Haringey Library
Project Start 14 September 2009
Status on 2 December 2009:
148 Tweets
451 Followers
28 Lists
UK-wide, this places us at place 8 of public library twitter accounts, and of London Boroughs, we hold the top spot, followed by Westminster, WCClibraries with 388, Tower Hamlet, http://twitter.com/ideastores, with 228 followers.
Read back through twitter stream here: http://twitter.com/haringeylibrary
See where others have engaged: http://twitter.com/#search?q=haringeylibrary
Twitpic account: http://twitpic.com/photos/haringeylibrary
The Haringey Libraries twitter account has become an accepted part of the community. It informs, entertains, engages.
Inform/Entertain:
- Recent additions
- Author appearances
- Gallery exhibitions
- Events
- Things of literary interest
- live reporting from events
- Opening of Black History Month at the Gallery at Hornsey Library:
- Pictures,
- audio http://audioboo.fm/boos/67530-black-history-month-launch-speech-by
- quotes
- Talk by Bill Bruford at Hornsey Library:
- Opening of Black History Month at the Gallery at Hornsey Library:
Follower Quality:
The follower number is not as strong an indicator of the influence of a twitter account as the follower quality. Since the objective is to engage with locals, authors/writers, fellow libraries and librarians, and member of the media and publishing industry, our followers are all of these four groups, plus members of other Local Authorities who are keen to replicate good ideas.
Since there are many tricks to gaining followers quickly, a better indicator of the quality and influence of an account are the click-through rates when posting links or pictures. The average click-through rate on twitter varies between 2.5 – 4 per cent. On the library account, because we have been building followers carefully, we regularly get a click-through rate of 8 – 10 per cent (see here – 39 views when we had 450 followers) – which shows us that people are there and listening. Stephen Fry, in comparison, has a click-through rate of 2 per cent. Other recognised people I know myself have rates between .02 and 5 per cent.
Paul Clarke, a consultant with Directgov, comments thus:
In my independent view, anyone who has got in the region of 10% click-through has built a highly engaged and relevant audience. They have probably taken care to eliminate spam and bot followers, thus strengthening the real credibility of their twitter brand even further.
Follower numbers are not everything; put another way, using the tactics of some well-known social media practitioners, a following of 500 would be inflated to one of around 12,500. It would actually have the same reach, but look far worse and unmanaged to anyone who knew what they were talking about.
