By now many ministries have become aware of and began utilizing social networks like Facebook. We started doing so just earlier this year. We have found it to be a great way to do day to day communicating with our "friends" on Facebook.
While it cannot replace our other avenues of communication, it is worth taking a few minutes to add to the repertoire.
We debated about whether or not to create a "group" or a "page" on Facebook for our church. (If you don't know the difference, check out this blog post http://tiny.cc/g4i3y) There are advantages to each, and it is worth thinking about which way to go. For us, we went with a page.
The two main reasons we chose a page for our primary Facebook presence are external visibility and more visible communication.
External visibility. Pages on Facebook are visible to those outside of Facebook. You do not have to join Facebook to see a our church's Facebook page. Not only that, my understanding is that pages are indexed and therefore have the potential to show up in search engines. So, we can advertize our church's "page" as a direct link on our website or in our email marketing and anyone can stop by the page, whether a registered FB use or not. (http://tiny.cc/calvary67)
Visible communication. The other benefit of a page is the ability to do a "status update." Just like a personal profile, page status updates are posted to all your friend's (technically, fan's) walls. This allows these updates to be visible on a persons "feed" page - the default landing page after you log in.
A side benefit is the ability to copy some code and put a "fan box" on your own website that show the "wall" from your page right on your sight. Can't do this with a group.
Jason Cooper
Posted via email from Cooper-ation | resourcing for ministry
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