228 Facebook Fans and Counting

By Cheryl Lowe, public relations specialist

One month and 228 fans later, Girl Scouts of Central Texas has a Facebook presence. We took the plunge and have mostly been met with positive feedback. We’re a smidge closer to the cutting edge of Internet-based communication.

 We got there within a week of Oprah so that’s not too bad right?

 And knock on wood, but so far we have not had any safety issues. Our communications staff monitors the page daily and thus far we’ve not had a single inappropriate comment. Granted, our volunteer interaction still isn’t at the level we’re hoping for but the few interactions we’ve had were exactly what we had in mind.

 Now that we’re on Facebook though, the challenge is morphing into maintenance. Most organizations probably feel the same tug-o-war: update often but only with high-quality updates. Does our council really have enough highly relevant content to share something via Facebook once or twice a day? What things can we put out there to provoke conversation among our members (or fans as it may be in Facebook-land)? Do we make the priority quantity or quality?

 Every communications fiber in my colleagues and me says “quality!” but there’s the devil’s advocate saying “but quantity keeps you in front of people.” Ideally we’d have a substantial quantity of high quality material to share. But where do the hours in the day come from to find and post that information?

 And don’t even get us started on RSS Feeds and Twitter. We know both are out there and we’re exploring both. They lead right back to that same root question though – do we have enough highly relevant content to effectively use these tools? If not, are these the best tools for us? What other tools are out there that better suit our organization? What is a passing fad and what is here to stay?

 What are you finding? Is your organization struggling with the same questions? What tools makes sense for you? How do you use them? Girl Scouts of Central Texas is chomping at the bit to know!