Content of the week #10: A love letter to Facebook Groups

Nobody I know likes Facebook. At best it’s a graveyard of cringe pictures from 15 years ago and the place you go to buy 2nd-hand baby clothes.

And yet it has 3 billion monthly users. It’s the most popular social media platform on the planet.

It’s because people still use it, and if your Facebook page isn’t getting a ton of engagement then it might be because you’re not using it in the same way people are using it.

So my content of the week isn’t actually a piece of content, it’s a love letter to Facebook groups.

For me, this has been the core value of Facebook for a long while, alongside Events and Marketplace.

The only reason I ever log in nowadays is to check in on the Museum Social Media Managers group, and as I briefly linger on my homepage I’ve recently been served posts from the LiDAR and Aerial Archaeological group.

If you don’t know, LiDAR creates 3D scans of the Earth’s surface by measuring the time it takes lasers to reflect from the surface to a receiver. It also allows penetrating through foliage, allowing archaeologists to discover sites previously hidden – like this lost Maya city.

This group has 227.4k members. In the past 24 hours alone there have been 21 posts, each full of people interacting with each other.

I joined the group after seeing this post asking what some strange circular markings could be.

189 comments provide the answer: they’re old oil tanks, used to contain any oil that spill from containers. An American petroleum geologist chipped in to say that if tanks were set on fire by lightning they’d use old civil war cannons to punch holes in them, allowing the oil to flow into the berm.

I read that and thought it was bullshit – and then someone else provided photo proof in the comments.

So as a person who never uses Facebook, I’m now a member of this group and regularly going on Google Maps to check out random bits of fields around the UK to discover old Roman canals, medieval forts and neolithic burial sites. And I can’t remember the last time I followed an institutional page, because I don’t get that same kind of experience.

So what I’m saying here is that people are not using Facebook how you’d like them to use Facebook, i.e. waiting with bated breath to comment and Like your posts. What they are doing is joining communities of interest, talking to other real people and learning new things.

Maybe we should join them.

What else I’m thinking about

I did a LinkedIn post about moving to Bluesky. I’m still on Twitter/X too – but if you run an organisational account you’re probably wondering what the fuck to do.

It’ll help to ask yourself a few questions:

• How critical is Twitter/X to you as a service? And here I’m talking about telling people you exist, what events are on, whether there’s been a fire or answering people’s questions. If you specifically point people to Twitter/X already then you’re going to have to change a whole lot of marketing and signage, so if you’re making a big change make sure you plan for it.
• Does Twitter/X’s USP make sense for what you want to do? Threads and Bluesky are basically clones, and all three platforms are centred on conversation, networks and primarily text-based, reactive posts. If you don’t have the time to do that kind of content or it’s not your audience, then maybe don’t bother.
• What are your values? All social media is owned by bad people who want your money and donate/use that money for bad things – Elon Musk is just more obvious about it. The bots, spam and general tone of Twitter/X is enough to put a lot of people off regardless, but what are the red lines for other platforms?
• Why do the same old thing? You are free of your chains. You don’t necessarily need to be on any social media platforms. You could focus on one and do it really well, you could pour all your resource into video, you could create a channel that explores your topic rather than just being about your institution. Go crazy.