Yes, you really can create a website with blog software. It’s a great workaround for those who don’t want to deal with the heavy lifting of coding. Aaron Schmidt and David Lisa are talking about it right this minute…
David (left) and Aaron talking about using blogs as websites.
Some reasons that this is a good way to work is that it’s fast and easy to post content, and that you can change the look (or “theme”) of the site with a touch of a button. Also, as Aaron said, “blogs write good code” so search engines can find it easily; this helps your site rank high in search results.
Yep, we’re back for another Computers in Libraries conference. Today, Sunday, saw lots of people arriving in DC and settling in, while others were delayed by flight troubles. And there were a number of great pre-conference sessions today — including one by Yours Truly.
This evening there was another successful gaming session put together by Aaron Schmidt and Erik Boekesteijn. Lots of people gathered for pizza and playtime.
Tomorrow morning will begin with the welcomes from the conference organizers and the opening keynote. Stay tuned!
I’ve been spending my time in the marketing track today, and good ideas and tips have been flying.
The morning began with Nancy Dowd, marketing director of the NJ State Library (and my blog partner over at The M Word). She discussed 10 trends that can give your marketing a "second life," such as relating to people with stories, listening to customers and letting them run the conversations, and promoting your green-ness. She’ll be posting her slides on The M Word soon.
Then the crowd heard Aaron Schmidt and Sarah Houghton-Jan do a really useful tag-team presentation on making your web site more useful, findable, read, and used. They told the crowds about tons of websites where librarians should register their own websites so surfers and searchers can find them. And most are free & easy — you can’t beat that!
They’ll be posting their talk as well, and this dynamic duo has a related article coming out in the Nov/Dec issue of Marketing Library Services soon.
One of the afternoon speakers was Geert van den Boogaard, who discussed digital marketing at DOK, the Library Concept Center in Delft, the Netherlands. Geert wowed the crowd with things DOk does, such as greeting people via Bluetooth connections as they enter the building, and screencasting messages within the building on a Wii platform.
One thing that van den Boogaard emphasized was one of my own main marketing points: First, understand your patrons and what they want. That idea should be the foundation of all your marketing and promotion.
It’s hard for me to believe that it’s Internet Librarian time again… but here I am back in Monterey.
There were preconferences yesterday and today, and the full conference starts with a bang tonight with a Gaming session run by Aaron Schmidt and Erik Boekesteijn. (That’s in the DeAnza room, 5:30-8.)
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