Marketing: Listen to your users

Generally when we think of someone marketing to us, we think of them doing all of the talking. Often that is the case, but they should be listening too. How can a person, business, library, collection, or project market itself to me if he, she or it doesn't know what I want? If you are creating a new digitization project or an online collection or a digital library, go out and talk to those that you hope will use it. Ask them open-ended questions, then LISTEN to their answers. Ask questions of lots of people and listen to the responses to hear what they want as well as what they don't want. And listen for the things that they desire but consider impossible. Who knows, you might be able to do them.