Find friends for your charity with Facebook

Facebook is a social networking site that allows people to stay in touch with friends and share photos, links and videos. In 2010, Facebook had over 23 million active users in the UK. It is particularly popular among 18 to 34 year olds, making the site a great way of marketing to this age group.

The first step is to create a Facebook page about your charity or social enterprise. Facebook pages need to be created by individual members of the site, so an employee or volunteer will need to join the website as an individual to create the page.

The other option within Facebook is to create a group for your organisation. Groups are best suited to community organisations or campaign groups that are organised on a personal level. There are various differences between Facebook pages and groups, but one important difference is that posts by a group administrator are linked to your personal account, while posts by a page administrator are linked to the organisation.

To help people find your page, create the page under the "Non-Profit" category. Once you have created your page, create a username so people can easily find the page. For an example of a Facebook charity page, visit The Horse Trust's Facebook page, which was created and is regularly updated by Acorn PR.

Once you have created a page about your charity or social enterprise, you will need to promote it. Ask friends and supporters to become fans of the page and post information about the Facebook page on your website and marketing materials. You should regularly update your Facebook page by posting news stories, photos, videos and information about upcoming events.