Your Church's Facebook Page

Yesterday I talked about your Facebook page and what it should be like. Your church's Facebook page should be different, though follow the same principle - your church on Facebook should look like your church in real life.

If I knew your church well, then got on your Facebook page without looking at the title, could I still tell from the posts that it is your church?

I have seen a few church Facebook pages that have been totally hijacked by someone with a particular agenda. If every post on the page is about the women's quilting ministry or the youth group or some other ministry in your church, then the people who discover your church on Facebook are going to get a false impression of who you really are.

Does that mean they should post less? Not necessarily (though for the youth, maybe they want their own page). Instead, it probably means that there needs to be an increase in posting from the rest of the church, especially the pastor or person in charge of the page who can highlight what is REALLY going on in your church.

You may not know it, but you are already developing these posts, you just haven't put them out there yet. It's your bulletin. What's the big stuff that's going on? What's the upcoming sermon and scripture? What sort of outreach ministry is experiencing an urgent need?

Do you record your sermons? Using YouTube or Vimeo, you can easily give people access to them online. We've found at Anderson Hills that we have almost developed an online campus with the amount of people who log on to watch our videos on a weekly basis.

Whatever you do, keep your content updated. It's better to have no Facebook presence than an out of date Facebook page.

Also, be sure to use the information page to give a brief synopsis of you church. Who are you and what are you about. We have begun to discover that some people are finding our church first through Facebook.

Finally, make sure there is a link back to your webpage. One of the best things a Facebook page can do for you is just link back to your webpage and increase traffic there.