Mike Lewis, otherwise known to many of you as RRGraphixGuy (also Chief Information and Technology Officer for Wasatch Railroad Contractors) called me a few days ago and said, "we went viral".

My first reaction was to call the lawyer and tell him we had a potential issue on our hands. Then, I wondered who in the company had a virus and then, it hit me... "You mean, Facebook?"

As Mike and I talked about it, he explained that looking at the statistics in relation to our other posts, one recent post in particular stood out. This post caused a serious spike in our statistics because of the number of times it was passed on and shared. The post's "virality" was significantly higher than anything else we've posted on Facebook, at least since the statistics have been available to us. It got me to thinking: Is our industry under-utilizing Facebook as a whole?

As an interesting real working experiment, I submit the following to the readers of RyPN:

Would you be willing to post your Facebook page on RyPN and allow the rest of us to "friend" you? I propose also that we set a date limit to this test. Let's say next Wednesday, July 25, 2012. In that time period, I would like to see how many of your Facebook pages gained more friends directly from RyPN.

Now, I know we are opening ourselves for spammers. To prevent this, I suggest that befriending requests be made as a result of this post and that we make it clear that we want to befriend a page for the purpose of railfanning/preservation. The contacted party can accept or reject the request, so, it is up to all of us to pick and choose who we accept or decline.

Why do I want to do this?

I was amazed that 20% of our fan base is over the age of 50. I was also amazed that we have a female following! There will be plenty who say I am doing this for business, which is not my primary goal. My primary goal is to establish a larger railfan/preservation base of instant messaging and social networking. This is more an experiment of how large a social railroad preservation base we can build, than it is anything else.

Our Facebook page is:

http://www.facebook.com/Wasatch.RR.Contractors

Also, we have a YouTube page that can be seen here;

http://www.youtube.com/wrcsteamteam/

My last question; How many of your groups have a YouTube page and why or why not?

Feel free to back door us if you don't want the whole world to know;

jrimmasch@wrrc.us

mlewis@wrrc.us

Kindly,

Said it before, will say it again:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Baltimor ... 5824370567

Baltimore Chapter NRHS.

John, This link has been up many times before.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/roanokenrhs

latest youtube video by one of our members

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq07q4kK ... ure=relmfu

Feel free to share us in any of your experiments

Anyone wanting to connect with me on Facebook PM me I will be happy to give you my contact information, I did like the pages that were posted and will be happy to share your posts. Likewise I share other things, (I'm still ducking about the flag Gary... LOL) In a serious note I do think that there is great value in the use of Facebook and it is just one of the new tools that were nor available 10 -20 years ago.

Mark A. Frazier
Saint Augustine, FL

The activities of the Alexander Chapter-NRHS and the SE Narrow Gauge Museum are at:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/197040687034632/


Thanks

Matt Bumgarner

I learned a bit of something working on supporting the lost engines, the engines were in Roanoke, but I am in SW Michigan, Susan in Illinois, a few others elsewhere, but some of our group, the TWVRPS, were localized, but those people distant have trouble physically attending a direct locale, IE the 4-8-0's in Roanoke. That did not stop the support or gaining attention for the Lost Engines. Museums are somewhat a localized thing, but the internet can help expand its connections, this is a good thing.
If there is a local museum near you you should get involved with it.

http://facebook.com/pages/Albuquerque-N ... 04451&_rdr

and

http://facebook.com/pages/Railroad-Arti ... 08976&_rdr

Hi John,

The New Hope Valley Railway's Facebook page is:

http://www.facebook.com/TriangleTrain

We chose "Triangle Train" as a tagline to differentiate ourselves from the New Hope and Ivyland. Our customers tend to search for us with the term "New Hope Train" which returns both railroads in Google. You'd be amazed how many calls we get from Pennsylvania, especially around Christmas time.

The way we have our organization set up in Facebook, all you (or anyone) have to do is click "Like" in order to... well... Like the page. No approval is necessary unlike personal pages where you can pick and choose who you are friends with.

This is a great idea, I hope we all get more Facebook exposure as a result of this activity. Thanks for suggesting it.

Mike MacLean
President, New Hope Valley Railway

We at ELDCPS use Facebook in two ways: first, our public face:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/ELDCPS

And our second aspect is a "secret" (FB's term, not ours) page for our Member/Volunteers. Access is by invitation only, so those who actually work (or who have expressed serious interest) are the only ones with access.

We use it not only as a more in-depth team update, but also as scheduling tool -- the "Events" are worksessions, with a thumbnail sketch of the day's tasks. Works pretty well - peripheral chatter is kept to a minimum (do it on your public pages, thank you), and we've found it a great aid in keeping focus (and peer pressure to get people to turn out!). Helps too when we need to pass the job leaders' baton depending on people's availability.

Of course, not all of our volunteers are on Facebook, so a conventional email/phone chain still exists for some - but that's lots less of a task, given the FB message can be copied and pasted into emails, and the volume of people who need phone calls is greatly diminished. We also have a general Member's Blog on our website that is open to registered members, where postings describing the activities appear on fairly frequent basis to inform our remote members of the goings-on in the Society. (Those blog postings then serve as the basis for newsletter articles - another happy side-benefit of electronic media!)

Thank you, John.

RailroadGloryDays.com also has a Facebook page. Here is the link:

http://www.facebook.com/RailroadGloryDays

My demographics seem to agree with yours, but I'm not surprised at all.

Sincerely,
Glen Brewer
RailroadGloryDays
http://RailroadGloryDays.com

There's a ton of competition for Facebook. Instagram, Pinterest, 500px, Zenfolio, Google Plus (that one is doing really well).

Despite the rumors of their demise, Flickr and Twitter are still alive as well.

However... I think Facebook will be around for a long while, despite the competition. Why is that? Everyone and their dog is Facebook. I mean that literally, I'm "friends" with a seafaring dog who spends his summers on Tall Ships. I'm also friends with "Chesapeake Anne Ohio". I suspect most of you can guess what type of house pet she is.

With such a huge installed user base, it's got tremendous inertia. You could pay folks to join another service and it would take a couple years to get everyone migrated.

So, if you like another service and want to promote your brand on it, great, go for it! But don't ignore the 800 pound gorilla of social networking...

Mt Rainier Scenic RR's Facebook Page can be found at:

http://www.facebook.com/MtRainierScenicRailroad

We use the page to announce events, specials and promos etc.


We also have a "secret" page. but of course it's a secret.

Nothing too exciting there, most posts are about upcoming events and things like "We really need a conductor for Saturday, Joe was scheduled but had to mark off!"

Mike and I spoke this morning. In the less than 24 hours that the post has been up, we have gained well over 10 "likes" As such, quick math says we have gained potentially 1000 new contacts.....if each of the ten has 100 other friends.

In the first 24 hours.....who has seen an impact?

Mike will report more in a bit.

Where is the Fort Wayne Group, C&TS Group, TVRM Group? Spencer Shops? Strasburg?

Come on guys, head out of the hole for a few seconds.....it won't hurt!

Thanks to all of the great PM's and the posts so far.....keep it going!

JohnE.

WW&F Facebook Page is at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Wiscasset-Waterville-and-Farmington-Railway-Museum/147279126870

I've been doing social media for years, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that predicting this stuff is an exercise in frustration. It's nearly impossible to guess which posts will "go viral" and what folks will find interesting.

Some stuff is obvious, for example it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that when the upcoming 4449 trip is confirmed and officially announced, it will be all over the web.

But for the most part, you can't predict when something will catch folks interest. I've posted photos I thought were great, only to hear mostly crickets. I've also had stuff I think wasn't special go nuts.

If you run your own website, you can really see the randomness. Traffic ebbs and flows with no easily discernible patterns.

Many folks try to predict it and game the system, but I suspect the few that succeed do it more by luck than skill.