Facebook’s Dirty Little Secret

Hey everyone,

We’ve already committed to being the most open, honest, and transparent student government in this school’s history. We’ve emphasized the importance of direct and constant communication with the student body — and we’ve proven it in this campaign by:

• setting up this website (http://www.nicoleandravi.com),
• creating an extensive and comprehensive platform (http://www.nicoleandravi.com/platform/),
• updating a campaign blog that you can interact with us on (http://www.nicoleandravi.com/blog/),
• filming campaign videos (http://www.nicoleandravi.com/media/),
• providing a campaign email address (ideas@nicoleandravi.com), and even…
• creating a campaign phone number that you can call and leave us a message on (703-942-9850).

But we’re also on top of that final frontier, the one location you can almost always inevitably find college students visiting while they procrastinate or just want to find out what their friends are up to…

Facebook.

What’s Facebook’s dirty little secret, you ask? As easy as Mark Zuckerberg has made it to use, it’s still difficult to connect with people in any one way on Facebook. People aren’t always friends with Student Government members, don’t get event notices, ignore group invitations, or just plain never find out what Student Government is doing. We want to change that. We’re communicating with people on Facebook in 4 distinct ways:

1. Facebook Group
   
   We’ve created a great Facebook group with lots of information about us, our campaign, our platform, and those people who are helping us turn our vision for Mason into reality. If you haven’t already, click here to join our group and get updates from the campaign trail.
2. Facebook Profile Pictures
   
   The fact of the matter is you just can’t help but to check what your friends’ new profile pictures are. And if that’s the only way to reach out to some people, so be it. We’ve created a great Facebook profile picture for people to use during the campaign to show their support for us, and we’ll use similar images in the future to advertise Student Government events and functions. If you haven’t already, go ahead and change your profile picture to this image!
3. Facebook Ads


Maybe you don’t visit Facebook groups and don’t like to see people’s new profile pictures…but if you’re on Facebook, you can’t ignore the ads. By advertising to the 14,000 or so George Mason students on Facebook, you can get information out about Student Government in a cost-effective manner on a site that 50% of college students visit daily. Just today, we’re already at more than 10,000 views — think about if Student Government advertised for events, meetings, or even open positions this way. We’re looking forward to taking advantage of everything Facebook has to offer to get information out next year, including their most recent development…

4. Our Very Own Facebook App

Picture coming soon!
That’s right. I’m proud to announce that, later this evening, we’re going to be launching this campaign’s first official Facebook application. When we said we were ready to reach out to you in every way possible, we meant it. Now we’re no experts at this, so it’s still a pretty simple app — but we’re laying the groundwork now for a great way to communicate with students next year. Love them or hate them, Facebook Apps one of the best ways to spread information out in an interactive manner on the site you visit the most — and we promise there will never be any zombies, werewolves, pirates, or ninjas involved. More information will be added here as soon as it launches!

So that’s Facebook in a nutshell for you. We’re continuing to use a couple things Student Government has used in the past — and utilizing a few brand new ones to take advantage of everything that Facebook has to offer. No matter what the medium, however, we’re interested in getting our message out to you. If you know of any other ways we can reach out to the student body, on Facebook or otherwise, we’d love to know — please get in touch with us and let us know your ideas.

Thanks so much for your continued support and don’t forget to join us on Facebook — in whatever way you want!

-Ravi Udeshi
Candidate for Student Body Vice President