The Power of Facebook
ABC Life Literacy Canada launched its Facebook page nearly two years ago as a way to share useful information and to have ongoing conversations with our fans. To date, we have over 800 fans that are engaged in both our cause and our organization.
The main purpose of our Facebook page is to share information about the literacy field and about our organization.
To us, Facebook is a form of two-way conversation; we want to talk to others in the field, and find out what people are doing and how they are engaging in the literacy cause.
To that end, we post photos from events, links to interesting news articles or websites, videos, literacy tips, and discussion topics. We encourage others to post photos and information to our page and to provide us with their thoughts and ideas.
As a way to increase our fan base and raise awareness for Family Literacy Day, we ran a campaign on Facebook, which included a two-week contest where people could win prizes. The first week we asked people to share their best family literacy tip; there were 15 comments in less than an hour. This was a great way to get others thinking about literacy and how they practice it, and then share their advice with our other fans. The second week we asked a trivia question each day of the week and saw great response. In addition to the contest, we asked people to share photos and information from their Family Literacy Day events as a way for us to find out what people did to celebrate.
Overall, the Family Literacy Day campaign was successful as we had higher engagement than usual during the month of January. On average, we obtain 40 new fans a month; in January we had 200 new fans.
If you’re thinking about creating a Facebook page, here are a few tips:
- Be active. Try and post one or two pieces of interesting content every day. Don’t let your page go dormant.
- Share the wealth! Try not to post only items about your organization. Share information from other organizations or news articles and broaden your message platform.
- Volume is important. Don’t post too much in one day because it could result in overwhelming someone’s news feed and they might leave your page.
- Promote your page everywhere you can – website, newsletter, email signature, etc.
- Encourage your staff and learners to become a fan of the page and engage in conversation. It could be a forum for them too.
- Engage in conversation. If people are posting comments on your page, respond to them! Encourage conversation by asking people’s opinions or asking them to post photos or links on your wall.
- Be patient. It takes time to grow any social media channel, so don’t be discouraged if it takes a long time for your fan base to grow. Remember, it’s not the number of fans you have their level of engagement in your organization.
With over 500 million active users, your audience is likely already on Facebook, so why aren’t you?
Ashley Tilley is Communications Coordinator at ABC Life Literacy Canada.
ABC Life Literacy Canada is a non-profit organization that inspires Canadians to increase their literacy skills. We connect and mobilize business, unions, government, communities and individuals to support lifelong learning and achieve our goals through leadership in programs, communications and partnerships. ABC Life Literacy Canada envisions a Canada where everyone has the skills they need to live a fully engaged life.
