On October 25, I posted on the "Wear It!" Facebook Timeline the following: Wear It! Oswego is a great example of a truly successful grassroots campaign - congratulations to them for all their hard work!
We want to help you promote "Wear It!" in your area with resources found on our web site, custom logos, and free resources. Not sure where to start? Email outreach@safeboatingcouncil.org!
I received an email from one of my "Wear It!" contacts in Australia that lost her daughter in a boating accident and has since created "Courtney's Rule Stay Safer to live = Always WEAR your Lifejacket Why RISK It", asking: "I want to spread more awareness on safe boating and life jacket awareness, would love some hints for my page to help continue to be my daughters voice."
Many of you are already doing an excellent job on your Facebook Timelines promoting boating safety and delivering important messages to people that have "Liked" your page. I wanted to share the tips that I shared with Cathy for those of you who are still starting out on Facebook and would like a few pointers. Here's the exact email I sent to Cathy so you can look at the examples that I mentioned and tweak them to fit the needs of your own Facebook Timeline.
1) Your user name (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Courtneys-Rule-StaySafer-to-liveAlways-WEAR-your-Lifejacket-Why-RISK-It/473188806045939?ref=stream) can be changed to be shorter. This will allow you to promote the page easier (for example: it can read: www.Facebook.com/CourtneysRule). Facebook will walk you through the steps to change your user name when log in to Facebook and visit http://www.facebook.com/username
(UPDATE: Cathy has changed her username to www.Facebook.com/CourtneysRuleWearIt. She had one minor issue when trying to create the new username - she wanted to include an equal sign (=), but usernames can only contain A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and periods (.) Otherwise, she had an easy time changing her username.)
2) You're doing a great job on your Timeline already - you use a lot of photos and share great stories about life jackets and boating and water safety. Remember that photos and images are one of the best ways to share your message. For example, the post you did on Monday holding the "Wear It!" signs and wearing your life jacket got nearly 20 likes - that is absolutely awesome.
3) Shorter messages work best. If you want to share a news article, pick out the key item that you want people to know. For example, when I post "Saved by the Jacket" stories on the campaign's Facebook page, I always pull out the quote from the article that mentions that life jackets were worn, or that they were important to the person's survival, etc.
4) Facebook is a little different from Twitter in that hashtags (#) don't do anything on Facebook. Hashtags are great for Twitter - they help to create trends and important key words for others to follow, but you don't need to use them on Facebook.
(UPDATE: Cathy had mentioned that she was using hashtags because her Facebook and Twitter accounts were linked. This is a personal preference whether to link the two - I don't like it only because I tweet multiple times a day, but only post on Facebook once a day. This is another thing that's important to determine: how many times will you post on Facebook? My personal recommendation is no more than once a day, unless something major is happening, but it's really up to you.)
5) You can mention others on Facebook - for example, I saw you mentioned the National Safe Boating Council on your post Sunday about "Inventing the Impossible." Instead of putting the hashtag before our name, you can use the @ sign and then type in "National Safe Boating Council." You'll notice that Facebook will pull up a link to the NSBC's Facebook page - you can click on that and a hyperlink (a link that shows up like the words you want) will direct people to the NSBC's page.
Social media is a constant learning process - things change daily (if not hourly or less!) on social media. Are there any tips that I missed that you've found to work great on your own Facebook Timeline?
Rachel