by Chris Syme, Chair of the CoSIDA New Media/Technology Committee
follow Syme via her blog www.cksyme.org
Some athletics communicators see Facebook as a necessary evil. Some see it as a great branding channel. Some see it as a waste of time. In our Social Media 101 series, the first tool we'll tackle is Facebook. How can use this platform that reaches over 500 million people worldwide to strengthen our media strategy?
Recently, we surveyed the New Media/Technology committee to get some feedback on Facebook and uncovered some interesting statistics:
• 87% of respondents have a Facebook "fan" page in their department
• 6% have a Facebook "friend" page
• 6% have no page of any kind
• over 75% of the pages are managed by SIDs
• 18% are managed by marketing
• 31% have an editorial strategy
• 50% post everyday
• 7% post once a week
• 18% have a landing page set up (a default page that all "non-likers" will go to first that is usually graphically engaging with promotions, web URLs, videos, etc.)
· • of those 18%, a total of 75% of respondents coded the landing page in-house and the rest hired it done or used applications like Splash Tab
· • The majority have 100-500 followers
Facebook's Use and Purpose in Athletics
The majority of survey respondents use Facebook as a news broadcaster with some using it for promotional purposes. Jay Stancil at Union College in Kentucky says he is still experimenting.
"It's largely for posting news," Stancil said." We do try to engage fans some, especially during the 'quiet' times of the sports year . I have done one contest, and am planning others"
Stancil's experimentation mindset is common across the board. Most communications associates would like expand Facebook's engagement factor, but time pressure and lack of good information seem to be a roadblock.
At Montana State, our Facebook engagement plan involves variety. Contests and polls worked well, but not all are created equally. One of our most popular contests was asking fans to submit and then vote on a song they wanted played at a football game when the team ran out on the field. One that didn't work so well was asking fans to register for a chance to join our mascot on the floor during a time out for a dance during their favorite song. That promotion was definitely for the younger set. We routinely run polls on our website and will duplicate the same polls on our Facebook page. Facebook has a good application for polls. To install it on your page, click on the "edit page" link under your profile picture, go to the "Apps" link on the left side and cruise there for applications. We just used the generic Facebook poll application. One engagement trick: post a poll every week on the same day in the morning.
Creating fan engagement on Facebook takes time and strategy. There's nothing wrong with using Facebook as a news broadcaster provided you realize that will likely not create much interaction. Social Media Examiner (www.socialmediaexaminer.com) writes that fan engagement increases significantly with the use of an editorial calendar where posts are planned out on a schedule.
One of the better "family" of fan pages I've seen is the University of Wisconsin (
http://www.facebook.com/help/#!/wisconsinbadgers). They have over 217,000 fans on their home base "Wisconsin Badgers" and have grown that largely due to engaging content.
Tam Flarup, Director of Web Site Service at Wisconsin says, "So we don’t constantly blast people, we do have planned release of items based on our headline schedule which we project out six weeks, but meet every Monday on for tweaks of the week. Our @uwbadgersdotcom tweets are based on this timetable as well. We know our fans like videos and photos, so we try and pick headlines that have those connected to them. The other sport Facebook pages are handled by the athletic communications contact and they take care of their own release timetables.
Editorial Strategies
Most new media committee members have a skeletal editorial strategy that defines the purpose of what the page will be used for and what will be posted.
Tim Riordan at the University of North Carolina Wilmington explains their editorial strategy: "We have begun a content calendar for the office for UNCWsports.com. The website feeds the Facebook page through RSS (twitterfeed.com). We also have the ability to add our own notes to the fan page."
Chad Jackson at Armstrong Atlantic said they post non-news items weekly and every release from the website automatically goes to Facebook. This "broadcasting" strategy is common among college athletic fan pages.
At Montana State, we share the Facebook fan page with marketing. We don't post news releases on the page unless they are something big--no event recaps, etc. We decided to use our Facebook page to increase the engagement of our fans and promote our events and giveaways. We routinely use polls and ask questions to get fans engaged. When the football team went on the road, we asked fans to post pictures from the game. Our privacy settings are pretty open, allowing fans to post pictures and make comments. We do monitor for spam and delete it when it shows up.
Friend vs. Fan Page
Facebook policy doesn't allow organizations, personal brands and businesses to have friend pages. If you are currently running yours as a "friend" page, you are running the risk it will be taken down. Facebook routinely deactivates friend pages that get over a certain number of fans. It is better to set up a "ghost profile" on Facebook and set up a fan page from that account. Another advantage of this method is that you can set your privacy settings wide open. It also give you the option for metrics (Insights), location check-in, larger profile picture, landing pages, a customized page name, and many more applications
Landing Pages to Promote Your Organization/School
Currently, Facebook still supports the use of landing pages for businesses. This is a formatted page that people will land on initially instead of your dreary "wall." Facebook uses their own mark-up language (FBML) for coding these pages, and is supposed to moving to another format for these soon (IFrames). For the time being, both codes are acceptable. The use of landing pages is proven to increase fans for your page. See a good example at the
Big Sky Conference Facebook page (
http://www.facebook.com/#!/bigskyconf?v=app_4949752878). Also, the Green Bay Packers Facebook landing page (
http://www.facebook.com/#!/Packers) has a good example of how to create inbound marketing back to your website.
Landing pages offer a more graphically pleasing introduction to your Facebook page.
Staci Schottman, Director of Communications and PR at the NAIA talks about the philosophy behind the landing page for their "PlayNAIA" Facebook page. You can view it at this link:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/PlayNAIA.
“With student-athletes connecting with Facebook pages every day the NAIA sees tremendous value in a custom landing page to welcome fans and build awareness about the student-athlete experience," comments Schottman. "The NAIA’s approach to college athletics is very personal and the opportunity to connect with fans and have them tell their stories builds our brand and gets people excited.
"The NAIA worked closely with Concera Media on a variety of Facebook efforts, including the splash page. We continue to see value in what we are doing but recognize the social media landscape is forever changing. We’ll continue look for new ways to add to our fan experience and know Facebook will be a valuable marketing tool for the future.”
Landing page applications are plentiful on the web and for a very minimum investment, you can have a graphically engaging landing page from companies like Splash Tab (
http://www.splashtab.com/)
The Ever-Changing Nature of Facebook
A Facebook fan page requires vigilance. Facebook is constantly adding and changing features with little or no warning. Some can be very helpful and some can be a nuisance. It's a good idea to be a "friend" of several Facebook pages that the company sponsors that give you access to this information in real-time. Just remember that your fans don't see the posts made by these Facebook pages on your feed, so no need to worry about clogging up your fans' feeds.You'll need to "like" each of these pages for them to show up in your feed. Here are a list of a few:
4. Facebook Developers. http://developers.facebook.com/. A page for those interested in applications and development of applications.
Be sure and email me (2cksyme@gmail.com) with any Facebook questions you have and I'll try and get you pointed in the right direction.