Hilinsky Consulting Social Media Blog

Earlier this week, we were invited to an afternoon with the Facebook PR team to discuss best practices. The PR team did three quick presentations that we have decided to break down into three blog posts. Stay tuned for posts number two (marketing your presence) and three (livestreaming with Facebook)!

Our first topic is how Facebook uses Facebook (as presented by Matt Hicks, Corporate Communications)

When your fan page has 13.5 million fans (9 million monthly active) there is pressure to keep a steady flow of great content.

Matt Hicks walks us through some of the checklists that the Facebook PR team use to keep their fan page awesome and engaging for all Facebook fans.

Use this post and the checklists provided below as an easy-to-follow “best practices” guide for your own fan pages. And ask yourself (and your team): is YOUR brand taking similar steps (to the ones detailed below) in order to engage your Facebook community?

Facebook’s page is quite a hub of activity, they use their fan page to:
• Syndicate all of the official blog posts via notes (including all product announcements)
• Link to other interesting and relevant fan pages (such as the Disaster Relief page)
• Utilize pictures to enhance information (such as graphs and stats)
• Take advantage of video
• Constantly post status updates
• Use the fan page as the “about” section of their website (info, resources, etc.)

To continuously “feed the social media beast” (as they call it at Facebook) and release engaging content they circulate:
• User stories
• Tips (video)
• Topical tours (how different verticals are using Facebook)- here’s one for all you foodies
• Q&A with interesting people
• The story of the week (how Facebook is impacting people in the real world)

Best ways to get this content:
• Use authentic voices: the Facebook blog is open to all employees (employee crowd sourcing)
• Take advantage of guest bloggers (public figures, partners, first person users, authors/journalists, activists) guest bloggers can provide great content with an outsiders perspective.

The components of a product announcement launch (this takes their whole communications team)– remember that integration is important!
1. Facebook Blog
2. Facebook Data Team
3. Targeted Facebook Page Status Updates

The Facebook blog “Style for the short form:” remember to have an authentic voice
• Be Brief: say more with fewer words
• Be direct and authentic: avoid adjectives, etc.
• Be casual: simple language, non-AP Style is okay
• Be personal: use 2nd person, avoid the term “users”
• Make a call to action: engage, ask open-ended questions

“@Facebook wtf r u doing on twitter?”
Even Facebook uses Twitter because they want to be everywhere their users are. Their Twitter account compliments the Facebook fan page and they consistently push out the same content. They also utilize YouTube in a similar way.

Lastly, here’s a list of all of Facebook’s social media channels:
Facebook fan page
Facebook Blog
@Facebook
YouTube