The following article first appeared in the Sustained! web magazine from PEJE, an organization that serves day schools. Ken Gordon is the Social Media Manager of PEJE. It’s an excellent article about how to build an online community on Facebook that can be applied to any organization.

Read the full article on Sustained!

Ken Gordon, Social Media Manager of PEJE

So you started, or joined, a Facebook page for your Jewish day school community. You put up a few posts… and the only response was the soft click of crickets in your backyard.

What now?

Now you grapple with an important and awkward truth: social media is not entirely obvious. Using Facebook is not like reading a book. Or listening to a teacher in class. Or, you know, just talking to another person. Social media is a strange new kind of human communication, and it has its own obscure commandments. For those of us who didn’t learn to talk and tweet at the same time, this stuff must be gleaned on the fly, later in life.

You won’t find a handbook on Jewish day school social media citizenship in the how-to section of any bookstore, or anywhere else for that matter. Indeed, the day school world is only starting to emigrate into this part of the universe. (Which is why AVI CHAI started their Social Media Academy for day schools, which is a great first introduction to the world of Fans and Followers.)

Point is: Your Facebook kehila may be very perplexed; if so, show them the proper way to behave by offering a few essential principles of good social citizenship. Be a mentsh and teach these new citizens the rules of the road—or just pass this column along, if you’re too busy—and soon we’ll all be Active Daily Users.

You’re a Regular

Encourage your people to build in regular—daily, weekly, etc.—visits to your social media sites. How to manage this? Ask them. Send an email to your colleagues or close friends in the community requesting that they set aside a regular time of day to engage your page. (Ten minutes over morning coffee sounds good to me.) As for people far outside your offline network: advise them, in your newsletters and/or your email signature, to stop regularly so they can catch all your great links, videos, and updates. Just be sure that you, and/or your administrator, post enough valuable and diverse content to warrant such regular visits. (On the PEJE FB page, we post plenty of articles that come from outside sources. People tend to find it refreshing and useful when you share content that isn’t just, say, “selling” your own stuff. Another tip: FB users in general, love video and photos.)

Lights! Camera! Action! Interaction!

The most important thing about social media is the interactivity of its participants. Newbies need to understand that their input is wanted—desperately wanted. We them to react to the material posted on a Facebook page (and maybe even react to other people’s reactions). How to do this? Glad you asked…

More Impressions than Rich Little

The most passive way to contribute to a FB community is to simply view a Status Update or Link on Your Wall. Facebook counts each “impression,” which The Next Web defines as the “raw number of times each entry has been seen on the wall and in the news feed of fans.” The page administrator will receive regular reports on the number of impressions, which will delineate the range of your influence and indicate what does and doesn’t interest your community.

Click and Read

Your people can do better than a few impressions. Actually clicking on a link posted by a Facebook user, and then reading it, is the first real step to joining the online community. If something catches your eye, be sure to click away.

You Like?

Hitting the Like button—beneath a link or status update—is an even more active form of Facebook behavior. Likability is Extremely Important in the social media world, and it’s also a good strategy for those of you who are seriously time-pressed. But it’s not as substantial a response as the following two methods.

Sharing Is Caring

Sharing is good because it helps spread the word around. And if you’re not the kind of person who likes to speak (or write) in public, this may be the best way you can serve in the PEJE social media crew. You click on the word “Share” right underneath the piece of content in question. A box opens up. You write in it, click the “Share” button, and it goes on your wall. Or you click the “Send a Message Instead” link. You fill in the names of the person/people you want to tell about this, write a message, and then send it off.

All the Rest Is Commentary

Write a response, a thoughtful response, to a Status Update or shared Link and you’ve done something with true social significance. The process is simple: You click on the word “Comment” right underneath the piece of content in question. A box opens up, and you write your comment. Simple. Note: Not every comment has to be a dissertation—such things are better employed in grad school and your Friends will likely lose interest in a lengthy response—but it is a good idea to respond intentionally when you’re commenting.

Answer the Call

When confronted by a good question in a Facebook status—good administrators are constantly asking questions—you answer it. It’s OK to hang back and read how other people respond … but it’s generally good manners and a healthy social attitude to answer legitimate questions put out to your Facebook community.

Be a Model

Note: you can’t be the only person on your Facebook page. Imagine a Facebook page that is nothing but status updates that get Liked and Commented On by the administrator. (This would be, as John Bender said in The Breakfast Club: “Sorta social—demented and sad, but social.”)

When you set up a FB page for your school, particularly when you’re first starting out, it’s essential that you invite some good role models to the party. People, that is, who know how to be a regularly active member of your community. So don’t be shy. It’s not cheating to ask for help, it’s essential. Remember, this is social media.

Two kinds of invitations may be necessary.

1. Invite people you know are comfortable with Facebook, and your community, to join your group. These are folks, let’s say, who know about day school and social media and will naturally become part of your community.
2. Invite qualified people to respond to a stimulating question. You can—and should—arrange debates. Find a provocative piece of content, ask a provocative question, and then invite several smart people (of varying opinions) to respond on the page. One great way to get people to respond: call FB friends out by name with a tag.

The great thing about modeling good social citizenship: it’s contagious. What are you waiting for? Stop reading this and show your community the way of FB. The more you engage the page, the more people will engage with you.

BY KEN GORDON

Ken Gordon is the Social Media Manager of PEJE. He cordially invites you to friend our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter.

Read the full article on Sustained!

What we’re reading this week:

10 Examples of E-newsletter Footers and Headers with Social Links
While working on a redesign of his newsletter, Ben, a blogger for e-newsletter service MailChimp, collected standards and best practices. Here’s what he found.

How To Split Up the US
A very cool visualization that represents how relationships develop across geographical boundaries in 210 million public Facebook profiles. It helps understand how your social network forms and travels.

Measuring Type
“A selection of the most commonly used typefaces were compared for how economical they are with the amount of ink which they use at the same point size. Large scale renditions of the typefaces were drawn out with ballpoint pens, allowing the remaining ink levels to display the ink efficiency of each typeface.”

Articles on Nonprofit Marketing and Communications
Long list of helpful articles on how non-profiters can market. Via kylacromer on Twitter.

I spend so much of my time on social networks that it’s hard for me to remember that not all nonprofits use them. But you should! Social networks, like those below, are an ideal way to create community, distribute information and learn from others. Plus, these are all free services, and free marketing is a nonprofit’s best friend.

So, as part of our end-of-the-year-top-five-blow-out, here are our five favorite social networking sites:

1. Facebook: We love Facebook is the community-based Pages and Groups. But we especially encourage charitable organizations to set up a Facebook Cause. This lets you easily spread the word about important issues and lets you take donations online. (See Talance on Facebook.)
2. MySpace: What we love about MySpace is its size. It’s the third most trafficked sites in the United States according to Alexa, so it’s a great way to make connections and send out buzz. Non-profits can use the blogs to distribute alerts and updates.
3. Twitter: Twitter wins our hearts because it’s so fast. This microblogging site lets people follow updates without the bulk of a blog. Nonprofits are using it in great ways – such as sending out calls for blood donations. (See Talance on Twitter.)
4. Flickr: Sharing photos seems innocuous enough, but there’s power in those images. We’ve seen church groups post compelling images of their missionary work and nonprofits post images of their events, which can create interest in future events.
5. YouTube: If photos are powerful, videos are even more so. We love the way YouTube brings images and sounds to your network. Look the Living Darfur official music video, which has received more than 2 million views. Activist Naomi Klein has created a powerful network for her Shock Doctrine. Movies are powerful things.

At first glance, you may think kuler from Adobe Labs is little more than online paint chips. But imagine paint chips in dazzling combinations that have been rated for effectiveness and beauty by a network of people. It’s an excellent tool for choosing colors for web and print projects, and an interesting community to become involved in.

I haven’t tested it, but WebAssist has a plug-in that lets you use kuler with Dreamweaver for on-the-fly color combos.

I’m very pleased to report that NTEN cited my article “How Nonprofits Can Be LinkedIn” as one of the best articles they ran in 2007. Santa came early!

Read the whole article on this blog or on NTEN.

(Also, if you happen to be an NTEN member, Talance has a partnership that lets you save on online training.)