Remember Why You Joined in the First Place

By Andrea Berry, August 15, 2011

 When I asked around the office “Why did you join Facebook?” Idealware staff shared the following reasons: 

 
• To announce that I was pregnant and then to share pictures of my daughter with friends and family easily
• Kicking and screaming. My agent forced me to.
• I was in college when it first came out, and it was the "new" thing. It was a big deal when my university was "turned on".
• To see what it was about and to keep in touch with work colleagues
• To stay in touch with friends from high school when we all went off to different colleges.
• I joined in 2007 to see who I could dredge up from my past.
 
No one said “to hear about breaking news." No one said “to watch commercials for brands I am interested in." And of course, no one said “I joined Facebook to hear about what my favorite nonprofits are doing.” 
 
Unfortunately, as nonprofit staff members, as we put up our Facebook posts and go about our Facebook routines, we often forget this important point.  Your constituents may have decided they want to receive updates from you on Facebook, but you are not the reason they are logging in.  When you post a continuous newsfeed about your organization- what you want people to do and why they should support you-  your constituents will eventually tune you out.  It is our job as nonprofit communications staff to remember that this is a social media.  We need to ask questions, engage our constituents, do things that start and continue conversations.  We need our posts to fit comfortably between the picture of cousin Fred at the baseball game and Beth’s check in at the local bar. 
 
Yes, our constituents like to hear about the great things we are doing, but don’t forget that they want to feel invited to participate instead of like they are watching a commercial. 
 
How do you make your posts memorable?  How do you fit into the stream of photos of friends’ children, sports talk and posts about drinking binges?  We need to ask ourselves these questions on a regular basis. Engagement is the key…the more we can emulate the social nature of our own posting and the postings of our friends, the further this tool will take us and our nonprofits.  
 

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Comments

"Fans" and Engagement

by Stephanie Johnson (not verified) - 2011-08-16 12:44

Another often forgotten point is that the number of people who "like" your organization is probably much greater than the number who choose to see your updates in their news feeds. The number of fans who actually visit your page (rather than just getting posts in their news feed) is even smaller. And of course, the number who read/comment is much smaller than that.

Here's an article that lays out the issues pretty well, although the stats given are just Wild Guesses: http://www.allfacebook.com/7-biggest-fan-page-marketing-mistakes-2011-05

Here's another article explaining how Facebook Insights can provide a better picture than just the number of 'fans': http://www.netwitsthinktank.com/social-media/39-questions-your-nonprofit...

Thanks for sharing!

by Andrea Berry - 2011-08-18 15:02

 Thanks for sharing these resources Stephanie, they are both quite thought-provoking. 

I definitely agree, we too often call our measurement done when we count "likes", but there is so much more.  We need to think about the interactions we are having with people, and not just the fact that they ahve allowed us to share info with them.  The true power of Facebook does not lie on how fancy your Page is, but on how compelling your posts are. 

Great points!

by Ari Herzog (not verified) - 2011-08-16 11:24

It is surprising that I am seeing this linked on several Facebook page walls -- so people are clearly visiting and sharing, but nobody is commenting here. I'm curious why not. Is it because of the simple and mindless action of clicking the like or share button, whereas writing down some sentences to you the author is time consuming?

Comments are often a challenge

by Andrea Berry - 2011-08-18 15:00

 Hi Ari, 

We find that getting comments on our blog is often a really tough task.  I agree, there is something so simple about sharing a resource, but comments take a little more thought and effort.  I also think that the "I have nothing of value to add" worry effects many of us.  We feel like we aren't going to add to the conversation, or that our questions are dumb or obvious, so we choose to stay silent.  When in fact, the comments that most people would write in response to a post like this would likely be quite compelling and thought provoking.