Are you using Facebook? Do you have a person or page set up specifically for your church? If not, there’s no better time that the present to do it. It’s FREE!
Recently I received an email asking a few implementation questions about setting up and using Facebook for church. Here’s the Q&A:
What is the one thing we need to make sure of?
To do it! Communication in this day and age is social networking and interactive dialogue. The days of mass email and communication ‘downloading’ to people is changing. Our email boxes have become like our snail mail boxes, full of stuff that we don’t need. Most people simply don’t have the time to weed through all of it. Facebook cannot be your main source of communication (not everyone will be on it), but it brings the church to where a lot of people are already.
One more thing I would do. Make sure to do frequent updates. Frequent for your church might be daily or weekly. Update regularly and be consistent. Frequent status updates keeps you on the news feed so people know what’s going on.
What do you do if someone posts something that is inappropriate?
We haven’t had this happen, although it could. It’s important that someone is monitoring it regularly. As the account owner, you can delete anything off the page that you don’t want.
I sometimes post images that the pastors use during their messages to illustrate points they are making. I made the mistake of posting some images that had an illustration of something bad, that without the message looks like we’re saying bad things. Of course that was the image that Facebook chose to be the album cover for that set! Oops. I deleted them quickly. :)
Who manages it?
We have three people that manage it. I started it, so by default I’m the main person. The three people are the communications director, the visual arts director and the web master. On Monday when we get the newcomers list, we invite them to join.
Any other comments?
Here’s a few tips that might help:
- Pages are now more like friends, so you can set up a church page.
- Invite newcomers each week.
- Use the friend finder and invite people off of that weekly.
- Do regular, consistent updates.
- Link your blogs, Flickr and Twitter, or any other services you can to your Facebook.
- If someone posts a question, have the appropriate person respond quickly.
- Let everyone know you’re on Facebook. Announcement loops, print material, bringer cards, etc…
- Change your profile pic regularly.
- Turn off the chat feature. (unless you like IM’ing a lot)
Happy Facebooking!!!!