The discussion about Facebook (FB) and AEGEE’s representation there is an ever returning topic. The AEGEEan Editor Patricia Anthony has been studying web communication design few months ago and made a project on AEGEE. A project with the result that the way that AEGEE is organised in the Internet is very chaotic, as Jüri Kirpu mentions in the interview about the Communication Guidelines. So to continue the research Patricia chose to contact Miguel Gallardo who is the new Projects Director and who has been posting information about how Facebook is planning to delete invalid Facebook profiles, such as profile pages of antennae which many AEGEE antennae, unfortunately, still have.
People argue that they are not interested in changing their antenna from a profile on Facebook to a page because of the fear that they might lose their followers on Facebook as some antennae already have 1000-2000 friends or more linked to their Facebook antenna profile. This makes it harder for such people as Miguel to convince others to make the change anyway, but fortunately he is not the only one from the new Comite Directeur (CD) interested in this topic, and he explained together with fellow new CD member Pavel Zbornik (European Institutions and Communications Director) why change of the AEGEE representation on Facebook would be good.
Why should people not worry about going from a profile to having a page for local?
They should not worry, as they can easily convert Profile to Page without losing any friend, AEGEE-Bamberg can be an example of that. And in case they already have a page and a profile, they can convert the profile into page and then merge this page with the second page (however this is only possible when merging a smaller one into a bigger page).
Why should antennae make Facebook pages instead of profiles for their local?
Example of which statistics can be seen when administrating your own Facebook page
One reason could be because of Facebook rules, but we all know how well we follow rules in AEGEE. We can try to motivate antennae signaling the risk of losing valuable contacts and information in case their website is closed (without prior notice). But the main reason should be the added value of having a Page instead of Profile. With a Page the members can more easily subscribe to it and there is no need to wait for approval to start receiving information. As the owner of the page you can get deep insight about your fans: where do they come from, their age, how they found your page. You can see how many people see your post, and the cruel reality on Facebook is that thanks to EdgeRank algorithm in general no more than 10-30% of your fans or friends (in case of person Profile) see your post. With a page you can get relevant information to be able to increase the reach of your Facebook updates.
It is not so long time ago that AEGEE-Alicante changed their Facebook strategy and started a new page. Why did your antenna take that decision?
Well, our board and active members discussed if a FB group was the best option to channel all the communication with our members and stakeholders. We also discussed this topic with one of our members who had done a Master in Social Media and Communication, and her contribution was very helpful. What we finally decided is to keep the FB group for communication with our members and potential members (young people interested in AEGEE or in our activities) and we installed the FB page for externals, like the Youth Council of Alicante, local governments, press, companies (and whoever else is interested) … So this is the Facebook URL that we promote on our website and in emails.
Pages can be linked to other pages. For example, The AEGEEan “likes” close to all AEGEE pages out there on Facebook, but a Facebook page cannot “like” a Facebook profile. Actually, the Facebook profile seems to be the first domino brick in the game who fell and made other antennae create a Facebook profile for their local, which went on and on and has created a big mess. It is against the rules of Facebook, which many people might not care about because it has not been deleted yet so why would Facebook employees bother deleting it?
Example of Facebook pages related to AEGEE already "liked" by The AEGEEan
However, antennae should care about the fact that you can do a greater PR on a Facebook page than on a profile because the page is there to follow a company, organisation, or some famous star; get news, post on the wall etc. In fact the most options that are available with the Facebook profile are also there on the page, and it grants a much bigger opportunity to reach externals for cases such as FR and finding new members. Let’s face it, if you did not know about AEGEE then you would probably not befriend such an antenna on Facebook, meaning that the profile has a very limited audience in comparison with the Facebook page. AEGEE-Bamberg did, AEGEE-Alicante did it, and AEGEE-København has done it recently as well. Miguel, Pavel, and The AEGEEan members hope that your antenna will follow these steps towards having a more structured presence of AEGEE online in the nearest future.
Written by Patricia Anthony, AEGEE-København