What is your charities name and Mission?
We are Diabetes UK, the largest organisation in the UK working for people with diabetes, funding research, campaigning and helping people live with the condition.
Our mission is to improve the lives of people with diabetes and work towards a future without diabetes.
Why do you use Facebook and which services do you use?
Being an incredibly popular site, it just made sense to establish ourselves on Facebook. We started off with a Diabetes UK group a few years ago, but most of our activity is now on a Diabetes UK fan page, where we have about 9,000 fans.
Having a Diabetes UK fanpage encourages dialogue between fellow supporters and we’ve seen a real community emerge from this.
We also post events such as fundraising activities, upload our latest videos and use the notes feature and wall to keep supporters up to date on our activities – and value the many “likes” and comments (positive or negative) that are left.
We’ve recently created a page for our young supporters, as this age group has different interests and activities so we wanted our Facebook activities to reflect this http://www.facebook.com/
We’ve also worked with other teams/offices in the organisation to help them get set up on Facebook. There are currently groups for Diabetes UK Scotland, Diabetes UK Wales and Balance Magazine. These can be found through the search function on Facebook.
Have Facebook supporters done something wonderful for you?
We recently launched a Facebook status donation campaign to raise awareness about our new Get Serious campaign underlining the seriousness of diabetes.
Due to the incredible take-up from our supporters, we were able to broadcast our messages to over 150,000 people on Facebook.
Do you consider Facebook an important part of your work online?
Absolutely. Our Facebook page is incredibly active and our fans help us spread the word about campaigns and key issues. It’s also a great resource in terms of finding out what people affected by diabetes are concerned about.
In fact, we recently developed a viral video in response to all the comments left on our social networks, particularly Facebook, about children with type 1 diabetes being bullied at schools due to misconceptions about the condition (www.diabetes.org.uk/record). The video has now been viewed over 65,000 times!
Have you encountered any problems using Facebook?
While we employ a soft-touch when it comes to moderation and let people voice their opinions, we did find it challenging in the past to keep track of all the posts and conversations happening on our page.
We’ve now implemented a moderator schedule which spans different areas of the organisation and they report back any questions left on our wall that fellow fans haven’t been able to answer or any issues that come to light. It’s made the whole moderation process much more manageable, while involving other areas of the charity in online activities.
Have do you have any tips for other charities?
Let your supporters talk to each other – you don’t have to step into every conversation! And don’t censor. We only remove abusive posts or posts promoting commercial activities. It’s important that people can voice their opinions, positive or negative, and you can really learn a lot from just listening to what people have to say.
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