Using the Wombourne Choral Society's facebook page...

Step 1 - Registering on facebook
Click on link sent in the e mail www.facebook.com/wombournechoral
If you are not registered on facebook, this will open up the Sign up screen.
Enter details in sign up section, (ensuring that you have a way of remembering the password). Click sign up

You should now be on the choir?s facebook page. To complete registration on facebook, however, you will need to use an activation email ? see below.
Whether or not you decide to build your facebook profile and collect 'friends', you will need to activate you email account.

Option 1- Linking to the site without developing your facebook profile
Click 'Home' at top right hand of page to take you to the account set up page.
Page 1 is 'finding friends'. There is the option to skip this if you do not want to build a facebook friend population. When prompted skip again.

Page 2 is to fill in your profile information. Again there is an option to skip if you do not want to build a profile. Skip again when prompted.

Page 3 is setting a profile picture. Again skip if you wish as before.

Go to the activation email as prompted at the top of the screen.
You may be taken automatically to the right place where your emails are.
If not, minimise the facebook screen and open your email account. Refresh email if necessary (click send/receive) and go to message saying 'Just one more step ...... '.
Note confirmation code (this may or may not be needed - the process has worked automatically for me without having to use the code, but it is best to have a note of it in case.) and then click the link on this e mail that activates your account.

Option 2 - Building a facebook profile
Follow the same process as above but complete the information and processes in pages 1, 2 and 3.
This will set a profile about you and your interests, and allow you to start inviting people you know to be friends. Essentially, the system will look through your email contacts to see how many of them are registered on facebook.
It will then list them so that you can invite them to be 'friends'. You will be able to deselect people that you do not want to invite and confirm the ones you wish to invite.
Those you confirm that wish to invite will get an e mail to ask them if they wish to accept your invitation and you will be notified of their replies. Those that accept will become your 'friends' and will be able to get information regarding the choir when you click 'like'. See below.

Step 2 - Linking to the choir's page
Having activated your account with the activation e mail as above, you need to get to your 'home page'. If you are still on facebook, you should be able to get to this by clicking on 'home' in the top right hand side of the page.
If you need to re-enter facebook, or have difficulty in locating the home page, then put facebook into the google search, click on the link and log in using the details you used in the 'sign up' section above.
At the top of the page in the blue band, you should see a box with 'search' for people places or things?. In this box enter 'wombourne choral'.
You may find that you are offered a link as you type this in to the box. Click on the wombourne choral option that will come up or press enter. When that page opens, it should be our choir page. Next to the title is an option saying 'like'. Click this.

Step 3 - Using the page
There are two potential advantages to using facebook, from the choir's point of view:

1. To improve publicity about the choir to attract audiences and choir members

2. To generate a greater sense of engagement and friendship amongst choir members

For improved publicity, a number of elements are needed, requiring different levels of involvement. The basic principle is that it is a cascading process that relies on each person passing information on to their friends, and encouraging them to pass information on to their friends in turn and so on. If everyone did this, we would very quickly reach a very large number of people.

Any facebook user that clicks 'like' on our facebook page will automatically receive updates, so we want as many people as possible to do this.
When we put the details of a concert on the page, therefore, it will automatically go to all this group. Not only do we want choir members to go on facebook and 'like' our page, but we wish them to get their friends family etc to do the same so that our publicity network grows as large as possible.

Some choir members may not be keen on using facebook. I will say something about privacy below, but even if the member decides not to build a profile and a friends group, if they will register and click 'like' on our page, even if they never use facebook again, they will receive email alerts about changes to the page. These will include messages such as concert details that they can forward by ordinary e mail to their friends and acquaintances.

We will be even more successful however, if the page becomes a kind of magazine that people are interested to read. This will depend on choir members joining in by writing messages that can appear on the page. This can easily be done by entering text where it says 'say something' in a box under status on the upper left of the page. People can also add comments to other entries to build a conversation, always more interesting than someone writing a lot of text.

The more entertaining the read, the more people who come upon the page would be likely to click 'like' and thereby be drawn into our publicity web!
This kind of active use of the facebook page will also help us with the second potential advantage of the system. When people look at the page, they will see some entries that are more for the enjoyment of the choir members than for wider readers.

Photographs of the Garden Party would be one example. Any one will be able to upload photos to the page. People can also write 'notes'. Bass, Point and Altometer are written as ways of generating interesting entries amongst choir members. If someone would write as 'Tenor of our Times' and 'Treble Trouble'(say), there could be a voice from each section!

As you explore the page you will see the Timeline, which provides us with an opportunity to build the archive of the choir on the page. This can increase the interest of the page both for choir members and for anyone else who might be interested in the choir.

Anything that can convey a sense that being part of the choir is fun would help to attract new members and new audiences.

Privacy and safety
Finally, just a word about privacy. Some people will be concerned about the potential for facebook to give out information they would prefer to remain private.

First of all, I have set out how to register without entering information for a profile. Those who do not wish to use facebook can still help by registering and clicking 'like' on the page. They would not need to have further dealings with facebook and therefore be troubled about privacy settings.

For those taking a more active role, we would suggest that it is best to assume that anything you put on the page can be read by anyone who looks at the page, members of the choir and wider public. This is the safest approach to prevent unplanned circulation of comments that could cause embarrassment.

As with any facebook entry, however, it is possible to set the privacy setting to limit who can read entries. For example, if you look at update status, you will see in the bottom right corner a blue sign for 'post' or 'save and post'. Next to it on the left is an arrow and the work public. Click on the arrow to set privacy settings.
You can restrict the message to friends or by pressing 'custom' to specific individuals. I cannot go into the full details about privacy settings in this note, but there is plenty of information about this on facebook itself.