Increasing Visibility and Outreach with Facebook

Devin SmithAmeriCorps Ambassador of Mentoring

Social Media Outreach CoordinatorBoston Partners in [email protected]



Increasing Visibility and Outreach with Facebook



Agenda to be covered• Why use Facebook?• Navigating our page• Content restrictions• Creating Social Content• Gaining Facebook Fans• Increasing visibility • Increasing engagement• Organizations to emulate• Q & A• Plus/Delta



Why Facebook?• 500 million active users (half log-in daily and spend an

average of 55 min.)• Average user has 130 friends and becomes a fan of 2 pages

per month• 150 million users access Facebook through their

smartphones• Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups

or events• 30 Billion pieces of content are shared each month



Navigating our Page• Page name and URL should reflect the organization

• The profile photo should be the logo or recognizable image of the organization

• The about page should be populated with information about the organization

• http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/bostonpartners



Content Restrictions

• Facebook allows you to post just about anything, but that doesn’t mean you should!

• Keep content work appropriate, use clean language and be creative instead

• Posts are limited to 420 characters max, including characters in URLS



Creating Social Content• Using externally-generated content

– Articles, info-graphics, video clips you did not create yourself– Only post if you think those that follow you will find the information

interesting or useful, relative to Boston Partners in Education.– Always include a comment about the posting that gives it context

relevant to your organization– Always keep Organization Mission Statement in Mind



Internally Generated Content• Better then just reposting the content of others because it shares more

about what an organization does• Can be a time-suck if you’re not careful• Video-Easy way to get people engaged; If its compelling enough, people

will repost/share via their networks• Blog Posts-can easily be reposted via Facebook; great way to highlight the

work of volunteers, teachers and students



Gaining Facebook Fans

Define your goals:-Who are you trying to reach? (volunteers, teachers, donors, parents)-Why are you trying to reach them? (connect with them about programs and services, and to share advice

and success stories)-What kind of information are you trying to convey through SM?

(Updates about events and fundraisers, information about successful volunteers, teachers, students)

- What is the benefit of using SM to get them this information vs. more traditional forms of communication (easier, faster, less expensive then traditional mailings, allows audience to be more interactive and share our content)



Where our Fans are• Research what kind of social media presence similar organizations

have and steal their good ideas, but don’t repeat their bad ones• Look at who they’re reaching and with what kind of content• Strategize what is REASONABLE and REALISTIC to accomplish with

Social Media• Send an email about your SM pages to those in your email or

constant contact lists• Add a hyperlink to your office email signatures• Add FB/TW buttons to website• “Like” Similar organizations and post content to their walls

occasionally- only if relevant and useful to those that might see it• When posting an article on website or blog, add a ‘share” widget to

increase visibility of content



Leveraging our networks

• Email lists, constant contact, salesforce,, donor/volunteer lists- if you have emails, you have potential followers!

• When posting new content, encourage employees (and yourself) to share via your personal contacts

• Ask organizations you partner with on projects to share via their networks



Increasing Visibility• Tagging to increase visibility



• Thank” others to increase visibility



“Sharing” visibility- Its good Karma



Increasing Engagement

• Ask for engagement. Ask Facebook Fans to repost, “like” or share some of our most interesting or noteworthy content. This is a great way to increase their engagement and introduce our content to their social networks.



Post during peak times



Be Concise

• Shorter posts are more likely to get a response

• Try to keep posts under 100 characters



Ask Questions

• Ask a question when posting an article or blog post, or utilize the Facebook Questions Function for increased share-ability.



Photos of events• Take photos at events and post them on Facebook

afterwards. During the event, encourage people to find us on Facebook and tag themselves in the event photos. This encourages people to “like” us, and also, all photos they are tagged in will show up in the newsfeeds of their social networks, increasing outreach.



Be consistent

• Try to post regularly, at least 3 times a week.



Organizations to emulate• Mass Mentoring Partnership• Strong Women, Strong Girls• SMILES Mentoring• Big Brothers Big Sisters of America• Boys and Girls Club of Worcester• Girls Incorporated of Holyoke• Big Sister Association of Greater Boston• Generations Incorporated• City Year Boston



Questions?



Plus / Delta

Increasing Visibility and Outreach with Facebook

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