Facebook Pages for Organizations

Some organizations have already created Facebook Pages, others have created Profile accounts. And, there are some others which are considering creating a Facebook presence, but are not sure whether to create a Page or a Profile account. Before making a decision about using Facebook for business purposes, here are some considerations:

• Read Facebook’s terms of agreement. Of course, you have already agreed on those terms when you created an account.
• Pages are for organizations. Profile accounts are for individuals. From Facebook's terms of service: "Profiles represent individuals and must be held under an individual name, while Pages allow an organization, business, celebrity, or band to maintain a professional presence on Facebook." The terms of service says clearly that a Profile account should represent an individual.
• Pages are distinct presences that communicate, distribute information and content, engage their fans, and capture new audiences virally through their fans’ recommendations to their friends.
• Pages offer analytics; Profile accounts do not. Analytics include how many likes, comments you received each day, and demographic information.
• Pages are designed to be a media rich, valuable presence solution for an organization.
• Pages are customizable. Profile accounts are more limited.
• Pages offer a “Like” button (or a widget) that you can embed into web pages. Profile accounts do not have widgets.
• Pages have unlimited fans (or likes). Profile accounts are limited to 5,000 friends.
• Pages allow you to email everyone in your fan base. Profile accounts limit you to sending 20 emails at a time.
• Pages automatically accept fan requests. Profile accounts require you to manually accept new friend requests.
• If you are using an Profile account, instead of a Page for your organization, individuals might be less reluctant to friend a Profile account that represents a group or an organization—because an organization is not a person.
• Facebook does not provide a way to convert a Profile account to a Page. If you have Profile account for your organization and you want to use a Page instead, you have to copy your information to the page. Friends cannot be converted to fans. Options are:
  • Ask friends to like the Page by sending them a message from the profile account. 
  • Tell friends by using a status update.
  • Recommend through the Page “Tell your fans” option. You cannot customized the message explaining why you're asking them to do it.
  • After copying information from the Profile account to the Page, l decide whether to delete the account or leave it. Instead of deleting it, you can set the privacy settings to limit it from being found. Two different presences on Facebook can be confusing to potential fans and friends. Facebook's friend recommendation feature will continue to suggest to friends of friends to your  abandoned Profile account.

References:

Fan Pages vs. Regular Profiles

I don't have a website for my organization. What is a Facebook Page?

Why Your Company Should Have a Facebook Page (Not a Profile)

del.icio.us Tags: facebook

Social media policies: not developed, yet

Today, lots of people are tweeting that only 29% of businesses have social media policy, according to a report from employment services firm Manpower. Here are my thoughts on the report.

• I am not surprised about the percentage. In fact, I think it is a little high.
• Before companies should develop a social media policy, they should know what their goals are in using social media. How can a company create new policies using new media when the company does not understand the media and the implications using these new technologies.
• Some companies are struggling with using social media because the use of social media conflicts with their existing policies (i.e. only the public relations department is the only ones who can make announcements and speak publically for the company). These companies should examine existing policies before considering new social media policies.
• Companies should decide if a policy is needed.
• Companies may want to look at how much faith they have in their own employees and consider the Five reasons they don’t need a policy.
• From the same Michael Hyatt article, are there any companies brave enough to create their policy like this one? If so, those companies have complete faith in their employees to do the right thing. Of course, the smaller companies may be able to use this policy more so than larger companies.

“Use whatever social media you want. Feel free to use it on company time. Just use common sense and remember that if you publicly identify yourself with the company’s brand then act in a manner consistent with that brand. It’s in all of our best interests to do so.”

Now, is the time, though, to consider:

• goals of using social media.
• how social media fits and can be used to convey the company’s values.
• how the company will use social media.
• how social media fits into the company’s core businesses.
• existing policies and practices that conflict with social media.
• developing any new policies to address social media use.

del.icio.us Tags: social media,policies,guidelines

Open source blogging: Open source content

Leo Babauta, the author of Zen To Done: The Simple Productivity E-Book! is granting full permission to use his content. In his post, Open Source Blogging: Feel Free to Steal My Content, he explains his reasoning with counter arguments. For each of his counter arguments, I offer the positive possibilities of opening educational content for anyone to use without restriction.

LB 1. Google rank will go down. Because Google penalizes pages that have exact duplicates, PageRank may be reduced.

What is the positive? Someone will read our educational material who might not have found it on our web sites.

LB 2. Loss of revenues. ...In this example, thousands of people are reading my work (and learning about Zen Habits) who wouldn’t have otherwise. That’s good for any content creator.

What is the positive? Our reach is extended. Someone who could not afford for the content or someone who was not willing to pay for the content reads the content.

LB 3. Who knows what people will do with your work? Someone could take my work, turn it into a piece of … baloney … and put my name on it. They could translate it with all kinds of errors. They could … well, they could do just about anything. ... that you can’t control it, and even if you can, it’s not a good thing....

What is the positive?

LB... What if someone takes my work and turns it into something brilliant...Or more likely, what if they take the work and extend the concepts and make it even more useful, to even more people? Release control, and see what happens. People are wonderful, creative creatures.

Someone could make our educational content more exciting, interactive, and understandable to audiences that we did not reach with our original content.

LB 4. You’re making other bloggers look bad. Perhaps .. I’m doing it simply to stay in line with my values. And who knows? Maybe others will be inspired by this in some way.

What is the positive? We, as public educators, could be lead the way.

LB 5. What about when you write that print book you’re always talking about? When I get published by a major publisher, I probably won’t be able to release copyright. I accept that as a cost of getting published in print, which is a dream of mine.

What is the positive? We think about all of our content as being open, and the exception is that we copyright only those products that absolutely need copyright (I am not sure what they would be).

LB 6. What if someone publishes a book with all your content and makes a million dollars off it? I hope they at least give me credit. And my deepest desire is that they give some of that money to a good cause.

What is the positive? More people will read our educational content.

LB 7. But … but … they’re stealing from you! You can’t steal what is given freely. I call this sharing, not piracy.

What is the positive? Our educational content gets shared.

Thanks to John Dorner for sharing Open Source Blogging: Feel Free to Steal My Content in his del.icio.us bookmarks.

What are other possibilites?

Blogging Policies for Extension Professionals

A friend of mine sent me this Inside Training article, "Blog Patrol". The article which is directed at the corporate world made me wonder if Extension organizations have developed policies specifically for employees who decide to blog.

There are no specific blogging policies at our university and Extension System. My guess, though, blogging falls under "appropriate use of computer resources." I am blogging as employee, using an blogger.com, and using university resources to connect to the blogging service.

Although blogging is a great way for Extension professionals to share their knowledge and expertise, only a few are blogging at that moment. Because we, as an organization (ACES), have not encouraged individual blogging, most people have not given any thought to blogging. Interestingly, we were one of the first Extension organizations to have a news blog. It is maintained by one individual in the Extension communications unit. Only a couple of different groups have begun blogging in specific topic areas (i.e. home horticulture).

I am wondering in other Extension services, is blogging encouraged, discouraged, or not even discussed? What kind of support is given to bloggers? Does your institution provide blogging services within your organization's web site? If there are policies on blogging, what are they?