Communications With Curb Appeal

What do your customers see when they visit your website? Attractive and informative content, or pages of weeds? Step up your curb appeal with communications that reflect your value, without breaking your budget.

Content Management Systems (CMS) are one way libraries can effectively and affordably deliver rich, dynamic and timely content.  Library staff can work together to reach specific audiences while maintaining one cohesive site.  Adding BookLetters to a CMS saves staff time by automating tasks and incorporating content into the applications.

The Mount Pleasant Public Library (NY) incorporates BookLetters into their Joomla CMS web site. Their “DIY (do it yourself)” approach keeps them in charge. BookLetters Widgets automatically update their site, without extra work. Their communications are current and flexible, serving as web pages and e-newsletters. Rather than spending hours doing repetitive work, library staff are available to do the work they do best- serving their customers.

“Mount Pleasant is very excited about this new service (BookLetters)”, said Library Director John Fearon. “By allowing our users to more easily find interesting and stimulating material our collection will become much more accessible. This new service also ties in with our goals of offering new, value-added digital services and promoting our services in a more effective and environmentally friendly way”.

Contact us to learn more about how BookLetters can help you save time and resources while effectively reaching out to your community.

This is just one of many valuable tools included in the BookLetters service.

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Double Duty

The Palo Alto Public Library uses the BookLetters Custom Newsletter feature to create a weekly notice called “What’s Going on at Your Library,” that is sent to 5,000 subscribers and posted on their website.

Palo Alto’s Jessica Goodman, a librarian at Palo Alto explains,

We use our custom BookLetters to alert our customers about upcoming library events and related books in the collection, to showcase books, and to call attention to older titles they may have missed or forgotten. BookLetters offers an easy way to keep our web-based presence dynamic and to connect online customers with the physical books in our collection.

In one easy step, Palo Alto achieves two goals- filling their website with valuable content, and reaching out to customers with newsletters who want to keep up with all the library has going on.

Giving staff the right tools to complete their objectives saves time and money. Our content library is integrated into all BookLetters applications, allowing the library staff to quickly and easily create both content rich web pages and e-newsletters at once, saving them valuable time that can now be redirected to assisting patrons.

Contact Us to find out how you too can use BookLetters to reach out to your community.

This is just one of over 50 valuable features included in the BookLetters service.

Think Outside the Blog

Your blog is a basic component of your web 2.0 presence- to communicate timely information, engage your patrons in conversations about services and events, and lure visitors deeper into your website. But filling a blog can be a full time job. BookLetters rich content, graphics and web applications give you the tools and content you need, right at your fingertips, to create a dynamic blog.

• millions of pages of content you can copy and paste into blog posts
• catalog linking gives your patrons easy access to request items
• widgets add visual interest that once embedded automatically update your site
• premade lists do some of your work for you
• customize posts to reflect what is important to your community
• editorial clips create ready made blog posts

The Findlay-Hancock County Public Library (OH) integrated BookLetters into their Main Library Blog and their Teen Services Blog. From their Main Blog they link visitors to Staff Picks and New DVDs. The Fiction Bestsellers and Teen Scene widgets they planted add visual appeal and keep their patrons coming back to see what is new.

Carol Dunn, Audio Visual Manager says,

“BookLetters helps the FHCPL achieve a high standard of professional quality each and every week in our Blog. We strive to maximize all available BookLetters resources so our patrons know what we have available. Thanks to our partnership with BookLetters we can effectively display all information resources online with the highest standard of excellence in our webpage and on our Blog.”

Contact us to find out how our rich content and dynamic web applications can work for you.

Discover over 50 valuable features included in the BookLetters service.

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Put Your Marketing Front and Center

Your library works hard to build collections and plan events that reach out to your community. Get the most out of your marketing using BookLetters’ flexible web applications and content. BookLetters helps you make your marketing goals reality.

Sandra Lee Bisnett a librarian in the Reference Department of the Fresno County Library says,

“The wonderful thing about BookLetters is its ease of use. BookLetters pages can be created by our librarians, who choose the materials for the page, rather than our webmaster, making the process quicker and more efficient. After creating the BookLetters page, it only takes a simple step to create the code for the widget that draws visitors from our front page further into our website. “

The Fresno Public Library received a Big Read grant to promote the novel Tom Sawyer. Using BookLetters, they created a marketing message that promotes events and additional readings that link directly into their catalog. A BookLetters Widget on their front page lures visitors in for more information. This message serves their marketing needs for months, and can be used as a web page and e-newsletter that they can send to remind their customers of the Big Read.

Discover over 50 valuable features included in the BookLetters service.

Give It to Them Straight

In this financial climate, libraries need to have their radar in tune to react and reach out to their patrons with relevant and timely communications. Your community needs to know the value you provide, for their benefit and yours. The information contained in print newsletters and annual reports is invaluable, but the time and cost of producing them can be prohibitive. Delivering important information straight to the source- your community- could be your best bet to maintaining local support.

BookLetters‘ suite of tools easily integrates into your overall communication plan, and takes you beyond the confines of print marketing. With BookLetters:

* Personalize and deliver messages to patrons based on their needs and interests
* Customize content to brand your library as the relevant source, not a third party
* Ask for patrons’ help with funding and advocacy when you need it
* Enable staff participation by simplifying the updating of web pages and e-newsletters

BookLetters is proud to help libraries deliver their value.

Discover over 50 valuable features included in the BookLetters service