Hey, I have made an (un)official Face Book Page of this clan.

Link is here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-13th-Marine-Expeditionary-Unit/204969279548594

Tell me, whether it is a good concept or not.

I can delete this page, if you find it unnecessary.

Leave a comment and do not blame me.

I'm sure ie seen a Facebook page for this clan before and I think other people asked about it

I see it only as a pleasant addition.

i was going to make one but forgot lol

What purpose does this facebook page serve? It seems rather bare bones, and it doesn't contain much. How does having a Facebook page help out the clan. Not trying to say this is bad, I just want it to have a clear point if we are going to do it. The YouTube channel gives us a centralized location to store the videos. What does this Facebook page do for us?

It's a good promotion tool if used right I think.

There's a few ways I could see this helping out. Whether it be the best way or even beneficial is a different story. Perhaps try to find a clan who does have a facebook page to see how, why, they are using it.

To get this page recognition, we would have to:

• Send out links to this page
  
• Friend/like it with our own accounts, so that our friends see it and if they friend/like it their friends would see it, on and on
  
• Friend/like fackbook game/publisher accounts. Such as if this page were to friend/like Battlefield3 or EA people going to those pages would see us.

What it could be used for?

• Recuriting people from Facebook
  
• Setting up and coordinating events as it has an event system built in. This would be shown to those who have friended and possibly to those that are not a member of our web site for one reason or another
  
• A palce to share stories, events, updates or whatever else. There wouldn't be any news articles or anything like that.
  
• Even though we have a place to upload videos for public, we don't have one for photos. We could use this as a place to upload pictures (if permission is granted on the account)..... and vidoes.

Drawbacks?

• We and friends would need to make it seem active
  
• Account owner will need to manage it (unless there is a way to have multiple account owners).
  
• It goes nowhere and does nothing for us.

I mean not only does EA have a website and each of their games have a website, but they also have facebook pages for those as well. Why? For exposure, marketing, advertising, and reach.

ummm... Not sure if this is what batorun had in mind but, that's all I could come up with.

Just a thought!!!

Trister wrote:

What it could be used for?
* Recuriting people from Facebook

How would we use it to recruit? By sending random invites to people on Battlefield or Call of Duty pages? I do not use Facebook myself, so I am not sure how we would use it to recruit.

Trister wrote:

* Setting up and coordinating events as it has an event system built in. This would be shown to those who have friended and possibly to those that are not a member of our web site for one reason or another

Yeah, but our site itself has a calendar and event functions built into it as well. If there is demand for this kind of functionality, we could enable it on our forums directly. Using Facebook for people who do not have membership only detracts from the incentive to get an account which could have a negative effect on site membership.

Trister wrote:

* A palce to share stories, events, updates or whatever else. There wouldn't be any news articles or anything like that.

I think you should clarify that point more. The forums are already a place to share stories, events, and other things. I don't know why you would want to eliminate news articles as they drive traffic to our website, and provide extra content for our current forums.

Trister wrote:

* Even though we have a place to upload videos for public, we don't have one for photos. We could use this as a place to upload pictures (if permission is granted on the account)..... and vidoes.

If we were looking for a place to do images. We have an image gallery function on the forums to use. If we wanted an external site for images, would we not want to use a dedicated photo site, such as Flickr or Picassa?

Trister wrote:

Drawbacks?

• We and friends would need to make it seem active
  
• Account owner will need to manage it (unless there is a way to have multiple account owners).
  
• It goes nowhere and does nothing for us.

This is why I am concerned about this. It presents extra work for the 13th to take care of. We do not want to spread clan effort too thinly and we want to make sure that the initiatives we put ourselves to have a positive effect on the clan. Having a Facebook page means that we have to make sure it is maintained and content is added. You say having a Facebook page can help with recruiting; however I think the more correct statement is that: a GOOD Facebook page can help with recruiting, but by the same token, having a bad, infrequently updated, or content free page can actually detract from recruitment efforts, as it gives the impression that the clan does not put enough effort into what it does, especially if the Facebook page is the first page they see the 13th. First impressions mean a lot when it comes to getting new recruits.

Trister wrote:

I mean not only does EA have a website and each of their games have a website, but they also have facebook pages for those as well. Why? For exposure, marketing, advertising, and reach.

This is always given as a point whenever this is suggested, and believe me, this is far from the first time this has been suggested. But the question is, how much does it increase our exposure and reach, compared to the amount of effort we would need to put in to make it a good, frequently updated and informative.

Plus, other drawbacks:
It could splinter the community. As it fragments discussion. I would imagine some people may, instead of using the forums, use our Facebook wall for discussion, which would splinter our community and could lead to the forums being less active and less interaction between clan members.
As I mentioned before, a poorly managed page can detract from recruitment.
Not everyone here has a Facebook account. I don't and I don't think I am the only one in that situation. Which means many members may not get much benefit from this page at all.
It requires extra work on our website if we want to promote the page here.

to bump in what's already said in other words: FB nowadays is a good way to promote things to friends. just by liking this page friends of yours can check it out out of curiousity and thus find out about the clan even if they otherwise maybe wouldn't have. it's a smooth and silent way to help promoting without any more effort than a simple click on the like-link. also, as said, this is a great way of having important news sent out to people who like the page, this can be events to promote the clan, for instance some kind of private competition for people in the clan and people who like the page on FB, to get them more involved (example of these can be random cups, dogfight-tournament or whatever, the posibilities for events is limitless).

this forum is the main core, and a good example could be how the P4F-page always link to their forum for discussions. those who don't have FB wouldn't miss anything out since FB mainly just repeat the main news

the activity on the page is usually fixed by updates, for example a post about the new server on P4F could be posted there to make people aware of its existance, posts about new squads opening up could be posted there so people get to know about it in case they're curious about joining it, etc etc. there are a lot of pages who only make a post every now and then, and since you have this forum the posts can include a link here for members to get active in the conversations about it and random people can satisfy their curiousity by askin on there if they're not already members here etc etc.

to put it short, it's a very easy and smooth way of promoting the clan and make it more visible for people you know and don't know online. I can honestly say that I was a bit supriced that I couldn't find anything about 13th MEU on FB when I first started hanging around

I think I would sum it best up with: "it become what you make out of it", so yeah.. no matter if this will be a "go" or "no" it'll probably require some thought. especially if it's a go, how it'll be organized for the best convenience since it's true that there's a small risk of a minor split in the communication between members if som decide to be lazy and only be on FB or something

(I'm extremely tired as I write this after a long day and it's 3 am, but meh.. it should at least make sense to some extent )

Lol It does make sense

I don't have FB account either, becouse I'm a bit paranoic about social networking and any page that could contain personal info. So I don't think I would be able to join.

Nmd12345 wrote:

Lol It does make sense

I don't have FB account either, becouse I'm a bit paranoic about social networking and any page that could contain personal info. So I don't think I would be able to join.

I do have a FB, but I don't feel comfortable with sharing my personal info, even if it's only my real name, with other people from the clan or people I don't know in real life. No offense, but you have to understand where I come from.

Spino Prime wrote:

Plus, other drawbacks:
It could splinter the community. As it fragments discussion. I would imagine some people may, instead of using the forums, use our Facebook wall for discussion, which would splinter our community and could lead to the forums being less active and less interaction between clan members.
As I mentioned before, a poorly managed page can detract from recruitment.
Not everyone here has a Facebook account. I don't and I don't think I am the only one in that situation. Which means many members may not get much benefit from this page at all.
It requires extra work on our website if we want to promote the page here.

thats the main reason we shouldn't go ahead with the Facebook Page. although i use facebook(a lot), the gamming community should stick on private forums...

@Nmd you dont have to give all the info, i use Nusume Alex and its the name i use pretty much everywhere online, although its not the name from ID card....its not even a real name, beside Alex which is universal....and what do u got to hide, are u some secret agent or russian spy working for Masons ? Some secret society shaman or a high stake gangstar? i don't get u guys.....

@Cmdr.Michael where u come from?

Cmdr. Michael wrote:

Nmd12345 wrote:

Lol It does make sense

I don't have FB account either, becouse I'm a bit paranoic about social networking and any page that could contain personal info. So I don't think I would be able to join.

I do have a FB, but I don't feel comfortable with sharing my personal info, even if it's only my real name, with other people from the clan or people I don't know in real life. No offense, but you have to understand where I come from.

+1 I don't feel comftable with people knowing my personal deals and it's kinda security risk swell


It would be quite uncomfortable if say Spino could access my photos info and all that

The only person who can see my info in te clan is Shocky

If we do decide to go through with FB my only suggestion is change the page name because there is an actual 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit in USMC, and during some training at Ft. Pickett I met a couple they dont know who we are yet but if they wish to start a page to link their families and other soilders. I believe they should have rights to thier name... just add like gaming clan at the end or somthing

I'll like it, but don't expect anything else with friend requests and so on. (Total excused for being one of the ones I've talked to daily for a while and also Jager for being rl friends lol)

Really feel unsafe with personal details ever since the PSN hacks and getting money stolen off me, so you can understand where I'm coming from.

But overall, I don't see how it can be something bad for the clan, any publicity is good publicity

SuperShocky wrote:

I'll like it, but don't expect anything else with friend requests and so on. (Total excused for being one of the ones I've talked to daily for a while and also Jager for being rl friends lol)

Really feel unsafe with personal details ever since the PSN hacks and getting money stolen off me, so you can understand where I'm coming from.

But overall, I don't see how it can be something bad for the clan, any publicity is good publicity

GO ME

It's not like that Nusume I understand what you mean, but I think my reasons are good enough—or alteast real enough—to consider if its worth taking the risk. We live in completely different countries.

First of all, the insecurity in Mexico. I know it sounds odd, but some criminals—for frauds and kidnaps—have been known to research their victims threw social networks. And second, FB itself and their rather famous incompetence to protect personal info.

Banks, stores, the government, and phone companies, they all have a history of selling personal information here on Mexico. And I'm not talking about conspiracy things. I'm talking about millionaire deals that have been revealed threw leaks and reached the headlines. What would make FB any different?

And its even worse for me, since the laws on Mexico that prohibit selling personal information are extremely weak, and so are the punishments and the institutions for it. Why should I take another unnecessary risk?

And no, I do not mind giving personal information—first name and age mainly—to clan mates I know, but I don't want them on any database...

Ok, so there's some concerns and points here.

If you don't feel comfortable sharing personal information (PI) then don't. There are levels of permissions that allow you to control who sees or what they can do on your page. You can deny viewing of your photos, posts, comments or deny people the capability to create posts or comments. You can deny all the way down to making your account non-existent. Or just simply omit putting PI on your page.

You, Spino, do have a good point about splitting up the community. I say no news articles because FB is not that kind of medium, I don't even know if they allow that many characters to write up an article. Even newspapers such as the Boston Globe do not post up articles. Instead, they post up a small description with a link to that article to their own website. And that is all FB really is, short descriptions of... life, I guess, that is about a sentence or two long. While the forums are the long deep discussions. Will it get split up, perhaps a bit, but I assume not enough to have a prominent effect. We could also deny everyone to ability to create posts while allowing them to still make comments to the posts we put up there.

Please excuse me of my ignorance. I was unaware of the capabilities of this website. However that may be, those things would only reach members of this website and perhaps people of other websites to which we have posted a link on, such as the battlefield forums.

Currently our recruiting methods seem to be invites from in-game and other games' forums, in which, they would need to search through. We could extend our reach using FB if people "like" our page. If they do, then a link gets placed on their page. This link, depending on their permissions would be seen by everyone or just their friends and/or friends of friends who look at his/her profile. And would hopefully start an exponential chain reaction because once you "like" something all your friends get the update that you "liked" it, working down the line through friends of friends of friends....

Everyone who ends up "liking" the page will get updates shown on their pages as we upload new photos/videos, make new posts, and even create events. Here is an example of Battlefield Heroes' FB page. As you can see it's nothing spectacular as in WOW! It's just an informational page. The updates are posted anywhere from mutliple times a day for when they had issues with their server, to daily, to once a week. This particular page does not allow people to create new posts or upload photos/video, but allows them to make comments. Or maybe a better example would be a clan's page ATF or NoWayOut

Even though Shocky, there is an actual 13th, we would be using a different category.

But it still all comes down to would it be worth the time and effort.

Regarding the real 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, I agree with having to distinguish ourselves from them, a bit disrespectful If I do say so myself to name ourselves the same as those who have served for their country as a page.

Change of FB name?

13th Marine Expeditionary Unit - Clan

Or something along those lines

I agree We should have clan in the name somewhere


Also no offence but I don't think Leadership will have time and all that to run a Facebook page as well as the clan AND the YouTube channel