Making the Most of Facebook Groups: NATAL
I love Facebook groups. Really. They can be the center of great community engagement and a campaign if used correctly and strategically. Facebook groups serve a different purpose than pages; groups are great for encouraging niche topic discussions and action, while pages are generally more focused on general agency communication and general community engagement. One Israeli organization, NATAL, so effectively utilized Facebook groups that Facebook featured it on its own Nonprofits page.
NATAL, the leading trauma center for victims of terror and violence in Israel, created a highly successful Israeli blood donor awareness and registry campaign that successfully leveraged Facebook groups. One of the most urgent needs in case of emergency is quickly locating blood donors, and NATAL wanted to find a way to both convey that need for blood donors and solve it at the same time. They created a website, bloodgroups.co.il, to publicize the campaign and offer information about who should give blood and why it is needed and launched the campaign in April 2010. The most prominent feature on the site is a call to action to identify your specific blood type by clicking on a blood donor type on the left side of the page (screenshot below).
Once you click on your blood type, the Facebook Group for your blood type opens in your browser. NATAL created eight Facebook groups, each one with the name of the blood group. In marketing terms, this is brilliant, because NATAL is now closely linked to the marketing keywords “blood donor.” According to the video (see above) that NATAL created about the campaign, “we used groups and not pages because of message-all-members function is only available in groups.” (I have been saying for years that this is the unique selling proposition of Facebook groups.)
Approximately 4,000 people, mostly Israelis, have joined the groups. Whenever the Israeli Red Cross sent NATAL a message with an urgent request for blood, NATAL used the message-all-members function to ask for donations from group members.
It didn’t hurt that the campaign received a lot of exposure in the Israeli press, or that they were awarded free coasters to distribute to pubs throughout Israel with information about the campaign. However, the most interesting thing about the campaign is how they took advantage of Facebook groups and how the groups are being used.
How NATAL Rocked Facebook Groups
One thing that NATAL understood at the time was Facebook groups’ message-all-members feature, which Facebook pages does not offer. Facebook no longer offers the message-all-members option. However, groups launched a similar feature which shows new group postings as notifications, and sends emails to members with links to new postings. (Of course, members can choose to turn off the email notifications through their settings.)
Another thing NATAL understands is that groups can engender fabulous conversation when that conversation and idea exchange is focused. A Group about diabetes, for example, is likely to have too many discussion threads, and possibly a lot of spam. Alternatively, a Group about diabetes research will be very focused on that topic and encourage discussion about the latest research by members who care passionately about diabetes research. Within the individual NATAL groups, the discussions are about the need for blood, the campaign, and how people can help.
NATAL also made the campaign very personal. When you are talking about your own blood type, and you’ve self-identified as a specific blood donor, it’s personal. Given that, the discussions within the group will tend to be more personal, and the connection with the cause will be personal as well.
Debra Askanase has 20 years of experience working in nonprofit organizations, from Community Organizer to Executive Director. She is the founder and lead consultant at Community Organizer 2.0, a social media strategy firm for non-profit organizations and businesses. She blogs about the intersection of social media, nonprofits, and technology at communityorganizer20.com and regularly provides advice and commentary to our eJewish Philanthropy community.