As part of my coursework towards my MLIS, I took a semester long class on social media use by information organizations with a focus on libraries. I learned a lot in this brief class about best practices in using social media, and how to get the most out of it. One of the most important points is to take the time to craft a plan. If you don’t have a plan, you’re posting can be haphazard at best and end up being essentially a digital bulletin board that doesn’t really engage people. Focusing the social media posts to just a few types and areas of content while also planning out how many posts will be done helps create a following. It’s also important to write like you talk on social media and create posts that are fun, and that generally start by telling people what’s in it for them. Don’t count on them going beyond your post to the link you’ve included because many people aren’t going to. Create an engaging post that let’s them know right away why they should be interested and all the pertinent details. The concept of social capital is also important to keep in mind. Make sure that you’re posting a lot of shared information or information about local places and events beyond the library, rather than simply library events. It helps to engage people and build goodwill when you aren’t simply asking them to take part in your events all of the time. You can see what is effective if you actually track your numbers, even simple ones like follows or engagement stats that are automatically generated. By tracking these, you can see what posts are a hit and which are duds, letting you fine tune your content to your community. And a final piece of advice that I took away: Don’t try to be all of the things to everyone. Narrow down your target audience and then choose two or three social media channels best suited to those audiences and your library. After that, narrow down your content areas so staff can focus on creating great content on four or five areas that appeal to your target audience, rather than scrambling to try and post about everything.