Accidentally building an audience on Facebook

It's almost exactly three years since I set up the University's Facebook Page, as part of the landgrab when 'Pages' were first introduced. Since then we've done very little with the page other than keeping it ticking over. I've kept a slow trickle of updates flowing into our stream, usually press releases or public lecture listings, but very little else.

Given the lack of effort expended, it's been to a bit of a surprise to realise of late that our Facebook Page has become rather popular. We're approaching 6000 'likes'. We've almost trebled our number of 'likes' in 12 months, with a big spike when A-level results came out but continuing to grow at 50 - 80 new ones per week (see images below). This is especially impressive given that we've never posted a link on the homepage or main student pages of the website.





Our levels of interaction are relatively low; we get tiny numbers of 'likes' or comments on most posts and almost no questions on our wall, though we do very little to encourage any. But last night when I posted an update about our presence on University Challenge we picked up half a dozen comments and 45+ 'likes' within the hour. We also know that we get a small spike in traffic to stories on the website or videos on YouTube when we post them on Facebook. In short, it's clear that there's an audience out there and that it's comprised of people who, having sought us out, are interested in what we have to say (especially when we say something interesting!)

The ambition of Facebook's expansion - the changes to Messages announced yesterday, the Foursquare-style checkins, the open graph Facebook-isation of the whole Web and persistent rumours about ventures into search and mobile - mean users may well soon be spending even more time in Facebook. For the forseeable future we'll be continuing with our light touch approach, but as Facebook grows and our audience on Facebook grows too, we may find that we've accidentally grown a valuable communications channel deserving of much more attention.

Related info: For anyone wondering if their department or office should be on Facebook (or Twitter, or LinkedIn etc.), we're producing some guidelines to help you decide and to help you do it well if you do take the plunge. These aren't quite ready yet, but they're coming (better late than never!) In the meantime, feel free to contact us for individual help and advice.