Fans are Better Than Friends:
February 2009
This probably isn't news to you; Facebook's growing popularity is inescapable, and in the last few years more and more of our clients have been asking us about social networking and social media. This article is the first of a multi-part series on how to establish your organization on Facebook. I'll be giving you a broad overview of the options for arts organizations (and other businesses) on Facebook — you'll get some essential tips about what you should be doing, and then I'll be back next month with some more specific how-tos and suggestions. We recently introduced a new Facebook application, i'll go!. In my role as project manager for i'll go!, I've spent even more time than usual on Facebook in the last few months — not (just) playing Scrabble, but also paying close attention to the Facebook presence and activities of many arts organizations. It quickly became clear to me that there's a lot about the structure and history of Facebook that people don't know, and that most organizations could use some help getting started. (This article is only tangentially about our i'll go! application, since you'll understand that better once I get into more detail; if you want to read more about it now, click here.)
Facebook Origins Facebook was started in 2004 as a way for college students to connect with other college students — playing on the idea of a college "facebook" where you could see the names and faces of everyone in your class. The service was slowly expanded to include other demographics: first high schools, then select businesses, and in September 2006 the site was officially open to everyone. Even then, though, it was still a social network that was all about people connecting with people. But of course, brands and businesses and organizations wanted in — with tens of millions of people coming together in one place online, they saw a big marketing opportunity and wanted access to those people! Since then, Facebook has been gradually adapting in an attempt to meet the needs of these organizations without compromising the site's appeal to individuals. Facebook Content Facebook has many different kinds of content, and there several different ways for an entity to exist on the site:
Some of these things are confusing and overlapping, but each has different attributes and a different purpose. Let's look at all the forms an organization's presence on Facebook can take. Facebook profiles are for people: people with a First Name and Last Name, with a Hometown and Relationship Status, with Favorite TV Shows and Movies. Sometimes when people decide that their organization should have a presence on Facebook, they just create a profile for the org — suddenly the Laboratory Theatre is Single and looking for Friendship. This is not a good idea! I can't emphasize that enough. Facebook doesn't approve of fake profiles like this. They put a high premium on being one place on the Internet where people aren't anonymous, where they're really themselves (they still require a real, verifiable .edu e-mail address in order to join a college network). On Facebook, people are who they say they are — not someone else, and not some other entity. Facebook has been known to delete these fake non-person profiles without warning, notifying the creator that "Facebook profiles are meant to represent a single individual." Groups So your organization shouldn't have its own Facebook profile. What then? For a long time, the only other option was to create a Group for the organization instead. Any Facebook user can create a Group and invite others to join it. Often Groups are things like "If Your Last Name is Paul" or "Wesleyan New York Alumni" or "Zombie Apocalypse!," but they work pretty well for organizations, too. You can post photos and videos (and allow your members to post their own photos, too), send messages to group members, and allow communication between members on a Discussion Board and the Wall. (See "Roundabout Underground" and "Studio 42" for examples of arts organization Groups.) Groups also allow you to create Events, and send out invitations to the group members. Still, there are a number of things about Groups that aren't really ideal, because they simply weren't intended to be used by organizations in this way. There are limits to the number of Group members you can message at once! If a Group has over 5,000 members, the "Message All Members" is disabled — you've become a victim of your own success, and you just lost your one direct channel of communication with all of those patrons. Also, with Groups, what you see is all you get. Photos, videos, messaging, the discussion board — that's all a Group can have, and you can't add any other kinds of content. Pages In November 2007, Facebook announced that they "noticed that people were trying to connect with brands and famous artists in ways that didn't quite work on Facebook," and introduced Pages, or "Fan Pages." A Page is similar to an individual profile, but it can be created for any entity that's not a person (e.g., the Brooklyn Museum, Oreo Cookies), or for any public figure (e.g., Barack Obama, Madonna). The common thread among Facebook Pages is that people are really Fans of the subject, not Friends of it. Pages give you a lot more content options. You can add photos and videos just like you can in a Group, but there are also many other modules that can be added to the Page. The specific modules that are available to you will depend on what category you create your Page in — Musician Pages come with a music player, for example. (Click here to see the full category list.)
(If you have a heavily-populated Group that you created a long time ago, and you've been hesitant to "start over" with a new Page, this should make it easier for you to take the leap: You can convert a Group to a Page! Look at the sixth question on this help page for details. Facebook will copy over all your members, and all text contributions to the page (you'll have to re-add and photos and videos, though).) Without question, my recommendation is that every arts organization have a Facebook Page, with a dedicated administrator who can take the time to cultivate it, add content, and send out weekly Updates to Fans.
The Pitfalls of Pages That said, there are still a few pitfalls of Pages that you should keep in mind.
1) Out of sight is out of mind. "When I get bored, I become a fan of things." That's a direct quote from my friend Josh, explaining to me why he's a Fan of 43 different Pages on Facebook. It's very easy to to surf around, come upon new Pages of interest, and click the "Become a Fan" button — and then never come back again, even if the Page content is constantly changing! Notice that Josh didn't say, "When I get bored, I check out all the pages I'm already a Fan of." Becoming a Fan doesn't necessarily mean that the user is really engaged with the organization.
We created i'll go! to solve some of these problems, and to fill in the functionality gaps that Facebook Pages don't quite cover. If you're in NYC, you should check it out and sign up now; it's free. If you're not in NYC, check it out anyway, and stay tuned; we'll be announcing our expansion plans soon.
This has been a very condensed overview of how arts organizations can have a presence on Facebook — but next month I'll be back to dig in a little deeper, showing you how to implement some of these features and to talk about some best practices. Until then, I want to hear from you! Ask me questions and let me know what you're confused or curious about, and I'll address those things in the next issue.
** A note about Privacy settings: If you've been putting off signing up because you don't want your personal information all over the Internet, take a minute to read this page about Facebook's privacy settings. There are lots of ways to restrict who can view your information. I'm Facebook-friends with a whole bunch of work-related people now, as a result of i'll go!, but I created a Friend List called "restricted," so not everyone can view my photos, for example. You can use Facebook for work while still being professionally cautious.
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