In her presentation at the recent Mashable conference, Randi Zuckerberg, who works the marketing side of Facebook (and who is sister to Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of the social site) provided several tips for nonprofits using Facebook. Andrew LaVallee summed up those tips in his blog post at the Wall Street Journal. They included:
- Use fan pages in addition to groups. Millions of Facebook users become fans of new pages every day. Also, fan pages can only be managed by the nonprofit, thus becoming official profiles.
- Don't get too enamored with applications. It is better to stick to a small number of apps and streamline the look of your pages.
- Engage visitors on your Facebook page instead of immediately directing them to an external site. The more involved, the more likely they are to donate, and recommend you to their friends.
- Create lively content. Have a little fun with informal posts, video that explains what you do, and photos that reinforce your message. Zuckerberg also pointed out that the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is users over 35, a group that is likely to get involved as donors and in fundraising.
Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is testing the sale of charity gifts that will benefit nonprofits. Kiva, Project Red, the World Wildlife Fund, and Toms Shoes will be the first beneficiaries, but if the program is successful, it will be rolled out to other organizations.
A streaming video of the entire conference is available at Mashable.
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Comments
This is a great summary!
Because Facebook helps people connect and share with the people they care about, its important to facilitate this, not interrupt it.
Great summary! I have a summary of the key points from the conference here:
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/08/reflections-from-mashable-conference.html