media salt

It’s hard to believe that it has now been almost a year since our church took a big leap into social media with a Facebook Fan Page. When I wrote the corresponding article, Facebook Fan Pages were the new hotness and very few ministries had given them a second thought. Today, it seems like almost every ministry I’m aware of has Facebook page, and rightly so… It’s a fantastic (free way) to connect with your audience where they’re already gathering. Let’s break down how it has helped my church over the last year…

Our Statistics

First, lets start with some stats. Within a week of the initial launch, our Fan Page had almost 800 fans. As of this article, we’ve grown to 1,963 fans and seem to pick up another 10-20 every week. For reference, we’re a church that averages about 5,300 folks on a Sunday morning between our 3 campuses. Here’s a glance at our demographics:

• 25% Male/75% Female
• 7% of Fans are 13-17 years old.
• 4% of Fans are 13-17 years old.
• 28% of Fans are 25-34 years old.
• 28% of Fans are 35-44 years old.
• 25% of Fans are 45-54 years old.
• 25% of Fans are 45-54 years old.
• 7% of Fans are 55+ years old.

It always surprises me to see the maturity of our Facebook audience. Speaking of maturity, I’m also shocked that I’ve had to do very little moderation in the life of our Facebook fan page. I’m of the opinion that the anonymous nature of the internet tends to bring out the worst in people, so it’s hard to admit that I’ve never had to censor someone or remove a post due to offensive content. I can count the number of posts/comments I’ve had to remove on one hand, and they all relate to people trying to sell something on our fan wall. No big deal.

What’s Working?

So what has the Fan Page helped us with the most? I’d have to say that it has helped to be able to connect with our audience in a casual fashion; we get a lot questions and comments on our Fan Page Wall that people probably wouldn’t send to the church in an “official” fashion such as email or through the website. It has also been great to see the community step in and answer questions for us. We often have people using our wall to get help finding a small group, and they normally get recommendations from other members of our audience before I’m able to respond (no complaint there).

What’s Not Working?

Is there anything I’ve been disappointed with? I had high hopes initially for the wall post -> Twitter integration, but eventually disabled it. All it did was post garbled links to our Twitter account that linked people back to Facebook instead of directly to the content. Also, I’d like to see more ways to publish more information directly on Facebook without having to dive into FBML, but really, it’s hard to complain about something when it’s free.

If your ministry still isn’t on Facebook these days, there’s really no excuse any more. Get started by making a page for your church… or maybe create a unique page for each of your largest ministries. Have you thought about creating a page just for your prayer ministry that automatically pulls in the latest prayer requests from your Prayer Engine prayer wall? Since it only takes a few minutes to get your fan pages up and running, you’re really missing out on some great opportunities if you’re not taking advantage of such a powerful free tool.

Do you have any good Facebook successes or failures to share? Let us know in the comments below.