This week we are featuring guest blogger Tracy Pound! Tracy is the Program Coordinator at MVCALS (Mountain View Communities Adult Learning)
We’ve all heard the advice about privacy settings and cautions around your digital footprint. It’s commonplace that employers and HR departments can creep you at their leisure and glean a sense of who you are, the opinions you hold, even *gulp* get a voyeuristic peek into your life (including party pics in which you’ve been tagged).
Consider for a moment what might happen if your personal Facebook gets hijacked in the name of your non-profit. Would it be a desirable brand extension?
Most non-profits lack huge advertising budgets - if any - but if you’re a CALP, you already know this; But we are indeed a resourceful bunch. To serve our communities, we want to offer programs that improve literacy and inspire learning, but all our hard work requires promotion. So where does a Program Coordinator turn, to get word out on program offerings for FREE?
Why Facebook, of course!
Where are the people in your community talking and gathering on Facebook?
Why Facebook groups, of course!
And here is the rub: to join a Facebook group, you must use a personal Facebook account. Business pages cannot request to join groups. When you are set up to manage your CALP’s Facebook page, you are given various permissions but your personal account is linked as a Facebook Page Manager.
And you know what that means: a blurred line between the personal and professional.
Whether this is a complimentary or conflicting extension of you, ponder this: posts of your kids, your past times and ad nauseum vaca photos, a crazy cat meme obsession, the moments you forgot your mantra to ‘Just Be Nice’, every opinion voiced by comment - political or otherwise. All of it, everything that is YOU, becomes inextricably linked back to your CALP.
Admittedly, Facebook has never been my poison. After a brief 3 month presence in 2005, I chose to steer clear of the Book-o-Face drama and the frenzied ‘friending’ requests from long lost high school classmates.
Then in in 2013, I enrolled in a university program which forced me to create a ghost profile to access the class notes. Following my Facebook reunion, I did little more than ‘like’ distant friends’ kids photos, share recipes, timewasting surveys, and the occasional- usually tasteful- joke. Today, I am so thankful that very little of me lives in this social space.
Then I saw this:
(captured from https://www.facebook.com/EJPaulaSimons/?fref=nf, January 27th, 2016)
Clearly, this is a problem for many professionals and it’s not just regarding Facebook group posts.
How do you maintain the distinction between your CALP and your private Facebook account?
Any tips to trick the system? Please share.
PS - If you are looking for how to get Facebook setup for your non-profit, here is a handy link: https://nonprofits.fb.com/
Tracy Pound
Program Coordinator, MVCALS
If you've got a great idea for a blog post, we'd love to hear from you! Please email Odette at news@calp.ca if you would like to be a featured guest blogger.