Florida State University School of Information faculty members Christie Koontz and Lorri Mon collaborated on the recently published, “Marketing and Social Media: A Guide for Libraries, Archives, and Museums,” a guide to marketing libraries, archives, and museum professionals in the social media age.

The collaboration is both an introductory textbook and a guide for working professionals who want to go beyond mere promotion to developing a planned and deliberately managed marketing campaign.

“Libraries have a long tradition of reaching out to people wherever they are and today that’s increasingly happening in social spaces such as Facebook and Twitter,” Mon said.

Beginning with mission, goals, and objectives, readers will review the components of both the internal and external environments that must be understood to plan an objective campaign. Chapter coverage includes SWOT analysis, identifying and involving stakeholders, a 4-step marketing model, market research, market segmentation, market mix strategy and evaluation.

Each chapter includes explanatory topical content designed to build a framework of marketing and social media management understanding including discussion questions, which can be developed into classroom or workshop assignments and key terms.

“The valuable synergy developing between marketing and social media is too powerful to ignore,” said Koontz, who has taught non-profit marketing for two decades.  “Marketing strives to drive an organization’s mission successfully with customer-centered planning. Social media facilitate communications between and among customers and organizations using customer-centered, participatory online technologies.  My students agreed to offer illustrative marketing solutions for the problems and challenges libraries, museums, and archives face making learning easy for all who decide to read our book and begin the practices of ‘true marketing.’”

“At Florida State’s iSchool, we’ve long recognized that information technology leadership is crucial for today’s information professional, so in addition to learning IT skills such as web and database design and usability, students can also gain skills in social media management and digital reference through hands-on experiential learning,” Mon said.  Many of our graduates are now working as social media managers, or are managing virtual and electronic services and new technologies in a variety of settings including libraries, museums and government agencies.”

Koontz, who earned a doctorate from Florida State in 1990, teaches and conducts marketing activities for the College of Communication & Information. She also serves on committees of state, national and international library and information organizations and has won numerous awards for her research. She is faculty advisor for the ALA Student Chapter, which won Best in the Nation in 2012.

Mon, who graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, teaches and conducts research on social media and emerging digital technologies in libraries, nonprofits, education and e-governments.

To learn more or order “Marketing and Social Media: A Guide for Libraries, Archives and Museums,” visit Amazon.com.