Advocacy: The Big Picture
Course
Developing a Plan [4:32]
While the advocacy process takes place anytime in any place where there is an opportunity to develop understanding and support for our work, it is best supported when there is a plan in place to ensure that it's strategic and effective.
Planning marketing strategies is similar to action planning, with timelines, goals, and objectives that support the mission of the school and of the school library. Implementation follows the plan with built in measures for assessing the effectiveness of the marketing. And control is characterized by the systemic approach to marketing, including an evaluation of the effectiveness of the plan. So, clearly, it's important to establish goals and messages. Set your goal or objective. What do you want to achieve? Make sure it's time specific and measurable. Define your message, and then target your audience.
Targeting the message to the audience involves knowing who they are and also how you can motivate decision makers. Remember, people do things for their reasons, not yours. So what do you know about them, their priorities and interests? What do you need to find out? How do you go about finding somebody who might have the information you need, and what research might you need to do? Make sure that you assure the target group that their agenda will be assisted by whatever you have to offer. You want to communicate: "This is who we are, this is what we do, this is when and where we do it, and for whom." So, that it's clear to them how you can assist.
And finally you also want to have some strategies based on data. Before you plow ahead, look at the data, reflect on your practice, and talk to librarians in other schools, as well as learning community colleagues and other members of your own personal learning network. Make sure you understand the needs of your users, as well as potential users. For example, current students who do not use the library and as well as teachers who may or may not utilize your services.
One thing I have learned from the opportunity to work with marketing and PR personnel from the corporate world, is that brand is more than a logo. It is the expectations that others will have about you and your program, based on the experience that they have at points of contact with you, and we, as a profession, need to work on our brand behavior. So, think about brand as the way in which individuals and groups must behave, in order to earn the desired reputation. All of us need to take a look at our individual program brand to determine what our constituents and communities think of it. Because, in short, this is your program identity and reputation and expression of what your program stands for. It is formed and added to by you and others over time. In addition to the various points of context or experiences that stakeholders have with the program, it also includes things like websites or blogs you've created, tweets, blog comments, your counter screen names, and everything else you've left behind on the Internet from your online activities.
And it is also tied into your personal brand or expression of yourself. Your personal brand is an extension of your program and requires the same care and feeding to ensure that it is always viewed in a positive light.
Although advocacy for the school library program should be a daily practice, results can be best attained (and tracked) through a purposeful plan. As Ballard explains, the plan "should focus on explaining the relevance of existing services based on data and evidence." Data should be probed for relevant findings and gaps and applied to a process of building strategies for moving forward. Developing an advocacy plan is a complex effort that involves numerous data sources, feedback from others, professional reflection, and ongoing monitoring and improvement.
Ballard emphasizes that, "a brand is more than a logo." The brand is the school library's identity.
1. What are the key elements of your school library brand? You can work from an existing iteration of the brand or start anew. List key words, possibly from the school library mission or your professional beliefs about school librarianship.
2. Select 3-5 representations of the library, such as the space, website, a policy, a display, or a lesson plan.
3. Review these samples, and look for evidence of your (desired) brand in appearance, action, and other qualities. Reflect: What evidence aligns with the brand? What elements seem to contradict, or perhaps not necessarily contradict, but fail to advance the brand? What changes might strengthen the infusion of the brand across the activities of the library?
MLA Citation
Morris, Rebecca J. "Advocacy: The Big Picture: What Is Your Brand?" School Library Connection, September 2017, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1987468?learningModuleId=1980795&topicCenterId=2247903.
Entry ID: 2128120
Additional Resources
Words from the Wise: Advocacy Quotables.
About the Author
MLA Citation
Ballard, Susan D. "Advocacy: The Big Picture. Developing a Plan [4:32]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, November 2015, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1987468?learningModuleId=1980795&topicCenterId=2247903.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/1987468?learningModuleId=1980795&topicCenterId=2247903
Entry ID: 1987468