Like many churches out there, you see the value of facebook for your ministry. You get that it is the best place to build your community online. Awesome. Now where to begin? Before you rush off, create the fan page and start inviting everyone you know to “like” it, take a moment to consider the following.
Every social platform or network requires that you create content. Content meaning anything that you can share on facebook. This means text (up to 420 characters), links, videos, notes, photos, questions, or events. What will you share with people? How will you as a church create and share content that engages, enriches, and adds value to the lives of those who decide to like your fan page? To answer these questions, might I suggest assembling or assigning an existing team the task of working through this question and plan the nitty gritty details. The final product of this conversation should take the form of a content calendar.
One of the biggest fears (for me at least) is that if you create fan page, spend time mapping out a plan, and complete a content calendar, no one will care. If you feel like no one cares long enough, then eventually your fan page will look dead and lifeless (not what your church wants). To combat this fear and give your fan page a good chance of survival, keep that same planning team around you and get everyone to commit to not only creating content for the page, but to commenting, liking, and sharing the posts in an authentic way. And by authentic way, I am referring to the fact that you don’t want people to blindly interact, but take the time to review and engage (as they feel led) daily. If a group of people commits to this, your fan page has a great chance of success.
Setting standards, rules or a code for admin interaction is pretty important. Your fan page updates and content, represents the voice of your church. Kind of like official statements. You are going to want admins (those responsible for posting content) to understand and have something to point to when they grant or deny congregational requests for posts. As an example, what are the qualifications for prayer requests you post? How about community needs? You may think this is unimportant when you first start out, but I promise you, admins will run into gray area pretty quickly. Give them some solid ground to stand on when posting official status updates.
Now that you’ve created a content calendar, assembled a team, and set some standards, you now have the green light to create the fan page and invite folks from your congregation to like the page and begin building your community online. I’ve obviously left a lot out of the picture, but I am interested in what questions you have out there.
Are you struggling with social media or facebook at your church?
I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to answer your question or point you in the right direction.
There is little doubt in my mind about this one. Facebook offers the simplest, easiest and most affordable way to build, grow, and mobilize your community online. Over the last few years there have been a host of products to hit the church tech marketplace that essentially offer private “social networks” to churches. This in and of itself sounds great. Who wouldn’t want their own private social network? While you may be very excited about this concept for your church, hear me out first. I’ll reward you by listing some major players in the below.
Follow me for a moment. When you meet corporately, whether it is on Saturday, Sunday, or throughout the week, you are meeting behind four walls as a community. Meaning, they are pretty private gatherings. Think of all of the work that goes into these. You’ve got to manage the facility, plan the gathering, staff the gathering, and get people to come. Behind the scenes, I know you’ve also had to do a lot of training and have held quite a few meetings. In other words, it takes a lot of time and effort to execute. This is also true for private social networks. While you don’t have to actually write the computer code and manage the servers, you have to put quite a bit of effort into making sure that network, works. For instance, think about:
An even bigger deal is that all of this conversation and effort is yet another thing that is behind four walls. Of course many of these platforms offer the ability to share posts and content from the network into other social networks, but I ask of you this one significant question. Assuming the mission is to transform the lives of people in your community and the world, why wouldn’t you want to build your online community in the middle of 630+ million people? I can’t think of a reason.
I ask you to consider building your online community out in the open, on Facebook. For most churches around the country, a vast majority of the community members are already on Facebook (don’t need to worry about adoption). To boot, a majority of the people with accounts know how to use the platform and logon multiple times throughout the week (little training and sounds pretty sustainable). You still need to have people responsible for managing the Church Fan Page, but you can rest assured that your efforts will pay off. Everything you post (church messages, thoughts, prayers, news, events, questions, etc.) all have the potential to reach and touch thousands of people who are not part of your church community. In another post, I’ll dig deeper into the value of weak connections and what it means for your ministry. Be sure to subscribe to this blog so you don’t miss it.
Ok, so you want to build your community in the middle of 630 million people? Follow these simple steps to get started:
*Disclaimer: While I think that “building community” is best left for facebook and other open social networks, these platforms offer some distinctive features and functions that help a church perform needed internal functions.
Does this make sense? Anyone out there using a church private social network? I’d love to hear from you and learn how it is working for your church.
