I’m a human, so I want to be friends with humans on Facebook. I think I’m probably not alone on this.
Yet what should an organisation do if it wants to establish a Facebook presence? Increasingly organisations of which I am a member are creating Facebook profiles, as if the organisation itself were a person, with a firstname, lastname, date of birth etc.
Yet as a user how am I supposed to interact with one of the organisation-profiles? Do I know the person writing to me or not? Or is it just the intern in the office sheltering behind the veil of anonymity of the profile?
The answer is to create a Facebook Page for your organisation (note: this is NOT a group – it offers many more features than a group), and to use that to build relationships with members. Of the organisations I know Republic has the best strategy in this regard.
The interesting issue behind all of this is the blurring of professional and personal in Facebook. If you work for an organisation should you befriend organisational contacts? The answer is not to make a neutral Facebook profile for your organisation and become friends with people that way, but instead use a Facebook page for that purpose. Use your own personal profile to make contacts with people you know, and make sue your privacy settings are configured correctly to avoid blurring the line between personal and professional.
🙂 One of the four organisations I mentioned this to has replied positively, two have defended their positions, and one has not replied. Anyway, c’est la vie.
Correcting myself. You did mention that but in other words … still, the swimsuit part still has a point 😉
I could not agree more. Beside all the concerns you have written, there’s another one. It’s a fact that these corporate personal profiles can easily access all the ver personal or even intimate data of their friends … but on the other hand I cannot understand people who are adding corporate friends not being aware that they are allowing complete strangers hidden behind the corporate image to observe them in swimsuits from the last year’s holiday…