Birthday doom approaches. I’m turning 25 on Weds. It’s the first birthday where I’ve actually paused and considered my age. I believe that there is a point in everyone’s life where they stop, realize that they aren’t a kid anymore, and it creates a solemn moment. I haven’t experienced mine.
It’s funny how you spend your entire childhood, looking up at the adults, seeing how big they are, how powerful, confident, and awesome they appear. You watch with envy as they stay up late, seemingly do as they please, and you say to yourself, “I wonder when that will be me?”.
Until this week, I’ve always felt that same feeling. No matter that I’m 6’ 2”, I still sometimes feel like that little kid when I compare myself to others, I still sometimes ask, “when will I look and feel like an adult?”.
This weekend I got to go on a little mini-vacation to Sequim and Port Angeles, towns where I spent a good part of my teen-years. It was an amazing, nostalgic trip, with plenty of sightseeing, stories, family visits, and even a quick swim in my favorite lake.
That night, when we walked in the room, a sudden realization hit me and I commented to my girlfriend… “You know, it just hit me, when I was 13, I was outside these rooms, doing the landscaping as one of my first real jobs, wishing I was in there… now, I’m 25, and I’m getting booked into my king-suite by the manager, a client of mine.”
That is the exact moment I felt big, all grown up, ready to #crushit.
Follow-up to: Your Rotary Club & Technology, in which we discussed fundraising through social networking sites. This article will act as a basic primer that Rotary clubs can use to help get their club onto Facebook successfully.
What is Facebook
In an effort to keep this article focused and helpful for those clubs who are already looking into Facebook and other social networking sites, we’ll try to skip basics such as this. There is a great wikipedia page that explains in great detail the answer to that question. In essence though, Facebook is a website or “social network” made up of friends, family, and acquaintances.
Why Your Club Should Use Facebook
Facebook allows for quick, personal interaction between people from other clubs and non-members.
Again, to save time, I’ll refer you to my previous article Your Rotary Club & Technology which outlines some of the potential reasons why you will find it beneficial to bring your club onto Facebook.
Other basic reasons might include:
- Ability to easily share club media — videos, photos, presentations
- Easy club notifications with member updates
- Online presence for clubs who have no website
- Invite non-club members to participate and get involved with your causes
- Expand the reach and effective operational range of your club beyond your local area.
- Connect with the 100s of other clubs who are already on Facebook.
A Few Notes Before You Dive In
Facebook is not an easy-mode solution to your clubs fundraising and logistical problems. Just because you sign up here doesn’t mean your problems will disappear, it will require you and your club members to step out of their technological comfort zones.
It’s not just for kids. Do not allow your doubts of technology and it’s relevance to your age group stop you from joining in. Many clubs with members of all ages are experiencing the fun and effectiveness of Facebook in both their personal life and their Rotary club.
Step I: Find / Designate an Expert
One of the most important ways to ensure that the transition goes smoothly is to either find someone who is already on Facebook and who knows its ins and outs, or designate someone within your club to research the idea and then take lead with the project.
No doubt, if you’ve found this article, you are either that expert, or the designee. In that case, I promise to make this as easy and painless as possible.
Step II: Get Members Online
In order for the Rotary club to have an effective presence on Facebook, you need to get as many users online with their own account as possible.
Rotarians are often busy people and it’s hard to just expect that they will all take the time to go make their own profile in a timely manner, some assistance and planning is required!
Step II Actions:
- Have a Facebook Meeting – Get all your members together for a special project night, or in place of a regular meeting day. At this meeting the Facebook expert can walk the members through the process of setting up their account.
- Have each member setup an account with a valid email address; provide them instructions on how to customize their profiles, post their pictures, and write information about them.
- Walk members through the main functionality of Facebook, including a tour of its features.
- Cover the following subjects:
- How to find their friends — already on Facebook
- Controlling spam
- How to share links
- How to create friend lists
- Privacy, how to control their information
- How to share their videos and photos
Step III: Setup a Facebook Page
Now that your club members are online you can begin creating a presence for your club online.
You’ll want to review Facebook’s guide (PDF) for creating and managing a page. It contains a great amount of useful information and can save you time.
Once you’ve reviewed the guide, find out what materials to prepare, and then follow the step by step process for creating the Facebook Page.
Step IV: Customize Your Page
Once you’ve setup your page, be sure to include detailed information about your club. Follow any applicable action steps below.
Step IV Actions:
- Add your logo – Make sure it is centered in the middle of the image so that it crops well for thumbnails. If worse comes to worse, just use the Rotary logo.
- Link to your website — if you have one.
- List your meeting times & locations.
- Add details about your Programs, History, and an invitation for people to join your club from within the “Notes” tab of Facebook.
- Upload photos and videos that relate to your club and its activities.
Step V: Invite Club Members to Join
This area of your page will act as your action control panel for your Facebook page.
Once you’ve completed the setup and basic customization of your club’s Facebook page, you need to invite them to join it and “become fans.”
To do this, click the link directly below the logo that says “Suggest to Friends”. By this time, all Rotarian members in your club that are on Facebook should be set as friends on each other’s account.
Simply select your Rotarian friends in this list and click “Send Invitations.”
Prompt the members to accept the invite so that they become members or “fans” of your new Facebook page. They will have to manually click the “Become a Fan” link in order to be fans.
Step VI: Designate Admins
It’s important that you engage the services of the more adept members to run the Facebook page. These admins can help you moderate the page. Assign them tasks to ensure that one person isn’t the bottleneck for updates to the club pages.
To designate other admins, click the link “Add Admins” and select which club members should be made admins. Usually, the club treasurer and the website committee all have access and are trained on how to do specific tasks.
Step VII: Promote the Page
Once you’ve created your new Facebook page it will slowly begin to show up in the search engines under your club’s name. Typically this process takes about 30 days, but it can often take less time.
We recommend that club members share the link to their Facebook club page with any friends via email, a website link, or sharing through their Facebook account.
Remember, the success of your club’s online presence will reflect how much effort you put into it. If you build it, and then simply leave it as is, you won’t see much success.
Practical Uses for Your Facebook Page
- Send out invitations to club members and fans of your club with RSVP capabilities that will allow you to better plan events for your club.
- Send out club notices and updates to all members.
- Post speaker schedules.
- Post recorded video of presentations at your club.
- Upload photos from club outings or events.
- Become partners with other clubs.
- Create a home page for different causes that you promote on Facebook — collect donations.
Final Thoughts
A Facebook Page can create a great many opportunities for your club online. Therefore, more and more clubs are migrating to Facebook from more traditional, less manageable platforms such as static websites.
Hopefully this primer is enough to get your club on the right path. If you found this guide helpful, please support our club the North Whidbey Island Sunrise Rotary Club at our club’s facebook page! We’d love to hear from you!
If you are having technical difficulties or need more assistance, feel free to contact Sam Howat via Facebook.
Please feel free to leave a message in the comments below with your questions, or with a little information about your Rotary club, or links to your Facebook page!
Beyond the obvious benefits of protecting your business’s reputation online, there are additional perks and opportunities that small businesses can use to their advantage.
As I mentioned in my post Businesses Can’t Avoid Social Networks Forever, there are several added benefits to participating in the social networking / media websites. Sure, some businesses will continue no further than to monitor their rep online, but others will find it as a powerful new opportunity to grow their business.
Brand Recognition & Equity
Depending on your product or service, many businesses can use social networking sites to help grow brand equity.
Some companies’ brands are their most valuable asset. If your marketing and sales efforts rely heavily on brand recognition, then social networking gives you the perfect opportunity for creating that brand recognition.
Twitter and Facebook are particularly useful in this area. You can participate in the Twitter community, entice your customers to follow you, catch a more unique, personal glimpse into your business and therefore establish a very close connection with your customers.
On Facebook, you can establish a branded page, all about your business or organization that people can become “fans” of. This is shown in their user stream and all of their friends are then introduced to your brand.
By simply existing in these social networking arenas you will collect a certain number of follows, but by really participating and interacting with your community you can greatly increase the amount of impressions for your brand.
Case Study: Threadless
Threadless is a t-shirt / art community that has grown over the last few years because of their savvy use of Facebook, and other social networking tools to interact and participate with their community.
If you go to the Threadless Facebook page you’ll see a branded community with thousands of fans and an amazing level of participation by both the company and its customers.
The company has a dedicated Facebook page, 56,000+ fans, and a very involved staff.
From live video based giveaways of their product on Thursdays, product announcements, contests and live-updates from any event or launch, they garner support and interaction with their customers.
More Ears and Eyes on You
Another advantage to social networking sites is the ability to create some useful relative inbound links to your own website.
First, let me be clear; I am not advocating a link-spamming type of setup. I am talking about relevant links and sharing of links that point back to your website.
Instead of viewing social networking sites as an SEO opportunity — which it certainly is — you can view your social networks as a way to get more people looking at your products.
When you launch a new product line, you can do a complete write-up of it on your blog. Publish the blog, share links to the article into your Facebook and Twitter communities, and you’ll see the amount of inbound traffic go!
If you are writing helpful, real articles on your blog, people landing on the page will be able to review your information, and click in to your site and view more information about your product or service.
In addition, this approach helps with your Google juice. Since Google indexes blogs so quickly, the content in the article will end up in their index very quickly.
Case Study: BLUETUX – Web Design & Development
At my own company, BLUETUX, we’ve been using this technique to great success. Instead of trying to do full press releases, or custom announcements for Twitter and Facebook, we simply create a new press release or blog article, share it through the various mediums, and are then contacted directly by interested customers.
A large percentage of the traffic to BLUETUX is generated by our Twitter account and Facebook Page and, according to our statistics, it occurs on days when new releases are sent out.
Essentially, we’re using Facebook and Twitter as the platform for pushing out new information about our services.
We grow our social networking community by simply asking our customers to follow us online, promise them that we aren’t looking to spam them, and then provide them with occasional updates and as always a more personal level of interaction with our customers.
Before 2008 we rarely were following up with our current customers, educating them on new technology, new services or new opportunities for them to grow their businesses online. We only heard from most of them when they had a problem, or when they felt that they needed a new website. This was hardly an effective or wise approach for us to take, and we’ve been working hard on establishing a personal connection through social networking for any client that is willing.
Since we began this new approach, we’ve seen a 30% monthly increase in traffic and a very large increase in customer communication and repeat business / upgrades with our customers.
How Does It Fit Your Business
Many times, people see success stories like Threadless or BLUETUX and they say, “Well, that’s nice but I don’t sell X, I sell Y — how would this help me?”
The first step is to establish yourself in the community. Create your online presence, talk to your customers, ask them to become fans on Facebook, and ask them to follow you on Twitter.
If you concentrate on providing real value via these mediums, you will find that your customers will begin to interact more and more.
Giveaways, specials, product announcements, all of these old methods of marketing can be employed using social networks as the platform. You will find that the more personal, helpful, and interactive you are, the more people will become interested in your business.
Once you’ve established a small following, you can find creative, simple ways to further market yourself to a larger audience.
There is nothing more exciting than to have a happy customer base that is also acting as your best advertiser.
They shout your praises, refer work, and actively promote you to their friends.
