Facebook tips

Today's post is on the subject of social media. There's a good number of courses you can go on to learn everything you need to know about social media and more, but a lot of them do cost a fair bit of money and that's something most people don't have at the moment. So, I thought I'd put together a quick how-to on using facebook and twitter for your venue.

First up is facebook.

Creating your page

There are various different sort of pages and groups and so on that facebook has or might have for your venue. Community pages, groups and a 'page' are the main three; most people will want to have a 'page' because it's best tailored of the three to the sort of thing most venues will want to do with facebook. To create a page for your venue, you'll need to go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Once you're there, just follow the prompts and enter the information as requested. It's fairly self explanatory. You can have as many page admins as you want. When any admins are on the page, anything they post will come up as being posted by the venue. This applies to photos, links, page status updates and 'likes'.

Creating events

Your venue can advertise 'events' on facebook which it can invite its followers/fans to.

To create an event, click on the events link. You'll find it on the left hand side of the page, under the venue picture, above the 'about your venue' information. The button to create an event is on the far right of the page. From there, just fill in all the information you can about the event; where, when, a picture and so on. You can also select guests to send an invitation to if you want, though you don't have to.

Once your event is live, you can edit the information at any time, as can any other page admins for your venue.

What is a check-in?

Your venue page will say on the left hand side how many check-ins your venue has. A check-in is when a person has tagged themselves in a post at your venue. Keeping tabs on how many people have checked in at your venue will tell you how many people who use facebook a lot are visiting your venue. Geo-location activity, such as checking into a venue, is getting more popular all the time, so it's something worth keeping an eye on in the future.

Sharing photos and collecting photos

A venue can share its official photographs through its venue page. To do this, click on the photos link on the left hand side of your venue page. There, you'll have the option to create new albums and to add new photos to existing albums. Give your albums names that are very descriptive; if it's clear what's in them, people are more likely to browse through them.

Your fans can share their photos of your venue via your venue page too. Whenever they post a picture to your page wall, it'll get collected into the 'photos of your venue' section which you see under your own albums on the photo page.


I hope that was useful! It doesn't include everything that you can do on a facebook page by any means, but it's a good start. If anyone wants hints and tips on anything else by all means ask and I'll be happy to do what I can in a follow-up post.

I'll be looking at twitter in another post.

If you've got questions I didn't answer do comment or drop me a line through twitter @Sarah_Fellows or by email to fellows.sarah.m@gmail.com.