Freegle Direct - Why You Should Add Facebook
If you like Facebook, then you probably don't need convincing that using it to enhance your community is a good idea. So let's assume you loathe Facebook and think it's evil.
The first thing to realise is: that's your view.
- It will be the view of some of your members. But it's not most people's view – just look at how astoundingly successful Facebook is.
- Whether you like it or not, people are spending vast amounts of time on Facebook – to the extent that they are even watching less TV. I know, it's awful. But that's where people live online now. And that's where we should reach them; they're perfect people to be freegling.
If you're under the age of 40, it's pretty likely that you'll have a Facebook account. Ask around. If you have kids, or grandkids, ask them if they have a Facebook account. People have grown up with Facebook. We might not have done, but it's what's happening now.
And there are some aspects of Facebook which are just perfect for Freegle. We spread best by word of mouth. Because you see what your Facebook friends are doing (that's why you hate it, right?) people will see their friends freegling. And they'll wonder what it is. And that's the first step - getting people to even hear about us.
You might hate Facebook. That's fine, we're not trying to persuade you to like it. But isn't it good for your community to get people who do like it to start freegling?
Promoting national posts on Facebook
In Modtools > Publicity there used to be a really easy way to share national Freegle's daily Facebook posts. As of November 2024 Facebook has disabled this, and seems to have deleted all such past posts.
To post them manually to your local community Facebook page, you now have to:
- open Facebook,
- switch from your personal account to managing your Freegle page,
- go to national Freegle page on Facebook,
- under today's post click Share > Share to Feed,
- then click the big "Share" button.
These instructions are for a browser on a computer; in the Facebook app on a mobile device, the last two lines are "Share" then "Share now".
For posts originated by Freegle's national account, that's all there is to it. For posts where Freegle is re-sharing something from another account, first copy the introductory comment by Freegle, because when you share, Facebook may only include the original post by the other account, omitting national Freegle's comment – in which case you would need to paste the intro comment (or type your own) into the popup where Facebook shows "What's on your mind"/"Say something about this".
Promoting local items on Facebook
The same feed used to also generate a local daily post showing the most popular items on your Freegle community, so that it only took one click to publish this to your local community page on Facebook. These posts served as examples of what's been Freegled, each with a link to Freegle. As of November 2024 Facebook has also disabled this and deleted past posts.
Instead, you may want to take a screenshot of recent items, e.g. using the mobile Freegle app. Crop off any ads, Log in to your local community page on Facebook, and post the image with a comment such as "Just a few examples of free stuff recently offered or requested on ilovefreegle.org."
Backup access arrangements
In 2023 Facebook made things more difficult by restricting access to accounts. Our Social Media team can help with general queries about running Facebook (and Twitter) pages, and also operate 'Amy'. Amy is a Facebook account set up to help local community pages get linked successfully to the Modtools sharing tools, and also to provide a backup in case a page gets lost or abandoned with no current community volunteer access. The is a simple Facebook Business Management tool which adds a layer of backup; in theory, even if there was an issue with the Amy account, we’d still have a way to restore access to any of the groups which have this in place. As with the Amy account, no action is taken otherwise by anyone nationally without local consent.
