My company, JANSON Communications, released today a study of military Facebook pages. The study examines the use of Facebook pages by the U.S. military to identify trends, best practices and typical uses.
JANSON’s Research and Analysis team examined over 680 military pages during two weeks in January and grouped the pages into four category types; location, personality, organization and recruiting pages. They were then examined for several factors including clear dilineation as official pages, posted terms of use, interaction with fans and posted media among others.
Among some of the findings the study revealed:
· Only 22% of pages had clear terms of use governing behavior of fans;
· 84% of pages had no interaction with fans at all during the study period;
· Most pages were not marked as the organization’s “official” page, leading to potential confusion with fan-created pages and “clone” pages
· 87% of pages had at least one form of contact information with a link to the official site being the primary means for 71% of pages;
· Recruiting pages answered 1 out of every 12.5 questions or comments posted by fans.
We found that though this study focused on military pages the lessons learned apply to any government agency hoping to use their Facebook page to create a stronger relationship with the public, employees and family members.
The full study is available here http://bit.ly/caRwh8
Thanks for sharing – I suspect most government agencies would find similar results.
Thanks Tricia and I think you are right. Most of the issues apply to any government entity with a fan page. Its been nice seeing the interest in our report.