There are many reasons why your membership organisation should be on Facebook, and it’s not just because it’s free to create a profile – even though that does make your decision to take the first step a lot easier.
The truth is, visiting social media platforms, like Facebook, to keep up to date with what’s happening in your network has become an integral part of many people’s daily routines - whereas they mightn’t find a reason to visit your website every day.
As a profitable organisation there are a number of different accounts you can consider setting up.
The first is the Company page. The company page can be accessed by any Facebook user and is ideal for both communicating with existing members, as well as showcasing your organisation to potential members and stakeholders.
The other option is to set up a Facebook group. This is a great tool to communicate with your loyal members and you have the ability to make the group partially or completely private, so that non-members can’t access member restricted information.
5 reasons why membership organisations need to be on Facebook:
1) Engage your existing community: You can engage your community of members in an interactive and social online setting, by posting content they would find both helpful and interesting. Facebook’s easy-to-use commenting, liking, reacting and sharing features provide an ideal space for active conversation.
2) Raise awareness of upcoming events: You can easily share updates on an upcoming event – whether it is sharing a link to sign-up for an event on your website, creating an event on Facebook with the ‘My Events’ feature, or simply posting a brief status update reminding your community that an event is coming up.
3) Productive feedback: The nature of social media provides a comfortable environment for people to voice their opinions on your brand and services – you can even create public polls, to gauge your community’s opinion on a particular topic. You can use the constructive advice gathered here to develop and refine your organisation’s offerings.
Ensure that you monitor user posts and comments regularly to avoid any potential harm to your public image.
4) Lead people back to your website: On Facebook you are given so many opportunities to present your website to your Facebook followers – from sharing links in status updates, to adding your URL to your About overview. For example, you could share a link to a new blog post or news article that’s been uploaded to your website
5) Expand your reach and grow new sign-up rates: Your community can share your posts to their own network, and through an online ‘word-of-mouth’ progression this will raise the general public’s awareness of who you are and what you do.
If you want to go a step further to expand your reach then you might also consider signing up to Facebook ads – Facebooks paid social media advertising option that lets you target and promote your content to new audiences.
If you need any further help or advice on social media, feel free to contact Expert, email us@expert.services.