15 Ways to Promote Your Corporate Library

Introduction

Are you looking for ideas to promote your corporate library service to other departments, employees, researchers, and management, and want to increase your library user base? This article is for corporate librarians, information professionals, and anyone seeking to increase engagement with their organization’s library services.

A corporate library is a specialized information center within a business that curates and manages industry-specific research, technical data, and competitive intelligence. Promoting your corporate library matters because it ensures that valuable resources, expertise, and information services are visible and accessible to those who need them most—driving better decision-making, innovation, and organizational success.

How to Use These Ideas

We have been providing solutions to special and corporate libraries for nearly 30 years and over this time we have been involved at many levels within the library. This experience has allowed us to gain invaluable insight into what the needs of both the users and library staff are, how management might be influenced, and how to best present ideas to decision makers.

Simply marketing the corporate library and keeping it in front of users is a very effective way of creating more user engagement. In this article are just a few ideas to help increase visibility. They may be relevant to your situation or provide you with inspiration to develop your own ideas!

1 – Create an Email Newsletter

By capturing the names and email addresses of your users, you can then use this to keep them up to date with ‘everything’ you do at the corporate library. Some corporate information centres and libraries don’t run an email marketing newsletter, yet it is the easiest and most direct way to approach and speak to your users.

Using tools like Mail Chimp to set this up simplifies administration and you can encourage both library members and non-members to join if this is permitted within your organisation.

2 – Welcome Packs

When someone uses your corporate library for the first time, provide them with a Welcome Pack. This could include:

  • A simple fact sheet of contact details
  • Reading lists
  • Library opening hours
  • Information on how they would like to stay informed (e.g., by email)
  • Directions to a central location for key library resources and materials
  • Lists of upcoming events or seminars you are hosting
  • Examples of tasks you have performed for others within your organisation

The first email they receive should also replicate the details you provide on the fact sheet. It can also direct each person to a central location for key library resources and materials, rather than leaving them to search across different locations. You can also flag upcoming workshops or other training programs that build information literacy.

3 – Partner / User Group Events

Use your suppliers and any third parties or business partners to help deliver workshops or briefings tailored to departments’ specific needs. Invite them to hold library briefings where they can talk about their latest offerings and solutions. These sessions can support research, market analysis, or regulatory updates for any team that relies on specialized information services. Make sure you invite department heads, researchers, and your members. Use your newsletter to promote this to generate interest.

4 – Library Website or Portal

Make sure your corporate website has a space just for you. Have a link from the corporate site directly to the Library website or portal where the first page might inform users:

Key features to include:

  • What specialist information, databases, reports, and other digital assets you offer
  • Reading lists and the latest titles available
  • Your opening hours and your location (include travel/parking facilities nearby)
  • Staff details and bios, including roles such as corporate librarians or a s librarian where relevant (include group and/or individual photos)
  • A blog or section on the latest news and events at your library
  • A simple search function to access resources, with cataloging metadata that improves discovery within business systems

If permitted, create your own corporate library website using WordPress or other content management software. Learn how to create your library website using WordPress in this article.

Perhaps your library management system provides a Search Portal where you can market your services and regularly change the content so that it is fresh and up to date without having to keep referring back to your webmaster. A Search Portal such as that within Soutron allows you to control the entire experience, theme, and style – even make it look like your own corporate website. It provides a great starting place to engage your users and keep them coming back to access your library catalogue online. Learn more about our Library Search Portal technology.

Modern corporate digital libraries now operate mainly through digital platforms integrated with enterprise systems such as SharePoint for real-time access.

Integrated library systems support scalable information management and more precise search through customized metadata and cataloging.

5 – Share Great Ideas!

Produce case studies, recent examples, or blog articles on how you or other library colleagues have helped your users within the organisation with competitive intelligence, market analysis, and tailored reports. These examples can also show how the library provides support for compliance or risk management by organizing critical company documents, managing data, and improving the information process across organizations. If you can get your colleagues to produce them and pass them to you for review before publishing them on your website library pages, even better. Just make sure to share via the newsletter and social media, if suitable for public broadcast of course!

6 – Take the Library to Other Departments

Find out about other department events and seminars where you can help and take part. Grab 5 minutes to talk about the library and showcase examples of your work, including how you support departments with authoritative resources so employees and management can make fast, data-driven decisions. This can include:

  • Monitoring competitor activity
  • Tracking industry trends
  • Sharing regulatory updates that give companies an advantage

7 – Use Video to Promote the Library

From simple how-to guides and information videos to recording recent events held. Capture them on your smartphone. Most are more than capable of recording high quality video. Purchase a tripod to make your video more professional. Smartphone tripods don’t cost much, so “go pro”! Video can also explain newer digital tools, including AI or automation features that improve user engagement, routine support, and search or research assistance.

Share these on your library search portal or via YouTube or Vimeo (check to make sure this is approved by corporate) and again don’t forget to include links in your next email newsletter to staff.

8 – Create a Distinctive Library Logo

To help promote your corporate library, produce your very own library logo. This might be a variant of your organisation’s logo or something completely different. Either way, once you have this approved, make sure to include it in all your corporate library literature, emails, social media, and promotions. Branding is a key ingredient in helping your users identify with you and your service.

9 – Run Your Own Social Media Accounts

Social media is a great platform for you to build an audience and niche user base. We have seen many corporate libraries create their own social media accounts and use these to promote events, content, and even the history of their organisation via the library, while also highlighting learning resources that encourage learning, professional development, innovation, and a stronger workplace culture. Posts can feature curated digital materials such as e-books or audiobooks tied to employee skills, leadership, personal growth, and wider business development. The only cost here is a little of your time to set these up and share the articles and events from your website.

10 – Leverage Your Library Staff’s Own Social Media

This might not always be permitted or even possible if other colleagues do not use social media, but if they do, just ask if they would like to get involved in re-sharing library content via their own accounts. Twitter and LinkedIn are perfect. Make sure they are on-board with your organisation’s employee social media policy first.

11 – Produce a Library Blog

If your software allows it then provide periodic updates in the form of a library blog. Talk about the specialist areas, events taking place, and core services such as literature searching, competitive intelligence gathering, or document delivery, and again invite new readers/employees to join your newsletter. This can also help share useful knowledge and support better decisions across the business. WordPress (mentioned in point 4 above) provides the tools you need and a great platform for running a blog as part of your library website. You can also generate a blog from within Soutron software and publish it to the Search Portal!

12 – RSS Feeds

An RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication) is a great way to push your website news, content, articles, and blog to others. Soutron Search Portal includes this feature.

13 – Get Involved in Other Events – Digitally!

You might not have the time or budget to physically attend all the conferences, seminars, user groups, or showcases related to your library or organisation, but you can still get involved online.

Most events use social media and #hashtags to help promote them, so use these to get involved in the debate or event and get noticed by others in your industry. For example, #librariesweek is a very popular hashtag during Libraries Week which takes place in early October each year.

14 – Fact Sheets / Reading Lists

A simple but sometimes overlooked task. Produce regular fact sheets or reading lists tailored around high-value topics such as:

  • Business intelligence
  • Management
  • Engineering standards

This way, they better support department-specific priorities and specific needs within your Search Portal. It’s easy to produce downloadable PDF versions allowing your users to take these away for later reference – with your branding! It can really help engage users with some of the great content and value within the library.

15 – The Physical Library

How much space does the library have within the organisation? Even in a corporate library with fewer than five full-time staff and mostly digital services, physical space can still be vital. Are you lucky enough to have open spaces or rooms you can offer to your organisation or others? Make them available for company events, seminars, and corporate training. A physical library can also serve as a local hub for workshops, information literacy sessions, or programs that support teams and shared resources.

Provide visitors with presentation tools such as:

  • Screens
  • Displays
  • Projectors
  • WIFI (budget permitting, of course)

Libraries also face challenges such as budget reductions that can exceed 20% during downturns, information overload from over 400 quintillion bytes of data created daily, privacy compliance needs such as GDPR and CCPA, and staff skill gaps around AI and digital curation, so space and tools should be planned carefully to balance access, security, and cost with trusted publications and databases that enhance productivity.

Conclusion

We trust these ideas are of some value and might help you in the near future. Demonstrating usage statistics or cost savings ratios can help justify the space by showing productivity and helping teams face challenges. We would love to hear from you if you have any other ideas or suggestions!