Purpose

This study aims to explore preadolescents' opinions of the social media marketing strategies hosted by libraries to promote collections.

Design/methodology/approach

An experimental Facebook page was created with posts containing interesting animations, games and book recommendations. A questionnaire survey was administered to 262 preadolescents between 11 and 13 years old to seek their opinions about the posts, and confirmatory factor analysis was used to measure their acceptance of the marketing strategies.

Findings

The authors examined the effects of five marketing strategies: word-of-mouth marketing, buzz marketing, event marketing, viral marketing and gamification marketing. In terms of sharing, word-of-mouth marketing proved the most popular, followed by buzz marketing. Participants were least accepting of viral marketing. The authors found that gamification marketing resulted in higher engagement than did event marketing. The preadolescent participants preferred engagement marketing strategies over information sharing strategies.

Originality/value

According to the uses and gratification theory, preadolescents seek, share and engage with information in ways that differ from other age groups. With specific reference to hedonic engagement by preadolescents, the authors built a two-fold model to describe the information-seeking behaviors of preadolescents from the perspective of marketing strategies. The study findings indicate that librarians who use Facebook to promote library collections should first employ gamification and word-of-mouth marketing to build trust with preadolescent users. Event and buzz marketing will then be more effective when applied within the context of this trust.

中文翻译：

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使用社交媒体营销策略促进青春期前的图书馆馆藏

目的

本研究旨在探讨青春期前儿童对图书馆为推广馆藏而举办的社交媒体营销策略的看法。

设计/方法/途径

创建了一个实验性的 Facebook 页面，其中包含有趣的动画、游戏和书籍推荐。对 262 名 11 至 13 岁的青春期前儿童进行了问卷调查，以征求他们对帖子的看法，并使用验证性因素分析来衡量他们对营销策略的接受程度。

发现

作者研究了五种营销策略的效果：口碑营销、口碑营销、事件营销、病毒式营销和游戏化营销。在分享方面，口碑营销最受欢迎，其次是口碑营销。参与者最不接受病毒式营销。作者发现，游戏化营销比事件营销带来更高的参与度。青春期前的参与者更喜欢参与营销策略而不是信息共享策略。

原创性/价值

根据使用和满足理论，青春期前儿童寻求、分享和参与信息的方式与其他年龄组不同。具体参考青春期前的享乐参与，作者构建了一个双重模型，从营销策略的角度描述青春期前的信息寻求行为。研究结果表明，使用 Facebook 推广图书馆馆藏的图书馆员应首先采用游戏化和口碑营销来建立与青春期前用户的信任。当在这种信任的背景下应用时，事件和口碑营销将更加有效。