multiple images, and keep the words of the ‘front cover’…

Option 3 is to get creative by smuggling Pictures Of Words in as part of a post with multiple images. Here’s an example of this - I took a nice picture of the library in the sun, and then used multiple further pictures with words on, and the caption, to tell the audience the info I needed them to know. It got lots of Likes and so lots of people saw it - which absolutely would not have been the case if I’d just posted the Zones-related graphics.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Uni of York Library & Archives (@uoylibrary)

Here are the Insights for that picture. As you can see the accounts reached figure is higher than the previous examples - 1,428 - because of the higher levels of engagement. It’s not just the 160 Likes, it’s the fact that 36 people Bookmarked it, 74 people visited our profile after viewing the picture.

You can also see that 32% of the views were from people who weren’t following us, and that 36 people followed us directly as a result of seeing this post - so Reach helps you find users who didn’t yet know you were on Instagram, as well as ensuring as many existing followers see key messages as possible…

I really hope I’ve convinced you not to post ‘created’ images or pictures of words from now on! If you’ve been doing so up till now don’t feel bad, because EVERYONE does it. But do yourself a favour, reach more people, and do more of what your audience likes.

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I’ve run a lot of in-house workshops for various cultural organisations, in which I audit their social media and come up with recommendations, working with staff on what they feel comfortable implementing. If you’d like to discuss social media training, get in touch!