Tuesday 31 March 2009

Marketing the library services

Yesterday an email was sent around to our members and studying members as a "reminder" of the library services they have access to as members. It was probably the only marketing of the library that did not have other services included, or where the library was not just a "side dish". In other words: This email was about the library only!! What an honour!



It was a quite simple email, with a professional layout and examples of the type of searches we could do and it was a great success in terms of response.


The only thing I can complain about is that the email was sent out in the late afternoon, 45 mins before we close and we were aware that this email was being created, but had no clue it was being broadcasted on that day! So as one out of the two people on the telephone I must have sounded surprise in the first call referring to this email.


Done about 30-40 enquiries today!

Friday 27 March 2009

My Marketing Search Engine



Inspired by a web 2.0 I attended, I have for a while been fiddling with the thought of creating a search engine for all my marketing resources which I have created as a researcher in my current for the past 2.5 years.

Although the bookmarks in my browser are a great way of keeping all the links in one place and even in subject order, when it comes to actually using them you need to go through many links before you actually find what you are looking for, unless your brain is so sharp that you have all your bookmarks memorized, in which case you really do not need any of these tools!

I have looked around and out of all the search engine customization tools out there (such as MSN's Live Search Macros, Eurekster Swicki etc) but have now narrowed my choices down to two candidates. The first one is Rollyo. For over a year I have heard this word, coming in, but discretely gone to the back of my mind with the label "to be looked at later". It has several times been recommended by Phil Bradley whose blog I follow. The second one is Google. I have seen lots of websites using a adapted version of Google as a search tool for their websites, I believe the organisation I work for was once of them even. The benefit of using Google's version would be that my Gmail account, my Blogger account, my Picassa picture album, my Toolbar etc is all in the Google family, which means that with one login and password everything is accessible. Not to mention things will look familiar for me. Moreover, from what I have read so far, there is not a limit to the number of pages you can add to your search engine in Google's version, unlike Rollyo where the limit is 25. I think I have made my decision, I am not happy that Google is the winner, but let's see, I might give Rollyo a try later on.

So far I have only looked at the different types of search engine customization tools and chosen mine, now I need to create it and next would of course be to test it's usefulness.
I wonder if the Google search engine will give me the possibility of tags or meta data or thesaurus terms..... hmm....



I have only added a few of my bookmarks, but it has already created a mini search engine for me to test:


By the way, the link to this search engine (easy for me because I can just log on to my Gmail and access it) is probably something I will have to bookmark: http://www.google.co.uk/coop/cse?cx=012893089089251216177%3Aftxel3ywsxu