I get to call some really creative people all over the world my friend. I’m so blessed that way, but not so far away is a super group of creative types that I hang out with as our Hendersonville Geekbreakfast. Once a month we all meet up for breakfast, talk some shop, make fun of somebody and plan collaborative projects. The in between times we’ve become a real solid group of friends. One of my ‘geek’ friends is Jason Elkins. Jason has started doing some really cool things with his media company, Transparent {social} Media, on facebook. They are helping all kinds of businesses, and churches, leverage facebook for to reach their clients in an open and relational marketing.
I asked Jason a couple of questions
1. Where do you see most churches going wrong on facebook?I see most churches going wrong with Facebook in the way they view communication. It’s not a one way street:1) They are utilizing Facebook like a traditional media outlet. They think of it like a flier or pamphlet with information that they are getting in front of their congregation. In fact, it’s a platform for communication/interaction and engagement. For example, instead of posting your favorite bible verse, perhaps you should ask your Facebook audience what their favorite verse would be.
Instead of saying “we had a great time at the youth event”, you are better off asking “what did you think of our youth event?” or “How could we make it better next time” or “Tell us what you loved about the youth event”.
“Praying for our congregation” is good. “Click ‘Like’ if you need a prayer today or send us your prayer requests” is better.
“Listening to Skillet” is good… “What is playing on your iPod right now” is better.
Announcing service times/cancellations/upcoming events is a great use, but engage with your audience.
2)Two things you can do with Facebook now that are new/unique:1) Incorporating a podcast of your sermons online is a revolutionary feature in Facebook. Using a custom tab combined with Soundcloud (a hosting application) you can serve up your sermons on Facebook and people can share them with their audience. Because of the way we are developing these pages, an administrator can upload the latest sermons to Soundcloud and they will appear on a custom tab.
2) Other things a church could do on a custom tab would be to incorporate an introductory or testimonial video, show pages of a sermon or a book, take donations for a mission/tithe and incorporate a form to build an e-mail list. The Lifebook page is a good example of utilizing all of these features.
thanks Jason for taking the time!
Here is part of an example of Transparent {social} Media’s latest work on a church here in middle Tennessee.
They set up the standard fan page, but tweaked out the welcome to have a matching graphic layout to the ‘profile pic.’ It doesn’t show up, but my cursor is floating over the sermons active link page. I think that is pretty cool.. but it gets better..
At the bottom it has email / contact info capture capabilities. You don’t have to wait for the person to show up in the pew to fill out this form. They can do that over facebook. Not to mention, your parishioners can donate through this facebook portal. Pretty darn cool. They have the rest of the page tweaked out with those things that are pertinent to a church body.
So how are you using facebook for your church? You might want to contact my friend Jason and see what all is out there.
Gavin, I am the admin for our church’s FB page. I have tried the interactive stuff…asking questions instead of just posting info (our FB page is linked directly to our website feed which is a wordpress blog). I’ll post questions like “What did you like best about…” or “What’s your favorite thing about…” and nobody comments. I’ll give you that most of our followers are middle-aged to late middle-aged adults, but still, do you have any idea why they don’t utilize the interactive features?
Gavin, I am the admin for our church’s FB page. I have tried the interactive stuff…asking questions instead of just posting info (our FB page is linked directly to our website feed which is a wordpress blog). I’ll post questions like “What did you like best about…” or “What’s your favorite thing about…” and nobody comments. I’ll give you that most of our followers are middle-aged to late middle-aged adults, but still, do you have any idea why they don’t utilize the interactive features?
@Gavin – Thank you so much for the opportunity to share some thoughts and some of our work on your website! I appreciate you!
@Jason H
I took a look at the FUMC Fan Page and although recently you did ask a few questions, the vast majority of your interactions are articles (as you mentioned) and church news.
You save a step by having the blog auto-populate to Facebook… However, at this point, you have trained your audience that this isn’t a place to interact, it’s just a place to get information. You would be better off sharing the link, and adding a comment “Hey folks, here’s an article on Phil & Sally’s amazing work in France. Let us know what you think”.
You need the interactions and comments/likes because the interaction drives your info higher into the commenter’s news feed the next time they log into Facebook. That’s why questions and interactions are so important.
Frequency is also an issue on this fan page. You would be better off posting 3 times a week and not having 3 auto links in one day. Maybe the link would be one of those posts and the other 2 would be questions or interaction starters. It’s kind of like church in a way… Great sermons and announcements are really important, but the life change is happening when relationships are built.
I would also change your icon to a picture and not the building. Our research is showing that people want to interact with people and faces and not logos/buildings. Track your stats if you make the change, I would be surprised if the interaction doesn’t increase.
Thanks again for asking the question and I hope that this info is useful!
Jason Elkins
Transparent Social Media
@Gavin – Thank you so much for the opportunity to share some thoughts and some of our work on your website! I appreciate you!
@Jason H
I took a look at the FUMC Fan Page and although recently you did ask a few questions, the vast majority of your interactions are articles (as you mentioned) and church news.
You save a step by having the blog auto-populate to Facebook… However, at this point, you have trained your audience that this isn’t a place to interact, it’s just a place to get information. You would be better off sharing the link, and adding a comment “Hey folks, here’s an article on Phil & Sally’s amazing work in France. Let us know what you think”.
You need the interactions and comments/likes because the interaction drives your info higher into the commenter’s news feed the next time they log into Facebook. That’s why questions and interactions are so important.
Frequency is also an issue on this fan page. You would be better off posting 3 times a week and not having 3 auto links in one day. Maybe the link would be one of those posts and the other 2 would be questions or interaction starters. It’s kind of like church in a way… Great sermons and announcements are really important, but the life change is happening when relationships are built.
I would also change your icon to a picture and not the building. Our research is showing that people want to interact with people and faces and not logos/buildings. Track your stats if you make the change, I would be surprised if the interaction doesn’t increase.
Thanks again for asking the question and I hope that this info is useful!
Jason Elkins
Transparent Social Media
Thanks Jason…I’m going to plead guilty on posting not posting links. You see, we are a smaller church with a smaller staff and I’m the youth director. Over the past 18 months I’ve taken on the website and all of our online presence stuff and any a/v media issues fall in my lap. So, taking time to update the website AND
Thanks Jason…I’m going to plead guilty on posting not posting links. You see, we are a smaller church with a smaller staff and I’m the youth director. Over the past 18 months I’ve taken on the website and all of our online presence stuff and any a/v media issues fall in my lap. So, taking time to update the website AND
Thanks Jason…I’m going to plead guilty on posting not posting links. I knew that links with comments looked more intriguing than posts from an auto-feed. You see, we are a smaller church with a smaller staff and I’m the youth director. Over the past 18 months I’ve taken on the website and all of our online presence stuff and any a/v media issues fall in my lap. So, taking time to update the website AND the FB page gets cumbersome. I also figured having all the posts go the the FB would help people not miss info, but I guess there is good and bad both ways. Thanks for taking the time to check out our FB page and our website. I really appreciate your advice.
Thanks Jason…I’m going to plead guilty on posting not posting links. I knew that links with comments looked more intriguing than posts from an auto-feed. You see, we are a smaller church with a smaller staff and I’m the youth director. Over the past 18 months I’ve taken on the website and all of our online presence stuff and any a/v media issues fall in my lap. So, taking time to update the website AND the FB page gets cumbersome. I also figured having all the posts go the the FB would help people not miss info, but I guess there is good and bad both ways. Thanks for taking the time to check out our FB page and our website. I really appreciate your advice.