In the process of creating and launching the Coop Kids Facebook page, there were a lot of questions about how to let people know about events that were happening.

In the process of creating an event on a Facebook page, you’ll be asked whether you want to publish the event to your wall. When you publish it to the wall, it appears on the Page’s wall, and your fans will see it in their news feeds – ie their “home page” feeds, and it will come from the page itself – not from your personal profile.

The third and final step when creating an event is to “Invite Friends”

Administrators suddenly find that, although everything else they do on the page publishes in the name of the page (not their personal profiles), this prompt brings up their personal friends, and the invitation goes out from their personal profiles. It’s confusing, and I’m not sure why the last step isn’t “Update Fans,” which would appear in fans’ “Updates” queue.

It’s not quite logical, and it may well change – as so many things do with the Facebook interface.

In the meantime, what should administrators do?

Invite your friends – but with caution.

When people connect with you personally on Facebook, they’re probably not signing up to receive all your work- and cause-related marketing. Don’t send these kinds of invitations indiscriminantly to all of your friends. And don’t use this as a way to show your colleagues/business prospects/other clients what you’re doing. That’s what LinkedIn is for.

Invite only people who will be interested in the event itself.

Update Fans

You can send an update to all fans of the page by going to the Events tab, clicking on the name of the event, and then clicking “Update Fans” in the menu under the event image.

This update won’t appear in your fans’ Messages (like a personal invitation from your profile will), but it will appear in their Updates tab, which is in the Messages submenu.

It’s important to go beyond just creating the event and update the page fans and invite friends (responsibly), because otherwise fans will miss the initial publication of the event, unless they take the time to go to the page itself and look up the events.

It’s also alright to send more than one update to fans about an event. Send one when the event is created, and then send more as the event draws closer. Just be sure that the updates aren’t spammy. Give more information about the event. Provide links about performers or pertinent subject matter.

Like all social marketing, it will work best if you keep it relevant, expected and interactive.

I stumbled across this excellent presentation on the difference between using social media tools and developing a social media strategy.

Too often, people in business and non-profits jump into the tools because someone on their board said they should be on FacebookTwitterYouTubeFlickr. Or someone read int he New York Times that social media is the way to go.

Anyone can integrate the tools, but without a clear strategy – including goals and measures of success – most of those folks end up using these mew media to do the same old (ineffective or downright annoying) push marketing. That’s the worst thing you can do in this space.

Milling about before a day full of presentations and workshops on technology and museums, John and I told our hosts about the weekend of museum hopping we had already accomplished. See, the presentation was Monday at Wellesley, just about 15 minutes from my brother and sister-in-law’s house. We had decided t make a full weekend of it, driving over Friday and taking in Boston on Saturday and Sunday.

The workshop organizer smiled and said, “So you’re the kind of people who go to museums in your time off, too.”

Yes. Yes we are.

Maybe it’s because our professional lives didn’t begin in museums. Or maybe it’s because we are thieves and plagiarists at heart, always looking for someone who is doing something really cool that we can steal, erm, adapt. But we do go to museums everywhere we travel. And this weekend in Boston was no exception.

On Saturday, we visited the Paul Revere House in Boston’s North End. It was a perfect day. Sunny, but not too hot. The traffic wasn’t unbearable. We parked and walked a couple blocks to the Revere House, stopping momentarily across the street to admire it. It’s much smaller than I would have imagined, although I’m not sure why my imagination would have veered toward something larger. Perhaps it was that, somewhere in my history student past, I remember hearing something about Revere’s children numbering in the double digits.

My 3-year-old daughter cavalierly tried to cross the street alone, and could not understand why we pulled her back.

“What? It’s not a street. It’s just bricks.”

We toured the house in the typical fashion of a family with children who are at varying stages of attentiveness and ability to grasp content. Posey, our 3-year-old, was most impressed by the opportunity to stand completely inside the large (reproduction) fireplace in the dining room. Meanwhile, Bee, who is 6, was more impressed by the objects in the museum: a rocking bassinet in the kitchen, the fake food in the dining room the furniture in the upstairs bedrooms, the fact that there was no bathroom in the house.

For Posey, she was more engaged by the game of make-believe she played in the brick courtyard than by the museum itself. She is 3. Historical perspective isn’t yet her thing.

But for Bee, I wanted to make it more meaningful than just a zip through an old house with no bathroom. We talked about domestic things. Cooking over an open hearth, living without electricity, the logistics of many people sleeping in what amounts to a 2-bedroom/0-bath colonial.

Once we were back in the car, I tried to brooch the subject of Paul Revere’s role in American history, but quickly found that it is difficult to explain Paul Revere without first explaining colonialism, imperialism and revolution. Add in the further complications that my daughters are Chinese immigrants, and therefore not – as I was when I was a very young American history student – looking at history through a lens of white privilege and a Eurocentric sense of manifest destiny. (Not that I was doing that on purpose, mind you.)

So I went with the fairness explanation, something that inspires great passion from sisters who are close in age. 

“For a long time, the English people in this part of the world had a leader who didn’t treat them fairly. So they decided that he wasn’t a good leader. They figured they could lead themselves more fairly, so that’s what they did. And the man who lived in this house was one of the ordinary people who helped to start that new country.”

To be honest, she wasn’t all that impressed, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s just a matter of time before she decides to make her own declaration of independence from the tyranny of her little sister. I better hide the tea.

It struck me

I do love this TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson, who contends that school systems “educate” creativity out of children. It’s the funniest presentation on education I have ever seen, and I’ve seen some funny ones. Enjoy:

In 2004, I was living in Pensacola, Florida, when Hurricane Ivan struck and swept extensive damage through the city. The storm cut off vital transportation routes, left the entire community without electricity and showed all of us just how fragile our homes were. It also showed us how strong our community was.

As Red Cross food & water distribution station cropped up all over town, people opened their doors to neighbors and shared whatever excess they had.

Frances Moore Lappe is an inspiration to many people who are passionate about issues of food security, sustainable farming and organic food production.

If you’re not familiar with the work that she and her daughter Anna Lappe do, you should visit their site immediately. Visit, learn and contribute.

One of the first things you’ll learn about this world in which children still starve to death is that (this is important) there is more than enough. There is more than enough food to go around. No one needs to be hungry. And certainly, no one needs to starve.

A friend emailed me today because she is exploring Twitter and how her museum might use it to connect with fans. She wanted to know my thoughts on using a real person’s name versus an organizational name. In other words, should individuals employed by the museum post to Twitter under their own names or under the organization’s name.

There are pros and cons no matter how to do it. <!–more–>

Twitter is the very essence of social media, and the primary thing about social media is that it’s social. People don’t socialize with brands. They may use brands in order to further their social status, but they don’t socialize with them. It’s the difference between getting email blasts from Microsoft and getting handwritten notes from Bill Gates.

A lot of organizations are on Twitter under their organization’s name. Not coincidentally, many of them seem to Twitter fairly institutional type content. They post about upcoming events, big news and all your basic press release type material.

It makes sense – how much more personality can an institution or a brand have? It can’t make friends, start or join conversations or express any kind of opinion on anything but the most narrow subject matter. I mean, sure, some brands have plenty of “personality,” but I wouldn’t follow @hottopic or @anthropologie or @windex or @sevethgeneration (all names made up – no idea if they’re really Twittering) in an effort to connect to real-live people. In fact, I would only follow if I were already sold on the brand.

There’s a logic in doing that, though, because only your biggest fans will follow you. It doesn’t matter how many there are. If they’re following you and you give them something valuable, they’ll spread your message.The big catch here is that you have to already have some fans who will be happy to connect with you. Probably easier for brands like Seventh Generation or Anthropologie than brands like Windex or Kentucky Fried Chicken. This is where you have to know your audience’s technographics.

(Ironically, nearly all individual politicians on Twitter fall into the category of Twittering as a brand. @algore is a brand in most people’s minds, not a human being. Fodder for another post)

Then there are people who are on Twitter with their own personal brand first and foremost, with their company connection secondary. We all know that @ev and @bizstone are the Twitter founders.

Then there is the middle road, where your Twitter name is both human and corporate. @richardatdell is a famous example.

So what’s the best way to go?

As with all other social media tools, I think it totally depends on how you plan to use it. What’s your goal? What will = success? Start there, and work backwards.

Want to be more human and accessible? Maybe @name_at_yourbrand works best. Already have a good fan base that you want to empower, @yourbrand could work well.

Do you trust the people who work for you to build your brand with the skills they already have? Let them use their real names.

You can probably answer a lot of these questions for yourself by hanging out on Twitter, perusing posts via search.twitter.com and getting familiar with the etiquette and mores of the medium.

What’s your experience? What works for you? What engages you or turns you off? What would make you click that Follow button?

PS – If you are on Twitter, go on over and follow @KasjaSabatke, who has gone with her real name.

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