What advice do you have for creating and maintaining a Platoon Facebook group/page?

First thing - Secret group. That makes it unsearchable and only knowable to those invited. I use it for non-military but highly private functions to great effect. It's a great tool for posting articles and information for your team to read and talk about. Just make sure you have a clear vision of what you want to do with it and lay it out in a charter of sorts to avoid any surprises.

That said, it can be a bit drama-filled when you start mixing past and present members. Some guys see that DD-214 as a chance to show their asses a little more than normal, which can create leadership challenges regarding current service members.

This is going to sound like a homer since we are on RP but I would tell you to create an RP page for your platoon. SSG Carlos Madden is that possible to do at that level?

I manage a career field for the AF, so I have roughly 4K people to spread information to and I tried Facebook and it was honestly...a disaster! So I ran into LTC Yinon Weiss at a RAND Corp transition summit and we discussed the potential that RP had for getting that information out. It has worked very well to date and is growing slowly.

I would personally use RP over FB for this sort of thing any day as it has led to more professional discussions and better sharing of info. If you search for Dirtboyz you can go check out our page to see the kinds of things that have been shared on there.

Be careful! These things can have a great benefit, but they can also invite new and "fun" problems. Also, if you get it started, it needs to be kept updated and relevant, otherwise it's just another wasted tool. Finally, make sure it's in compliance with the Army Social Media policy and any local policies. For example, all of ours have to be reviewed and monitored by our PAO.