There is no denying the presence of facebook these days. It’s become a part of our daily life. Many get their breaking news from it, share birthday greetings via it, and engage with friends and colleagues through it. Quite simply, it is a medium we must use now to communicate with our memberships and our community. Simply denying the presence of facebook and its current dominance only hinder your organization in the long run.
I believe that most student organizations should utilize some form of facebook page. While a few groups would function better with a facebook group, I believe any organization that has a minimum of 40 members and is also looking to expand would benefit from the creation of a facebook page. This post will not focus on the basic aspects of creating a facebook page other than saying that the page should be designed with a long-term presence in mind: correct spelling and punctuation of page name, ability to pass admin structure to new leadership, and developing a content strategy is important.
Once a page is established, the wall post becomes a primary means of communications (page messages get buried in inboxes and aren’t really seen–sadly many organizations still use the page messages as an ineffective means).
BuddyMedia, a company that assists many well-known brands and their social media marketing presence, released a white paper entitled Strategies for Effective Facebook Wall Posts. The document can be downloaded for free on the BuddyMedia website in addition to one of their several other studies. While their test subjects do not specifically include student leadership organizations, they do include several different industries.
Some basic conclusions:
Post content at night. The best results were at around 11pm EST.
Do not use URL shorteners. As much as I like bit.ly, hootsuite, tinyurl, or any other post shortener (something quite popular on twitter), it actually reduces the amount that people read on facebook.
Be brief. Posts that were under 80 characters were more likely to be read than longer posts
Use the best day. This varied dramatically by industry. On average Thursday and Friday are the best days to posts (one of the reasons I now highlight all my previous weekly posts on a Friday)
Utilize questions but do so at the END of a post. Brands that asked questions had a higher response, but that went down if the question was asked at the beginning of a post.
Utilize “action words.” People respond well to directional words such as “submit,” “respond,” “share,” “post,” etc. At the same time they actually reject sale words like “buy” or “purchase.” Important to know if you’re trying to do something like advertise prom tickets via facebook.
If you’re in charge of the facebook page for your organization, I would encourage you to download and read the full report. It’s a good read.
Special Note: You may have noticed this blog is a little bit different than some of the other ones I’ve been writing recently. This is the second of a new type of blog post, The Toolbox. Don’t worry, I’ll still share stories and insights. I’m just going to try to regularly dedicate a blog entry to highlight new tools, technologies, resources, and/or approaches that affect the way you can serve and lead on your campus and/or in your organization. If you think you’ve got a great toolbox idea to share, please let me know at pm@pmaurer.com