Att marknadsföra ett bibliotek på Facebook

Sammanfattning: With the advent of a range of social networks, librarians all over the world have startedto ask themselves how this new technology can be used as a way to market theirlibraries. Today's information websites and search engines are difficult competitors forlibraries and information centers, and are forcing traditional information institutions tomarket themselves in new ways.Marketing theories have traditionally concerned themselves with money transactionsand marketing of specific services and/or products. Relationship marketing theories, onthe other hand, focus more on the relationship between the customer and the companythat produces the product or service. These two parties are seen as co-producers, andrelationship marketing theories tend to focus more on a win-win situation, than on thecompany gaining power of the customer. The relationship is the important thing, and thetheories concentrate to a great extent on how to nourish these relationships.This paper is a discussion about whether Facebook as a social network is a usable toolfor library marketing. Since both libraries and social networks are all aboutrelationships, we chose to make use of a relationship marketing theory to investigatethis. This theory was Evert Gummesson's theory about the most important relationshipsin marketing.The literature we have used in our analysis shows different meanings when it comes tohow to best, if at all, market a library on Facebook. The conclusion is that there is notone correct answer and every different library has to explore what is best for them.