You are on page 1of 11

Pages Manual

Facebook Pages for


Journalists
1. The Basics
For an in-depth look at how to build a Page, visit our Pages Manual: https://facebook-
inc.box.net/shared/9e5jiyl843

Step One: Create a Page: (http://on.fb.me/ehlbBj)


A Page gives you a way to maintain a professional presence on Facebook while keeping your personal
profile separate. It creates new opportunities for easy connections to a broad group of people. If you
have a profile, you can set up your public Page, today and get started with:

 Listening and broadcast tools: Tap into a two –way connection to your readers
 Frictionless connections: An easy way for readers to connect to you without having to approve
each one
 Social SEO: Your Page will appear in search results when readers search for you
 Wide audience: While the maximum number of friends for a profile is 5,000, you can have a
unlimited amount of connections on your Page
 Social distribution: Post your articles that direct back to your site and make it easy for them to be
shared with readers and their friends

We recommend setting up a Page for yourself, as well as for your organization.

With your own Page, you can share observations from the field, find sources within your own community,
and solicit feedback from your readers.

Example: The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof’s Page: http://www.facebook.com/kristof

With a Page for your organization, your team can have an additional channel to share articles and gain
insights into readers.

Facebook
Example: San Jose Mercury News Page: http://www.facebook.com/mercurynews

2. Reporting and Crowdsourcing


Your Facebook Page can serve as another news channel, where you can share observations from the
field, notes on your reporting process, and articles. Use your Page to solicit commentary, opinions, public
opinion and content from your readers.

The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof reported from his Facebook while on the ground in Cairo.

Facebook
Another example is the NPR Page (http://www.facebook.com/NPR), which regularly gets great responses
from readers. In fact, out of the 140 to 150 sourcing questions asked so far, only two or three have had
no result (http://bit.ly/fuoucb).

More from NPR:


- After the Haiti earthquake, NPR posted a status asking if readers had family members in Haiti,
and it generated enough source leads for several days’ worth of coverage.
- In July, NPR asked people for thoughts on cancelling cable TV subscriptions and they received
more than 4,000 replies (http://bit.ly/fo6G9z).

Additional opportunities for crowdsourcing:


- Search he Facebook stream for sentiment on issues from local government to international
disasters. Simply filter results by “everyone”. (http://www.facebook.com/search.php)
- Visit Facebook Stories for user-submitted experiences that can be sorted by theme and location.
(http://stories.facebook.com/)

Themed Pages
Extend your brand or a special feature through themed Pages. For example, The New York Times started
a Civil War Page for war buffs that follows their Disunion series, where they share contemporary
accounts, diaries, images and historical analysis of the Civil War as it unfolded. More than 14,000 people
have liked the Page. (http://www.facebook.com/nytimescivilwar)

Facebook
The Wall Street Journal also extended the narrative from a story to a Facebook Page with its coverage of
Haitian-American Marc Henry Bigot’s journey to Haiti to find his wife and two-year old daughter after the
earthquake. (http://www.facebook.com/intoportauprince)

3. Engaging with Readers


Once your Page is set up, it’s important to keep the momentum going and your audience engaged. Be
sure to interact with your readers by responding to a portion of comments on your Page and update the
Page frequently.

After surveying the top 100 media sites on Facebook, we found the following best practices
(http://on.fb.me/fmrGaJ).

Facebook
 Stories involving emotional topics, passionate debates, and important sports events have 2-3x
the activity of other stories
 Status updates that ask simple questions have 2-3x the activity
 Stories published in the early morning or just before bedtime have higher engagement

The Wall Street Journal poses a thought-provoking question to its readers and garnered nearly
400 interactions in less than 12 hours. (http://www.facebook.com/wsjonline)

With a direct channel to your readers, ask them questions and for feedback on what kind of content
they’d like to see on your Page:

Sports Illustrated’s Peter King engages with readers on Facebook


(http://www.facebook.com/SIPeterKing)

4. Growing your Facebook audience


Few things are more valuable than an engaged audience, but it takes some work to get there. Promote
your Page organically to the most relevant people through cross-promotion, featured Pages and the Like
Box.

Cross-promotion

Facebook
If you or your organization have multiple Pages, cross-post content to entice people to like both Pages. Be
sure to tag the other Page so it’s easy for people to like it.

The New York Times (http://www.facebook.com/nytimes) cross-promotes its Civil War Page.

Feature Pages
You can also like Pages from your Page. For example, The Wall Street Journal features its other Pages to
highlight other WSJ-related Pages. (http://www.facebook.com/wsjonline)

Like Box
Grow your Facebook audience by making it easy for people to like your Facebook Page without leaving
your website. Add a Like Box (http://bit.ly/dXH2Uy) to your website with just a few lines of code and
make it easy for visitors to see how many people have liked the Page and which of their friends have
7

Facebook
already connected. You can also customize the social plugin to include recent posts from your Page in a
window on your website.

More information on promoting your Page can be found in our Help Center (http://on.fb.me/grrABV).

5. Insights
Gain insights into the most popular content and see what isn’t performing as well through the Insights
dashboard (www.facebook.com/insights). With Facebook Insights, you can monitor key performance
indicators, view customer demographics and interactions, test product changes, and optimize key drivers
of growth. For example, you can view how active people are on your Page and receive feedback on your
posts. These analytics can be accessed through our online dashboards as well as programmatically
through our API (http://bit.ly/eoRZMX).

Additionally, post quality ratings can be found at the bottom of your posts on the Page and show the
quality of your posts in driving interaction from users. Page Admins can also export most of these insights
to an Excel or CSV file. 3           

Facebook
6. Best Practices
Navigate Facebook as your Page

In addition to commenting on your own Page’s wall as your Page, you can now post to and comment on
the Walls of other Pages using your Page.

How to do it:
1. The “Your Settings” section of the Edit Page View allows you to set defaults for how you post to
your Page - as yourself or your Page - and set-up email notifications.
2. Click “View all email settings for your pages” to enable other Page notifications.
3. Select “Use Facebook as Page” in the Account Menu in the top-right corner to
navigate and interact with other areas of Facebook as your Page.

Facebook
4. When you use Facebook as your Page, you will receive notifications in the top-left corner when
people Like or interact with your Page.

Feature Admins on your Page


Humanize your organization’s Facebook Page by featuring admins on the Page and highlight the people
responsible for sharing content. To feature a Page Owner, click “Edit Page” and select the Admin in the
“Featured” section.

Customize posts
You can post status updates, photos and links to specific audiences based on location and language. Just
click “customize” from the Publisher.

Link your Page with your Mobile device


Add the Page’s unique email address to your mobile device to send mobile photos straight to your Page
Wall. You can also add your Mobile device to your Page for Status Updates by texting “f” to 32665

10

Facebook
(FBOOK). After the Page is linked with your mobile number, send a text to 32665 (FBOOK) to post an
Update to your Wall.
***

Connect with the Facebook Media Partnerships team on the Facebook + Media Page
(http://www.facebook.com/media).

Learn more about Facebook Pages here (http://bit.ly/ik7mhE).

Find answers to your Pages questions in the Facebook Help Center (http://www.facebook.com/help/?
page=175).

11

Facebook

You might also like