Great advice to stay safe on Facebook

Let's face it. You are on the front lines.

If you are your organizations' Facebook Fan Page administrator, you are no longer just yourself, independent citizen on Facebook. You are representing your organization and often become the public face for your online network. And it's weird.

Technically, you are not allowed to create a second "professional" profile, and technically you are not allowed to create a profile as if your organization is a person. I say "technically", because many, many admins have pulled this off. But that would help solve much of the problems.

With some of the recent changes to Facebook Fan Pages, things have gotten better. For instance, it used to be if I posted content to my org's FB page, it would show up as coming from me, personally. Now it shows up as coming from my org. That's good.

But before the change, I was frustrated because this meant anyone could click on my profile and see information about me. I would also get numerous friend requests from our supporters and although I hated to turn anyone down, I had to make a hard and fast rule: I never accept friend requests from anyone I don't know personally. I post pictures of my kids on my personal FB page, so I had to draw the line somewhere. Plus some of my own personal opinions and thoughts might not jive too nicely with some of my org's more conservative members. If I had a "professional" second profile, I could accept those requests and maintain my privacy. But no.

Again, tough but important choices in a ginormous gray area. I suspect we'll be hearing much more about this as time marches on. But back to my point.

The changes have improved much of this, but there is still an element of privacy invasion when you need to communicate directly with a supporter (that asks a question, or if you interact with them on Facebook Causes.) There is also the uncomfortableness of what to do when you inevitably get a friend request from your boss. They really don't need to know how you are progressing in Farmville. During work hours.

I suggest changing all of the Privacy settings to "Just Friends" and in your Friends section, create lists. I have one list for "work" and one list for "family" and they don't get to see too much of what I post (you go back into your privacy settings and choose "Customize" from the dropdown and you can choose to limit information to be viewable to all friends except an individual's name or a list.) Everyone not on those lists gets to see everything.

More info here, in a great article I read in The New York Times, titled "5 Easy Steps to Stay Safe (and Private!) on Facebook." (Originally from ReadWriteWeb)

Still not sure you've done it correctly? This page has a really cool feature where you can type in one of your friends' names (or your boss') to see exactly how your page will look to them.

Um, Seth? Gotta disagree, bro.

That's it. I've had it.

I'm might as well pack it all in. I'm washed up, useless, worthless, and not fit to have the word "online" in my job title.

According to this post by Seth Godin (who, btw, I've been a fan of since his "Permission Marketing" book in the go-go early dot.com days), the nonprofit I work for is a failure, because it is not in the top 100 Twitter users in terms of followers. And it is my job to develop our social networking outreach strategy. #fail!

Really, Seth? This is how you measure the effectiveness of nonprofits? Really?

I can't think of a more insipid criteria to measure whether a nonprofit is adverse to change or not, or has an effective communications strategy. Here's why:

1. Nonprofits are adverse to change? Maybe, and to varying degrees some more than others, but isn't everyone? When's the last time you brought home a different brand of toothpaste without someone in your household complaining? Big business, government, manufacturing are all resistant to change (well said, CauseWired.)
   
   
2. Nonprofits have to be good stewards. If NPO's changed their strategy every time the blogosphere got all hot and bothered about the next new thing, we'd all be holding virtual events in Second Life. We owe some caution-before-action to our donors and to those we serve by our mission. We should not be first in the pool. We should at least make sure it is full of water before diving in.
   
   
3. Free is so not free. Managing social networking sites takes staff time - a luxury most nonprofits do not have. At my org, we are fortunate to have 1.5 people managing our social networking profiles (in addition to managing a host of other things, of course), but I know how lucky we are. You have to devote time to it to do it well.
   
   
4. Top 100 on Twitter. Notice anything about what those folks have in common? Most of them don't have day jobs! Or at least not 9-5 jobs. They are celebrities. And many have a staff of people to either tweet for them or ply them with content. They are free to tweet on about the particularities of their day and it is still going to be more widely read than anything I could possibly post about the amazing work my NPO does. God that's depressing.
   
   
5. Shouldn't quality of followers matter? Here's the deal. We're selective. Here's why: We actually use our Twitter channel to listen. I scan our followers' tweets quite a bit. Not just when they mention us, but their everyday tweets. Why? Because I actually want to know, what are they interested in? What types of posts are they retweeting? Are our followers more liberal or more conservative? It's fascinating. But I don't want to wade through pages and pages of followers telling me how to "Get more followers instantly" or "Check out my barely legal photos." So we screen new followers, and if they are spammers, we block them. You can't tell me Ashton screens all 3 million + of his followers.
   

Seth, I'm sorry; I have to call you out on this one. You've got it all wrong.

Choices

I was doing an interview with a writer for the NonProfit Times the other day about how my organization uses social networking to build awareness and further the reach of our campaigns. He asked me what criteria we use for posting content via Twitter and Facebook.

Criteria? I asked.

He continued on to ask if we had a set method of evaluating what to push out through social networks, and what's our approval process - who makes the final decision.

Funny, it never occurred to me to have a set of criteria or decide by committee. I had that sudden panic; "Oh god! Should we get one?" For a minute I ruminated that it is what you are supposed to do, but that feels so, well...formal to me - the antithesis of social community spirit.

But it hit me: when I decide to post content to my personal pages, I tend to post things that blow me away, piss me off, or make me green with envy at their cleverness. I don't have a criteria and I definitely don't consult a committee.

So when I am posting things to my organization's pages, I go with my gut - and so do my co-workers who also post to our pages. It has to be a story that makes me feel something. Sadness, relief, joy, anger. And it has to presented in a way that makes me want to read it.

This is where so many nonprofits and retailers fail miserably. Just providing the title of an article with a link doesn't really do it for me. You have to sell it. Tell me why I should read your post in 140 characters or less. Remind me that you are a human being posting this content and not some RSS robot.

"Was having a hectic day...but this story reminded me why I work here" makes me intrigued. "Read this story this morning and I can't stop thinking about this girl" is another one I would read.

Yes, yes, there are limits and exceptions to everything. Don't overshare, of course. They don't need to know that you "definitely didn't need that last glass of red wine last night." Don't air your nonprofit's dirty laundry. Don't say super-controversial things unless they are part of your mission shtick, like PETA or HRC. There is a line - I just can't tell you where the hell it is. You need to figure that one out on your own.

Be genuine. Be real. You aren't just posting content for a faceless, nameless mass. They are people - so are you - and in most cases, so are those that your mission serves. Keep that in mind and write like that.