Marketing the academic library with online social network advertising

Facebook is now a ubiquitous part of the lives of many university students across the world. The libraries that serve them now have an opportunity to leverage this online social network to promote their services and resources. However, the effectiveness of a library’s efforts in this area will depend greatly on the number of connections it can make between its users and its Facebook presence. Building on a previous investigation that suggested online advertising might be a cost-effective way to achieve this goal, this paper investigates the relative effectiveness of several different approaches to Facebook advertising. To his end, the results of several advertising campaigns conducted by an academic library in Hong Kong are analyzed. Based on the results of these campaigns, it is suggested that social network advertising is effective in promoting the library at a surprisingly minimal financial cost. Academic libraries can consider using social network advertising to complement their existing marketing efforts.