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Quick start: 3 ways of building communities on Facebook

5th June 2011 by clare white

Horsham page on Facebook
Horsham page on Facebook

In this quick guide we”ll look at three useful ways of building communities on Facebook.

Sometimes people worry about using Facebook to talk to people who aren’t personal friends and family. All of these methods allow you to interact with people without needing to be Facebook-friends with them.

Pages allow you to use Facebook under the name of a website, business or place. Horsham and Kings Cross are two examples of popular Facebook pages started by Visit Horsham and Kings Cross Environment respectively.

Notice that in both cases, Facebook has added check-ins to the community pages. People who use location features in Facebook can check-in to a place, they can ‘like’ the page or comment on its wall.

The Horsham administrator Gavin encourages comments and interaction on the page by reposting questions he receives through email or on the main website.

  • Create a Page on Facebook here.

 

 

An example of a collaborative document from the Show and TAL group
An example of a collaborative document from the Show and TAL group

 

Groups are good for encouraging discussions and debate. They can be private or public. For example, our Show and TAL group is used to share tips and links to hyperlocal websites.

An added feature of groups is collaborative documents, where groups can all add and edit text together (as seen, right).

  • Find help on creating a Group in Facebook here.

 

Finally, Events are a good way to build community involvement.

As we showed in this post, they don’t have to just promote events in real-life physical spaces but can also be used to build up an audience for a regular digital event.

  • Facebook’s guide to creating an event is here.

 

All three of these methods need more than just starting them to be successful communities. You’ll need to plug away, ask your friends to invite their friends and share content frequently to see them grow and become more interactive. But with so many people spending more time on Facebook than any other website, reaching out to them here is very worthwhile.

  • Click here to explore more advice and quick tips for Facebook
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clare white
Latest posts by clare white (see all)
  • Three ways to use Facebook in your community - 4th September 2011
  • Public and private spheres: building zones in Facebook - 1st July 2011
  • Getting more attention – tagging and understanding notifications - 15th June 2011

Filed Under: Quick Tips, Using Facebook Tagged With: Facebook

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  1. Facebook is just a fad. | Bob Gaboury says:
    5th June 2011 at 9:27 pm

    […] Quick start: 3 ways of building communities on Facebook (talkaboutlocal.org.uk) […]

  2. Public and private spheres: building zones in Facebook - Talk About Local says:
    1st July 2011 at 8:57 am

    […] If you’re ready for a closer look, our quick start and tutorial video shows you more about some of… […]

  3. Talk of the Town – a Facebook handbook: contents - Talk About Local says:
    1st July 2011 at 9:04 am

    […] Quick start guide: 3 ways to build communities with Facebook […]

  4. links for 2011-07-14 « Social Stoke says:
    14th July 2011 at 9:04 am

    […] Quick start: 3 ways of building communities on Facebook – Talk About Local (tags: #exchangecafe facebook) […]

  5. Talk About Local » 2011 Review says:
    20th December 2011 at 11:59 am

    […] The seventh most popular post is again by Clare, she explains about 3 ways of building communities on Facebook. […]

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