Five of the best charity Facebook pages
Welcome your new supporters and make the right first impression by creating a custom welcome screen for your Facebook Page.
Facebook now has over 600 million users (back in 2011!) and it’s likely to be one of the places that people will find out about your organisation.
Making a good first impression should be pretty high up on every charity’s list of goals. Yet many charities have Facebook fan pages that are unattended – often with a wall full of posts from confused or misinformed users. To make sure you make the right first impression, creating a custom welcome screen for your Facebook fan page is essential.
Here are five charity custom Facebook fan pages that take different approaches to the problem to give you an idea of where to start:
American Red Cross
The American Red Cross always uses technology to its fullest. Its Facebook page is no different. The landing page displays feeds about disasters, blog posts and Tweets, giving the user a reason to get involved. Scroll further down the page and you’ll find a variety of media, from YouTube videos to Flickr photos. Even though it’s only a Facebook Page it could easily be confused with a fully fledged website.
Cancer Research UK
Celebrity endorsements are a great way of inspiring new supporters, but even if you don’t have Gary Lineker on speed-dial, you can still learn from the Cancer Research UK page. The focal point here is a punchy YouTube video, specifically made for the page. Add in the ability to personalise the video, as Cancer Research UK have done, to get people sharing the video and get your page in front of a lot more people. If you have the right content, Facebook excels at this kind of viral promotion.
NSPCC
Engagement is key for charities. What’s the point of millions of people knowing who you are if they don’t do anything to help? Using polls on your Facebook fan page is a great little way to get your fans talking to you, to make them think about a cause, and to collect valuable data on your supporters. Add new polls regularly and you may get people visiting your page and interacting just to get the latest results. These polls also show up in voter’s friend’s Facebook feeds, helping spread the word about your page. Find out more about Facebook Questions.
Comic Relief: Red Nose Day
Your Facebook fan page needs to be suitable for your charity. You need to know your goals and then tailor your page around them. A great example of a charity doing this comes courtesy of Comic Relief. It’s no secret that Red Nose Day’s main aim is to get donations and its fan page makes this clear. As soon as you visit you’re faced with a big red donate button – sometimes getting straight to the point works.
UNICEF
Even though you can do some great things with your Facebook fan page sometimes they just don’t stand up to your own website. So why not turn your page into a portal to your site. This is exactly what UNICEF have done in the multimedia tab of their fan page. Pictures and links to articles on UNICEF’s website are show on Facebook, helping drive traffic to the main website where people are exposed to calls to action for campaigns and donations.