I was talking about Facebook with someone at a conference last week when he said, “yeah, but Facebook isn’t really engaging. When Pages get too big, it’s not really a community.” There’s a lot of truth to that. The Facebook platform makes it difficult because a Page does not offer cross-conversations, so conversations become silos. A Facebook Page is a community, but it is usually a loosely-tied community of lurkers and inactives who don’t have the opportunity to interact with each other or the Page often enough. I think of my colleague’s comment as a challenge: I believe that you can create community within a Facebook Page, but it takes a lot of work, discovery, and dedication.

Who are the fans and why are they there: the discovery phase

One of the key issues is understanding exactly who the audience is and why they are fans. The obvious thing is to ask your fans why they like the Page. I’ve set up polls on the Page and also asked this as a wall post, but I almost never receive many replies. What has worked for me is experimentation: test several types of wall posts aimed at different audiences. Look at the number of impressions of each post (from Facebook Insights) and the amount of interaction per post. When you find what garners both impressions and interaction, you’ve determined your audience.

An example: I launched an all-day Digital Storytelling Day about digital storytelling and fundraising on the FirstGiving Facebook Page. It didn’t engage the Facebook community…at all. Though the day closely followed a highly successful joint Twitter chat with TechSoup about the same subject, the Facebook event had extremely low participation. The important takeaway was that I decisively figured out who the majority of Facebook are fans are, and who they are not.

Create opportunities for community: subgroups and leadership development

Create subgroups that feed into the Page as a path to creating community. We created a FirstGiving for Runner’s Group that has become an incredibly supportive group for runners who fundraise.  Dedicated community members have emerged, and they act as the unofficial community managers because they are so welcoming. We asked the emergent leaders to become more active within the official Page. Subgroups create interconnected communities that will join up with the larger Page, and bring those connections and community to the Page.

Another idea is to invite enthusiastic Facebook fans to become more involved. I’ve created private groups for campaign leaders, and see no reason why this strategy wouldn’t work for Facebook Page enthusiasts. Invite the more enthusiastic, dedicated fans to join a private Facebook group to discuss what is happening on the Page, plan content and strategy, invite friends to join the Page, and feel ownership of the Page.

Get the messaging right: crafting community-building updates

It can be hard to craft updates that create community. Experiment. Try new things. The FirstGiving status update “The reason I’m raising money is _____” had the largest number of impressions and comments to date. What’s more, our daily number of new fans doubled that day.  This works for the FirstGiving Page, but anything that invites feedback could work for yours.

The challenge with updates is to translate it into community. Responses don’t create community. Insert yourself into the responses to create conversation. Reach out individually to those fans who took the time to respond. I would also suggest following up with an engagement activity off of Facebook as well.

Setting up the page: make them community-focused

A few simple ideas that you can implement to create the right tone and culture of community:

• Allow others to post updates, photos, and videos on your Page. In my experience, most people don’t abuse this privilege. For those that do, “block” is a great option!
• Make the default wall view updates from the “(name of Page) + others.” Let everyone participate fully!
• Offer a welcome tab that sets the tone for the Page. There are some great examples here and in this wiki.
• Create a regular content calendar that the community can rely upon, and let people know what type of content to share, and when

This is just the beginning of a list; I’m sure that there are many other ideas you have to share as well.

Find your own community: Ideas and resources to help you engage better

Amy Sample Ward hosts a  Community Builder chat that is really supportive. There is a Community Manager’s Twitter chat Wednesdays at 7pm GMT (2pm EST), with the hashtag #cmgrchat (hosted by @jpedde). Additionally, I rely on the wisdom of fellow community managers such as @blaisegv, @amyrsward and @kg. (Everyone needs a community!)

What have you tried that has created community on a Facebook Page?

I read a fascinating blog post at The Community Roundtable entitled The Value of Community Management. The blog post considers the value, specifically the financial benefit, that community managers provide to managed social communities. Several readers who manage online communities wrote in to offer their data about the difference community managers make. Reading the discussion, I realize there are a number of points that are fully applicable to social networks such as Facebook Pages and Groups, Linkedin Groups, Google Groups, and others. They apply equally to for-profit and nonprofit-sponsored communities.

1. Active management of an online community creates real value for the organization

Tom Humbarger was the paid, active community manager until his position was eliminated. From that time forward, his company chose to manage the online community passively. Tom wrote a blog post about what the effects of active vs. passive community management. His data shows that growth, number of visits, number of page views, and time on site decreased dramatically during the absence of a community manager. The full article is well worth reading here.

As an example, this graph illustrates the dramatic drop-off in the number of site visits once active community management ceased.

2. Similarly, active management of a Facebook Page creates real value for the organization

I was the active manager of a corporate Facebook Page for a period of three months in 2009, until the company decided to eliminate all managed social media. From that time forward, the company decided to auto-fed blog posts to the Facebook Page, with no added interactions. During the time of active Facebook Page management, the Page grew at a rate of about 8 fans a week, had a post quality of 21, drove about 8 visits a day to the site,  but had a conversion rate from Facebook Page to website registration of almost 25%. Since the Page became inactive, the number of new fans/week has dropped to less than one, there are almost no website visits, zero conversions, and the post quality is zero.

Community Roundtable blog reader Maggie McGary also saw similar stats in her nonprofit’s Facebook Page: she writes in the comments that the number of visits from Facebook to her nonprofit organization’s website plunged during a one-month absence from active Facebook community management.

Community management, whether you define it as managing a private community, or a community on a social media platform, is critical to community growth and moving people from the managed community  towards organizational goals.

3. Active management also encourages relationship-building, which leads to loyalty and community growth

When I was a community organizer, we used to call this “relationship organizing.” Simply put, friends bring friends to organizations, and remain involved because of them. I used to try and map friendships, recruit influencers, and ask them to bring friends into the cause. In online communities, we develop cyber friends that influence us to participate and keep us active. I have started participating more actively in certain online groups because I have developed friendships with other members over time. I also recommend these groups to my friends, and feel increased loyalty to the sponsoring organization. I would never have created these online ties if the group wasn’t active and well-managed.

I asked Hildy Gottlieb, who managed the monthly twitter chat for consultants to community benefits organizations, if there are online ties between the participants of the monthly #npcons chat, and if these ties arose from the chats. She responded emphatically: “Oh goodness yes. There are many people who have met through these chats, who are now having some pretty engaged and higher level conversations throughout the month because they feel they know each other from that involvement.  It’s just like any other involvement or community- the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.”

Simply put, a well-manged online community leads to real value for both the members and the community sponsors. That’s a win-win situation.

Have you managed a social network? Can you add your data to this conversation?

Have you seen the effects of passive management on a social  community?