Marketing the Library to Teens

I read a great article today by Anastasia Goldstein about how to get teens into a library. The article really describes teens' quirks and idiosyncracies, and how you can use those special teen features to your library's benefit. Here's a summary of the quirks, followed by my suggestions for using that to the best advantage for the library (in bold italics):

Illustration by Max Scratchmann

Teens are multitaskers: Today's teens take multitasking to a whole new level, and can do homework, surf the internet, listen to music, play games, and interact on social media...just don't ask them to do chores!! In her article, Goldstein quotes a 2005 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation that says students between the ages of eight and 18 spend more than 25 percent of their media time multitasking. Libraries can capitalize on this by allowing internet access with headphones handy so that teens can listen to their music while doing homework and IMing friends.

Teens prefer byte-sized entertainment - Because of their penchant for multitasking, keeping a teen's attention for one single thing is a herculean task! I think libraries are currently doing a good job of providing entertainment in short snippets by having teen areas that specialize in media attractive to teens.

Teens expect content on demand. With iPods, DVRs, YouTube, and the like, teens today are used to getting what they want when they want it. This entertainment on demand attitude has begun to drive the way people market to teens. According to Goldstein, "...the CW series Gossip Girl was initially a complete bust—at least, in terms of traditional TV ratings. But when network executives noticed the buzz on teen blogs and fan pages and the number of times the show was downloaded on iTunes, they realized they had a huge hit." What this tells us is that if libraries use social media, teens will listen!

Teens want to participate. Teens like social media because of the instant gratification, and it's easy to see that when you look at how many young people participate in things like American Idol. Teens want to share their opinions more than adults might even want, but libraries can use that by offering young people the opportunity to share their book reviews in podcasts and video blogs. Put a camera or microphone in a teen's face and they will go!

To read more about this topic or to see the author's suggestions for using the quirks that teens share, check out the source article.