Facebook recently announced they have over two billion members. If you want to go where the people are, Facebook is it.
As a church, you should consider creating a Facebook Page. This is different from a personal profile or a group. It will allow people to check in, tag your churches in post, and see your public posts. Facebook.
At minimum, go create the a Facebook page, add a profile picture and cover photo and update your profile with basic information about your churches.
When you have a Facebook Page, people are able to send private messages to your church. Be attentive to this and respond to people’s questions! Facebook has documentation to answer your questions on how Page messages work (and tell you how to turn them off if you want).
Facebook is a great place to share the audio recordings if your church’s sermons. This lets people find and re-share your sermons on their own profile.
Once you have a Page, Facebook will repeatedly ask you to pay to advertise the page more broadly. This is annoying, but you aren’t required to do it.
Consider creating a Facebook Page even if you aren’t going to post to it regularly. It’s worth it just so people can find you, find out basic information about your church, and tag your church in posts.
Thom Rainier has some helpful tips on how to use Facebook effectively.
Unlike Facebook, I would only create a Twitter account if you’re going to update it regularly. It’s a great place to share links to sermon recordings each week.
I don’t recommend auto-posting from Facebook to Twitter. Twitter posts have a limited number of characters.
I also appreciated Thom Rainier’s post on ways churches can use Twitter effectively.
Instagram is very popular! Though it is photography-focused, you can also share images with text on them. I use Instagram to show the personality of our congregation by sharing pictures from special services and church events such as work days. If you video record your sermons, you can use it to share snippets (up to 60 seconds) from your sermons. (Here is an example.)
Private Church Social Network
There are private, church-specific social networks, such as The City, available. In many contexts, it would be hard to get everyone to sign up for something like this. That’s why Flocknote, which we talked about in Episode 2, focuses on church communication by contacting people using email and texts.
