Part 1: Style Guide
I created this guide for less familiar users of Social Media within Alpha, as a simple step by step guide to getting the most out of a Facebook “Fanpage”.
Facebook is now an essential tool to promote any ministry, so in Part 1, I’ll show you discuss style, how to know your readers, and what they might be interested in.
The Key to Facebook
Know Your Reader
There will be 3 categories of people reading your posts
- Core supporters of your your organization.
- People wanting to find out more about what you’re doing.
- Friends of the first 2 groups, reading your updates on their friend’s walls.
When you post something to your “wall” (the landing page for a fanpage), it is often read by the friends of your “fans”. The more fans you have, the more it will be read. This is what happens when a good post goes “viral”,
Target Audiences
There are a number of theories about how to categorize audiences, mostly along the lines of how they respond to your information.
The dominant theory at the moment is the Forrester Social Media Ladder. In my opinion, there are 2 types of Social Media users you should target: Creators and Participators.
Creators: produce and share all types of content on the web, and have followings online. They influence the opinions of others, and hence, their opinions count. They have to have a positive opinion about the course or issue that the course runs. Make up 21% of users.
Participators: maintain and have a limited level of participation on Social Media, but maintain social media profiles and have are mostly passive with interaction. Ideally, they have no awareness of the brand, and their first contact will be through social media. Make up 45% of users.
Your Target Audience
To understand your Audience, you must answer these questions:
- What do they want more of (and less of) in their lives? Eg: more humour, an interesting, polarizing discussion, more time or money, less stress, more satisfaction. peace and joy in their lives, more status and friends etc.
- Where would they rather be right now? Life, work, home, family situation
- What are their values and beliefs? Try to always respect these.
- How do they (and others) see themselves?
- Are they intellectual or emotional people?
- How can you interact, engage, and win their friends (the ppl reading their walls) to your cause? What messages will resonate with their friends?
Writing Style and Tone
Whenever you sit down to write, whether it’s for Facebook, an email, or another piece of writing, you need to tune in and broadcast on the frequency your readers are on – Radio WIIFM. What your (and every) reader wants to know is “What’s In It For Me?”. Send your message on this frequency and you’ll be listened to. If you send it on WIII (What I’m Interested In) you WILL lose them to a more interesting station.”
Types of FB Wall Posts and Tweets
Using an application like Hootsuite, it’s actually no extra effort to post to both your Facebook wall and Twitter account at the same time (and others like LinkedIn as well). The same text is posted to each, meaning more exposure, with no extra effort on your part!
Status Post Ideas:
Working for Alpha, there are a multitude of branches, all having different needs for Social Media. Some common post ideas I suggest for beginners starting a fanpage are:
- Meetings with interesting ppl
- Podcast Talks
- BiOY posts
- Video Clips
- Blog posts and media articles
- Quotes
- “Get to know you” style questions.
In Part 2, we’ll show you how to create a profile and fanpage on Facebook, and how to add your core supporters.
youngdesign says
“…Friends of the first 2 groups, reading your updates on their friend’s walls.
When you post something to your “wall” (the landing page for a fanpage), it is often read by the friends of your “fans”.”
This isn’t right…
Just because my friend “Like’s” Barbie, that doesn’t mean I’m going to see ANYTHING related to Barbie at all… if that was the case, our Feeds would be swamped with irrelevant posts that we simply aren’t interested in!
Facebook only shows you what is directly relevant to you, ie: what/who you have chosen to follow.
For me to see a post by Barbie, my friend would have to SHARE it first… then I ‘might’ see it, if it’s a popular interaction.
The only exception to this is Facebook Apps that share results to a persons feed… which most people hate.
Mikey says
You may be right. There is definitely a correlation between interests, but there are different newsfeed settings. It is possible that it will show up. This discusses more about exactly goes into the algo: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/22/facebook-edgerank/
Graham says
Thanks for writing this! I’ve got a pastor who is just entering the world of FB and I forwarded this to him.