Marketing the academic library with online social network advertising

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relative effectiveness of different forms of Facebook advertising in promoting the collections and services of academic libraries.Design/methodology/approach – The results of several Facebook advertising campaigns conducted by an academic library in Hong Kong are presented and analyzed. Statistics were gathered from the advertising application integrated into the social networking platform. Conclusions are drawn based on a comparison of the performance metrics of the different advertising approaches that were employed.Findings – In line with an earlier study, the results provide further support for the view that social network advertising has the potential to be a cost‐effective means of marketing academic libraries. It was also found that advertising strategies that draw upon the social features of Facebook were more effective than traditional approaches.Research limitations/implications – Since only the experience of a single institution is consi...