Libraries engaging with local bloggers

David Lee King writes about some thoughts he has after reading a blog post and listening to a PLA presentation that touched on engaging with local blogs in your own community.  He lists some ways that library staff can be proactively interactive with these users (or potential users, as the case may be). 

I have long promoted engagement with local blogs as an excellent online outreach technique.  It can be as time consuming as you want it to be - monitor one or monitor fifty.  It's up to you.  And don't limit yourself to just blogs--monitor local Google groups and continuing education discussion boards.  There are lots of ways for your local users to interact. 

Building on what David wrote, some of the tips I typically give are:

• Observe for a while: see what people say, what they do, what the tone of the site is like.
• Be authentic: don't write as an institution, write as a real live human being.
• Don't intrude: you don't want to come off as an infiltrating or heavy-handed pain in the rear.
• Identify yourself: make sure people know you're from the library.
• Show what you know: talk about library and non-library resources and services when it's appropriate.

There are also many tools you can use to find these local blogs:

• Blogs by City
• Frappr
• FeedMap
• Blogdigger local
• Metroblogging
• feedmap