Using facebook to build your audiences
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Freelance consultant Aoife Flynn of asquared is one of the mentors on our New Media Mentoring scheme. Aoife has very kindly put together the following information for those looking to facebook, and in particular the ‘facebook page’, to build audiences. Even if you think you know facebook (as did I!) what follows is highly informative and well worth a read.
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Facebook is a fantastic resource for businesses on the web. As facebook is about social groups and sharing of experiences and interactions, experience-based businesses are a natural fit, making it particularly suitable for arts organisations. As a web platform, facebook allows you to gather those users that are interested in your work into one place, and then allows you to have a two-way conversation with them, sharing information and content.
There are over 1.2 million Irish users on facebook meaning that 1 in 4 Irish people use this service, and approximately 50% of these users check into their account at least once a day. That’s a potential daily readership of over 500,000 people – significantly higher than the reader/viewership of traditional Irish media outlets. Not least of all that facebook is a free tool, with the potential for an international reach for your organisation and its programmes, so the real question is whether you can afford not to have a presence on facebook.
Page/Profile/Group
In theory you, or your organisation, can have a presence on facebook in three main ways
1) a personal profile
2) a group
3) or a business page
This article will illustrate why a business/fan page is the best option for your organisation.
Personal Accounts/Profiles.
This is the basic facebook account, and if you are already on facebook under your own name then this is the sort of profile that you will have. It displays your personal information and is set up to best represent individuals. From this profile you can become “friends” with other users, post pictures, share links and so on.
A lot of organisations have set up accounts for their businesses as a personal profile. This is actually against facebooks terms and conditions and may case your account to be removed, and in the case of repeat offenders to have your access to facebook restricted. Personal Profiles should only be used to represent individuals.
Not only is this against facebook’s terms, but many users will refuse to “add you as a friend” if your organisation is set up in this way as doing so would give you a high level of access to their personal information. Let’s say Mary attends your events and wants to stay in touch on facebook, if you are set up as a personal profile and she adds Arts Centre X as a friend, You- as Arts Centre X, would potentially be able to see Mary’s friends, her photos, her status updates and so on. Similarly any of the staff members of your organisation, now or in the future, could technically login as Arts Centre X and gain similar access to Mary’s information which might include where she lives, her personal email address, her education information and other very personal info that she would not wish to share with the organisation. No matter how much Mary may like your organisation it is highly likely that she won’t add you as a friend if she knows how facebook works.
Correct business presences on facebook:
Facebook terms and conditions ask that businesses set up either as a Group or a Page. Although they look very similar, and while it is ok to have a group, it is far more advantageous, and more appropriate, for your organisation to have a Page.
Group v’s Pages
Groups are a reasonably acceptable way for you to represent your organisation but, as they are intended for volunteer groups, informal groups, and unofficial representations of an organisation or a person they are not the most professional option.
Groups will allow you to communicate to your fans, and will restrict your access to their personal information, but they are linked into your own personal profile and as such you are personally identified with every post you make. This means that your name and your personal profile picture appears beside any email or status update you make on behalf of the group, and may leave you open to receiving emails from group members, depending on how your own personal account privacy settings are set.
Why set up a page?
There are several compelling reasons
1) Pages are locatable by google or other search engines. They will also display for anyone on the web- you do not need to have a facebook account to view a business page.
2) A Page will allow several individuals to administer it. So your director Lisa, your marketing manger Julie or your receptionist David can, providing they have facebook accounts, be set to administer the page. Anytime Julie or David or Lisa post an update on the page it will appear to come from Arts Centre X, not from Julie or David or Lisa personally. Your organisation’s image appears beside each post, not that of Lisa or David or Julie. So the public will not know who is who, and furthermore the public cannot see who administers a page. This allows for better administration between a group, a more consistent voice for your fans and a depersonalisation of the online space from individuals to the organisation.
3) Users connect with pages by becoming “fans”. Once you reach 25 fans you can set a specific url, or web address for your page. So rather than an unwieldy web address with letters and numbers you can set the page as http://www.facebook.com/ArtsCentreX
For example: http://www.facebook.com/TheModelSligo
If you have a page, and have over 25 fans, but have not already set your specific url go here to do so: http://www.facebook.com/username
4) As the administrator of a page you cannot access a fan’s personal profile- unless they have allowed their profile to be accessed publically. This protects the fan and will make them more comfortable connecting to a page.
5) Pages cannot direct email messages into the inbox of their fans. Rather a page will send an “update” to it’s fans. It looks the same but it is delivered into the less visible “update” box, and fans are unlikely to get notifications that it has been sent. This may seem like a disadvantage, but actually it works to encourage people to become fans as they know they won’t receive lots of emails.
6) Status updates from Pages, unlike those from groups, will appear in the newsfeed of your fans. The newsfeed is what a user sees when they log in to facebook. It is a clickable list of all the recent updates from people and pages that the person follows. As we observed in the introduction about 50% of users check in to their newsfeed every day, and many of these check in several times a day to see what is “new”. This makes the news feed a key way for you to reach your audience.
7) Pages allow you to import information from other social media platforms (blog, flickr account, youtube, twitter etc. ) thus providing you with an easy way to share content with your fans. If you have a blog or twitter feed you can set your page to automatically publish a new blog post/twitter post to your fans without you having to log in to facebook to make it happen.
8) Pages will give you access to valuable stats on your fans. A business page will tell you if your fans are male or female (by % and numerically) what countries/counties they are from, how often they interact with you etc. This information can be extremely valuable when tracking campaigns to see what methods of communicating work best with your fans.
If you want to set up a page for your organisation click here (read the FAQ’s below before setting up your page).
Click here to read more on Pages from facebook.
FAQ
I don’t have a personal facebook account, can I set up a page for my organisation?*
Yes you can. Facebook will allow you to set up a business account which will give you access to your page and to advertising but not to people’s personal profiles. Click here to see how to do this.
*Although it is possible to do this I would caution against it. If you are going to make the best use of your facebook page you are going to need to know how facebook works, which you can only do if you are a user yourself. How will you design campaigns to appeal to facebook users if you do not know how facebook users behave?
I already have a personal account but I want to set up a business account to keep things separate. Can I?
No. If you already have a personal account it is against facebook rules to set up a second account, business or otherwise. Doing so may cause all of your accounts to be deleted.
Who in my organisation should set up the page?
Ideally someone who is an active facebook user, however- it is important to note that whoever is the original creator of the page is not currently able to sever their relationship with the page without deleting the page entirely. This may change in the future, but this does mean that a more permanent member of staff should be the one to first create the page. Once the page is created you can add any number of admins to manage it.
IMPORTANT NOTE the Name of your page (Arts Centre X) is not changeable once it has been set. i.e. the name that displays on the page will be the one you create on the first screen, so be very careful to chose the correct name for your organisation.
I’ve set up the page and I want to make John, a member of my team, an administrator- how do I do this?
Go to the Page. Click on the words “Edit Page” which are directly below the page picture. This will bring you to the edit screen, scroll down a little and look on the right hand side. You will see a box called “Admins” with your name and image in it. Click on “Add”. From here you can add any other user as long as you are already friends with them. If you are not already friends with John you will have to add him as a friend before you can select him as an admin.
I already have a profile/Group set up for ArtsCentre X, can I convert this profile group into a page?
No, facebook doesn’t currently allow this. It is reasonably easy to move people who are friends of a profile or part of a “group” for ArtsCentreX onto a new page.
The simplest way is to email them with a link (remember to type/paste the whole link including the http:// part) to the new page explaining that you will be closing the group (and why if you like) and asking them to join the new one to stay in touch. It is often advisable to wait until you have your 25 first fans in place, and to have chosen your unique url facebook.com/ArtsCentreX before sending this email, but it’s not crucial to wait for this.
Additionally you can change the status update on the group/profile to say: We are moving ArtsCentreX to a Page and will be closing this group/profile we’d love if you came with us too- just click on this link: (and link here to the page of course)
And finally, you can also change the name of the group, and the info box on the group to say it’s closed. For example see a group that was set up for DJ Donal Dineen here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&ref=ts&gid=5367509854
I have set up my page but I can’t find it when I type the name into the search box on my facebook?
Are you a fan of your own page? You will need to be a fan before the page can be found in this way.
