The Facebook Trap
How do non-profits know how much and in what manner to commit to social networking tools like Facebook? Michael Gilbert has some good analysis and advice.
This piece is a really nice article by about the value (pro and con) of Facebook for non-profit organizations.
Gilbert’s piece addresses three concerns, of which all agencies using Facebook groups, pages, and causes to organize stakeholders should take heed:
- The upsides are unclear: More agencies fail trying to use Facebook than succeed, and often the successes are untestable as described.
- Facebook gets your list: By asking your volunteers and friends to join Facebook, you are ostensibly licensing Facebook to advertise to them.
- Facebook is a walled garden: The more an organization commits time to building Facebook content, the more of itself it shuts off from the general public (as opposed to those signed up for Facebook).
But, of course, we can’t just abandon Facebook, which — like it or not — is an important communication medium for many people. Smartly, Gilbert concludes that the best reason for a non-profit to invest in Facebook is if its existing stakeholders are using it, especially if they’re using it a lot.
If that’s the case for your agency, your Facebook effort is significantly more likely to be a success. Even still, though, the concerns addressed above loom. Gilbert has some useful suggestions for regulatory guidelines to apply to your Facebook communication strategies. Here’s my distillation of that:
- Ensure that no one has to join Facebook to interact with you in a particular way. Be mindful of peer pressuring your stakeholders!
- Whenever possible, make your network’s content visible to the general public.
- Use Facebook as an entry point to more open media, not the other way around. Remember that Facebook is a tool in service of your social networks, and not the other way around.
Why is this relevant to BlogLESS?: On the one hand, this is important to DLB because good communications strategy shouldn’t be available only to companies with deep pockets. On the other, I think Gilbert’s points should be interesting to any communication strategist, corporate or otherwise. -Pt
| Tagged with: | Facebook, Non-profits, Social Media |
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