I thought this was a great post, specifically this part:

We often overlook the fact that plans are not overly helpful when the goal is to learn, innovate, and adapt. As we know, social media are a set of technologies that are evolving constantly. They thrive in environments that are highly adaptive where organizational members can use technology to meet ever-changing needs. The decision about applying social media to needs should be located as closely to the ground as possible and not up at the top of the organizational chart.

Recently I started posting book meme photos to our library FB page. It was a gut reaction to seeing such boring stuff constantly going up. It worked. Loads of shares and interactions!

As someone who spent two hours in a Marketing meeting yesterday discussing our social media strategy, I couldn't agree more.

@Justin: I have had those meetings too! Jeez!

I think this post brings up another thing which I want to talk about: balance. It's easy to get caught up in the "just do it and don't look back" and "plan the hell out of everything" type of mindset. I think balance is the key. Find both in every project you work on.

I wrote about that earlier this year: justinthelibrarian.com

We actually joke that all policies for our organization will forever be in DRAFT mode as change keeps happening the second we finalize anything. I agree with the article that we definitely need a "Best practices and guidelines" but don't be afraid to break the "rules" when the rules change next month. It's a fine line.

Dang it. I wrote a long post and swore I sent it... Long story short, I believe you do need a plan for social media. It doesn't have to be extensive or rigid, but something that will help the library achieve its goals with the social media tools.

I think we need goals, not plans. When we talk about new social media sites, that shouldn't change our goals of what we hope to achieve by participating in these sites.

I'm not sure where I stand. We did have some meetings earlier this year then stuff happened and we haven't met in months. When we did meet, we came up with some goals for FB, Twitter, and Pinterest. I implemented the ones on FB and Twitter and our followers on FB have increased like 150% or something since January. So maybe that's working?

However, I've noticed that some weeks our FB followers are just "off" and don't respond to something that appealed to them heavily a few weeks before. Then again, FB's new policy of not sharing with your followers has killed our posts' visibility.

I guess when I think of "plan" I think of something that doesn't change: just stick to the plan, even if anything goes wrong.

I think my main issue with this is the definition of the word "plan." @Justin Kingery detailed his definition, and yes I agree in that case, where "plan" equates to inflexibility, that it is not right for social media. The way I think of a plan is being more flexible.

My problem with coming up with plans for social media is that sucess isn’t solely -- or even primarily -- dependent on using social media, it’s dependent on the content that you’re sharing. Setting that content up by getting the appropriate equipment (decent cameras, good audio recording devices) and making sure that smart people have the time and power to go out and engage with meaningful stories is far more important and is, to be honest, already so difficult that you don’t really want to start tying up the content you do eventually create with a convoluted plan that constrains how you distribute it.

@librarianry: i m agree with you

What I'm really getting from everyone here is such a nice balanced approach and I like that...plan ahead, but don't plan too much. Trust your gut both ways.

This is why I dig Branch! Everything comes out so balanced. Thank you all!

I think this is a good place to add in this piece by Michael Stephens about social media in libraries:

tametheweb.com

“The challenge around effective social media implementation is get library staff to see social media as an integral part of their jobs so that they choose to participate.” This challenge can be solved with transparency and a clearly defined, yet evolving mission: “If people are fearful of participation or do not see the value of participation, they will not participate.”

Inspiring!