Week 6: To Like, or Not to Like...Is that a Question?

With my business being a single department in a much larger organization, I was very lucky, in that I had 15 Facebook pages within my organization that I was able to like. However, considering this to be an easy out, without doing much for my page, I began to consider the possibilities and recommendations from the lecture and book readings. I specifically used, and built on the 3 keys found in the "Liking Other Pages" guidelines found in the lecture.

First, I imagined locations that our customers(students) would hang out. Using the Lululemon example, I thought of study spots and came up with a few local places. These included Vinaka Cafe, The Yellow Deli(open 24 hours), and the Carlsbad City Library. I had some trepidation in adding the Yellow Deli given that they are run by what some consider to be a cult, while we are a public institution. Since liking does not mean that we are endorsing any particular group or belief system, but rather liking a convenient and popular place to study, I decided to go for it. 

These likes also gave me a post idea to that I plan to employ once we increase our fan base, which would be to ask our fans to post their favorite place to study. This would give us opportunity to engage our fans, as well as find more pages to like and possibly grow our business.

The second guideline was to follow pages that share content that our followers would like or find useful. The first batch that I could think of were our local universities, since a large population of students at the college plan to transfer. I added CSUSM, UCSD, SDSU, USD, CSULB, and UCLA. So far, I have have seen a number of posts that I can link to or share when I am experiencing a "blank moment". One school even posted classic pictures with the hashtag "throwbackthursdays", something that we could easily do as well. As students are considering which colleges to apply to, this would familiarize them with the different local options and serve as a reminder to utilize the services offered by our department. 

Following this, I thought of pages that would offer content appealing not only to our students, but anybody with a thirst for learning, expanding knowledge, and maximizing one's potential. While I found a number of pages which fit this category, I wasn't confident that many were appropriate for our page and I settled on the TED(Technology, Entertainment, and Design) page, as well as Radiolab page, a popular documentary podcast which dissects and presents various topics through research, interviews, and anecdotes. In the span of one day, I have already found numerous posts which I find interesting and relevant to individuals within our higher learning institution.

Lastly, as previously mentioned, I wanted to show support to our colleagues. I remembered that our school had a social media directory and I simply went down the list liking each page. Taking this a bit further, I did a quick scroll down each page to see which pages were most current and if any offered information that our page could share as well. I found a few that met this criteria, and plan to check these frequently in an attempt to offer our fans better content, establish a good social media relationship, and recruit new fans. For example, the library might post about upcoming workshops aimed at supporting student success. Being that supporting student success is my department's mission, our page should engage and further promote such workshops. Adding to this idea, I plan to further engage our fans by asking what types of workshops or resources would best assist their academic studies.

The benefit to actively liking an engaging other pages is a no-brainer. This is a critical tool in building a fan base and fostering relationships as long as the page manager is willing and able to go beyond a simply clicking like.