How do you Facebook?

Written by lee, 1 comment

I’ve been told recently that if Facebook was a country it would be the third most populated in the world.  An interesting number to grasp when you are from a country with a population of approximately 4 million.

Facebook has come along way in the last few years. It is now more than just a social network for the younger generations but an important tool for individuals, businesses, community groups and causes to engage.

While we all understand why we should we dip our toes in the water, it is important to create a Facebook profile account that is appropriate so that your experience starting out in Facebook is a positive one.

A common mistake I often see is an organisation creating the wrong profile and therefore limiting their potential interaction with supporters. So what kind of profile should you have?

Facebook Personal Profile Page:

Personal Profiles are for individual people only.  As obvious as this might seem, many businesses and other organisations make a mistake here and create a Personal Profile.

If you have persevered in registering your organisation with making up a first name, last name and date of birth and you are now asking people to be your ‘friend’, stop right there!  You need to create a Facebook Page and delete the Personal Profile.  If you already have ‘friends’, let them you will be deleting the account and where they can find your new page.

Facebook Brand Pages:

Pages allow businesses, organisations, bands etc to have a Facebook presence.  These were once referred to as Fan Pages and individuals became ‘fans’.  Now these are called Brand Pages and individuals simply ‘like’ your page.

A key difference of engagement with a Personal Profile and a Brand Page is privacy.  When you become ‘friends’ with a Personal Profile you give the other profile access to your information (limited to your privacy settings).  When you ‘like’ a Brand Page you are not providing access to your information, however you can interact with the Brand Page in a similar way that you would with a ‘friends’ Personal Profile.

Facebook Pages can have multiple administrators and it is smart to have more than one administrator, even if they are not very active, to ensure your page access is not lost if someone moves on.

Facebook Community Pages:

A new addition to the Facebook family, Community Pages have been created to cater for non-organisations.  Pages had been created for things such as sports and these will be replaced with Community Pages.  They will look very similar but over time will allow contributions by a wide range of people, a little bit like Wikipedia.

Facebook Privacy:

It pays to check out the default privacy settings on your personal Facebook account from time to time,  you’ll find these under the Profile Setting menu.

Have you connected with Givealittle on Facebook?

Tags: Facebook Brand Pages, Facebook Community Pages, Facebook Profiles, Non-Profit Facebook Pages