We had several options as to what to choose for our fourth event and we opted for one that required a little more work. As a group we decided we would maintain for 35 days a Facebook page for F.A.B. This page would be a place where we could demonstrate statistics about human trafficking, as well as, tips for the public as to how they could become more aware on the subject matter. Once the page was up, each of us invited Facebook friends to the public page to "like" it. In addition to our friends, I invited other local organizations and tagged them in posts as well.
Like mentioned previously this was not an easy task. Although it seems straightforward to just do posts for 35 days, what is often not understood is that when it comes to social media you have to be strategic. By strategic I mean having short concise posts that grab the users' attention, not have redundant posts (this can especially happen with different sites that offer similar statistics), and you need to provide some type of solution (some positivity to the negativity).
Within our first week we were able to reach just over 100 likes; however, this doesn't mean that each of those people actually followed the posts. A problem we encountered that inhibited us from reaching our followers was not using the option to pay to boost our posts. Since it is an organization page, Facebook gives you the option for your page to appear as a suggested page to users at a cost of $5 per day. These $5 dollars are the maximum you can spend on your promotion each day until you decide to stop the ad. Without this option, unless followers clicked into our page they wouldn't see new posts. A way we found around this was to post on our own private page and link it back to the group's page. Doing so allowed to reach personal friends and through this I came to understood the impact that our page did have on a few people. Within the first week of managing the page I had a close friend admit that she was human trafficked for about 6 months and was appreciative of any work that brings awareness on the issue. It was then that I realized that any little thing you do, can have an impact in people's lives.
Overall, if I were to do this again, I would recommend myself to start this as the first assignment because then you can add the page's link to any flyers passed out in future events. I would also recommend to collaborate with another local organization in order for users to have an actual place to go to where they could help or get help. As the coordinator, I created the page along with the logo and cover page. I was in charge of splitting the days among our group members so we would each have 7 days to post and also helping post for anyone who didn't have a Facebook. In the end I helped to monitor the page for the entire 35 days.
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