The Digital Charity Lab 5 Minute Guides are intended to give you the basics on a particular digital platform or project. They are collaborative documents and we welcome your feedback and further suggestions in the comments.
Why Facebook?
- Free* platform for promoting your campaigns and raising awareness about your cause.
- Facebook can be great for nurturing relationships with supporters and getting feedback from them.
- It can be really useful for list building, through promotions, competitions or content marketing.
- Facebook is a great platform for storytelling – you can share stories that deepen understanding of your cause, and demonstrate your charity’s impact.
- Facebook added some fundraising products for non-profits in 2017 that allow you to do community fundraising online
*See caveat in the first point below
The Pitfalls
There are lots. Beware of the trap of devoting too much time to Facebook.
- While Facebook is technically free, its algorithm means that many of your posts will only be seen by a tiny fraction of your fans (it can be as low as 5%). It can sometimes be difficult to get any kind of significant reach without purchasing ads. Many smart digital marketers recommend treating Facebook as an advertising platform rather than a true social medium. I definitely recommend to clients to put more energy into Facebook ads than organic content.
- Facebook is a third party platform over which you have no control. Don’t rely on it as your main platform, as you are communicating through a middle man.
- It can be difficult to track results on Facebook, and very easy to spend a lot of time to get very vague returns. ‘Likes’ are not particularly valuable on their own, and you should have a clear strategy before starting on Facebook.
- The flipside of interaction with the public is that you also give a platform to people who dislike your charity, your cause or your positions. Negative comments can cause anything from time wasting, to public embarrassment, to legal difficulties.
Page or a Profile?
If you want a public Facebook presence, make sure you set up a page rather than a profile. Pages have functionality that profiles do not. If you’re new to Facebook, you will need to set up a personal profile for yourself first, then create a page for your business. You can add other people as administrators to the page as long they also have a Facebook profile.
Getting the Most Out of Facebook
- Have clear goals for your posts (such as user feedback, clicks, conversions) and evaluate the return on your time.
- Good content is the key for getting good engagement and return on Facebook. Beth Kanter’s excellent blog has advice on developing a Facebook content strategy.
- When posting links, using bit.ly will allow you to track clicks and shares, seeing geographical location, time of day, social media platform etc. It will tell you which content is working best on which platform.
- Develop strategic, properly tested Facebook Ad campaigns to make the most of its extremely powerful advertising platform. We have lots of resources to help you with that.
- Write a social media commenting policy and host it on your website. If problematic comments are left on your organisation’s page, link people to your commenting policy.
- Test out the Facebook Fundraising products and see if you can get your Facebook Fans fundraising for your cause – they’re currently not charging any commission on donations.
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