Facebook is a social networking site that enables users to share multimedia content
and links between friends. Users add friends, send messages, and manage a personal
profile that notifies their friends about their updates.
University units can create pages and groups on Facebook.
Facebook overview
A Facebook page is a great way to promote the activities of your department or University
unit. Facebook pages work well for showcasing accomplishments and events, engaging
with students, faculty, staff, alumni and the community, and for creating a forum
for conversation and discussion.
Strengths
- Facebook is the biggest platform with greatest reach and diversity of users
- From a business perspective, there’s a general acceptance of Facebook as a marketing
tool
- Facebook displays visual content exceptionally well
- People go to the platform to connect, to socialize and to catch up on what their friends
care about and are doing
- Missouri State cover photos are available for download and use
Challenges
- You’re competing for the attention of billions of users
- Facebook’s algorithm makes it challenging for brands to achieve high organic visibility
- Data gets skewed because people don’t update their interests as they grow and change
- Facebook requires some community management and customer service
Audience
According to Pew Research Center, Facebook has:
- 1.44 billion monthly active users
- 87 percent of adults between the ages of 18-29, making it the biggest demographic
on the website
- An audience that trends toward women. 77 percent of adult females and 66 percent of
adult males use the website
- The largest percentage of users (14) who are from the United States
- A leading demographic of college graduates
Discover more about Facebook demographics
Checklist
- Ensure more than one full-time faculty/staff member are page admins
- Be consistent with the brand’s color palette, messaging and imagery
- Set up a custom URL: facebook.com/yourname
- Treat your Facebook “about” section like your business card
- Know that anyone can publish and add images to the page
- Leave photo tagging on to encourage engagement
- Tag your followers and other pages when applicable to boost visibility in news feeds
- Determine standards for acceptable behavior before an incident
- Unless negative content violates those standards, don’t delete it
- If negative content does violate those standards, take a screenshot before deleting
it
