Q: What is a Facebook Page?
A public profile that you can create for your company, club, and yes, your nonprofit. This is similar to a private profile in many aspects but with some key differences.
Q: How is a Page different from a Group?
Anyone can create a Group. I can go now and create a Group for Oxfam or Red Cross or Community Chest. I don't need to get approval from anyone. Whether people will join my Group or not is a different story.
Theoretically, only authorized personnel can create a Page for a company, organization, etc. When you create a Page, Facebook will ask explicitly if you have the authority to do things on behalf of that particularly entity. But what if you lie? Well....you won't, will you?
Q: What can I do with a Page that I cannot do with a Group?
Many
- You can add applications to your Page just like what you have been doing with your private Facebook profile. E.g. you can add a RSS application to automatically pull in all the posts from your existing blog.
- Your Page can be seen by anyone on the Internet and not just the Facebook users (a huge plus). Though only Facebook users can join as fan and interact with your Page.
- Facebook provides you with basic usage statistics about your Page. And it is getting better everyday.
Q: I already have a website, why do I need to create a Facebook Page?
It is a lot more effective to go to where your target audience is than to ask them to come to you. Why restrict yourself to only one channel? By the way, Facebook now has over 200 million users.
Q: Is it difficult to create a Page?
Nope, not at all. Getting a decent Page up and running will probably take an hour or less provided you have your contents ready (videos, photos, etc). The challenge is, as always, making it known to your target audience - be it your supporters, donors, or volunteers. Invite your friends to become a fan. Put a "Find me on Facebook" badge on your website. Put the link in your email signature, newsletter, brochure...
Q: Any good example of a nonprofit Facebook Page?
I think the one from Red Cross is pretty neat - http://www.facebook.com/redcross. Note that you won't get vanity URL like this. Your URL is more likely in the form of http://www.facebook.com/pages/
your-page-name/some-random-number. Facebook only gives out vanity URLs to the big guys and I guess Red Cross is big enough.
Q: That sounds interesting, where can I find out more?
The Facebook site (http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages) is always a good place to start.
If you are really interested in creating a Page for your nonprofit, please also check out the Involver site. They have a list of applications (RSS, YouTube, polls, file sharing, etc.) that can add some instant functionalities to your Page.
And let me say this again - creating the Page is easy, attracting and retaining your fans is not. Good luck!
