What District 5950 (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA) learned from from a year of Facebook outreach

After a year of experimenting with Facebook outreach, District 5950 (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA) wanted to share some of the key learnings from our 2012-13 Public Image Grant. If you’ve ever wondered how to use Facebook to grow your clubs, here are 9 things you should know!

1. Manage Facebook on the district level if possible, not the club level—it’s a lot less work for everyone!

2. Dedicate an advertising budget so that you can reach out to people who are not yet connected to Rotary.

3. Write a month’s worth of Facebook posts at a time, and schedule them to post automatically at the right date and time.

4. Long, heartfelt descriptions of Rotary projects got the greatest response—by a long shot!

5. Always include a picture.

6. Include a call to action. We found that we started getting inquiries when we ended each post with, “If you’d like to know more about being part of projects like this, leave a comment or send us a message!”

7. Have two or three people administer the Facebook page so that someone is always available to delete impolite comments.

8. Prepare in advance information to share with inquirers. Write some informational messages about Rotary which you can copy and paste, and put together a district directory with a short list of current or past projects in each club.

9. On the technical side, here is a 3-minute video showing the best way to set up the advertising: http://youtu.be/mpq1-NJTn3A

For anyone who wants to know more, I’ve written a blog post with details and instructions: http://houseandhoffman.com/facebook-for-rotary. You’re more than welcome to reach out with questions; we’re happy to help others build on what we’ve learned!

Yours in Service,
Erin Hoffman Wagner
Minneapolis South Rotary Club