In a crisis, social media platforms like Facebook can be an important way to get critical, time-sensitive information out to your community. Public media stations should continually grow and cultivate a social media presence so it’s already in place when a crisis like H1N1 arises or turns for the worse. Having a strong Facebook presence can also be a regular part of your audience engagement strategy.
Facebook is now the most popular social network in the United States, and a recent public media technology survey found that
Suggested Uses of Facebook
There are two paths for using Facebook in your H1N1 coverage. The first is to take advantage of your station’s Page on Facebook. The second option is to use widgets to integrate Facebook functionality directly on your station website.
On Facebook: Facebook Pages
- Regularly use your Facebook status updates to communicate important developments in your H1N1 coverage, along with prevention and vaccination information.
- Crowdsource your H1N1 coverage: Use Facebook to gather audience insights and experiences with the pandemic.
Facebook offers organizations the ability to create profiles, called Pages. Having a page allows your station to use Facebook much in the way that individuals do — to connect with other users, update your status, and upload videos, audio, and links.
With Facebook Pages, individual users make themselves a “fan” of your station, much in the way they “friend” other users. When they make themselves a fan, it’s announced to their network of friends on Facebook, which increases visibility of your station’s Facebook Page.
A large number of public media organizations are actively using Facebook in this way, and some have thousands of fans. Here’s a list of public radio outlets using Facebook Pages, as compiled by PRPD.
It’s important to remember that each fan of your Facebook Page is a direct one-to-one connection, and this makes it possible to communicate important H1N1 developments with members of your Facebook community. The status updates you make on your Page appear in the news feeds of all your Facebook fans. In addition, you can message your fans individually, as a group, or in more targeted fashions.
Unlike your station’s broadcast signal, Facebook is built for interaction. You can expect your fans to comment on and “like” many of the items you post. You can also use your connections with users to find sources, solicit story ideas, and follow leads for your swine-flu coverage. (On this topic, also see our recent blog post on crowdsourcing H1N1 reporting using Public Insight Journalism)
A Facebook Fan Box
Promote Your Facebook Page
Growing the number of fans is an important part of a successful Facebook presence. A large collection of Facebook fans will make the platform a more effective tool during times of crisis.
Even if much of your broadcast audience is on Facebook, it may not be aware of your Facebook page. Make sure you provide your website visitors with prominent links to your Facebook Page, and use your broadcast channel to increase audience awareness.
Additionally, Facebook offers an easy-to-implement Fan Box that you can place on your website to promote your Facebook Page. The Fan Box allows users to become a fan of your station without having to leave your website.
Find out more about setting up and optimizing your station’s Facebook Page here.
On Your Website: Facebook Share Button
- Allow your visitors to share your H1N1 content — links, audio, and video — with their Facebook friends.
The Facebook Share Button is one of of the easiest and most effective ways to take advantage of the platform. Adding the Facebook Share Button to each of your stories leverages the power of peer recommendation and increases the visibility of your H1N1 coverage. While there are many social bookmarking tools available, the strong overlap between public media fans and Facebook users argues for highlighting the Facebook Share button on station websites.
When a user selects the Facebook Share button on your website, it sends the link of your H1N1 story (along with a thumbnail image and brief description) to their Facebook profile page and appears in news feeds of all their friends on Facebook. According to Facebook, the average user has 120 friends, bringing high exposure for each link that is shared on Facebook. And with resulting click-thrus, Facebook has the potential to become a top referring source of traffic to your website.
Read the details about implementing the Facebook Share Button for you H1N1 coverage here.
On Your Website: Facebook Connect
- Add Facebook functionality to your website and local H1N1 coverage.
Facebook offers an API (application programming interface) called Facebook Connect, which allows your station to integrate Facebook functionality directly on your website. Facebook Connect has a large array of features and options to chose from, and some of the more advanced options require significant web development time and effort.
But there are some simple tools that offer many of the benefits that come with more advanced uses of the Facebook API. Facebook has introduced “social widgets” which are installed with only a snippet of code. These social widgets are easy to set up and require relatively little time and effort; Facebook estimates they each take 1-2 hours to implement.
Facebook Connect widgets allow people to use their Facebook logins on your station website. This means their activity on your site will be shared with their network of Facebook friends.
On Your Website: Facebook Live Stream Box
- Facilitate live online conversations coordinated with on-air programming.
- Host local health experts to answer H1N1 questions from your Facebook audience.
Live discussions on your website
The Facebook Live Stream Box is one of the social widgets from Facebook and provides public media stations a way to host real-time online conversations about local H1N1 issues. (Note: another option many stations use is Cover It Live, which provides similar features.)
The Live Stream Box is a stand-alone Facebook widget that creates a space where your website visitors can join a running conversation and interact with other users in real time. Users log in using their Facebook identities and can choose to view what the entire audience is saying, or filter to only the activity within their network of friends. Facebook asserts the Live Stream Box will support millions of simultaneous users, making it a good fit for broadcasters no matter the market size. Users also have the option to send their activity on the Live Stream Box to their Facebook profile pages.
Read about how to place a Facebook Live Stream Box on your site here.
