In this Business Insider video:

https://www.facebook.com/businessinsider/videos/10154001218189071/

‘Shark Tank‘ investor Robert Herjavec reveals the biggest mistakes small businesses make:

• know your numbers. If you don’t know your accounting, problem
• branding and marketing. Most people think branding is your logo. Branding is your whole package. Everything that your customer sees, feels, touches and interacts with.
• success is in failure. if you cannot absorb failure, you will die

the difference between small business and academic institution, being that the library or the entire university, is that small business is reliant on itself; if it does not well, it perishes. The library and the university are reliant on external funds and can fester for a long time. But eventually it dies. In that sense, learning from the lessons for small business can help:

• Branding is not mimicking someone else (another library[s)). It is not a superficial activity. It is not slapping pictures on social media. “Interact” is the key word. “Likes” in FB does not reflect complete interaction
• know your numbers. Analytics is not about “likes” and “visits.” it deeper datamining, which can explain behavior and predict behavior
• if success is failure, why safeguarding the social media in particular and the entire behavior of the library from “failure.” Isolating students or staff from acting with the excuse to safeguard from failure is practically isolating innovation.