Making Lemonade: Reimagining the Target Audience for Local Continuing Education Programs

Abstract

Long Island Library Resources Council (LILRC) is one of nine New York State regional library councils, which serves all types of libraries in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Continuing education programs are LILRC’s mainstay offering, attracting a consistent audience of local librarians to in-person events and conferences. When COVID-19 restrictions compelled LILRC to transition its programming to an online environment, the opportunity arose to reach a new audience that had previously been unlikely to attend in-person events on Long Island. Through a revision of marketing strategies to reach a statewide audience, LILRC expanded its program attendance to include participation from other counties, and surprisingly, also found new attendance from participants outside of New York State.

Keywords

• continuing education
• marketing
• segmentation
• professional development