You can get up on stage to promote your community group or business, it is wonderful and effective.
But how about reaching people who don't already know about your activities-who aren't in your audience yet? Facebook is an easy way to grow your community group or small business.
It is cheap(cost of internet) and is available for your group or business to use to promote and inform at no cost, right now.
I have my own personal facebook page, one for dash robin and one for Village life at Northey street. Why? Because the potential audience and resources available is far too good to resist.
There are around 6 million active Australian users of facebook....that's a lot of people facebooking!
To get started follow this link to create your own page. It is user friendly. Once you have created your own page you can then create a business or community group page.
Now you have found some friends, uploaded great photos of your groups members, shared activities and invited people to events.
Perhaps you've decided it's time to turn your attention to sharing your interests or helping grow healthy communities.
Beginners guide to facebook sharing...
Discover more and share your favourite community group, businesses and services amongst your network simply by searching for them and 'liking' them.
Each page will have a thumbs up symbol. Once you have clicked on this you have liked a page. You will get updates on your facebook home page whenever this page has any comments, photos or links.
To share this pages news with other relevant pages and your online community is easy!
When you enter a comment or status update you can create an active hyperlink to another facebook page.
Simply type the @ symbol before you write the page name in. This short cut will make it effortless for people to click onto another page. Don't we love effortless?!
Here's an example; the Village life at Northey street page was developed to showcase the Village life social enterprise market which I co ordinate.
We are a community centred market, so low cost and effective ways to promote ourselves are what we need.
Each time I comment about a particular stall holder I create a link through to their page.
So Village life fans may become the stall holders fans too-by clicking the good ol' like button again!
To link your own liked pages all you need to do- as I mentioned above- is add the @ symbol before typing the facebook page name.
As you type in the name of the page it will show up in blue as you can see
Readers now have the option to click on these words and go directly to that page.
All your liked pages' latest news will appear on your home page.
You can share these individual news updates too.
Clicking on the share button will post this news onto your own page profile.
I shared a Gum nut hill stationery page update about their new range of refillable pens made from recycled Australian timber. This is how it appeared on the Village life page.
Recycled newsprint paper pencils
We now stock refillable Fountain Pens made from sustainable timber. Feel free to visit our online shop for more photos and browse the full range of Gumnut Hill Eco-Stationery :Dwww.gumnuthill.com.au
It is a win-win situation. It is showing the range of things available at the market, it is promoting gum nut hill stationery and ultimately supporting the aim of developing sustainable local business.
I also add links to facebook fan pages with external websites which have relevant inspiring books, courses, events, groups or films.
I love to highlight positive or pro active social and environmental resources. As our market is a eco friendly local market these are targeted to our networks existing interests.
This example linked to the permaculture course page of Northey Street city farm.
Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable human environments. It aims to bring food production back to where people live and to develop new, sustainable ways of living in our cities and rural areas.
In this case the impressions reads 208, (see the text I highlighted in red) which means this little piece of information appeared on 208 individual home facebook pages.
By utilising the share option your whole network learns more about something you love.
It is all these small and big details which can help keep us up to date with what is going on.
Good luck and I hope you find this helpful!
xKate
4 comments:
Technology comes hard to me....I have only just managed to link my blog to my profile! Can I set it to show my blog posts automatically or do I have to manually post them? As for linking to someone else??? Give me time to digest what you have posted and then I will try it out :-) We are all getting so connected now aren't we, the world is getting smaller :-)
I just started a FB page for my jewelry business, and am very pleased with how it's growing. Good to see that it's working for you, too, Kate!
xx
Wendy
https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Always-Greener/192180670819526
You can share you blog with facebook automtically-via facebook page
go to 'edit page'
go to 'apps'
go to 'notes'
go to 'edit import settings'
add your blog address-copy and paste it in if you like
voila!
(It will be automatically updated as a 'feed' if you have problems check you have allowed long feeds on your bloggers settings. )
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