Like it or not Facebook is here to stay. Not a day goes by that I don’t read a story either online or in print about Facebook and how businesses and organizations, both for profit and not, are using various forms of social media to strengthen ties to their customers.
Some college athletics and alumni organizations have been reluctant to embrace this shift in relationship building for fear of the unknown or a lack of knowledge about how to leverage these social mediums.
But when they are integrated into your current marketing and communication strategies they can pay huge dividends in the way of increased response, loyalty, and desired action on behalf of your audience.
Does your organization run a Facebook fan page? If not, why not? There’s nothing stopping one of your fans or alumni from starting one for you (in all likelihood someone probably already has), so you may as well take the lead and control the message and guide the conversation the way you want.
Facebook fan pages are very viral. When someone joins your fan page the action is posted to News Feed so all of their friends see that your alumni or fan has taken this action. Odds are good if the person seeing this has a relationship with your organization, they’ll join your fan page too, and the viral effect really kicks in.
You can use your fan page to update your fans on upcoming games or events and link to ticket or donation pages. Just shot a viral video for your upcoming season? Post it to your fan page for everyone to see (and hopefully pass along to others).
Attention spans are short these days. People need to see your message and your brand everywhere for it to be effective.This means not only do you need to show up in their mail box and their email inbox, but in the places they hang out online as well.
Here are 4 steps to building and profiting from your organization’s Facebook fan page:
1) Research the fan pages of organizations similar to yours to get some ideas. Here is Facebook’s page where they’ve posted examples of pages that work.
2) Create your page and add information about your organization. Be sure to post important phone numbers and website links. If you are so inclined you can really dress your page up using HTML or FBML … just make sure you let someone in your office with the correct skills to do this for you.
3) Engage your fans by giving them useful and relevant information about events you’ve got coming up. Your Facebook page should be a place where they can connect with other fans. You should also try to include applications they can use, and special updates or offers just for them.
Try not to overdo it with messaging your fans. 2-3 times a month is enough. But keep in mind that the more fans interact with your page, the more News Feed stories for users’ friends are created, increasing the awareness of your page.
4) Promote your fan page outside of Facebook. Put a badge on the homepage of your athletics or alumni association website. Mention your fan page in all communication with your audience including print mail, email, and don’t forget your voice mail message. Make sure everyone who works within your organization knows about your page and ask them to mention it as well.
Do these few things and your fan base will grow very quickly, your message will be spread farther than it could have been on its own, and you’ll find that there is much more excitement about your organization than you may have thought.
