4 Tips for creating Facebook pages for your NPO

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• With more than 500 million Facebook users, this platform has become the social network that most internet users spend their time on occupying the second rank in worldwide traffic, according to Alexa.com. The apps and services offered by Facebook are highly recommended for Non Profit Organizations in order to build awareness of their cause, and a valuable tool for fundraising.

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1. Create a “Page” for your NPO, never a “profile” page.

• The most common mistake is to make a “profile” or personal page for an organization. This will limit the number of followers to 5,000. Besides “pages “ can deliver updates or postings to certain groups of followers or to all at once. While on the “profiles” is limited to one on one. “Pages” has an added feature of analytics, which will give you valuable statistics regarding your visitor’s demographic, geographic, interaction and other additional information. “Groups” are another option that is not ideal since this format is more of a closed group of friends, like a club. From a “Group” you cannot send a message as a Group, you can only send personal messages with your name tag.

• Besides you cannot send messages to all the members if this number exceeds 5,000. Facebook recently created “Community Pages” which are also not recommended for NPO, since they are intended for general interests of a particular public community, and Facebook reserves the right to take over the management of that particular “Community Page” if it finds it strategic to their best interest. To create a “Page” account go to:

• http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

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It will be important to choose your category under the three options available, since you cannot change it later. In our case, choose; Brand,

product, or organization.

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Choosing “non-profit” description, next choose a name for your NPO, verify that you are the representative, and click on “Create

Official Page”.

2.Making your “Page” Visible

• Contrary to MySpace, Facebook does not allow too much customizing, except for the profile image and the customizable tab. We can create an image which could occupy a greater part of our left margin not exceeding 200w X 600h pixels. Here is an example of a “Page” which benefits from this application:http://www.facebook.com/LuckyMagazine

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3. Customize your http: address (URL) of your page

• When you first set up your page, your address will look too long and complicated, like;http://www.facebook.com/pages/VOGUEES/98367118441?ref=ts

• We can change this address to a cleaner and simpler one, like; http://www.facebook.com/organization-name

As long as it is available and we have at least 25 followers. To choose a different user name go to:www.facebook.com/username

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4. Allow for Interaction

• Sometimes you will visit a FB page that does not allow it’s visitors to post any comments. We have to understand that the social media tools are meant to share content, and interact instead of being a monologue of one to many. It is highly recommended to allow your followers to post comments and share them in your page.

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• Check all your settings and allow fans or followers to post their comments.

• If you happen to experience spamming activity or any other not wanted comment you could always report this to Facebook as SPAM. It’s good to accept good and bad comments about your service or products, but other uncommon practices may not be welcomed.

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