Orkney Library: The little library with the big literary following

CAT ANDERSON Welcome to Social Creatures, a podcast from Sprout Social. I’m Cat, and I’m here to explore some of my favourite success stories from the world of social media. This is a space for everyone. And, really, nearly anything goes. But what makes an account successful or popular? Honestly, it’s hard to know. But that’s what we’re here to find out.

Throughout the series, we’ll talk with the brands behind the accounts you know and some that you don’t to explore the weird and wonderful ways that businesses, organisations, and individuals have achieved success on social media, all the tangible insights that you can apply to your own social strategies. And we’ll be heeding the advice of Stacey, our social media agony aunt, who’s here to guide you through some of your trickiest digital dilemmas.

This week, I’m joined by John Peterson, who’s the man behind the Twitter account @OrkneyLibrary. I first found Orkney’s Twitter account a couple of years ago when I stumbled upon the very real and hilarious beef between them and their neighbouring library of Shetland, Ireland. What can I say? It’s not every day that you see libraries bickering with each other over Twitter. I came for the drama, but I stayed for the content.

Orkney has grown its following into the tens of thousands with its blend of genuinely interesting insights and then charming and silly humour, all while earning fans and PR from right across the globe. They are the literary darlings of British Twitter and have secured their place as a must-visit destination on many of the biggest book launch tours.

If you’d like to have a look or follow the account while you’re listening, you can find the handle @OrkneyLibrary.

John, welcome.

JOHN PETERSON Hi.

CAT ANDERSON I’m going to start by choosing a tweet from one of Orkney’s thirty-five thousand tweets that they’ve posted. One which I love.

JOHN PETERSON Gosh, is it that many?

CAT ANDERSON Yeah. So many. And I think it gives an insight into the personality of the account pretty nicely. So, this was a tweet that was accompanied with a picture of a book, which had a stamp of another library’s name on it. I’ll read it first.

“A book was just returned that thought it was a loner,
but it wasn’t ours at all.
A book that left it’s home in Tucson Arizona,
for some Orkney Library balls.

Get back, get back,
get back to where you once belonged.”

Now, there is a lot going on in that tweet. We’ve got global library banter. We’ve got the Beatles. And then, of course, the Orkney Library balls. Can you tell us the story behind this post?

JOHN PETERSON Well, the – the book got returned to the mobile library, and it was in a bag of whole lot other books that somebody had dropped off. The mobile library driver noticed this library stamp, which is what most libraries do. They have a stamp with their library name on the – on the sort of edge of the page block. And it was Tucson, Arizona. So, she brought it to me. And it’s just a immediate word association. You see, Tucson, Arizona, you think Get Back by the Beatles. It just seemed like an obvious lead-in. And everybody’s been watching The Beatles: Get Back, you know, documentary series. And it was just—. It just seemed like a perfect way to go.

You know, this is the sort of thing that turns up all the time in libraries. You either get tremendously overdue books, which, you know, is always kind of interesting just because of the sort of time context thing, or – or, you know, books that have traveled a long way. In this case, sorta for four thousand miles or something, you know.

CAT ANDERSON Yeah. It’s crazy. So, that’s a tweet that I love. But for those who maybe haven’t interacted with your account before, John, could you tell us a little bit about what the Orkney Library Twitter account is like and why people love it?

JOHN PETERSON Like I said, we’re a library and an archive. So, we try and talk about stuff that’s happening in the library, stuff that they’re doing in the archive. We have a mobile library, so we often post about where it’s going, which is a good way of showing off Orkney, as well as keeping people up to speed with, you know, where it’s – where it’s going to be. We talk about the different services and some of the things we do for the community that we’re serving. But also, we try and have fun with all those things as well and share them in a kind of entertaining way, so that it’s – it’s useful, hopefully, but also gives people – even people who aren’t here have something—. You know, they have something to follow and to give them a bit of an understanding about where we are.

CAT ANDERSON Can you tell us a little bit about, for people who maybe don’t understand what you were talking about with the—? I think it’s safe to say famous Orkney Library balls.

JOHN PETERSON The library in Kirkwall, we’ve got a kind of paved area in the library with benches and trees and stuff. I suppose they’re just a sort of architectural element. They’re cast concrete balls, but they’ve kind of got a sort of theme all of their own. People come and visit us. They take photos on them and stuff. And we post things about them on – on social media from time to time. But they’ve just kind of become associated with us a bit.

CAT ANDERSON Yeah. I know that I was looking at some of your tweets that had the most likes, and the ones that describe the Orkney Library balls always get lots of likes. But for reading it right without the picture of the architectural element, it definitely is a little bit with innuendo.

But maybe we’re getting a little bit too into the weeds here. Let’s zoom back out, and could you tell us a little bit of about Orkney and Orkney Library? So, paint a picture for our listeners. Where are you, and what is the library like?

JOHN PETERSON Well, Orkney is a group of islands—an archipelago is the proper term—just off the north coast of Scotland. Orkney Library and Archive, which is the – is in Kirkwall, which is the main town, and it’s been around for years. It’s kind of a official—. The date it started was 1683. So, we’ve got it as our main library. ‘Cause we’ve got a population of about twenty-two thousand. So, we’re not that big a place. But an island community. Quite rural, surrounded by the sea. A lot of farming. Which it’s just quite a unique place as all islands are.

CAT ANDERSON So, to what extent does social media play a part on the life of Orkney? Can you gauge that at all?

JOHN PETERSON Social media, generally, I mean, it’s – it’s here. You know, like everywhere, there’s loads of people use it and businesses use it and organisations. It’s – it’s just like everywhere else. It’s—. For us, it’s just a way of showing what we do and talking about the stuff we do, drawing attention to stuff. But also, you know, we have a bit of fun with it—. And I don’t know. Show the side of the library and the archive as well, actually, that people maybe don’t know or definitely can’t always get to. You know, by definition, a lot of our followers aren’t in Orkney. So, you know. But people are always interested in – in books and in libraries and in archives, old photographs. All that kind of stuff. And so, it’s just a good way of talking about that, you know.

CAT ANDERSON Would you say that you’re the social media sweetheart of Orkney?

JOHN PETERSON No. I – I – I definitely wouldn’t say that. We just do our thing. There’s loads—. There’s quite a few really big accounts doing stuff. ‘Cause it’s—. Orkney is, you know—. It’s really picturesque, and it’s got a really strong tourist industry and loads of history and actually loads of really good food producers and craft producers. And, you know, it’s just—. It’s that kind of place. And so, there’s loads of stuff happening, really, on social media.

CAT ANDERSON You’re maybe my sweethearts of Orkney then.

JOHN PETERSON Oh, well, we’ll take that.

CAT ANDERSON That is as a personal thing.

JOHN PETERSON We’ll take that.

CAT ANDERSON But it is interesting, because I think Orkney—. You mentioned it is. Orkney Library is quite an old institution. But also in terms of how long you’ve been on Twitter. You’ve had a Twitter account since 2009, which was actually only three years after Twitter launched. So, it was quite early in the life cycle of the platform. Can you tell me a little bit about why Orkney decided to go on Twitter and why it became such an important part of the library?

JOHN PETERSON When you look around, and lots of the people we interact with, which are, like, other libraries and archives and museums and stuff, I know it’s a lot of them where it was around the same time they started to get onto social media. I think it was just starting to become a thing beyond, you know, personal accounts, and the organisations and people were starting to get involved with it. And so, I think that was about the time it really started to boom. 

You know, I mean, we had a website like everybody did. But it was just a way of communicating more with people. You know, that sort of faster way of getting information out there and just showing off, showcasing the library, you know, and – and what – what we were doing, what we were about, ’cause we were advertising stuff that was happening. It’s worked, you know. And it’s – it’s good fun doing it as well. So, I mean, it makes it more fun. You’re always learning stuff doing it as well. And, sometimes, you know, you could come up with something to talk about in social media. And it’s a way of, you know, exploring things as well, because there’s so much information and knowledge out there where the people who follow you. So, there’s, you know—. We put stuff up, and stuff comes back to us as well with it. You know, it kind of works in a very sort of organic, kind of interactive way as well.

CAT ANDERSON Yeah. I love that. Because I think, so often, when people start, especially an account associated with a business, you want to immediately have tens of thousands of followers. And I think Orkney is a really good example of experimenting, having a little bit of fun, having a mixture of content out there, and then growing and growing. Because I think since you obviously started the account, there’s twenty-two thousand around thereabouts, people on Orkney. But your followers are coming up to around the seventy-eight thousand mark. So, many of your followers aren’t Orkney residents. Do you know who your followers are, and do you have an idea of how far your reach goes?

JOHN PETERSON Not really. We never really analysed it that much, to be honest. We kind of just—. We just kind of keep on going and see, you know, who comes along and who, you know, who comes in and who gets in touch and stuff like that. But I mean, obviously, they’re—. You know, the majority of them aren’t in Orkney. So, they’re – they’re all over the place. And that’s really nice as well, actually.

CAT ANDERSON I think you’re being really modest, because I know exactly the type of people who follow you, and you get lots of famous authors following you. I know that you get lots of nice positive attention and—.

JOHN PETERSON Oh, yeah. Yeah. We do get that as well, which is great. It’s been a huge benefit, actually, because it’s brought, you know, authors to come and see us. And, you know, a small, relatively difficult and expensive place to get to, you know, compared to traveling around on the mainland and things like that. Then, you know, I’ve – I’ve spoken to other libraries who really struggle to get included on author tours and things like that. I mean, there, I suppose, is a bit of a novelty that have come into us as well. But, you know, we’ve been really lucky in that way. And then, they follow us and interact with us and stuff. 

But then, we’re – we’re talking about books and doing stuff for books. And it’s all that world. You know, it’s books. And you don’t think about it too much, because if you did, you probably wouldn’t be able to post anything. You’d be going, “I can post this. Such and such is going to see it.” You know? But we don’t really think like that. We just do it and hope that it’s okay.

CAT ANDERSON Well, it definitely is, because I think—. I mean, there’s people like me, I’ve never been to Orkney. I found you years ago, as I said, because you were making fun of Shetland Library, and I thought that was absolutely hilarious. And I actually think I saw it in press as well. And I think that’s another thing where, because of the blend and the humour and the interest and the genuine niceness of everything that you’re posting, it’s just such a lovely feed to read.

JOHN PETERSON Yeah. The thing with Shetland as – as well. You know, just fine. I mean, they – they are very similar in terms of their—. I mean, they’re also an island group. Same virtually location. They’re further north, which they’ll always highlight that they’re further north than we are. But they’re trying to do the same thing as we are. They’re you know, trying to promote what they’re doing, show the sort of challenges of providing the services they provide in – in an island kind of setting. So—. But it’s just good fun every now and again to have to kind of needle each other.

CAT ANDERSON Oh, absolutely. You know, you do have a beautifully nuanced tweeting style. Like, there’s a lovely blend of content that you put up there, which we can chat about. But at times, you know, you’ll have a naughty joke, and then there’ll be a lovely black-and-white photograph of Orkney and its citizens throughout the ages. And, of course, there’s lots and lots of content about books as well. Do you think it’s that combination of humour and nostalgia, Orkney pride and literature, is that a reflection of your own character and what speaks to you? Or do you try and keep it separate and embody the library?

JOHN PETERSON It’s probably both. You know, like I say, it’s a library and an archive. So, the combination of showing off stuff from the library and stuff from the archive is kind of – is definitely trying to embody that. But it is also stuff that interests me. I mean, even the – the silly stuff, the really bad puns and jokes and stuff, it’s the sort of stupid stuff that occurs to me just as I’m going about my day, you know. So, it’s not like—. I’m not sitting with a pencil and a pad, trying to come up with a pun. It’s just stupid stuff that occurs to me sometimes or silly stuff or whatever. So, I think it would be impossible to do otherwise. It would be a real grind in your brain trying to come up with stuff.

CAT ANDERSON Oh, I totally agree. And I think that’s what works really well on Orkney, because, I will be honest, I wouldn’t have thought that the archive stuff would particularly appeal to me as much as it does. But it’s because of, I guess, your way of framing it and saying like, “Oh, look, here’s this guy falling down the slopes. Here’s this man who loves his dog.” Like, really, really—. Like you – you inject a lot of humanity into the archive pieces.

JOHN PETERSON And the archive photos. There’s loads of amazing photos. And you kind of feel that you need to add something to them. And we usually do explain what the photo actually is, but we’ll quite often have a bit of fun with it as well. The archive’s got sixty or seventy thousand, you know, images of – dating right back to the sort of 1850s, I think. Maybe even slightly before that. But the – the—.

Anyways. So, often, you just come across some lovely, you know, sort of photos or – or just ones that are quite funny. I mean, you’re not really making fun of them. But there’s just that thing, you know, with old photos. Very serious faces or – or – or just – just funny stuff. And so, sometimes, you say something kind of humorous as a sort of launchpad for showing the photo. And then, explain actually when the photo was taken, who took it, what it is. And so, you start to catch people on the first thing and then tell them more about it. It’s just kind of a style we’ve developed. So, very rarely do we just straight post the photo and say what it is. Although, occasionally, you do come across that lovely photo of William Houston with his dog, where it’s just a lovely photo of a guy with his dog.

Lucy, who’s one of the archivists, you know, will give me her phone and say, you know, “I’ve just found this – this email or pop up.” And it’ll just be a grateful or something that she’s come across. And everything in the archive or, you know, there’s new stuff coming in all the time, but stuff is catalogued. But it’s not, you know—. It appeared on a list somewhere. But when, sometimes, you open something, you go, “Wow.” You know? “There’s this amazing.” And it’s maps or old letters, you know, or old photographs. All sorts of stuff. And so, there is an element of that. So – so, often when it comes to me, it is the first time, you know, I’ve seen it.

CAT ANDERSON Now, here at Sprout Social, we know that social media is a wild and wonderful beast. It can surprise and delight, but it can also confuse and perplex even the hardiest of social media users. Who better to turn to for help than our social media expert, Stacey Wright, who’s here to answer your questions over a cup of tea and some biscuits in the part of the show we like to call Sound Advice.

STACEY WRIGHT Right. I’ve got my cup of tea and I’ve got my letters, which can only mean it’s time for us to take a break and cosy down together. This is the part of the podcast where I, your social media agony aunt, Stacey, guide you, our dear listeners, through your trickiest digital dilemmas.

Right. Let me see what social media conundrums you’ve sent my way today.

“Dear Stacey,

“I’m relatively new to my role, coming from a successful beauty brand to an up-and-coming aesthetic therapies chain. My manager is pressuring me to replicate the large Instagram following of a frankly rogue cosmetic clinic, and is enthralled by the vanity metric of the audience size rather than whether or not the audience is interacting with their content.

It seems that our competitors in question might have bought their followers since they number over three hundred thousand followers, but achieve less than twenty likes on an average post. Meanwhile, I have daily emails from my manager requesting that I publish operational information to the social feeds about opening hours and booking advice, which only damages the genuine engagement we’re hoping to build. 

I’m getting deep frown lines that could serve as a perfect before pic for our own treatments. How can I inject confidence amongst my senior comms team to focus on long-term growth with authentic brand advocacy, rather than using dark hat social tactics and gripping green content from said celebrities?

Seeking thriller, not filler, Emma.”

CAT ANDERSON Uh, Emma, this is something that I think comes up a lot, and we hear from a lot when we are working in social media. And, in fact, one of the most viewed pieces of content on our blog is How to Grow Instagram Followers. 

Firstly, start with some internal education and back it up by data. Take that competitor, use a competitor tracking tool to follow their growth in audience. Did they amass followers in one go or is it a steady growth over time that they’re having?

Secondly, see how much advertising they’re actually putting out there. Go onto their Facebook page, find the page transparency section, and look at their ad library and see how many ads they’re running. And that will include across Instagram as well as other Facebook placements.

And lastly, how many people are actually visiting your profile and seeing that follower number. And this has a follow-up question to your manager. Do they actually care about other people seeing that number of followers, and is that a brand reputation issue, because they feel like it’s too low for how they perceive their brand?

If it is the case that they’re worried about brand reputation tied to that follower number, try and switch their focus to those big interaction numbers that also have that behavioural, economic science behind them. So, maybe it’s how many views on a reel you’ve had. And Instagram Reels is a really great place to start, because lots of people are consuming them, but very few people are actually creating them, which means you’ll get high volumes of people that don’t even follow you seeing that content straightaway.

Comments on posts would be my second area to focus on. As humans, we love to dive into the conversation and see what’s happening. So, comments underneath feed posts is another really strong metric to look at.

Last but not least, shares of your content. How many people are recommending your piece of content to their mates? A bit like when I log on to Instagram at the end of the day, and my inbox is full of cat memes, how much have people done that and sent your posts to their mates?

So, it might be the case that, actually, your senior leadership team just aren’t that social savvy and they’re not used to do social media as part of the marketing mix. Think about traditional marketing tactics that you would use to grow a customer base and apply that in the same terms to them for your following. So, you might have promotions that you want to push out to people through a street leaf letter in traditional terms. That could be a story post that’s more highlighted in the top of your feed. It’s more direct.

In terms of getting in front of your followers, you might do a direct mail campaign to the doors of your customers. That’s, like, boosted feed posts. That’s boosting that content to get in front of them in their feed, very much like pushing it to the letter box of their door.

And lastly, you might look at partnerships. So, with influencers, I would always say position them as doing a partnership with another business. They get paid for what they do. And then, they’re sharing their content to new audiences for you on your behalf.

So, that education piece is great for those long-term tactics to grow your following. But if you are in need of those quick wins to appease people day to day, in the example that you’ve given in the letter with the operational messages being pushed, and you don’t want to put them on the feed, try and shift those to the Instagram stories. Stories are timely. They time out after twenty-four hours, but they’re also highlighted more prevalently at the top of the feed, so you’re likely to get a better impression rate and you can go back to that team and say, “Look, how many people saw this. Isn’t it great?”

Secondly, if it is a quick win on followers and comments, then we know that those follow-and-comment-to-win campaigns on for yous can be really effective, but they come with a warning. Those engagement rates can be really high, and it’s hard to often come back from them. If you’re comparing your day-to-day activity with those competitions, it’s often not a fair benchmark to have.

Most importantly, as well as all these tactics, is to be confident. That confidence you want to inject into your stakeholders, have that for yourself. They hired you as an expert in social, and it’s just as important that they support you in feeling empowered to take the social media in the right direction and give you the opportunity to focus on that big content [unintelligible] that you want to and then, hopefully, then turn those deep frown lines into smile lines instead.

Emma, other listeners, I hope that’s given you some helpful insight. Until next time. Stay strong and stay social, listeners. And now back to the interview.

CAT ANDERSON But it’s interesting. We’ve touched on a couple of things here like the different content types that you share and then also a little bit of playing into trends that are currently happening on the Internet. I know that Wordle has become a big part of Orkney’s existence in recent times. Correctly so.

JOHN PETERSON Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody’s doing it. In fact, that was the same thing. ‘Cause the first I knew about it was it coming up on social media. Everybody’s doing this thing. So, it’s a bit of a zeitgeist. Like, you think, “How can we talk about this or use it?”

So, we’ve used it in a few different ways. So, it’s a good opportunity to put your take on it. We did do a kind of Wordle grid using books, and it was one of those things, actually, because the people who got it got it straight away. And this was all the people who were playing Wordle. And the people who hadn’t started playing Wordle yet were like, “What – what is that?” You know, they didn’t get it at all. But I quite like that. I quite like, you know, the “if you know, you know” kind of thing.

CAT ANDERSON Yeah. I love an “if you know, you know,” except when you don’t know. That’s the worst.

JOHN PETERSON No. I know. But – but there’s always somebody really helpful who tell the people.

CAT ANDERSON Yeah.

JOHN PETERSON You know, there’s always—. You don’t have to. Somebody will go, and they’re talking about this thing, you know, which I just quite, like, leave it and let into it. I tell them.

CAT ANDERSON A hundred percent. Obviously, community plays a big part in the people that you follow and how you’ve grown your following. But what other tips would you give to people who want to grow their accounts in the way that Orkney has grown? Are there any little pointers or strategies that you would recommend?

JOHN PETERSON I think just be consistent. Try and post regularly. But not, you know, not – not too much. I think, sometimes, we quite often—. I’ll have days where we – we don’t post that much or – or even a day where we don’t post at all. And I think that’s probably better than posting too much.

CAT ANDERSON Mmhmm.

JOHN PETERSON But also, don’t go for weeks on end putting nothing up. So, try and get involved in it, because, I think, by doing that, as well as the fact you’re – you’re feeding into the same for the people who follow you, you also—. It helps you develop your own idea of what you’re going to post, and it helps you develop, like, a kind of a eye or an ear for what would make good content. And I think it’s from doing it. It’s seeing what kind of the reaction you get, reacting to that. And also keep an eye on what’s happening and what other people are doing.

You know, you get all these funny things. We do quite a lot where it’ll be, you know, National Sandwich Week or something, and, you know, we’ll try and feed into that or do something related to that, or like the Wordle or thing or any of these things. 

But, you know, how often is that? Keep an eye on that sort of stuff, because, sometimes, that’ll give you an idea of what’s going to – what’s going to be trending later in the day. You might be able to feed into it. It doesn’t have to be related.

You know, we’re quite lucky in the library, because you can do nearly anything with – with books. There’s books on everything. That’s by the definition of what a library is. So, we always have books on stuff. But—. So, you know, try and come up with a different way of feeding into it. See if you can grab people’s attention a little bit. And just use what you have. You know, that’s different about you or what your thing is, because that’s – that’s what you have, and that’s what makes you kind of unique as an account. And try and think about anything you’ve got, really, that’s different.

I mean, way back at the start, when you were saying about, like, us posting stuff to do with the balls, which – which I [unintelligible], that’s something we have the other – other people don’t. Now, we’re at the point with that where people all over the world on holiday come – go anywhere and find, like, anywhere where there’s, like, spherical bollards. They’ll send us photos of them. I mean, honestly, I – I joked years ago. “We could make like a coffee table artbook of these balls from all over the world.” Because it’s people just sending them from everywhere. So, you know, that’s like—. I— I—. Well, they’re not unique to us at all, because they’re everywhere. But we’ve made a bit of a thing of them. 

And so, it’s when people see them, they go, “Oh, I’m going to,” and they snap a photo. And we get that every summer. You get tons. Sometimes, people send one, and I go, “I know where—. We’ve been sent them before, and I know where they are.” It’s like an aficionado of – of that. But yeah. That kind of thing. Try and carve your own niche.

CAT ANDERSON John, could you tell me maybe what opportunities and connections have arisen then as a result of the Twitter account for Orkney?

JOHN PETERSON Well, it’s—. Like we said before, it’s, you know, we’ve been followed by lots of authors and stuff, which has been really good for—. And publishers as well. So, that’s been really good for getting writers and stuff to come and do, like, author events, book launches. That kind of stuff. And we’ve sort of connected with loads of other similar accounts, [unintelligible] libraries, and things like that. You get a bit of a online libraries community, I suppose, ’cause—. And you get to know the people who run their accounts, who, you know, is – is great, too, to begin where it’s just, you get to meet the people behind that a bit, which has been really good for sharing ideas and bouncing off people. 

It’s because it’s made us better known. Even just people coming in who come to visit and they’ll make a point of visiting to buy one of our famous tote bags. You know, you just get this thing where people would never have done that before, and they would come in and – and do that. And so, you get the sort of Orkney, like, big logo places. People post photos of it, and, you know, all that kind of stuff. It’s just made a much sort of wider community for us to operate in than we would have just where we are.

CAT ANDERSON It’s something that I like to see as well, because you’re an account that I followed for a long time. I really love when you do see big authors interacting with you. Like, that is exciting. I feel like, in the literary sphere of Twitter, you’re definitely very well known. So, that must be exciting.

JOHN PETERSON Yeah. It’s really good. And like I say, when – when you can bring these people, you know, they’re willing to come and visit. It’s amazing. We ran this sort of online book club thing where one of the – where Pan Macmillan, the publisher for a while, called the Hurricane Book Club, which is still running in a slightly different way, but that came to us through, I suppose, social media. And it was a kind of book club where we had meetings, physical meetings, but also the questions and the points people made. Discussion of the books were posted online. So, it created a kind of online element, too. And just things like that that have come along and, you know, all helped raise the profile of – for us, but also just of libraries and books. And so, it’s worked for us.

CAT ANDERSON Yeah. It definitely has worked for you. And as a long-time fan of your account, I think you have absolutely nailed that lovely, organic feeling of life in the Orkney Library and Archives. And I love to watch it.

I’ve got a final question, which is a question that we’re going to be asking all of our guests on this podcast. If you had to delete all of the others and only follow one account on Twitter, who would it be?

JOHN PETERSON Wow. This is tough.

CAT ANDERSON Yeah. No pressure.

JOHN PETERSON No pressure? Okay. I think if I – if I was going to save—. And when we interact loads and we have a lot of fun with the National Library of Scotland, which is based in Edinburgh, which is obviously our national library, and we have a lot of fun with them. They’re trying to do the same kind of stuff as us. I would hate for them not to be there. 

But there – there are loads of other great accounts out there doing stuff. And, you know, you can do—. I think if you’re looking to lighten up your social media feeds, you could do a lot worse than follow – follow, you know, libraries, archives, museums, galleries, just places like that, because they’re all having a lot of fun. They’ve all got interesting stuff. And if nothing else, you know, they show you nice things. You know, they’ll show you whether it’s art or photographs or books or just lovely stuff. And there’s beautiful libraries all over the world, posting amazing stuff. So, you could do a lot worse than follow that stuff. Follow less news and politics and more libraries and museums.

CAT ANDERSON John, thank you so much for the time today. It has been absolutely lovely to speak to you. I have really enjoyed hearing about how Orkney has grown its following with all of its wonderful content over the years. It’s just—. It’s been fantastic. So, thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.

JOHN PETERSON You’re very welcome. It’s been great to speak to you, Cat.

CAT ANDERSON You’ve been listening to Social Creatures with me, Cat Anderson. Many thanks to today’s guest and to Sprout Social for making this podcast possible.

Make sure you join me for the rest of the series by subscribing on your favourite podcast platform, where you can tune into a new episode every two weeks.

You can continue the conversation around today’s episode by getting in touch on our social media at @SproutSocial or by sending your social media quandaries to our agony aunt, Stacey, by emailing soundadvice@sproutsocial.com.

Thanks for listening and catch you in two weeks.