Reaching Your Social Media Potential…

I have spent a few weeks trying and trying to decide what the resident church tech guy and media director could possibly blog about. Finally today, with the help of a question posed to me by our Pastor, we both agreed we had finally found my next blog posting. Weird how that works, huh?

In the day of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. So many opportunities have been opened for churches to get their name, events, and mission out to the local community and in the right circumstances maybe even further. Printed advertisement is always great, sometimes nothing beats the opportunity to place a flyer, business card, or post card in someone’s hand or business as a mean of being more personal. However, I personally believe any church that is truly seeking people outside of their own four walls must have both a social and printed presence!

About six months ago I guest blogged on Craig Clayton’s blog, one of the items I spoke about concerned the importance of social media incorporation in churches. I personally feel in order to get folks inside your church, you have to use all means necessary to get them in the door. That is of course unless you don’t want them there to begin with because you are afraid of “who you might get.” I hope that is not the case. We should NOT worry about “who we might get” from social advertising…if we worry about that then we are not truly doing what we are supposed to be doing in the first place. If you are truly proud of your church, DON’T be afraid to put yourself out there and let the community know who you are! Church family (members) if you are proud of what your church is doing for the Lord then “like” it, “share” it, “retweet” it! In turn, I will tell you why you should share it and like it.

After deciding to blog on this subject, I did some research on Facebook only. Did you know on average each Facebook user has 338 friends? Did you also know when you post, like, or share something on Facebook 15-35% of your friends see it depending on the time of day? Think about that, I personally have close to 900 friends on Facebook…that means anything I like, share, or post has the possibility of being seen by 315 of my friends. So what am saying by all these figures? I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED! For the church family of PHBC I will explain how this cool!

Peace Haven currently has 480 likes on Facebook.

• Each post to the PHBC FB page can be seen at most by 168 people (35%).
• If you as a church family member like a post on the PHBC FB page, that means not only is there a chance of 35% of folks on our page liking it…but also 35% of YOUR friends.
• If you like & share a post there’s the possibility it can reach even farther!
  
• One post on the PHBC Facebook page yesterday was only liked by a few people but it was seen by over 500-700 individuals due to friends of friends seeing the post.
  

So as you can see, it’s a “They tell two friends, then they 2 friends” way of looking at things. If you are not part of PHBC I encourage you urge your church or organization to start reaching out via social media. If you are a part of the church family a Peace Haven, I urge you to 1. Like our page of Facebook, and follow us on Twitter & Instagram. We always have great things to post! & 2. Start liking and sharing posts on the PHBC Facebook page that you feel you want to let everyone know about. Be proud of what God is doing amongst us at Peace Haven…SHARE IT. God Bless!