It’s that time of year. Time for long summer nights and beach music? Yes, thankfully, but I’m talking about something much more important.

It’s time for your campaign to start thinking about moving your 3,000 Facebook fans offline and into your nearby precincts knocking on doors, handing out literature, etc.

This year, folks who are new to the political process have become fans of your Facebook Pages and are ready to help with your campaigns, but may not be sure where to begin. For new activists who are unsure about the campaign culture, jumping in head first can be intimidating and many activities (read: knocking on strangers’ doors) will require extra encouragement.

Fortunately, Facebook Pages allow supporters to get an inside look at your campaign and provide you with the opportunity to create an inviting atmosphere for your campaign volunteers.

Take a few steps now to make sure your group or campaign is welcoming and inviting for our newly-engaged citizenry. The tips below will help you create an engaging Facebook Page community that will encourage your activists to join you offline.

Be sure your contact information is easy to find on your Facebook Page. Include an email where interested volunteers can contact you both on your Facebook wall (just under your profile picture) and the info section of the page. Also, be sure to include the person’s name that volunteers will be contacting. People are much more comfortable writing an email to info@nameforcongress.com when they know who to address the email to!

In addition to including an email on the page, I also encourage you to link to the Facebook Profile of a campaign staffer where volunteers can direct questions. Many campaigns have chosen to link their Facebook Pages to the profile of their volunteer coordinator. Of course, if you choose to go this route, be sure your campaign staffer understands and is using the Facebook privacy settings!

Upload Pictures

I cannot stress the importance of this enough. Facebookers love pictures and your fans will feel much better about joining you at events if they have already seen pictures of other fans at similar events. Upload pictures of fans putting together yard signs. Upload pictures of volunteers knocking on doors or handing out literature at local fairs. Upload pictures of your candidate engaging with volunteers. Upload pictures.

Don’t stop here. Once you’ve uploaded pictures to albums on your page, encourage your Facebook fans to tag themselves and their friends in the pictures. You may also want to encourage supporters to upload their own pictures. For example, you could have supporters upload pictures of their yards decked out with the campaign yard signs or their cars in various places around town sporting your campaign bumper stickers. The goal here is to create a community that seems friendly and engaging!

Recognize Offline Work Online

A great way to encourage participation online and offline is to highlight accomplishments by your volunteers or group members on your Facebook Page. Recognizing work done offline online reinforces the idea that your campaign is an actual community working together toward a common goal.

Did a campaign volunteer make an impressive number of phone calls this week or knock on a record number of doors? Be sure to recognize those accomplishments on your Facebook Page and encourage your other fans to try to reach those goals. Pictures of your featured fans doing whatever they do best will go along way toward encouraging the rest of your community! You may also choose to reward your fans with campaign gear such as t-shirts, bumper stickers, tickets to events, etc.

If you’re looking for an example of a great way to honor your fan base, take a look at the Heritage Foundation’s Facebook Page Featured Fan App. It isn’t necessary for you to build an application- a simple shout out will do- but hopefully Heritage’s example will inspire you.

The overall goal here is to acknowledge that volunteers are making a difference and having fun while doing it, so play around with these ideas and find something that works for your community.

It’s very easy to take feedback on our Facebook Pages when it’s positive. We don’t worry too much about how we will moderate comments when they are all praising our candidate, product, or mission.  However, you need to be prepared now to accept and engage with feedback in any and every form.  Every Page administrator should have a plan ready that will allow them to engage with feedback, while also controlling the message and moderating comments.

A few months ago, an animal rights group here in NC organized an online campaign where they posted hundreds of messages on Gov. Perdue’s Facebook Page Wall. The goal of the campaign was clearly to bring attention to the issue of animal abuse across North Carolina and they succeeded.

It also became evident that the Governor’s communications team was unprepared for the deluge of unsolicited and off-topic comments they were receiving. The Facebook Page administrator responded with a status update saying that the Governor’s Office was “listening” to the activists, but there was little they could do to address their concerns. Ironically, the administrator then immediately removed posting abilities from the wall. Thus at the same time they said they were listening to concerned constituents, they removed the medium by which the activists were communicating!

Did the Governor’s team have the right to control the message on their Page? Yes, of course. But it was unfortunate that they chose to do so without expressly giving the activists another medium. It might have been a better choice to provide the activists with an open thread of sorts where they could continue posting their message. This would have the added benefit for the animal rights group of having their posts show up in the newsfeed where many more people would see it.

I’m not sharing this example to disparage the Governor or her communications staff. Rather I share it because I know there will come a day when every Page administrator will face the challenge of appropriately dealing with unsolicited and unwanted feedback. Take the time now to set your strategy for dealing with unwanted or unsolicited feedback and save yourself the stress later.

As a general rule of thumb, your Facebook Page is yours and you have the right to remove any information that you feel is deliberately misleading, offensive, or in poor taste. However, does this mean you should remove comments asking questions or registering complaints about your products or candidacy? No, I don’t think that’s a good idea and it really wouldn’t be in the spirit of the social networking community.

If you find that you need to address negative feedback, here are a few steps you could take:

1. If your page is on a controversial issue or product, you may want to include an “etiquette box” on your wall detailing your right to remove any posts that are offensive or derogatory in nature.

2. When you delete a comment, send that person a message explaining why you had to delete their comment while also encouraging them to continue participating in the discussion.

3. When people ask questions, be sure to respond to their questions in the same thread with a link back to your site for more information.

Most importantly, don’t let the fear of unwanted feedback keep you from creating a Facebook Page. You may be missing a great opportunity to advertise your business and engage your most loyal customers. The best advice I can give you for moderating your Facebook Page is, “Go with the flow.” Keep in mind that your Facebook Page is your space and a reflection of your business on Facebook, but also remember that you won’t be able to control what other people write or say about your product.

As always, if you need help with your social networking strategy, contact me today!

This is a question that will continue to be asked as social media grows in prevalence and new analytics tools arrive.

While there are many methods for measuring your social network’s success, I’d like to point out two very common measurement myths and debunk these once and for all!

Myth 1: Success is a measure of how many fans or followers you have.

Truth: Success is not measured by the quantity of fans or followers, but by the quality of your social networking community.

I often remind candidates that the number of followers they have is not nearly as important as the number of followers they have that would be able to vote in their election or willing to donate to their campaign. That is to say, the quality of their fans and followers is a much stronger measure of success than the quantity.

This principle rings true for small businesses too. At the end of the day, does it matter that you have 1,000 Twitter followers if none of them will buy what you are selling?  No. Create a social networking strategy that specifically targets your customer base rather than simply broadcasting the message with hopes of gaining traction

As you create your social networking strategy, start by asking where your customer base is (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, or Foursquare) and then find those people and connect with them. On Twitter, this may be as simple as searching for folks in your geographic area while on Facebook it may mean purchasing Facebook ads.

The bottom line is that every campaign, small business, church, non profit, and other social networking entity should be primarily focused on connecting with their base and secondarily focused on bringing new fans and followers into the fold.

Myth 2: Success is a measure of the number of social networking accounts you have.

Truth: Social media success is not measured by the quantity of your social networking accounts, but by the quality of your social network communities.

The simple truth is the number of social networks available will continue to grow as social media becomes an increasingly legitimate form of marketing. This does not mean that your small business or campaign should sign up for an account with every network.  Find the few social networks that best fit your needs and work to create successful and engaging communities there.

Not sure if your social networking strategy is working for your campaign or small business? Contact me today.

Next to “suggesting to friends,” the share button is the easiest and most effective way to share information from Pages or other profiles with your Facebook friends. When you share a story on Facebook, that story appears in your friends’ newsfeed and on your Facebook profile.

Using the Share button

The most frequent use for the “Share” button on Facebook is on Page posts. It’s important to note here that when you share a Facebook post, you are sharing the content or link and the Page where it came from, but not any introductory text the Page had included with the post. This also means that you can’t share status updates. Note the two screenshots below. The first is a Page post and the second is a status update:

When you decide to share a post, you will have the option of sending the post as a link in a personal message or posting it on your profile and your friends’ newsfeed.  There are benefits to both of these methods, but one benefit to posting to your profile is that many more people on Facebook will see the post. The screenshot below shows where to click to switch between the two options. Once you’ve picked your method, choose whether to add a personal message, and click Share.

If you opted to share the message, your post will appear on your profile and in your friends’ newsfeed. However, remember the lists we made in the first section of this series? This is where these come in because instead of sharing the message with all of your friends, you have the option of sharing only with certain people or specific lists. To do that, instead of clicking “share”, select the lock symbol just next to the share button. A box will drop down. Select customize to use lists.

When you select customize, the box below will pop up.

To use your list, click on the drop down box that says “Only Friends” and select “Specific People.” Then type the name of the list you made in the box. In this example, the name of my list is “Conservative NC Politics.”

Once you are done selecting your list, click “save setting.” You will know that you added your list properly because when you click on the lock image, the drop down box will now look like this:

That’s it! Now just click share and you are done!

Conclusion

This wraps up our series on Facebooking for Activists. Campaign season is heating up and there are a lot of good, conservative candidates who need your help to spread their message. Pick a few in your area and start sharing their posts, notes, and links and be sure to suggest their Pages to your friends!

Suggest to Friends is an ideal set up for word-of-mouth marketing in Facebook. For activists who may be reluctant to frequently bombard their friends with status updates and Facebook messages, the “Suggest to Friends” function is the perfect solution.

Many Facebook Page administrators will ask you to help them spread the word about the Page by “suggesting it to your friends.” This is a really important tool on Facebook that allows you to easily invite new fans to your favorite pages with a few simple clicks.

My ideal day as a Facebook Page administrator would be for each of my Page’s fans to suggest the Page to each of their Facebook friends. Imagine how many people you could reach! I realize this won’t happen, but I would like to walk you through the “Suggest to Friends” process in hopes you’ll opt to share quality conservative Pages with your friends and family more often than not.

Suggest to Friends

To begin, go to your favorite Facebook Page, look at the options located just under the profile picture, and click “Suggest to Friends.”

The box that pops up when you click “Suggest to Friends” contains all of your friends and in order to suggest the Page to your friends, you have to individually click on their names. This is time-consuming and I’m positive it’s the reason more of you aren’t suggesting! Luckily, the lists you created after reading “Using Facebook Lists” will make this process much, much easier!

Click “Filter Friends” and select the list you want to use from the drop down box. For this example, I am using a list I created called “ConservativeNC Politics.”

Once you have filtered the friend selection by your list, Facebook will allow you to “Select All” to suggest the page to all the friends in that list. If you still want to narrow your friends from here, go through and handpick them individually.

Click “Send Invitation” and you’re done!

Suggesting Facebook Pages to your friends is the fastest and easiest way to spread the message about new candidates or nonprofits. The conservative causes you support on Facebook are depending on you to help them get their message out.

Use Facebook lists to make that process easier and start suggesting today! If you’d like a practice round, feel free to suggest Majority Connections to all your friends!

As an administrator for many Facebook Pages, I spend a lot of time asking Facebook fans and other supporters to share Pages, Groups, links, Notes, and more with their Facebook friends. The goal of these posts is to give you a few tips for sharing and spreading the conservative message to your friends and family on Facebook.

The first installment in this series will explain how to use Facebook Lists to target specific Facebook friends.  The second and third posts will then walk you through how to use those lists to share links and suggest great conservative pages to your friends.

Using Facebook Lists

For many of us, including myself, our Facebook friends include people with whom we don’t necessarily want to share our political views. Having been on Facebook since my freshman year of college, I’ve accumulated many former professors, colleagues, church friends, my brothers ex-girlfriends, former bosses, and even family members who I know will not appreciate frequent updates in their news feed about Sarah Palin’s Facebook Notes (this one is a good read) or the latest campaign Facebook Page I’m recommending (this one). Thus, I share your hesitancy to broadcast your political opinions to all of your Facebook connections.

The good news is Facebook allows you to categorize your friends into different lists and then target your updates according to those lists. This process takes a little time and effort on the front end, but you will find it really helpful once complete.

To get started, go to your home page or newsfeed page on Facebook. Look for this box in the upper left-hand corner and click “more”:

The list will be expanded.  Select “create new list”:

A box will pop up with pictures of all of your Facebook friends, groups, and pages.

Type in the name for your list and scroll through your Facebook friends to find the people you want to put in that list (select them by clicking on their picture).  Once you’ve selected your list, click “Create List.” Go back to the Facebook home page where you should now see your list in the top left hand corner.

That’s the play by play for creating Facebook lists. In the next installment of this series, I will show how to put these new lists to work to help you more easily and comfortably spread the conservative message.

I hope you’ll take the time to glance through these guides and share them with other activists who might need a hand!  2010 is going to be a great year for us, but we have to work together to get there! Get Facebooking!

As I mentioned in the introduction to this series, activists often tell me that they are having trouble keeping their supporters hanging around, but at the same time they don’t need a Facebook account. I think this mostly stems from not understanding how the platform can be helpful or not knowing how to use the Page they have.  A successfully-integrated new media campaign leverages social networking sites to engage your supporters and expand your activist base. Facebook is the best opportunity your conservative group has for reaching new fans and continually engaging your existing base, regardless of the size and scope of your organization. If you still aren’t sure, think of your Facebook Page as a frequent reminder to your supporters that your organization is out there and needs your help.

Note that I refer to your Facebook Page- not Group or Profile. It is really important that you are using a Facebook Page as the central account for your group’s Facebook presence. If you are unclear about the differences, visit “Facebook: Groups, Pages, and Profiles” for more information.  If you jumped into Facebook and started with a Profile or a Group, all is not lost, but you should go ahead and switch to a Page now.  If you are unclear about how to switch over and get your friends/members to follow, contact me for a few tips.

There are 3 main functions of a Facebook Page:
•    Information Distribution
•    Engaging Existing Fans
•    Reaching New Fans

Information Distribution

Your Facebook Page should serve as a tool for your activists to stay updated and involved, not a method by which you distribute press releases.  In the previous section, I discussed websites and recommended that organizations look at using a blog. Facebook provides the perfect outlet for you to bring traffic back to your site by posting the title, a short excerpt, a picture, and a link to the blog on your site.  With this strategy, you will be using Facebook to alert your fans that there are updates and give them a brief description and using your blog to provide detailed information. As you begin to do this with some frequency, you will begin to understand what information your fans are most interested in and which types of articles will really engage them.

As we are discussing information distribution, we also need to discuss the method you are using to update your Facebook Pages.  It is my very strong opinion that RSS feeds (especially the Note upload function) that automatically upload your blog posts into a preset format on your Facebook wall are robbing every Facebook Page administrator of any opportunity to share unique information and engage fans. You should be tailoring your message to your fans’ interests, not simply relying on an RSS application to pull in a title and the first sentence or so!  If you have time to write an article and you think it is worthy of your Facebook Page, do yourself and your fans a favor and take the time to manually enter the information. Your Page will be more aesthetically pleasing and you will have the opportunity to tailor your message, resulting in higher participation (I promise!).

Engaging Existing Supporters

I have described Facebook as an avenue to and from your website, but it’s also important to think of it as its own platform. There are many fans that will rarely leave your Facebook Page to visit your website, and because of this it’s important to engage them directly on the site. Use your Facebook updates to encourage your fans to respond to action alerts and to keep them updated on current bills or campaigns your group is working on.  You can also post pictures from events and videos that you might not post on your website or ask fans to answer questions or leave their opinions about the information posted.  Finally, encourage fans to click through links to read more on your website where they will be directly engaged with becoming members, signing up for email alerts, and donating.

Engaging your existing supporters is important because these are the people who will spread the word about your organization.  After you have managed your Facebook Page for a while, you will get a feel for what your fans are interested in and what keeps bringing them back. To keep fans engaged and stress the importance of participation, think of ways to acknowledge fans that contribute often to your Page and are strong activists.

Reaching New Fans

I have learned of countless conservative organizations simply because my Facebook friends either became a fan or suggested that I become one.  There is no real art to this. You can reach new fans by having a “fan-raising” campaign where existing fans are encouraged to suggest the page to their friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter.  Targeted Facebook ads are also a great way to bring in new traffic.

However, word of mouth and viral marketing are not everything here. It’s also important that when I come to your Facebook Page, I see that there is active participation, the Page is frequently updated, and the information provided is of some benefit to me.  In the last installment of this series, we will outline more ways for you to encourage your activists to help you reach new supporters.

A Few Final Notes

Understand that building a strong following on Facebook will not happen overnight- especially if your organization is smaller, just starting, or issue-specific. Rather than getting caught up in the number of fans, think about the quality of your fan base. For example, if you have 250 Facebook fans, but only 10 of them can vote in your upcoming election, how much good do they really do you?  Focus on the quality of your Facebook Page and overtime your Page will grow.

There is no formula for building a successful and effective Facebook Page.  Mostly it takes time, persistence, and your own blend of whatever it is that makes your organization tick. Just keep in mind that if I become a fan of your Page it’s because at some level I’m interested in your topic. Now, your task is to create a Facebook plan that will translate my surface interest into action.

For more ideas, visit a few Facebook Pages I manage:
FAIR
Majority Connections
ConservativeNC

For more information about the ins and outs of good Facebook Pages, read “8 Tips for Building Effective Facebook Pages.”

Stay tuned for more, and, as always, please share this series with your conservative friends and other activists!

Here’s a screenshot of the new layout:

The main difference between the new and the old is that the number of updates is now listed just under the number of inbox messages- something that most Facebook users do check. One drawback I see is that updates are still not included in the message count next to inbox on the homepage.  Thus, I may have 76 updates, but because I have no messages, there is no count next to my inbox:

This is a definite improvement over the old layout, and I am hopeful that Facebook will continue to improve the update feature as it could be a powerful tool for Page administrators  However, until  we see marked improvement in update responses reported, I would still use updates as a complement to wall posts and e-mail campaigns rather than relying solely on updates.

For another take on the new layout, head over to AllFacebook.com.

For a visual example, I logged into a friend’s Facebook account to grab a quick screenshot of her Requests section:

Regardless of how many updates a user has (34 is admittedly more than is probably usual), this placement on the page just doesn’t scream “Action Alert.”

This isn’t to say that there are no uses for Facebook Updates, just that there are much better ways to reach your members. Also, I am sure that out of all your Facebook Fans, at least a handful will read through your update and maybe even act on it. However, I really wouldn’t depend on the Facebook Update application for getting your message out to your followers. Consistent and effective use of your Facebook Wall is a better strategy because those messages show up directly in your fans’ news feed.

I do use Facebook Updates to complement region-specific information that I’ve posted on the Page that isn’t time-sensitive. For example, if I post a story specific to the Midwest for a national client on the Facebook Wall, I will turn around and send out an update that is targeted to the affected states. This practice assumes that Facebookers may eventually read the material, while also assuming that they also had a good chance of seeing it on the Page itself. Tip: If you choose to go this route with your Facebook Updates, be sure to include the states in the title, so your fans will realize the update pertains to them.

Next time you have time-sensitive material that requires action by your members or fans, turn to the Facebook Wall, Twitter, or your e-mail client instead of Facebook Udpates.

Facebook meet the Twitter for Pages application from Involver.com.

The Twitter for Pages application is perfect for integrating your Twitter account with your Facebook Page, while preserving the distinct purposes of each application.  The application adds a tab to your page (located at the top of the center column), allowing fans to switch from the wall tab to the Twitter tab to see what you’re tweeting.

If you choose to install the application on your Facebook Page, I recommend a brief status update that lets your fans know about the cool addition to your page.

The application is easy to install: simply follow the Twitter for Pages application link, click the Facebook install button, and follow a few easy instructions.

This is my new favorite Facebook App (probably because other Twitter for Facebook options were giving me such a headache).  What about you? Is there an app out there you like better than my new find?