There are plenty of c-words the Queen could be sharing on her new Facebook wall: crowns, courtships, the Commonwealth, ceremonies, corgis, Charles and Camilla … and so the list goes on!

Queen Elizabeth II is the latest public figure to move into the social media world, following in the footsteps of Obama, Oprah and Ashton.

While she may not be sitting in the throne room sending updates herself (although one never knows!), the newly crowned Facebook star has already amassed a loyal band of fans … 266,399 at last count!

While she may have a lot of friends, she’s also faced the challenges of moving into the social space with many negative comments being posted by fans and removed by her team, including comments about Camilla’s dress sense!

It’s a reminder that organisations or individuals entering the social space need to consider the positives and negatives of their social media presence and also be prepared to commit to connecting with their new community.

So why are more and more celebrities, business leaders and royal families embracing Facebook?

The reasons include:

• making new friends and reach the growing number of people using Facebook and other social media channels as their primary source of news and information.
• finding a new place to share photos, news and announcements; information that was previously limited to offline distribution.
• checking the pulse of the community
• cutting down on the paper used for event invites … although I doubt we’ll be receiving an invite to a Royal Garden party via Facebook anytime soon … I’ll keep checking just in case!

Finally, her grandson, Prince William, gave her something to tweet, Facebook and Flickr about this week by announcing his engagement to Miss Catherine Middleton.

So next year, they’ll be “going to the chapel” …

 

Chat soon,

the c word

 

PS. I wonder if The Queen is one of the 4000+ fans of the Facebook page about Corgis?