Facebook Causes

[abigailstein]

Hi All

I currently manage the Facebook page for Yorkhill Children's Foundation which is pretty active and has about 4000ish fans on it.

I also set up a Cause page ages ago, which I promptly forgot about - but have just rediscovered with over 22,000 people on it!

So my question is this - is it worth keeping? Should I be updating both pages? Can I convert the Cause page to a fan page? Help!

Any thoughts would be massively appreciated...

Thanks,

Abigail

[beautiful world]

The two pages are very different. Those that use the application "Causes" on Facebook would be able to see your Cause page, however it can't be found through Facebook search. The application encourages users to donate and build awareness; your page there should be about connecting with those users. You should find members are more willing to share their stories on this page if the charity means something to them - therefore most of these members have already heard of your charity. For this reason alone I'd recommend every charity to put up a page on "Causes" as there appears to be over 2 million users on this application!

Your fanpage is highly visible across Facebook, see it as a marketing tool. If someone tried to search for you on Facebook, this is the page they will be directed to. The page shows up on user's profiles and updates will be shown on their news feed. Use this page to your advantage, putting up customised tabs to market your charity and posting regular updates - videos, stories, blog posts, website changes etc. It is probably not worth comparing how many fans each page (fanpage or Cause page) generates - having 4000 fans on this type of page is a good achievement.

Due to the level of visibility, your fanpage will need more time spent on it to maintain the page and updates. It seems your Cause page is helping itself, just visit it from time to time to see any activity and what your members say (which I feel is important for charities to do in social media).

Both the pages seem to appeal to different Facebook users, as this is the most popular social networking site, the more users you attract the better. It is up to you, but I suggest keeping both. Hope that helps.

^DM

[Haworth Cat Rescue]

I set up on causes to generate donations, but it doesn't work for UK charities (they only accept for US). I find that the fan page works well, and we feed from it onto twitter which stops us having to remember to post the same stuff in different places.

[Ross McCulloch]

DM at Beautiful World sums it up perfectly. I'd concentrate on your page, perhaps look at creating a landing page for your charity on one of your tabs. Quarriers had a great example but they're currently working on an update.