Create an Association Page, Not a Profile
Since it’s visible to everyone, even without a Facebook account, creating a Facebook page for your association is already a first step in external communication, easily found through a search engine. The page is created from a “user” profile, which becomes the “administrator” of the association’s page. You can then recruit other administrators, editors, and even a team of moderators. All of these individuals also contribute to the page’s activity, as they can interact with your community.
It’s possible to add a group feature, either a single group or several private groups. The goal is to bring people together to encourage discussion, for example.
It’s important to remember that Facebook’s algorithm has changed in recent years, so the effectiveness of your association’s communication on the social network has shifted. In fact, posts from pages have been given less weight in favor of posts from profiles. To counter this trend, the simplest solution remained sponsoring page posts to ensure their communications were widely disseminated. However, we advise you not to publish your information from a personal profile but from your Association Page. Firstly, because personal profiles are reserved for individuals (Facebook relentlessly tracks fake profiles), and secondly, because if the person managing the posts from their profile leaves the association, nothing will remain.
Personalizing the Page
Let’s start at the beginning. When creating your association page, it’s important to choose a username. This will allow users to “find” you through Facebook’s search engine. For example, the association Les Petites Victoires du quotidien uses the username @lespetitesvic.association, which improves its ranking in search results.
Visuals are also important; users should be able to understand at a glance what the association does. The banner and cover photos are the first things your future subscribers will see, so make them want to follow you! For example, a photo of your members in action!
To make your page more dynamic, be sure to fill in all the information about your organization and keep it up to date. To prevent information from getting lost among all your future posts, you can highlight certain tabs when they seem relevant to your organization’s activities. For example, you can promote the “Events” tab or the “Groups” tab.
Posts
To make your organization’s page posts more impactful, we recommend carefully considering your editorial line, posting frequency, and the topics you will cover. Initially, there’s a tendency to post on many disparate subjects, and some posts from your volunteers may not even fall within your organization’s scope. This is why a clear editorial line must be developed beforehand, and everyone involved with the association’s page must adhere to it in order to harmonize and unify your communications with your community. (Who are you addressing, what message are you communicating, what tone is being used, which posts are performing best, etc.)
It’s important to ensure consistency in the presentation of your posts. Use emoticons, and use brackets to categorize them, for example, [AG], [Volunteers], [News]. Keep your texts short, no more than 150 characters, and don’t hesitate to tag volunteers and other individuals. You can also add a location to your posts to indicate where your activities take place, for example.