Facebook: Frivolous or Fundamental?

Face book originated as a social networking site specifically for college students that thrived on viral peer pressure. In recent years, however, the pressure to join Face book has crossed into corporate America. Face book now allows businesses to communicate news, promotions and events, and allows non-profit organizations to fund raise via the fan page.

Let’s start with the basics. A fan page is similar to a personal Face book profile, but it’s optimized for mass communication between an organization and its fans. Through the fan page, administrators can send messages and updates to all fans. Face book also has a notes feature organizations can use to create postings on their profile, similar to a blog.

To help organizations track their progress, Face book has created an "Insights" page. Insights allow administrators to track interactions with fans, including the number of likes, comments and wall posts. Insights also offers a "Fans Over Time" graph that tracks the rise and fall of fan activity over an extended period of time.

In addition to communication, Face book allows organizations to create events and invite all of its fans. There is an interactive RSVP function that shows who will and will not attend the event. It also allows organizations to send messages to the different RSVP groups separately.

For non-profit organizations, there is a "Causes" application that allows organizations to highlight its mission and position, and include a registered 501(c) 3 non-profit beneficiary and fund raise directly through its fan page.

More and more X static clients are making good use of inexpensive social media tools like Face book to interact and raise awareness among target audiences. You can too!