HOW TO: Post Milestones to Your Nonprofit’s Facebook Page

On March 30 the new Facebook Timeline design will roll out to all Facebook Pages and one new function is the ability to post Milestones to your Timeline. I’ll be giving a comprehensive click-by-click tour of the new Facebook Timeline design and tool set in my upcoming webinars on Facebook and Facebook Apps for nonprofits, but a how-to get started with Facebook Milestones is posted below:

1) Select “Milestone” from your Posting Module.

Simple enough. Click “Milestone” in your Posting Module. This first Milestone is what is known as your “Founding” Milestone. It is meant to tell the story of the founding of your organization. It’s worth noting that once you post your Founding Milestone, the “Joined Facebook” link in your Timeline will change to “Founded” on the right side of your page:

2. Add the date of your organization’s founding to your “Founding” Milestone.

Select the month, day, and year of your organization’s founding. You must also select that your organization was founded (or born, started, opened, created or launched):

3. Add the location of your nonprofit’s founding, the story, and an image.

Next, select the location of your nonprofit’s founding. After you type the first few letters of the location, Facebook will generate a pop-down menu of Facebook Places to choose from.

For the story, don’t just copy and paste the content from the “Our History” page of you website. Content on the Social Web has a different tone. Make it more personal, emotional, and get away from the jargon of “Our History” and tell the story of your nonprofit’s founding.

Finally, upload a visually compelling photo that either directly tells the story of your founding or a more general photo that speaks to your organization’s mission. The photo should be 843 X 803 pixels:

4. Review your “Founding” Milestone in the Timeline.

After you “Save” your Founding Milestone, review it the Timeline. Be sure to check for spelling mistakes, proper grammar, and make sure that the location link is pulling a Facebook Page that you have no issues with. Community Pages seem to be the default (most nonprofits don’t even know these exist!), but if you have added the location functionality to your Facebook Page, then official pages show up in the pop-down as an option as well. That said, your Founding Milestone will likely be your most frequently visited one since it is the only Milestone featured in the Milestone navigation menu on the right side of your page:

5. Post additional Milestones.

The process for posting additional Milestones is identical to the posting process of the Founding Milestone with one exception – by default your Milestone is posted to your Timeline. It’s says “News Feed” but that’s misleading. Milestones do not post to the News Feed, only to your page’s Timeline. You can, however, “Pin to Top” a Milestone. That said, at this point I am unsure how valuable that functionality is. Most fans only interact with your page in the News Feed and will likely never see that your Milestone has been pinned to the top. The fact that Milestones have few comments or likes at this point clearly indicates that they are not getting much traffic. If Facebook changes it so Milestones begin to show up in the News Feed, that could be a fun new way to maximize your Status Updates. Until then, I wouldn’t knock yourself out posting a lot of Milestones – just a few of the most important ones. It may be better to wait until they get News Feed exposure, if they ever do.

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