How do we spread the word about our awesome site?

So, after a long time chilling in Area51, we have made it to public beta. This is a pretty awesome thing - and we seem to be rolling pretty well with it. Lots of good questions and answers happening on a variety of library topics, which is cool to see!

Anyone committed to the beta is aware of the site, but now we are open to anyone! How can we get the word out to the world at large that LIS.SE exists and is awesome? There are a large variety of libraries and library groups out there that I am sure would love to be a part of this awesomeness.

How can we get the word out? Similar to this question - how do we let people know we are here? How can we spread the word far and wide (and not just necessarily online, either!)?

Ashley Nunn

• discussion
• site-promotion

Comments

Answer by dsalo

I've been tweeting it, and my tweets have gotten a fair few RTs, so that's something... but too much tweeting the same thing becomes tweetspam.

One thing DH Answers does that we might emulate is auto-posting new questions to a dedicated Twitter account. For those of us who follow Twitter, that's easier to monitor than having the LibStEx site open, or remembering to check it.

I plan to show LibStEx to my lib-tech students; with luck that will bring in more folks.

Comments

• andrea: a dedicated twitter feed would be excellent. we should include both the regular and meta questions.
• dsalo: Who should set up and own said Twitter account? I don't mind doing it, but I could be run over by a semi or something (ugh, my bike commute this morning was not fun). Ideas?
• Peter Murray: FYI, Ed Summers added a function to the Code4Lib IRC bot that automatically posts an in-channel message when a new question is asked.
• 1. Alan Thomas II: This sounds like an awesome function, but I'm not sure it's what you'd call an answer to the initial problem of getting people to know about it in the first place.
• dsalo: Interesting questions get retweeted and land in front of new eyes, is one way.
• Jakob: There is more than Twitterland out there. I guess that offline media and presenting this page at meetings will attract more participants.
• Manishearth: There already is a dedicated Twitter account. http://twitter.com/#!/StackLibraries

Answer by Melissa

Share the site on library listservs? \ Blog about it? \ E-mail all of our librarian friends? \ Stand on the street corner dressed as the Statue of Liberty holding a sign? OK, maybe the sign is too much ...

Comments

• Ashley Nunn: I like how it is the sign, not the costume, that is too much... ;)

Answer by M. Alan Thomas II

A note in your local professional newsletter/bulletin, an e-mail to your co-workers (if applicable), a post on relevant mailing lists, plus of course all of the relevant personal social media (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, &c.). . . . How do you announce anything?

I myself have submitted something to the LibraryJournal Tumblr, which is read by a lot of library-loving, technology-literate people; here's hoping they publish it.

Comments

Answer by Jakob

Just briefly present LibStEx at meetings in your organization, among colleagues, at workshops and at conferences. Mouth-to-mouth is still underestimated among us, used to do digital-to-digital communication so much.

Comments

Answer by Manishearth

Few things you can do (some stuff taken from my post here):

• Create a community promotion ad and post on a graduated site. Maybe on English (They already have one for Lit.SE, but that may be removed since the site was closed). Mathematica.SE and chem.SE have done so on Physics.
• Create an A4(or whatever) poster for your users to print out and stick somewhere. We did that on chem
• Write an awesome blog post, like this one by a TW mod
• Encourage colleagues/classmates/friends(who have a background in the site topic) to join. Tell them how awesome we are!
• Try to get more experts engaged. Remember, the more experts you have, the better the site is (we don't want to degrade into Yahoo! Answers)
• Retweet the upvoted questions posted by @StackLibraries

Comments