I think I could also have named this posting "The single biggest mistake I see International Education making on Facebook" — but I'd prefer to keep this positive. 
It's incredibly simple. International education offices and organization should becreating Facebook Pages for themselves instead of Facebook Groups.
I get a number of invitations each week from International education offices and organization to join a Facebook Group they've created. I won't do it because I consider it an inefficient and basically useless way to connect and communicate with those most interested in hearing from you! Those of us who work in social media will tell you this is true.
Why? The difference is in the purpose. Groups may be better for collaborative discussion and attracting quick attention, but Pages are one very good way (but not the only way!) for developing better long-term relationships with your community. And international education organizations and offices don't need collaboration with their community, they want to be able to connect to them for marketing and information purposes!
What do Pages and Group have in common? Only a few things…
- Both Pages and Groups allow for hosting discussions, a discussion wall and forums.
- Both Pages and Groups allow for video and photo exchange.
- Both Pages and Groups allow sending messages to fans/members. Groups has a limit of around 5,000. However, Pages has NO limit on the number of people that you can message through Updates. (Updates will become far more visible in the reported upgrades coming soon to Facebook.) AnyInternational education offices and organizations who think that they don't *need* to reach more than 5,000 people are deluding — and limiting — themselves. There is a worldwide market for international education which is not limited to one institution, one country or a one group of people. I think many international education offices and organizations will be surprised once they see where they have fans via a Facebook Page. THINK BIG.
And the benefits of Pages over Groups? Superior, no doubt.
- Unlike Groups, Pages are indexed on search engines and visible to anyone on the Internet, not just those on Facebook. Groups are only visible to Facebook members.
- Unlike Groups, Pages allow you to send out “bulk invites” to all your friends. And they allow better viral marketing because your fans can also send out bulk invites to your Page to others. That's not possible with Groups.
- Unlike Groups, Pages can send out status messages (which appear in Facebook streams) as well as Updates. These status messages can be linked to Twitter accounts to broaden the PR value of posts. This means that unlike Groups (which are passive), Pages are an active marketing tool. And Twitter accounts can also be linked to post on other social networks — send once, post the same message on multiple networks! That's exponential marketing!
- Unlike Groups, Pages allows the addition of applications to Pages that can be helpful to international education offices and organizations. Another important application if FBML (Facebook Markup Language) that allows you to customize the look of your Page.
- Unlike Groups, Pages allow you to create "prettier URLS". For example, my Facebook page for Manitou Heights can be easily found at http://facebook.com/ManitouHeightsGroup instead of the "ugly" and hard-to-memorize standard Facebook Page and Group URLs that utilize numbers.
- Unlike Groups, Pages give you statistical feedback (called "Insights"). This is essential for being able to see what works in connecting with your community and what doesn't.
- Unlike Groups, Pages allows a better integration of Event creation and invitations.
- Pages allow an office or organization to segment their community and send targeted updates. The updates will become more visible in the upcoming changes to Facebook. So, for example, Pages would allow an organization to Update all their California fans re an upcoming California study abroad fair circuit or their New York City or Chennai fans about an envent in their local. Targeted marketing, plain and simple.
- Pages also allows international education offices and organizations to participate in social ads. While this may not be a marketing choice for everyone, you won't get that kind of "add-on value" from Groups.
And one more very important reason for creating a Facebook Page – brand and reputation management. If you create an official Fan page, you will be in charge of your brand. If not, there are all kinds of possible negative consequences. First and foremost, you will have no control if someone else decides to create a fan page in your name.
For example, one of my favorite bands has 18,733 Facebook fans. However, someone else created a Fan page in the band's name that now has 16,088 fans. As far as I know, that Page is not controlled controlled by the band it claims to "represent" (which is why I won't "fan" it or link to it). So about half the total current half of the the band's fan base on Facebook aren't even really connected to the band — although they probably think they are! That's unfortunate.
If you create and run your own Fan page, you can report "fake" pages to Facebook and ask that they be removed and the fans be shifted to your real fan page. That itself is important in preserving your international education office's and organization's reputation on all sorts of levels.
Since you've read this far, why don't you fan Manitou Heights Group for providing this helpful information and so you'll get my updates! I'll be posting more about specific ways to utilize social media in marketing, public relations and brand/reputation management.
If you are an international education office or organization and have questions about using Facebook and other social media for marketing and public relations, please don't hesitate to contact me or comment below!
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Have you managed to link Facebook Page status updates to Twitter? Ideally, I’d like to make the updates in Twitter and have them show up as updates on the Page, but I haven’t found a (free) way to do that. I did find a way to have the updates show up on Twitter, but it doesn’t actually work for me!
Are you also planning on posting from, say, a WP blog to the FB page and Twitter? Or just from a FB Page to Twitter? And is there any particular reason why you only want to post from Twitter to a FB Page?
Hi Sarah,
You can post to both your Twitter feed and your Facebook Fan page status through TweetDeck which is a free software. It even lets you update your Linked In and personal Facebook status. Good luck!!
TweetDeck is not the only option if you want to post *simultaneously*. HootSuite is a web based option that I actually like better than TweetDeck. I’ve also used Tweetie for Mac quite a bit.
However, if you want to *integrate* posting to Twitter and Facebook, that’s different.
Posting to pages and Twitter you’re running for work is different than personal accounts.And you need to be careful because some times configurations cause double posting on different networks, which will quickly negatively affect the community you’re trying to build. So, Sarah, if you can clarify what you’re trying to do, I may be able to point you in some helpful directions.
Ruth–when I went to click on your facebook hyperlink above it said it didn’t exist. You forgot the Group in ManitouHeightsGroup at the end…just thought you should know!
i do know that if you use #fb at the end of your twitter post, it will post it in your updates on fb. that said, it is the personal updates and not the fan page/group – i don’t know if that is possible. ugh!
.-= jessiev´s last blog ..Bridging the Language Gap =-.
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