Quick question: How many union organizing leads have you missed because you’re not using Facebook?

Here’s 6 proven ways to recruit members using Facebook (and 3 ways that will fail miserably)

Here’s what works:

• Fan Pages for Campaigns – Engage non-union workers in campaign for a living wage, better standards or respect.
• Targeted Advertising – Facebook allows advertising targeted to employees of your major organizing targets.
• Fan Pages for Your Union – Do workers look you up on Facebook? You bet they do – and they expect to find something.
• Participate in Conversations – Go to groups and pages where employees hang out. Give values. Build relationships.
• Get Employee Lists – Most worksites now have Facebook groups that employees join. You should be able to get a partial list for most worksites.
• Listening – What are people saying about their employers and about you?

(P.S. Listening is the most valuable thing you can be doing)

Here’s what doesn’t work:

• Spam – They hate it as much as you do.
• Setting Up a Group for Workers Who Want to Join a Union – It’s the first thing many organizers want to try on Facebook. It doesn’t work.
• Setting Up a Fan Page and Not Maintaining It – It’s better not to be on Facebook than to have a page that isn’t maintained.

Speaking about getting union organizing leads on Facebook – I’ll help out the first three people who comment on this article to start generating leads using Facebook for your labour union.