A Case Study In Launching A Facebook Page

The Brain Aneurysm Foundation hired Inbound Zombie in June to help create a stronger presence on Facebook. Following is a case study in launching their Facebook Page.

Problems

There were several challenges they had with their current use of Facebook:

Too Many Places - The Brain Aneurysm Foundation had a Group Page, a Cause Page, and even a Profile. But they didn’t have a Facebook Page. This caused confusion with Facebook users and unnecessary work with BAF staff members.
Creating A Strong Launch – Because their presence up to that point was unfocused and weak, they wanted to do the opposite with their Page. We weren’t sure exactly how many people would initially become a fan of the Page, but we set a goal of 500 fans in the first 30 days – a goal we thought was attainable.
Confused By Facebook – Turned out, they needed some training on how to properly manage a Facebook Page.

Solutions

Set The Table – The first thing Inbound Zombie did was to create a custom Static FBML tab and main image. Pages with custom welcome tabs have a higher fan conversion rate than Pages that don’t.
Send Out Dinner Invitations – The Brain Aneurysm Foundation leveraged two major assets to promote the Page – NING and their email list. But we didn’t just say “Big news! We’re on Facebook” (yawn). We crafted a simple message that was sincere and compelling.
Serve Nutritious Food – Once people started joining the Page, we made a point of engaging fans in positive ways that created a lively and welcoming atmosphere. This meant posting valuable stories and thoughtful questions on the Page.
Train The Chef - A critical factor in a sustainable Facebook Page is proper training. We accomplished this with live training, a set of video tutorials on using Facebook, and a series of model updates on the Page.

Lessons Learned

First Impressions Are Powerful – Explaining the purpose of the Page to their supporters – with bullet points – set the tone for how the community now behaves. They share with each other, ask good questions and keep coming back.
How To Create Great Content In Three Minutes – Like most nonprofits, their “social media staff” consists of one person who is also the office administrator, IT manager and receptionist. Asking them to create content from scratch was just asking for failure. Instead, they reposted their best stuff from the NING community (forum posts with the highest number of replies), asked meaningful questions to engage fans, and shared resources from their information library.

Results

For a brand new Page on Facebook, we achieved pretty impressive results:

Over 730 fans in first 30 days
Consistent Five-Star Post Quality
A Happy Page Admin

Thoughts? What could we have done better?

Rehydrate your inbox here. Send hate mail here.

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Anonymous

John, great overview and great ideas. You’ve certainly helped give me some perspective when it comes to Facebook sites. I do have one additional thought: does the organization have Google Analytics or a web analytics tracking software like it? In Google Analytics, if they are doing a particular campaign and they wish to drive traffic to their website from Facebook, then they can use the URL builder (http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578) to track how much website traffic is coming from that particular URL.

I believe at some point in your blog, you mentioned that having special content for Facebook users only would incentivize its use. Would that be worth pursuing in this case and for non-profits in general?

My two cents, specifically requested by you

http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Andy – Yes, they have GA installed on their site. But tracking custom tabs is a great idea. In terms of the “fan-only” content, orgs have to be careful with that one, and it may not work for every org. The danger lies in appearing to hold something back that folks desperately need. On the extreme end it might be “The latest breast cancer research you need to know about”. See what I mean?

http://www.fanpageengine.com Customize Your Fan Page

To take it a step further, you can add custom Fan Page tabs within your Fan Page which you can brand and customize with HTML (Facebook’s version actually is called FBML but it’s all pretty much the same unless you get into advanced stuff.) You can also set your custom tab to be the default tab to be shown when a visitor lands on your fan page. So this is a great way to build your brand and a good way to get more conversions with your Fan Page. You can use a tool like ourFanPageEngine.com to customize and brand the fan page without knowing any HTML. Very easy stuff. Thanks for the awesome case study John!

http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Thanks. I'm a big fan, by the way.

beckymccray

You've hit on a key point: how will the organization keep this going? Initial training is important, but ongoing support may be just as important. Your description of the social media staff is deadly accurate for most small organizations. To supplement their own efforts, it can help to work with your closest volunteers who love both you and social media. They can help keep things moving, with some guidance as to where you want to go.

http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Becky – great point on allowing their biggest supporters the opportunity to hep manage Facebook. Thanks!

http://twitter.com/maggielmcg maggielmcg

I have a question: can you still set a landing tab if you have fewer than 10,000 fans? I could swear that I recently read something about that changing–that you needed to have 10,000 fans to be able to set a landing tab–but maybe I'm wrong?

Thanks

http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

I've never heard that…
http://twitter.com/russ_dean Russell Dean Roering

Maggie- Facebook set up that rule and it lasted….hmm, about a morning. The backlash that Facebook changed it back. Everyone can have an FBML page!

http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

That's the morning I slept in…

http://twitter.com/serviceresource serviceresource

For some reason, I thought that you could direct NON-fans to the custom tab, but that once someone is a fan, they are always going to see the “Wall” first.

http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

That is true.

http://www.kimwoodbridge.com Kim Woodbridge

Thanks for sharing the process John! Over 700 in 30 days is really excellent. I love it when goals get surpassed.

And training is so important. So often, the page is created and then it just stagnates.

http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Yeah, I was really happy about 700 fans. Granted, it wasn't 33,000, but numbers realistic numbers that are attained are better that having “remarkable” goals that never get hit.

Thanks for the comment, my fellow Zombie slayer!

http://www.communityorganizer20.com/ Debra Askanase

Awesome case study! I think giving visitors reasons to fan the Page is critical – much better and more targeted than asking people to “like' the Page. I think the personal message by Keith Lockhart and the statistics on the custom welcome tab are both good awareness messaging and convincing to visitors to “like” the Page. Congrats!

http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Thanks, Debra! I've seen it too many times: “Guess what?! We're now on Facebook!” Everybody and your Granda are on Facebook! Tell me something that's interesting.

http://facebook.com/marismith Mari Smith

Way to go, John — it's amazing how many organizations/businesses are so confused at all that Facebook offers. Particularly, the confusion around Groups vs. Pages (Fan vs. Community!) Excellent case study and nicely done steps – love the dinner example!

http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Thanks, Mari. I'm planning to publish a few very simple case studies like this over the next few months.

http://blog.dreamfetcher.com Kyle McShane

What did you do about their problem of having a group, cause, whatever other kinds of Facebook pages they had? Did you delete the other ones? If not, how did you direct traffic from those other pages to the new, main fan page?

http://www.johnhaydon.com John Haydon

We made the group secret, deleted the profile and added the cause to a tab on the Page.

http://www.rachel-levy.com Rachel Levy

Great post John! Engaging fans and providing interesting content are key!

http://johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Those are only two levers you need to be pulling.

http://www.BeckyCortino.com Becky Cortino

Great post! “Location” has always been an important factor, as well as what's being “served up”… I've been concerned on several occasions when I note 'too many locations.' Maybe sometimes entities are stymied by having a 'plan in hand' before they jump-on and understand the platform enough to get rolling? A quick-study “driver's manual” in the way of your 'Chef's Training' vids sound like the featured entree of the day!
http://twitter.com/Anklebuster Mitchell Allen

Hi John,
As a novice on Facebook, I can only say that it looks like you did everything right.
The key ingredient is the repurposed content: that was genius. We always hear about overworked volunteer staff (and PAID staff) being asked to add one more chore to their load. By “seeding” the content and encouraging user contributions, the fan page will be able to maintain its freshness without undue strain on the administrators.

Thanks for sharing this case study and relevant links. I've bookmarked this page so, if I bollix up my fan page, I'll know who to turn to!

Cheers,

Mitch

http://johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Mitch – Thanks for stopping by. I always appreciate your comments. Let me know anytime you have Facebook questions. OK?

http://www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com/blog Kivi Leroux Miller

This is a fabulous start up process and case study – thanks for sharing John!

http://johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Thanks, Kivi!

http://www.mkcreative.net/ The MKCREATIVE Team

Excellent solution to vexing problems. Nice one!
Ginny Tocci

Thanks for your help John in getting our new Brain Aneurysm Foundation Facebook page up and running. We are very happy with all your hard word and your great input and training.

http://johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Thanks, Ginny. You have an awesome community to thank as well. Very passionate and responsive.

Ofriday

Thanks John for this case study. It's refreshing to see actual examples of how other organizations create and sustain their Facebook communities. I manage the fb page for organization and this gives me alot of great ideas to rethink my approach to engaging our “fans.” Keep up the good work.
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http://www.sneakyheathen.com Corey Freeman

Thanks for the awesome case study. I'm just working on making my first facebook fan page now and your articles are a valuable resource.

http://johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Hey Corey! Glad they're helpful. I've picked up a lot of Headway tips from your site, so I guess we're even?

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http://marionconwaynonprofitconsultant.blogspot.com Marion Conway

Thanks for sharing this successful case study. The key here is this is really attainable with the proper planning, training and approach. You don't have to have a full time person attending to social media to be successful with it.

Marion

http://johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Marion – I agree wholeheartedly! Sustainability is critical.

http://twitter.com/eugmandel Eugene Mandel

How were you finding the stories to post on your page?

http://johnhaydon.com John Haydon

Mainly omments and posts from their community.

http://twitter.com/NBenvenuto Nicole Benvenuto

Thanks for sharing, John! I work for a large nonprofit in Miami and we've recently been trying to switch our strategy on Facebook from “pushing” content to asking more questions. It's amazing how much more engaged our fan base is and the incredible, real-life stories they have to share. Powerful stuff. The next task is just figuring out how to repurpose some of that content in some of our other communications…got some great ideas from this piece, as well as from some of Kivi's work — thanks guys!