Thinking of creating a Facebook page to help with recruitment and engagement with the public.
What would I have to consider before I make it?
[quote=“summerset139” post=18149]Thinking of creating a Facebook page to help with recruitment and engagement with the public.
What would I have to consider before I make it?[/quote]
Decide who has control of the content so that it meets the requirement. Your unit MCO will be the primary provider but you should have other page admins to help police it (or take over if the MCO leaves)
Then consider whether you want people to be able to comment on posts - it can be useful but it needs to be watched. It may be simpler to disallow this but you lose some interactivity.
Don’t use it for telling your own squadron what is going on as most of your followers won’t give a damn about whether you are in blues, greens or sports kit. Use a closed group for stuff like that.
Facebook is great, but insecure! I’d be very careful with the permissions - even then…
Also anything you upload becomes the property of Facebook! Check the T&Cs carefully!!!
why not try http://sites.aircadetcentral.net
cheers
DJ
[quote=“summerset139” post=18149]Thinking of creating a Facebook page to help with recruitment and engagement with the public.
What would I have to consider before I make it?[/quote]
- Read the ACO Social Media policy.
- Think about your content - make it interesting.
- Promote the page in the physical space - posters, letterhead.
Agree 100% with Incubus - have both a page (public facing) for PR stuff and a group (members only) for day-to-day admin.
Works really well for us.
[quote=“MattB” post=18319]Agree 100% with Incubus - have both a page (public facing) for PR stuff and a group (members only) for day-to-day admin.
Works really well for us.[/quote]
Agreed and ditto
What sort of day to day admin do you use it for?
[ul]
[li]Short-notice opportunities.[/li]
[li]Last-minute changes[/li]
li Reminders and chasers[/li]
[li]copies of the training programme and other reference docs[/li]
[li]publishing those photos which are less suitable for the public page :)[/li]
[/ul]
[quote=“incubus” post=18327]
[li]publishing those photos which are less suitable for the public page :)[/li]
[/ul][/quote]
Risky approach. Once it’s there, you loose all control over it’s distribution or viewership
[quote=“Plt Off Prune” post=18328]Risky approach. Once it’s there, you loose all control over it’s distribution or viewership[/quote]Having weighed the risks against the (morale) advantages we have decided that it is acceptable. It doesn’t mean we release anything which is harmful or offensive, just the stupid faces and mildly embarrassing poses that don’t go well with the PR article.
[ul]
[li]Short-notice opportunities.[/li]
[li]Last-minute changes[/li]
li Reminders and chasers[/li]
[li]copies of the training programme and other reference docs[/li]
[li]publishing those photos which are less suitable for the public page :)[/li]
[/ul][/quote]
Much the same apart from the photos bit.
We use an Events Management System and we post event notices onto the facebook group so the cades know they are there which works well. Also we use it to:
- Promulgate the Training Programme and pin it to the top of the group feed
- Share AEF letters for schools and similar (for camps that hit term times etc as well)
- Survey opinion of things using the polling options and discussing the results
- Praising publically online in the closed group
- Sharing the Comdt ACs updates and other stuff as required
We have both public and closed.
Closed works well for important changes to activities, timings etc, but make sure you have a dedicated team to update the public one. We tried to encourage the cadets to do it for part of their DofE, but once they got signed off, the updates stopped happening often, unless we prodded them to apply updates.
Do you allow parents in to the closed group?
No more than we allow them to hang around the squadron: we treat the closed group somewhat as an extension of the squadron and membership is limited to current cadets and staff, plus one or two wing staff, unless there is a good reason to do otherwise.
The civcom have their own group which parents can join 
No more than we allow them to hang around the squadron: we treat the closed group somewhat as an extension of the squadron and membership is limited to current cadets and staff, plus one or two wing staff, unless there is a good reason to do otherwise.
The civcom have their own group which parents can join :)[/quote]
Concur. We did have some parents on there but decided to remove them for child protection reasons - not that we had any direct concerns but like incubus said, we treat the page as an extension to the Sqn and that is the cadets space.
If parents need to find out what is on there, they can ask their child to show them the closed group or our Event Management System.