INTRODUCTION

Conducting public involvement is crucial to the success of any organization or municipality’s project. One way to expand outreach efforts is by using social media features, like Facebook Community Chats.

Here are a few ways to use Facebook’s Community Chats for public involvement and outreach campaigns.

HOW TO SET UP FACEBOOK COMMUNITY CHATS

Facebook community chats are a mixture of Facebook Groups and Messenger. Within a Facebook Group, users can build connections with like-minded individuals in real-time.  For example, chats can revolve around a specific event (e.g., a public involvement meeting).

When creating a community chat, only those who are group administrators and moderators can set up the chat. If you are creating the chat from Facebook, select your group, click the “+ Create a chat” on the left-hand side and follow the prompts. Click “Create chat.”

If you want to create the chat from Messanger, click on a group in the left menu, click + and then click Chat. Following the prompts, eventually clicking “Create Chat.”

Once created, the public must be a member of the group before they can join a community chat. If someone is not a member of your private or public group, they can receive a prompt to join the group in the Facebook app before they can access the community chat.

Also, group members can look at the community chats in the Facebook group before joining. To add someone to a specific chat from Facebook.com, select your group and then select the chat on the left. Keep in mind that if you are an admin, you may have to click “Browse” first. Next, click on the chat name then click “Invite”. After this step, you have three choices:

1. Click one of the suggestions under “Suggested” to add a group of people to the chat at once
2. Click a member’s name under “Community members” to choose a specific person.
3. Click the search bar to enter a member’s name, then select them.

Once you’ve made your selection, click “Send.”

In public groups, anyone can find and look at the chat. However, in the chat settings, participant approval should be turned on, which means members must first be approved as participants before they can interact.

Lastly, the group can have a max of 100 community chats going at one time, which means you can create a separate community chat for each project.

WAYS TO USE CHATS FOR PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT

There are numerous ways to use community chats for public involvement, including sharing important project posts and upcoming events, monitoring for conversations about the project and answering questions. If your project requires a survey, either posting a link to the complete survey or asking specific questions in the chat can provide useful feedback.

Another feature of using Facebook Community Chat is the ability to add a community chat to your Facebook group event. If an admin of a municipal or public project adds a chat to an event in a Facebook group, the chat will appear to all members on the event page on Facebook plus in your community chats on Messager and Facebook.

To set this up, the admin should select the group and click “Write something.” Then click “Add to your post” and select “Create event.” Go through the following steps and when you get to “Chat settings,” keep the toggle next to “Add chat on.” Here is where you can write your first message if this is a new chat or link to an existing one. Finally, click “Create event.”

In addition, reminders of the event will automatically be sent in the chat.

Notifications of community chats can be done through Messenger. Admins can either turn notifications off for all of your Facebook group’s community chats or choose the specific activity you want notifications kept on.

A best practice would be to give the project manager and the communications team admin-level access so they can provide high-level answers in real-time.