On the 9th of November 2011, the Special Libraries Section (SLS) held its 2nd annual networking event at the Singapore Management University (SMU) Li Ka Shing Library. This event was sponsored by Lexis-Nexis and there was a panel discussion held to talk about the topic of Social Media used for Marketing.
The panel consisted of representatives from various institutions. It was chaired by Charlotte Gill (SMU), with Nurhazman Abdul Aziz (LAS Chair for ICT, represenative from NTU Libraries), Aaron Tay (from NUS Libraries), Debby Wegner (LAS Chair of SLS, representative from TP Library) and Gaythri Raman (Assoicate Director of Marketing from Lexis-Nexis) as members.
Important take-away from the discussion is that the social media represent an opportunity for organizations to connect to their potential customers and organizations should look at it as a means to understand their customer needs better and not simply target it as a marketing platform to talk about their products. What impresses the customers more is if organizations are able to respond to their needs (opportunity to market when it meet their needs). The focus should be on customer engagement (one form of marketing) rather than advertising (another form of marketing).
Another interesting learning point is that feedback about organizations may be happening in Twitter or Facebook without their knowledge. Users may tweet about their experiences to their friends instead of telling organizations. It is thus of interest for organizations to monitor the twitter sphere, Blogosphere or Facebook about such comments and feedback.
At the close of the event, Ms. Charlotte Gill was announced as the winner of this year’s LAS Special Librarians Passion Award. Our congratulations to Charlotte!
Reported by Yit