When it comes to social media in Ireland, Facebook is still top dog. Creating a Facebook page for your organisation is an excellent, cheap and relatively pain-free way of delving into social media, advertising your organisation and the services it provides.
Why setup a Facebook Page for your Organisation?
– It’s free! With no set up or maintenance costs, the only expense you will incur is the time and effort that you invest
– It’s easy to use
– 60% of Irish people have Facebook accounts (Ipsos MRBI) so it’s an excellent way to advertise your services locally
– It can be a great way of opening up two way communication between you and your supporters and service users
– Provides an avenue for people to share their experiences and stories with others
– Useful for list building, through promotions and competitions
– Optional extras can be added to the page for example a custom PayPal ‘Donate Now’ tab.
Profile, Page or Group?
Facebook has three different options:
Profile
Put simply, a profile is for people. With a profile, users must request to be your friend (and then you have to accept them) before they receive content from you in their news feeds. Profiles come with features like Chat and gaming capabilities that are not available to Pages.
Page
A page is usually for public figures, businesses or organisations. Unlike a Profile, Facebook Pages are visible to everyone on the internet. Also, a Page requires a user to hit a button labelled “Like,” (instead of sending a friend request) to make the content from the Page visible on their own news feed.
Pages are different as well in the sense that they must be created from an existing account (a Profile), and different individual people (who have their own Profiles) can be assigned as administrators.
Group
Facebook Groups are for people to share their common interests and express their opinion. Groups allow people to come together around a common cause, issue or activity to organize, express objectives, discuss issues, post photos and share related content.
When you create a group, you can decide whether to make it publicly available for anyone to join, require administrator approval for members to join or keep it private and by invitation only.
Similar to a Page, new posts by a group are included in the members News Feeds and members can interact and share with one another in the group.
Groups can range widely from members of an athletic team organising activities to serious topics on politics and world events or even more light-hearted themes like a popular television series.
Sign Up
Most non-profit organisation including Kerry Volunteer Centre engage in Facebook through a Page. Here are a few simple steps on how to set up a Facebook Page for a non-profit organisation.
Set up a Personal Page
As mentioned above you must first have Personal Profile to set up a Page. To set up a Personal Profile:
1. Go to www.facebook.com
2. Enter your name, email address or phone number, password, date of birth and gender
3. Click Sign Up
4. A notice will appear on top of the next page telling you to go to your email account, click ‘Go to your email’.
5. Go to the email sent from Facebook and click on the link to bring you to your new Facebook Profile
6. Facebook will offer to go through your email address book for addresses of people that also have Facebook Profiles, giving you a chance to add them as your friends. Simply enter your email address and password and Facebook will find your friends. Select the ones you want to add by ticking the boxes to the left of their pictures and then click Add to Friends at the bottom.
7. Next you will be asked for your school / college /employer details. You can choose to skip this by clicking Skip which is beside Save and Continue
8. You will be asked for your Current City next and home town
9. Click Join
You have now set up a Facebook Profile Account! For more information on how to update your Profile picture and information about yourself click here.
Setup a Page for your Organisation
1. Sign into your Personal Profile Page on www.facebook.com
2. Click the drop down arrow on the top right and click Create a Page
3. Click Company, Organisation or Institution
4. Choose a category – Non-Profit Organisation
5. Enter Company Name (Organisation Name)
6. Click ‘Get Started’
7. Add a few sentences about your Non-Profit Organisation (155 Characters)
8. In the second box add your website url and other social media links if applicable
9. In box three, choose a unique Facebook web address. Kerry Volunteer Centre uses www.facebook.com/KerryVolunteerCentre
10. Click ‘Save Info’
11. Upload your Profile Picture (this is still for your Page). The dimensions for this image are 160 x 160 px
12. Click ‘Save Photo’
13. Now you can choose your Page Audience. Choose the audience location, age, gender and interests.
You have now successfully created a Facebook Page so it’s time to connect with us! Visit our Facebook page and leave a post telling us you are now on Facebook so we can Like your page and follow your organisaion. For more information on how to edit the information on your Page click here.
