Two Years on Facebook

Two years have passed since I launched a page on facebook for the Canadian Institute in Greece. If you’re not already one of our many followers, then please take a look at the page, here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Canadian-Institute-in-Greece/173666819462.

The page was intended to provide a very immediate way of updating people on our activities. Indeed, through the page, all our followers can be invited to events at the Institute. I usually create a facebook-specific announcement (‘event’) on the page about 7-10 days prior to the event itself, as a reminder. The responses to the invitations to this ‘event’ provide us with a good idea of how large an audience to expect at the Institute.

Following each event – usually the next morning – I upload photos from it, from the reception that followed, and from the dinner in the speaker's honour. My impression is that this visual cataloguing of the Institute’s activities is particularly appreciated – both by individuals who do not (yet) know the Institute at first hand, as well as by those who do but who are not currently in Athens.

In addition, a link to every post made on this blog is automatically posted on the facebook page. Usually a day or two after the blog post itself.

Over the past two years we have accumulated 756 followers (‘likes’) and counting. Of these, 60% are female and 36% male. Which I suppose means that there are about thirty individuals undecided!

The top ten countries represented are Greece (233), Canada (178), the U.S.A. (109), the U.K. (54), Australia (23), Norway (20), Germany (15), Italy (13), the Netherlands (11), and France (10). Given Canada’s French connection, it is perhaps surprising that France does not rank higher. (That the facebook page is in English may be a contributing factor.) It is also notable that we have a much larger number of followers from Norway than might have been expected.

The list of top ten cities from which our followers hail is rather less surprising: Athens (183), Toronto (34), Thessaloniki (17), Montreal (16), Edmonton (14), London (UK; 14), Waterloo (13), Sydney (12), Vancouver (9), and Oslo (9).

Please join us on facebook and propel your country/city up the rankings! More importantly, it’s the best (and easiest) way keep up-to-date on our activities. Let’s see if we can reach 1,000 ‘likes’ within the next twelve months.

Best wishes,

Jonathan Tomlinson

Assistant Director