The Point of Facebook Usernames

Like many people, I was somewhat unimpressed when Facebook first announced the Usernames feature (also referred to as "vanity URLS"). People already know how to search and find people/Pages on Facebook, and it's not hard to just post a direct link to your Page or Profile -- I was skeptical of the need to bring "usernames" into the picture. What's the big deal? Do we really need to turn Facebook into a place like the rest of the Internet, where people can go by something like "moonbeam1982"? Hmmm.

But I dutifully created mine on the night the feature went live (www.facebook.com/michelle.renee.paul), and not long after, I had my "duh" moment.

I ran into an acquaintance on the street in Brooklyn a few weeks ago. She used to be my upstairs neighbor, but I recently moved into a new apartment and I hadn't seen her in a while. We decided to make dinner plans and catch up, but since we used to be neighbors, we'd never exchanged contact info before.

She was about to whip out her phone to do the usual get-my-number-and-call-me-to-give-me-hers thing, but I realized there was an easier and faster way. "Hey, you're on Facebook, right? Just look me up there and send me a message -- my username is 'michelle dot renee dot paul.'"

Aha! So there IS a point to usernames, beyond the "vanity" aspect of the vanity URL. Suddenly it's really easy to integrate my online life and my offline life, and let people know how to find me.

Obviously, this applies to arts organizations too. Web site URLs are ubiquitous in offline marketing materials now -- they appear on posters, in direct mail, in TV commercials, etc. Your Facebook username means that your Page can now have the same prominence. If you've been working on your Page, and you're serious about wanting to gather more Fans, why not set up a username and include it everywhere that you currently mention your Web site? (And for the record, I haven't heard of or seen very many people opting for the "moonbeam1982" approach to usernames. Most are sticking with their real name, like me.)

Click here to create yours now, if you haven't already. I highly recommend setting your profile username first -- almost every problem I've heard about people having with this feature relates to accidentally getting a personal profile branded with an organization name. That's easy enough to avoid if you set up the personal one first.

One more note: Despite weeks of insistence that usernames were set in stone and uneditable, Facebook recently caved and now allows a one-time change of username. So be careful, but know that you've got one chance to make a mistake now.

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What are you doing to promote your Facebook Page? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Some Useful Apps for Arts Orgs

Here's a list of some Facebook apps that might be helpful for arts organizations. (Special thanks to my intern Ching Jen Lum for compiling this list!)

Music Player: Created by Facebook, this application lets fans listen to your most recent tracks directly from your Page. Add as many tracks as you want, and update Music Player as you create new music. (San Francisco Symphony)

Discography: Created by Facebook, the application lists your albums as well as the tracks each one. Fans track the history of your records. (New York Philharmonic)

Reviews: Created by Facebook. Reviews written by users for everything from shows, plays, exhibitions, page, etc.

Favorite Pages (automatically included when you set up a Page): Created by Facebook. Link to favorite FB pages, ideal for cross-promotions.

YouTube Box: Used to publish videos to FB pages and personal profiles (The Frick Collection, BAM)

YouTube Video Box: Similar to YouTube Box -- check them both out and see which you prefer. (New York Botanical Garden)

My Flickr: Integrate your Flickr account into your Facebook Page

ArtShare Gallery: Created by Brooklyn Museum of Art, the application shares works of art from museums around the world (Met Museum, MoMA)

Social RSS: Promotes blogs, podcasts, delicious bookmarks, photos, calendar listings (The Frick Collection, American Museum of Natural History, BAM)

My del.icio.us: Lists all pages bookmarked in delicious (Guggenheim Museum, MoMA)

Subway Status: A box to let users know which subway to get to your organization (Guggenheim Museum, Queens Museum of Art).

Promotions: Created by Wildfire, Inc., this application runs branded interactive promotions on Facebook Fan Pages. Promotion formats include: sweepstakes, contests, coupon giveaways, instant wins, gifting, quizzes, etc. (Not free!)

Polls: Created by Context Optional, Inc., this application takes the pulse of fans with custom polls for Facebook Pages! Polls are easy to create and analyze, with graphs showing user responses across demographics.

Privacy Settings, and other tips by other people

Time for a link roundup (or, "other people doing my job for me")!


The Inside Facebook Guide to Protecting Your Privacy on Facebook

If you came to the "Fans are Better Than Friends" webinar last week, you'll remember I promised to post a link to this article about Facebook privacy settings. It's a post I've been meaning to write, but now I don't have to because Inside Facebook does a great job explaining everything you need to know.

Facebook's privacy options are pretty extensive and understanding them will make it easier for you to control your own Facebook experience. If you need to "friend" your coworkers because you want to make them additional admins of your Page, but you don't want to let your boss see the embarrassing pictures of your five-year college reunion (...for example), it's easy to set groups and filters to keep your work life separate from your personal life.


Face-to-Facebook

This is just an interesting article that I came across a few weeks ago, about local bands and musicians using Facebook to connect with fans.

"...I only knew Javier's page was "successful" because I am a fan of a lot of pages and see how different people interact with their fans... Javier is really genuine and connects with his fans in a way others do not. People tend to gain a larger fan base when they interact with their page more."

Sound familiar? Being genuine, starting conversations, being an active participant -- all these principles of Facebook success absolutely apply to arts organizations.


Is Blogging Yesterday's News? No Way!: The How and Why of Arts Blogging

My coworker Chelsea's article about blogging! In my June 30th webinar (watch the promo), I'll be talking about how to integrate your blog with your Facebook Page, but if your organization's site doesn't have a blog at all yet, Chelsea will help you get started and give you some advice.

Facebook webinar series: Watch the video promos

I apologize for the silence around here lately! I've been hard at work on creating the presentations for the four-part Facebook course we've created for this summer.

We created a bunch of silly promo videos for the webinar series, and they came out really well (if I do say so myself) -- I highly recommend you check them out on the main page of the Patron Technology Web site to get all the info about the series.

Here's the short, non-video version of what's going on:

Facebook for Arts Organizations, a four-webinar series

Session 1: Fans Are Better Than Friends: Your Organization's Presence on Facebook (Encore Presentation)
Thursday, June 4th, 2:00-2:45pm EDT

Session 2: Are You Content With Your Content?
Tuesday, June 16th, 2:00-2:45pm EDT

Session 3: Apply Yourself!
Tuesday, June 30th, 2:00-2:45pm EDT

Session 4: Fan-ning the Flames
Tuesday, July 14th, 2:00-2:45pm EDT

All sessions are free for Patron Technology clients. (clients register here)

For non-clients, they're $45 each or $99 for the whole series. (non-clients register here)

Blog readers, you've got insider access! If you have any questions that fit into any of those sessions, let me know and I'll try to cover them in the webinar. (And as always, if you have any questions that DON'T fit into those sessions, ask anyway! I'll answer here.)

Of course. there will always be plenty of Facebook info that doesn't fit into a 45-minute webinar, so there will be many blog posts forthcoming this summer.

Hope to "see" you on Thursday!

More Twitter Lingo Explained

My coworker Allison has getting been getting into the social media game! If you missed her two excellent articles about Twitter, you should check them out -- the first one is a more general introduction to Twitter and its terminology, and the second gets into more specific examples of how arts organizations have been (and should be!) using Twitter.

There's plenty of Twitter info that didn't make it into the main articles, so I'll be posting some of the "outtakes" from here on the blog. Here's the first!

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Allison Klein, guest blogger:

If you've been listening or have recently started tweeting yourself, you've probably noticed that a lot tweets that have "RT" peppered throughout them. Welcome to the world of the re-tweet.

What?
Abbreviated as "RT," the idea of the re-tweet is really just a way to indicate that you’re quoting another users’ tweet. If you find a tweet to be particularly interesting, full of useful information, or including call to action worth passing along, you may consider re-tweeting it.

How?
To re-tweet something, just copy and paste the content of the original tweet, and precede it with the letters “RT” to indicate that it includes something that you’re re-posting from another user. Follow that abbreviation with "@" and the username of the original tweeter to give them credit. If you that doesn't push you over the 140-character limit, you might also want to include your own comments, but the re-tweet can also stand alone. (And yes, you have to copy/paste -- just typing "RT" will not do anything "automatically" like I thought it would the first time I tried to re-tweet something.)

Why?
I find that re-tweeting comes very naturally -- I don't know about you, but I'm always sending links to useful Web sites or funny videos to my friends and co-workers. Re-tweeting is just the equivalent of this practice in the Twitterverse. So I guess what I'm saying is--why not use it? It's an easy way to become a more regular/active tweeter without having to come up with or find your own content.

PLUS, using the re-tweet is a great way to get a conversation going with another Twitter user that you might not know yet. Once you've re-tweeted them, many people (corporate accounts included) will send a thank you message (via @reply), which you in turn can reply to if you so choose, so it really does serve to help build new relationships on Twitter. You're putting yourself on the original tweeter's radar -- which means that they might very well start following you, and so might some of their own followers. So think of re-tweeting as a good karma measure! The more you re-tweet and give credit to other Twitter users, the more likely they will be to take notice of your tweets and do the same.


Here are a few examples of re-tweets that I've posted recently, so you have an idea of what this looks like and how they may be used.

After seeing Hair on Broadway:

(I didn't happen to catch the performance on Letterman after all, but as a result of my re-tweet, my colleague @seajo did!)


Regarding a giveaway I was missing while out of town:

Notice that this one's a DOUBLE re-tweet: Not only am I re-tweeting the tweet that @NewYorkology posted, but they're re-tweeting the original 'news' story from Twitter user @MidtownLunch. This is how things tend to go a bit viral on Twitter!


You're probably following and being followed by other Twitter folks in your field:

You're bound to come across tweets that will be useful to those followers professionally, so why not re-tweet that content and help get the word out?


I found this original tweet via Twitter search results:

...so I re-tweeted it to spread the word.


And the Atlantic Theater did the same here, when they saw my own tweet reviewing their current show:

I should add that finding out that something you've tweeted has been re-tweeted brings no small amount of pride -- so definitely consider re-tweeting your followers if you want to make them feel good! It also lets them know that you're listening to what they have to say!

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Thanks, Alli!

Hello, my name is _________.

We already talked about WHO should create your organization's Facebook Page; now let's continue on through the process of setting up the Page. There are a few more issues to take into consideration before you dive in. (If you're ready to take the plunge, though, here's a link!)

The first thing to do is to decide on your Page title and decide on your category.


These are the first two pieces of information that you enter, and they're also the two things that you can't edit once you submit them. (If you've created a Page already and you're unhappy with the name or category, you can delete and start over. That should be an option at the top of the "edit Page" page.)

So the name part is obvious: make sure you know whether you want to be the "Lab Theater" or the "Laboratory Theater," and make sure you don't make any typos, either! (A real life example: the first time I tried creating the Patron Technology Facebook Page, I was just testing things out and I named it "patron technology" -- all lower case! I had to delete that version and start over.)

As for categories, here's the list again.

Out of the arts organizations that I'm a "fan" of, it seems that the most popular choice of category is "Non-profit," closely followed by "Museum/Attraction" and "Other Business." I think all of those work perfectly well.

I've been specifically asked what category I recommend for a theater. I have to say, it really doesn't matter. These categories don't exactly DO anything anymore -- the category of your Page used to determine what kind of special features your Page could have, but ever since the big redesign in March, Pages are flexible enough that there's basically no functionality difference between categories.

And here's the real kicker: that category list I linked above is not the same list that you see when you're searching or browsing Fan Pages.

Where's "Museum/Attraction"? Where's "Other Business"? Facebook is inconsistent with their terminology. (The category you end up choosing will show up under your Page title when people are browsing a list, but not on the main screen of your page itself.)

This is all to say: be aware that you're making a permanent choice, but don't worry too much about choosing correctly.

I think maybe some level of consistency through the arts industry might be nice, though. In the comments, let everyone know how you classified your organization! Let others learn from your example (or, you know, copy off of you).

Authorizing Multiple Page Admins

It's Q&A time!

Reposting a comment from last week:

What happens to the page when the person who's the administrator leaves the organization? Is there some way the page can be "reassigned" to another Facebook user? The potential for an unhappy ex-employee to sabotage the organization's FB page seems worrisome.

Main Street Theater's next comment got it right:

You can make admins out of any of the fans or any of your friends.

After you create your Page, you can grant additional people in your organization Administrator access.

By doing that, you give them full authority over adding, deleting, and editing Page content -- AND full authority over adding/deleting other Admins as well. So if you're the Page creator, and you deputize someone else as an Admin, that person will have the power to remove you as an Admin later if you leave the company. And you'll have the power to remove other Admins yourself, too, if they're the ones leaving.

(Of course, that also means that if you're dealing with an "unhappy ex-employee" situation, you'd better make sure you delete her before she deletes you! There are no different "levels" of being an Admin; everyone has equal rights.)

You can change/add/delete Page Admins from the Page itself -- you should see an "Add Admins" link on the left side directly under the Page photo.