[upme_private]All to often I see movement leaders making the same mistakes, and setting themselves up for trouble down the line. It’s hard to avoid Facebook nowadays, but after all, if you want to get the word out to your community, you’ve got to go where the people are.
We all know a random person or two who has managed to stay off the platform completely—which is another reason I recommend having a strong email list so highly. But for the rest of us, 1.3 billion and counting, it’s taken on the role of an indispensable utility, and I want all of you to Dance First members to be using it wisely and effectively. This tutorial article we’ll help you understand the Important differences between the four main ways you can publish, and give you some handy tips for reaching more people in the right way without resorting to paying to boost posts or buying ads.
- PROFILE: This is your homebase on Facebook, and it is meant to be you, with your real name. You can do things with your Profile that cannot be done in any other way. Profiles can establish Groups, create Pages, tag other Profiles in posts and comments, and have Friends, (up to a maximum of 5000). Your Profile has your Wall, where only your own posts and things that you are tagged in appear. Your Timeline or Feed is a similar, but different part of your profile, where FB’s algorithm determines what else you see based on your interests and friends activity besides your own posts.
Never create a Profile using the name of your brand or business, although you will sometimes see them used this way, it is against their terms of service and they are liable to shut you down at any moment. Once upon a time we had a Profile with the first name ‘Conscious’ and the last name ‘Dancer’ with 5000 Friends, one day we went to login only to find out that we had been locked out and our only recourse what’s to go through a process whereby our Friends were converted into Likes on our Conscious Dancer Page, (which fortunately enough we had already established). - PAGE: These can be created for any business, brand, public figure, musical group, DJ, etc. With your Profile you may create as many different Pages as you like. Pages get ‘Likes’ instead of having Friends, and you will see some of the most popular ones have upwards of a million Likes. With a Page, you can run ads, boost posts, and create events. Pages are the best place to aggregate your business related content. Just because people have Liked your Page doesn’t mean they are going to see everything you post in their Timelines, the FB algorithm limits your reach in order to encourage you to pay to boost posts or buy ads. It’s a good idea to create a Page for yourself even if you are a teacher just working under your name. For instance Jane Doe might have a Page called ‘Jane Doe Moving Arts’ or ‘Nia with Jane Doe’. Pages are always owned by one person, and may have multiple Admins or Editors.
- GROUP: A Group can be established by any Profile owner. Groups are generally organized around a community or special interest. The Wall in a group contains only posts made by the Group members. The Group members see the posts on their Profile Timelines among all of the other content, or when they specifically visit the group. Members can select a setting that will send them a notification for every new post. Groups can be set as Public, Private, or Secret. Admins can adjust the settings to allow members to post freely, or to require admin approval for each post. Groups cannot create ads, or boost posts, however it is possible to make Group events.
- EVENTS: These are special Pages created to expire after the date of event. Events can be created by Profile owners, Pages, or Groups. They have their own Wall for posts, which will only appear on the Timelines of people who have already either Joined or selected Interested in the Event. Events can be shared to Pages, Profiles, or Groups. Individuals can invite up to 50 friends to an Event before Facebook demands that you buy an ad. Once you create an Event, you can select ‘edit’ and then add as many hosts as you want, (they need to be either Group members or on your Friends list), and then they can each at 50 people too.
Typically the best way to get the most exposure for your posts or events is to use a ‘leapfrog’ approach. By this I mean creating a post or event in one place and then share it to various others, tagging people and Pages along the way. Example:
- Create an Event page for your workshop on your profile: “Jane Doe’s Epic Dance Retreat”
- Use the ‘Add to Page’ function to mirror it to your “Jane Doe Moving Arts” Page.
- Use the Share function to post it to the wall of any Groups you own or belong to.
- If you are an Editor on anyone else’s Page, (such as Conscious Dancer’s, as most Dance First members are), Share it to our Page and select ‘Post as Conscious Dancer’ and it will appear on the main Timeline of the page.
- Copy the URL to the Event Page, and post this to your Profile timeline, ideally with an interesting question or engaging headline.
- When posting it to your profile, you can tag a large number of your friends in your post, this will make it appear on their timelines. You tag people by typing their name until you see their profile name pop up and hit enter. You can backspace once to make their last name disappear if you want to, and separate each name with a comma.
There are a million little ins and outs to making the most of Facebook, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Here is a guide they published in 2015 about posting events.
https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/vip/fb-events-2015/pdfs/Event_Playbook.pdf
Be aware that Facebook is in a constant state of flux and that changes to the platform functionality happen all the time.
If you are reading this, it means that you are an active member of Dance First, so please make sure you have the following in place.
- You should be a member of our private Dance First Group. Please turn on notifications for All Posts, almost everything that gets posted in our group is either educational or membership related. We discourage promotions unless there is a specific discount or call to action for other members.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/dancefirstmembers - Make sure that you have joined, and post all of your events and promotions in the public Conscious Dancer Global Group.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/consciousdancer - If you are a Publishing Partner or Premium Level Dance First Member, you should be set up with Editor privileges on the Conscious Dancer Page. This will allow you to share content or post directly on our timeline as Conscious Dancer. (if you don’t see the Page editor controls, please contact us so we can add you.) Please don’t boost posts or buy ads in our name!
https://www.facebook.com/consciousdancer
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