Tag Archive - Facebook

What’s the difference? Facebook Groups, Pages and Community Pages

April 7, 2010 in Social Media

As Facebook continues to roll-out different ways for people and organisations to interact, I’m being asked more regularly by confused people – “what’s the difference?” Facebook provides Profiles, Groups, Pages, and as of last week, Community Pages. It’s a labyrinth – let’s take a look at the differences and get some clarity.

Profile

A profile is what most people have on Facebook. It’s a personal presence for an individual. According to Facebook:

“Profiles represent individuals and must be held under an individual name, while Pages allow an organization, business, celebrity, or band to maintain a professional presence on Facebook. You may only create Facebook Pages to represent real organizations of which you are an authorized representative. Fans of your Page won’t be able to see that you are the Page admin or have any access to your personal account.”

If you’re new to Facebook you might like to read the help topics on ‘Setting up a profile‘, and ‘Exploring Facebook‘.

Groups

Individuals will often join groups on Facebook. According to Facebook:

“Groups are meant to foster group discussion around a particular topic area…Groups can be created by any user and about any topic, as a space for users to share their opinions and interest in that subject. Groups can be kept closed or secret, whereas Pages are intended to help an entity communicate publicly.”

Some of the unique features available to Groups include:

  • the ability to restrict who joins the group.
  • the ability to send a message (email) to members of the group.

Not sure whether to create a group or a page? Mashable has a good article that explores the differences between Groups and Pages.

Pages

A page is similar to a profile, but for non-individuals. According to Facebook:

“Pages are for organizations, businesses, celebrities, and bands to broadcast great information to fans in an official, public manner. Like profiles, they can be enhanced with applications that help the entity communicate with and engage their fans, and capture new audiences virally through their fans’ recommendations to their friends.

You can create and manage a Facebook Page for your organization from your personal account. You can create a Page here. Please note that only the official representative of an organization, business, celebrity, or band is permitted to create a Page.”

Some of the unique features available to Pages include:

  • the ability to create a custom username for your page (e.g. www.facebook.com/communicatejesus).
  • contents of Pages is indexed by Google (i.e. it can be found on search engines).
  • Pages can add applications, including an ever-increasing range of business-focused apps and apps created by custom app developers like Involver.
  • whilst Pages can’t send emails to fans, updates appear in the news stream for fans.
  • Pages don’t display details of the page administrator.
  • administrators of pages receive a weekly update of their pages with details of how many new fans have joined, how the page has been used over the past week, and how many visits the page has received.

To learn more about Pages, you might like to download the Facebook Pages Product Guide.

Community Pages

Last week Facebook introduced Community Pages. At first, I thought it was an April Fool’s joke (who launches a new product on April 1?!). It appears that this isn’t a joke – you can now create a community page on Facebook ‘create a page’.

What are community pages? According to Facebook:

“Generate support for your favorite cause or topic by creating a Community Page. If it becomes very popular (attracting thousands of fans), it will be adopted and maintained by the Facebook community.”

According to Mashable:

“Another goal for Facebook is to keep official Pages in the hands of their respective brand owners. A company spokesperson tells us that Community Pages “give our users opportunities to express their enthusiasm and creativity, while allowing for Official Pages to continue representing official entities such as businesses, bands and public figures.””

I can’t find much more detail about Community Pages, but you can read ‘Facebook introduces Community Pages‘ on Mashable and ‘Facebook’s New Solution for Unofficial Pages: Community Pages‘ on All Facebook.

British Airways and front-foot social media engagement

April 1, 2010 in for Churches, Outreach

Last week I wrote ‘When social media engagement turns into a nightmare‘. The actions of Greenpeace and Nestle were great examples of the power of social media, and the potential damage when it’s not managed well.

This week, Marketing Magazine (UK) has an interesting post on how British Airways has been using social media to respond to industrial action.

Read ‘British Airways’ preemptive strike‘.

According to the article:

“A series of videos featuring chief executive Willie Walsh providing updates on the impact of the strike and apologising for the inconvenience caused to customers has received more than 100,000 hits on YouTube and BA.com. According to research carried out for Marketing, the videos improved perceptions of the British Airways brand among 19% of the people who had seen them (Marketing, 24 March).”

“‘Brands don’t have a choice but to do social media ‘ says Ian Armstrong, manager, European communications for Honda. ‘In a crisis, the medium can influence behaviour and brands can’t opt out as consumers will continue to use it. The brands just have to maintain a strong position and be true to their values; the tone should reflect that.’”

10 resources to make the most of Facebook Pages

March 25, 2010 in Social Media

If you weren’t scared off by Nestle’s nightmare on Facebook, you might be interested in creating a page on Facebook for your church or ministry.

I’ve been writing a Facebook strategy for a Christian organisation, and here are 10 resources I’ve come across in my research. If you’ve got no idea what Facebook Pages are, check out the Facebook Pages help page (always a good place to start!). Here they are (in no particular order):

  1. Facebook best practices for nonprofit organisations.
  2. Nonprofit organisations on Facebook.
  3. How to develop a Facebook page that attracts millions of fans – perhaps a little ambitious!
  4. 8 essential apps for your brands Facebook page.
  5. Facebook pages versus Facebook groups.
  6. How to set-up a winning Facebook fan page.
  7. 5 elements of a successful Facebook fan page.
  8. Top 50 Facebook pages.
  9. Five most common mistakes made by nonprofit admins on Facebook.
  10. Creating a Facebook Page for your church.

Update:

  1. 5 Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Page
  2. 5 things that don’t work on Facebook Pages (and 5 that do)

When social media engagement turns into a nightmare

March 24, 2010 in Social Media

Having a presence on Facebook is all the rage – companies, charities, churches, schools are all getting on board. But it can really come back to bite you.

Nestle is an example of a company probably wishing they never created a Facebook page. Why?

Greenpeace created a campaign claiming that:

“Nestlé, the world’s largest food and drink company, is making some of your favourite chocolate bars using palm oil from destroyed Indonesian rainforests. As a result, threatened species like orang-utans are being pushed into extinction and huge quantities of greenhouse gas are being released, accelerating climate change.”

This campaign was accompanied by a viral video (which, according to Greenpeace, Nestle got pulled off YouTube):

Have a break? from Greenpeace UK on Vimeo.

Greenpeace has been relentless – creating a campaign website, writing blog posts, writing open letters to Nestle’s PR department and developing a form for people to email the Nestle CEO, and encouraging people to speak out on Nestle’s Facebook page. Even Greenpeace seems surprised at the success of the campaign.

The Facebook page is filled with comments from upset consumers, urging them to act. I read through several pages on their wall and couldn’t see any official response to these comments (Greenpeace has shared some of Nestle’s response on their blog). Looking at the Nestle website, you wouldn’t have any idea that there is a major campaign currently running against them.

This highlights four important points for those of us wanting to utilise social media:

  1. anyone can create a Facebook Page, but the ease of creating a page isn’t proportional to the challenge of maintaining it.
  2. a Facebook Page is two-way communication – it’s not like a website or media release where you control the message.
  3. anyone can use your Facebook Page to speak out against you. It’s naive to think that you will only receive positive engagement.
  4. you need to have a strategy for how you will react when people say negative things about you.

This campaign has been a big win for Greenpeace (and the power of social media), and a nightmare for Nestle.

We’ve all been warned!

Looking for free social media icons?

March 24, 2010 in for Churches, Outreach

Here’s six good resources I’ve discovered:

  1. IconFinder
  2. Social Media Icons in 3 Sizes for Download (and version 2)
  3. The Best Social Media Icons All in One Place
  4. 80 Refined Social Networking Icons for Free
  5. 30 Amazingly Creative Social Bookmark Icons Sets
  6. The Best Original Freebies

Got any other recommendations?

Update:

5 dangers of using technology in the Christian life

March 14, 2010 in Christian Living, for Churches, Outreach, Pastors

Last weekend I presented a seminar at my church’s weekend away on the topic ‘Using technology in your Christian life’. I am tidying up these notes to be included in an upcoming post. In the meantime, I’d like to explore the dangers of technology. Obviously I’m a big fan-boy of technology, but it’s got its dangers. We need to be aware of these to ensure we don’t become a victim, and instead use technology for the glory of God. Here are five dangers that were raised in the seminar or that I’ve thought of. What would you add to this list?

  1. Alienation. Someone shared that they had been excluded from social events because they didn’t have a Facebook account. That’s not very nice. If lack of access to technology excludes people from community, this should raise warning bells. At the very least, there should be more than one way for people to access information – limiting communication about an event to one channel (e.g. Facebook) is exclusive as it assumes that people a) have access to technology (e.g. Facebook), and b) want to use it. We should assume neither.
  2. Addiction. This example of a South Korean couple starving their child to death while caring for a virtual child is at the extreme end of the spectrum. But the need to be plugged-in, to know what’s happening, to read updates, to share updates is a modern and unhelpful phenomenon that has the Center for Internet Addiction. If only we felt the same eagerness to read God’s word and pursue our relationship with Him. On a more light-hearted note, wondering if you’re addicted to Twitter? Try this fun quiz. Apparently I’m 45% addicted to Twitter. It’s a fine line between engagement and addiction. Other posts I’d recommend include: ‘Addicted to tweets‘, ‘Excessive internet use linked to depression‘, and ‘Enabled or enslaved by technology?‘.
  3. Laziness. Some things are best communicated face-to-face, or at least over the phone. Technology allows us to be lazy and laziness is never good. For example, sending your Bible study leader a text message to let them know that you won’t be coming tonight. That’s lazy – if you are not going to be there, it’s courteous to pick up the phone and apologise and explain. It’s easier to send a text, but for the benefit of your leader who has spent hours preparing and who is responsible for caring for you, it’s not a good option.
  4. Potential to sin. I’m not sure if our opportunities to sin have increased with technology, or if we’re simply more aware of them. But take for example Facebook – it can prompt jealousy and envy (I wish I had what she has), pride (posting status updates to promote ourselves), lust (looking at unhelpful photos of people), gossip (sharing news on Facebook, or that we heard on Facebook) about others. The list goes on. Sure, Facebook didn’t invent jealousy, envy, pride, lust and gossip – but it sure makes these sins easy to fall into!
  5. Wasting time. Nielsen recently revealed the extent of time spent on Facebook, and how this is increasing. On this site I shared how Australians spend 29% of all time online, on Facebook. I know I seem to be picking on Facebook – I’m not, it just provides lots of good examples! Technology can make us more efficient and productive, but it can also just help us to waste time. And we waste a lot. When the Master returns, I want to be busy doing his business, not procrastinating on Facebook.

What would you add to this list?

(Feature image attribution – it’s a light-hearted image for a more serious topic! http://www.flickr.com/photos/paloetic/ / CC BY-NC 2.0)

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