» Facebook Elaina Buzzell

March 2, 2012

Favorite Finds Friday: Facebook Edition

This week, Facebook announced that they are starting to roll out the timeline format to brand pages, with a mandatory change over on March 30th. This week on Favorite Finds Friday, I’m highlighting news and sites related to this change:

Favorite Blog Posts:

WARNING: Social Media Terms of Use. What you don’t know CAN hurt you. by Allen Mireles. While the buzz this week has been about the roll-out of timelines, there are very important updates to the Facebook Pages Terms of Use as well. This post outlines these, and other important TOU notes from other social media sites.
Facebook Brand Pages: How To Be Ready by Beth Kanter. Beth rolls out lots of advice and tips surrounding the rollout of pages, and how managers can start to work ahead.

Favorite Facebook Pages:

Since this change was only officially announced this week, not too many nonprofits and small businesses have changed over yet, but some have started the transition. Here are my favorites so far:

LoveIsRespect: National Teen Dating Abuse Hotline – I love their cover design, but (as noted in one of the blog posts above) it actually violates the new Terms of Use for Pages.
The Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) – They chose a cover picture to promote their upcoming conference – a great way to show the potential of your cover as a marketing tool.
J Campbell Social Marketing – I absolutely adore this cover image. As a consultant working with nonprofits on social marketing, the image of a conductor bringing the different media together into a symphony resonates well.
Elaina Buzzell – Sorry for a bit of shameless self-promotion, but I just launched my own Facebook page this week. I chose to go with a landscape panorama that I took on a road-trip this fall – simple and shows a bit of my personality.

Have you found other good posts about the Facebook Timeline transition or other exciting articles this week? Share them in the comments section below.

Have a great weekend!

February 6, 2012

What’s the Point? Outlining the Importance of Social Media Strategy

Original image from flickr user mclib

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been exploring Sparked to find bite sized volunteering projects for when I have downtime. Luckily for me, there are many nonprofits there asking questions about social media and communications, but it’s disappointing to see so many focused on poorly chosen goals and metrics.

Most of the social media and communications requests posted are on topics like, “How can I get more likes for my Facebook page?” and “How can I get more followers on Twitter”. My default response is to ask about their larger communications and/or organizational goals and how more likes or followers will help them get there. The responses that I get back are often that they don’t have a goal, that likes and followers are their only goal, or that they are on social media because a board member told them that they had to be.

I know that nonprofits are not alone in not quite knowing the right ways to use social media towards their goals, as businesses are struggling as well. Small organisations are often frustrated by a lack of progress and want to (re)gain ground as quickly as possible. However, moving ahead without strategy or planning rarely, if ever, leads to true success. Yes, you may get 10,000 likes on Facebook, but if you don’t do anything with them, or don’t know what to do with them, then how are they helping you? Or, as the title of this post more bluntly asks, “What’s the point?”

Read the rest of this entry »

2 comments

Elaina Buzzell

Tag: Facebook