What is Facebook?

Facebook is the largest social network in the world with more than 500 million users. People use Facebook to catch up with friends and colleagues, share news, information, photos, video, and more with people and organizations.

Why should I use Facebook?

Facebook offers an ideal opportunity to showcase your CSU department or program and build recognition, while encouraging participation and networking. CSU encourages the use of Facebook to connect with prospective and current students, staff, faculty, alumni, and friends of the University.

For many CSU organizations and departments, a Facebook page is the flagship of their social media presence. Facebook provides the platform to send information, receive feedback and encourage interaction among your fans.

How do I use Facebook?

Begin by setting up your organization's account on Facebook here.

Create an "official" page for your CSU organization. Including "Colorado State University" in the title will make it easier for users to find your page.

Facebook has Pages and Groups. Know which one will work for you.

Pages are accessible by the general public – they are searchable and can be seen by anyone even if they are not registered or logged into Facebook. Pages allow for applications and the opportunity to supply more in-depth information. Pages are intended for organizations, departments, and businesses to connect with users who like them.

If your goal is to create a small community on Facebook, consider creating a Group. Groups can be created by anyone and about any topic, as a forum for people to share their opinions and interest in that subject. Groups can be kept closed or secret, whereas Pages are intended to help an entity communicate publicly. Notifications to those in your Group will appear in their Facebook Inbox like an e-mail. If personal communication is your goal, forming a Group is a better option.

Confirm that you are the official representative for your organization and review Facebook's Terms and Conditions.

By using Facebook, you are agreeing to Facebook's terms and conditions:

You must:

• Obtain consent if you collect any information from users, making it clear that you (and not Facebook) are collecting the information, and post a privacy policy that will be strictly followed.
• Keep your contact information accurate and up-to-date. Do not include personal contact information on your CSU-recognized account unless it is appropriate to the purpose of your CSU organization, and in that case, keep it to a minimum.

You must not:

• Provide any false personal information or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.
• Create more than one personal profile.
• Create another account without permission if Facebook disables your account.
• Use your CSU-recognized profile for your own commercial gain or for communications or activities that are purely personal in nature.
• Share your password or do anything to jeopardize the security of your account.
• Transfer your account without getting written permission from Facebook. Administrators of CSU-recognized accounts may be changed from time to time - please notify the CSU Social Media Policy Staff.
• Post content or take action that infringes or violates someone else's rights.
• Post or knowingly permit the posting of content or any other use of your CSU-recognized account to cause harm, embarrassment, defamation, insult, or injury to any person or entity. This does not prohibit frank discussions, criticism, or opinion. The following content and online activity is strictly prohibited: lewd or indecent conduct, threat of physical harm, stalking, forgery, intentional disruption of university activities, advocating or causing the damage or destruction of university property, illegal discrimination, harassment (including sexual harassment), or any intentionally malicious, defamatory, degrading, or hateful material.
• Post content or take action that violates the law.
• Post identification documents or sensitive or confidential financial, medical, educational, or other personal information of any person without that person’s express, prior consent.
• Tag users or send e-mail invitations to non-users without their consent.

Start posting!

Respond to wall posts. Even the negative ones should be acknowledged.

Keep it real. Be conversational, informal, and always remember to be respectful of others.

Encourage involvement and interaction among fans. Facebook is designed to maximize involvement among users for an open line of communication. Use it to your advantage to collect feedback and provide users with a richer online experience with your organization.

Value-driven updates. Updates at least three times per week are recommended, but make sure each update contains valuable information your fans can use. Meaningless updates can drive your followers to not pay attention to your page, or even worse, remove your page from their news feed.

Monitor your page frequently. It is critical to monitor your page daily so that you can keep up with the conversation and activity (and spam) on your page.

Use Facebook's applications to make your page more dynamic. Add photos, videos, discussion boards, RSS feeds, etc.

Promote your page. Ask the members of your organization to follow your page and network with other organizations on Facebook by "Liking" their page or adding them to your page's favorites.

Use @. In a status update, type the “@” symbol followed directly (no space) by the name of another Facebook page you want to tag. For example, a status update from Colorado State University might say, "Congrats to @ColoradoStateUniversityVolleyball for the big win!" The CSU status update will show up on the Colorado State University Volleyball wall by simply using that tagging technique.

Additional resources

25 tips and tricks for using Facebook's many features. Read how to cross-post photos from Flickr, update your status remotely, schedule future messages to be sent, optimize search results and much more.

Check out Facebook's Help Center for everything you ever want to know about Facebook.