May 27, 2010Comments are closed.marketing, new media
I work part-time for a large, bureaucratic animal welfare group.
They were a bit baffled by ‘The Facebook’, and knowing I’d been using the accounts since I started here, they asked me to explain how they were set up.
They have one ‘personal’ profile called, let’s say… ‘Fluffy Pets Rescue’
Which, once it was created, made a Fan Page called ‘Fluffy Pets Rescue’.
Oh NOooooo! they wailed! WE HAVE TWO ACCOUNTS?! This is a *disaster* we won’t know which one to contribute to!
No, that’s fine, I said. Being a organisation, you’ll just want to direct everyone to the Fan Page.
Now, I also have to tell you the volunteering department has an account called ‘Volunteer Manager’. This allows the volunteer department (me) to post updates to the Fan Page.
THREE ACCOUNTS?! they screeched, trying not to faint.
Yes, I said. In fact, I suggest that every department is issued an account so that they too can contribute to the Fan Page. Like you give each department an email.
We can’t give everyone an account or they will be creating folders and posting pictures and OMG!
But isn’t that what we were complaining about, not a month ago? That no one had the time to contribute to our Facebook regularly and it sat untouched?
But what about strategy! they wailed. Things will be getting cross posted and they’ll be on our Facebook and there WON’T BE ANY STRATEGY!
So determining that the staff cannot be trusted to represent themselves to the public (and ignoring the fact every one of us have an email and a phone) they swiftly directed all ancillary accounts be canceled. I’m still confused as to what they thought might be such a terrible contribution to the Fan Page. Happy photos of volunteers? Pictures from our events? Photos of boobs and penises? Certainly, all would have been very likely.
However, they returned the sacred Facebook login to the desk of the CEO, who is probably still a little too busy to contribute regularly, but whom has a full knowledge of the ‘strategy’ and all is again safe.
Thank goodness for that.
I guess there’s a happy medium between control-freakery and laying yourself open to attack online. I speak from bitter experience of the RSPCA UK facebook site becoming a kind of anti-donation page because it was initially set up as a normal interactive page where anyone was free to post.
It’s now set up so that only the authorised staff can post, but anyone can comment on items, and I’m still dubious about whether I’d be very happy for children to be reading some of it.
The Dogs Trust http://www.facebook.com/DogsTrust seems to be able to have a normal open-access page with no problems, so I suppose it depends partly on how much your organisation attracts strong feelings and/or a desire to wind supporters up.