Social Media: Getting Started with the Basics

LWVOR Convention 2011

Instructions: Setting Up an Organization Page in Facebook

Initial Set-up

Log in to your personal Facebook page, called a Profile page
Type into the address bar
Click “Company, Organization, or Institution”
Choose a type from the pull-down menu. Nonprofit Organization works.
Type a name. It’s recommended that you use “League of Women Voters of ….” because people can search for you more easily if you spell out the organization name.
Click “Agree to Facebook terms”
Click “Get Started”

Making Your Page Look Good

Upload an image that will look good in the space allotted.
Click on “Upload an Image”
In the pop-up box, click “Choose File”
File will upload automatically. It may take a minute to actually show up.
To get your image to center correctly.
Hover your mouse over your image in the upper left corner.
Click on the “change picture” link that comes up on the picture.
A new page will open. Click on “edit thumbnail”. From here, you can scale it to fit and drag the image to adjust what you see in the square that shows up in your status updates.
Post more images – at least 5 – by clicking on “Photos” in the left column, then clicking on “Upload more photos”.
On the right, click “edit page”. Here you can make changes such as permissions, settings, and basic information. This is also where you access your insights (more on this later).

Getting an Audience

Click on “Suggest to friends”. Choose any of your Facebook friends that you think might want to “like” your League page.
Click on “Import contacts”. This will import your email contact list into Facebook and give you the opportunity to suggest to everyone in your email list that they “like” your League page. You will have the opportunity to choose who the message goes to.
Have Facebook connect to your web email account. Or, if you don’t have a web email account…
You can create a contact file to import. Click on “how to create a contact file” to do so. Link your Facebook page to your web site
Add a “like” box on your web site
In the right column, click on “Use Facebook as League of Women Voters of ….”
Click on “Add Like Box”. This will create code for you to copy and paste onto your web page so that you can have a box on your web site that asks people to “like” your page.
In the new window, click on “get code”. You can copy and paste this code into an email to send to whoever keeps your web site up to date. They will copy and paste the code into the web site.

Three Final Steps

Write a status update. Hit enter on your keyboard or click on “share” to post the update. This will allow you to see your page they way others will see it.
Choose which photos you want to have showing up along the top. When you hover the mouse over them, you will see an X in the upper right corner. Click on any that don’t look good.
Add another Admin. It’s always good to have more than one admin. This can be anyone you designate who has “liked” the page. To do this, in the right column, next to Admins, click on “see all”. This will open a page that will allow you to add someone else by typing in their email address.

Congratulations! You’ve completed all the essential elements of your Facebook page!

To log out, go to “Account” in the upper right corner. The bottom selection is “Logout”.

Maintenance

When you log in to your personal Facebook page, go to accounts in the upper right corner. Choose “Use Facebook as Page”. Click “Switch” next to the name of your organization. NOTE: You will see in the right column the option to use Facebook as yourself or as your organization. Be sure to change to the organization when you post anything for your League and change back to yourself when you are doing your personal business on Facebook.
Post links, status updates, photos, videos and questions at least twice a week.
In the right column, you will see “view insights”. Click on this to see how many people have liked your page, posted comments, etc.
Continue to expand your audience by asking other League members to invite their friends to like your page. The easiest way to do this is to ask them to either post a link to the League Facebook page or tag the page in a post, and make a comment asking their friends to like to page.
For help, on the right, under Account, go to Help Center (this is a great resource so remember where to find it).

How to Have an Effective Facebook Presence

First, what does it mean to have an effective Facebook presence?

The goal of having a presence on Facebook is to increase awareness of your organization and what you do. Likely, this translates into an increase in the effectiveness of the work of your organization. You can also stimulate excitement, new ideas, and insights for your organization. Hopefully this also translates into an increase in members, donations, and volunteers.

It is estimated that you can have an effective Facebook presence while spending no more than 1-2 hours a week, possibly even less. The better your posts, the more effective your presence. If you find yourself getting a couple of likes and a comment on each post you make, you have been successful! Be sure to track your responses in “Insights”.

Status Updates

90% of the power of a Facebook Page is in the “Status Updates.” Share content that inspires activity, such as:

Success Stories
Photos and Videos
Powerful Stats
Inspirational Quotes
Breaking News
Calls to Action: the smaller the commitment asked for, the more successful

Research has shown that the best way to post status updates is to:

Post 2-6 time per week
Only post RELEVANT content. If you have nothing relevant to say, don’t post.
Make them short, 80 characters or shorter.
Ask a question.
Post outside regular business hours.
Best days to post are Thursday and Friday. Worst day is Saturday.

Links

An easy way to post interesting content to Facebook is to use links. Good links to post to Facebook include:

A news article in which your League was mentioned
A news article on current events
An organization you are working with that has relevant content on their site
League web pages, including yours, when new info has been posted
An email newsletter with content you like or that mentions your League
More…

Find the page you want to link to on the web. Copy the link in the browser address window. On your Facebook page, click “link” and then paste the link there.

When sharing a link, always add a personal statement or question.

Tagging

Utilize the “Tagging” functionality to build partnerships. When you refer to another person or organization in your status updates, you can link to that person or page and also have your post show up directly on their wall. To learn how to tag, visit the Help Center (under Account) and type in “tag names”.

Easy web address

Once you have 25 likes, you can make a simple URL such as Your Facebook URL, or username, is a custom link to your profile that you can give out to people or post on external web site. Go to to set one up.

Updates

Send “Updates” two or three times per month, which is like sending out an email message to all the people who “like” your page. This is useful when you want to draw their attention to an event or special situation such as an action alert. To send an update, go to your page. Click 'Edit Page' on the right. Then, select the 'Marketing' tab on the left side of the page, and click 'Send an Update.' These updates can be sent to all people connected to your Page, or targeted to certain types of people connected to your Page.

How Can You Continue to Grow Your Presence?

It will take some time to build up a fan base, so be patient. Once you have 25 “likes” and have set up your URL, include it in all of your communications, such as:

Part of your email signature
The footer on your letterhead
Your web page
Email newsletters
All printed materials

Continue to ask others to encourage their Facebook friends to like your page. It doesn’t matter if someone is a member or not. Liking a page is a very simple act that appeals to anyone who even vaguely supports the organization.

Social Media Resources

The Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide

(Idealware.org is a very useful site – explore it!)

Beth Kanter, the nonprofit social media guru

Using Twitter for nonprofits

Blogging for the cause: Five ways nonprofits can use a blog to achieve real goals

Facebook Security

Following are some useful articles on keeping your information secure on Facebook.

Facebook Security Best Practices

A guide to privacy on Facebook

If your Facebook account is hacked: