Group Post

Our group's recommendation for how to develop the ORCO major/minor presence and community on Facebook:

As you may or may not know, our ORCO department has already attempted to connect with their students/faculty through this page.

We aren't sure who exactly started this page, but they set it up as an open group. The group currently has 107 members, only 1 past event, and 8 photos. For the few students that are actually in the group, it is a great resource and several of them (included Porsche and Madison) have posted on the wall within the past month about internship opportunities, questions, and important announcements. Because the purpose of this particular group is to create a space for ORCO majors to communicate with each other, this open group seems to be the best format for this because students can invite others to join, and anyone can see what is being posted.

After a discussion about the differences between groups and fan pages, we collectively agreed that ORCO should continue to use their group, but make it a more interactive page and encourage all ORCO majors/minors to join. Because it is important for ORCO students to be able to communicate with each other, the group serves a special purpose. At the same time, however, it is important for funding purposes (as well as for the growth of the program), that more people become aware of the opportunities that ORCO offers. A great way to spread the word about the program would be to create a Fan page that everyone on campus can like, and even people from across the country like other ORCO students/faculty. They could use this page to feature ORCO students and what they are currently working on, talk about developments within the program and recruit new majors, and interact with the MTSU community at large so that when we tell someone that we are "ORCO Majors", they will hopefully know what that means!

To further develop their online presence, they could create and post events, highlight student projects, have student/faculty contributors, and even post fun facts or ORCO tips, just to keep their page updated and active.

((((((Porsche, Madison, Sadi, and Jonny))))))

Facebook Fan Page Resources

1) 21 Resources for Effective Facebook Fan Pages
2) ADVANCED Resources for Customizing Your Fan Page
3) 20 Ways to Promote Your Fan Page

Facebook's Top Brands

According to Facebook's new "Pages" page, some of the top brands that recommend as examples include Ben and Jerry's, Starbucks, and Verizon.

Because I'm already obsessed with Starbucks, this is the example I'll use for this assignment.

Starbucks successfully uses Facebook by actively engaging their customers on a variety of levels. They interact with their followers by responding to their posts and even posting questions that encourage followers to respond. They consistently update their page and post a variety of things from videos, pictures, quotes, stories, and even coupons! All of these combined help to further create and establish their brand. They make it easy for fans to "share" their content, and even encourage customers to post their own experiences on the main page. They seem to genuinely care about the dialogue they create with their customers by listening to their feedback, they partner with other large organizations and use their power for good (example: Red Cross Relief Efforts), and they encourage the use of social media by offering special deals for their followers.

This article was especially interesting to me, and (although it's from 2009) it talks about what specifically makes Starbucks a top Facebook brand, as well as hosting a short video that addresses their unique take on social media.

I really enjoyed this infographic about Facebook's Top Brands

Fan Page or Group Page

While I have experience creating and managing personal, group, and fan pages on Facebook, I took some time to actually research the difference between all of them. This site seemed to offer the most information in a format that was easy to understand and compare.

Obviously all three of these designs offer unique pros and cons, and the advantages/disadvantages for each should be considered before deciding how to brand your business or organization.

Sharing Options and Visibility

Your profile, fan page and group all have privacy settings that enable you to control sharing permissions and visibility. Here is how these differ among the three:

	Facebook profile	Facebook fan page	Facebook group
Set who can update the wall	yes	yes	yes
The differences	You can set the update visibility globally AND on case-to-case basis.	You can only choose who can update the page wall: admins only or all members	You can set global settings separately for links, videos and photos
How?	Account tab -> Privacy settings	Edit page -> Wall settings	Group settings

Note: There’s one weird thing about sharing for admins within the page: when you (as admin) are trying to post something at you page wall, you get “non-personalized” – posting as a page (not as yourself).

Promotion Tools

Facebook Pages are known to have more visibility and (viral) marketing potential than groups due to these important features:

• They are displayed in each fan’s profile “Info” tab
• They are public and can be linked to externally
• They have various widgets that allow for external promotion (e.g. from a company blog)
• They can be added added as your “Page favorites”

To make a long story short, here’s a quick recap of page versus group versus profile (viral) marketing-friendliness:

	Facebook profile	Facebook fan page	Facebook group
Private? (seen after you register and become fan/friend)	Yes	No	Yes (BUT: discussions are public and crawled)
Usernames? (facebook.com/username/)	Yes (Should be verified via mobile phone)	Yes	No
Visible within fan / friend profile?	Yes (Friends box)	Yes (Info tab)	No
Promoting to friends	“Suggest friends to…” (one by one)	“Suggest to friends” (one by one)	“Invite people to join” (one by one)
			“Import from email”

Overall, if you are a small organization or club that needs to rely a small amount of info to a smaller amount of people, a group is your best best. It allows more control of who is allowed in the group, who can see things and post things, etc, and is really the most customizable.

Pages are a better option if you are a larger organization or brand that wants to get more publicity, and you also have more of an anonymous option because you don't have to put your name or any information on there. It's easy for people to simply click the "like" button, and they aren't bombarded with a million updates, so I think this is the best option for brands and big companies.

Want to know how to create a page? Click here!
To learn more about groups, go here. 

The Social Graph

According to this article at WhatIs.Com,

Speaking at the Facebook f8 event in May 2007, CEO Mark Zuckerberg used the term "social graph" to refer to the network of connections and relationships between site users. Zuckerberg said that "it's the reason Facebook works. "He went on to say the social graph is "changing the way the world works... As Facebook adds more and more people with more and more connections it continues growing and becomes more useful at a faster rate. We are going to use it spread information through the social graph."

Although this term is relatively new, the concept is not. The idea of this sort of web that connects people within societies, countries, and even across the world, is one that has been around and has been studied for hundreds of years. With the development and rapid growth of social media sites in the past 5-10 years, it has made it even easier to track these connections and analyze what we consider to a "social graph"

Since presenting this idea (in terms that everyone can understand), it has drastically changed the way people approach business, marketing, and connecting with their customers. Social media marketing strategies now embrace trends new web technology, focus on customer research and analysis, and customized content. In this especially helpful article, I found that

At the recent Web 2.0 Summit, Mark Zuckerberg said, “Over the next five years every industry will have to redesign itself around social.”

This idea will change businesses because it challenges them, and individuals on a personal level, to be more future-oriented, flexible and adaptable, and content-focused. 

About.Me

So I've only just started my About.me page, and I've linked it to my Twitter and Facebook profiles. It's really a great site, and I'm looking forward to spending some more time playing around with it and making it more my own. I think it will be a great tool for job hunting, as well.

Facebook

Porsche Kristina

24 January 2012

ORCO 4000

Facebook

            I remember the day clearly – I had been waiting for my MTSU acceptance letter and roommate assignments to come in the mail for weeks, and I couldn’t contain my excitement when it finally got there. I ripped open the envelope and immediately after reading my roommates name, I went to look her up on MySpace. When I couldn’t easily find her profile, I started to get worried. “Surely any normal person my age would have a MySpace, right?,” I began to wonder to myself.  So I did the next best thing besides stalking her online, I called her. One of her questions to me was if I had a Facebook profile, because she couldn’t seem to find me online. Come to find out she was just as worried as I was at the apparent lack of social media skills of her future roommate.  I’m not sure if Facebook was originally limited to certain regions, or perhaps it caught on differently throughout the country based on culture, but I had never heard of this website (and I was friends with a LOT of college students)! Thankfully she explained it to me and told me that anybody who’s anybody is on there, and I needed to immediately sign up with my newly-assigned MTSU email address. You can guess what I spent my next week doing.

            Since then, I’ve seen Facebook change and grow throughout the years and adapt to the progressing social media trends. I remember when you couldn’t post a status, when your only photo was your profile picture, and when you could start joining groups. It quickly became a staple in my life, and more honestly, an addiction. My roommate was right; it was THE way of communicating with people. Especially since I’m from out of state and my fiancé was back home in CO, it made it much easier to keep in touch with everyone and stay connected. Since joining Facebook in 2005, it has gone through a variety of makeovers, and my needs and reasons to use it changed as well. Once they opened it to everyone, it became a way to connect with my family. As an activitist and a student leader, I was very interested in the Facebook Groups and constantly created groups, invited friends, and joined as many groups as I could. As an event planner, I created and RSVP’d to an unbelievable amount of Facebook Events. And now as a professional I use my Facebook to keep tabs on all of my friends, but mostly to connect with people in my industry and keep up with any important news.

            I am a big fan of keeping personal and business accounts completely separate, but I also recognize the fact that it is almost impossible to divide them entirely. Because of this, I think it is highly important to maintain a professional Facebook page and make sure that I’d be willing to show anyone in the world what’s on my page without worrying that it might be inappropriate.

            I’ve recently had a neat opportunity to help The Nashville Wedding Planners Group as we create our entire online persona from scratch. There are challenges that come along with managing a Facebook Page for a a business/organization because every move made from that page represents the group as a whole, and not just me. It has been interesting, however, to see the impact that social media plays on group formation as we’ve had lots of our members and vendors find out about us from our Facebook page.