How to use Facebook Pages to promote your church group [Geek Your Church]

Facebook has become the premiere tool to promote products, groups, brands, and organizations. Because of its social nature, Facebook is an effective tool connect organically with friends and friends of friends.  My experience in the past has been as a youth pastor, but this could apply to any organization or business that is looking to promote their brand/product.

So why use Facebook for your group?  Here are a few great reasons:

• Your people are already using it.  Many people don't even visit websites anymore for information, they use social media platforms like Facebook to find what they need.
• Facebook is people focused, so are you.  The members of your church group have friends the do not attend your church and may never otherwise know about what you are doing.
• Let your people be the evangelists for your group.  They can invite their friends, promote events, and share how they are growing in their faith with people they have influence and relationships with.
• A well designed Facebook page can replace a website.  And it's FREE!  With discussion boards, the ability to add custom pictures and widgets, an events calendar, and news updates - Facebook is poised to provide the same rich content that a static website would provide.
• Have your group members find out about updates in their Facebook timelines.  For those who check their Facebook daily, this can be as effective or more than email for communicating.

Ready to get started?

Step 1: Sign up for a page

Notice I am saying "page" and not "group."  That's because Facebook has both pages and groups.  It used to be that the only way you can make a place for your group to interact was with Facebook groups.  These groups were treated separately from the normal timeline so people wouldn't see updates about the group regularly unless they checked.  Facebook wanted to do groups better and they didn't want to get rid of them so they created pages.  Pages are better because they act like a regular friend and can show up in the regular timeline of your group members.  Not only that, but Pages can add HTML and Application widgets that groups can not.  There really is no reason at all to use Facebook Groups for your church or organization.

With that said, lets get started signing up for a page.  Visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php to get started.  You don't need a Facebook account to sign up, but if you're already logged in, the page will be created separate from your personal profile.  That means you can make status updates for your page without anyone knowing it's you doing the posting.

Step 2: Fill out your information & set up your page

You can fill out as much as you would like about your church/organization.  I suggest including a short description, you address, website, and meeting times. Make sure to include an image for your profile picture, a church logo would be good here.

Under edit page, you can add all kinds of applications and widgets.  Make sure to set up your page to be viewed by everyone in the settings and make it public.  Make sure your wall settings are set to your liking.  I would suggest letting your members make comments and posts on your wall.  It is social networking after all.  You can keep the crazies out by booting any "fans" that cause trouble.  As of now, Facebook does well to manage any random fan page spam.  None to speak of in my experience.

Step 3: Get "Fans"

On your page, you should find a link on the top left that says "suggest to friends."  Invite everyone you want from your friends list and invite them to invite their friends.  This is the beauty of social networking.  Your page fans will help you grow your page even larger if they get their friends to "like" it.  Everyone who "likes" your page will automatically get your news and status updates.  If you're managing a website, you can place a fan page widget on it for website visitors to subscribe to your facebook page.
You can find that widget here:
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box. Place your facebook page ID in the setup wizard and it will give you the code to paste in your website.

Step 4: Get your Facebook url

Once you accumulate 50 fans or more on your Facebook page, you get to sign up for your own custom Facebook url.  This will be great to put on buisness cards and bulletins and should be easy for your church members to remember.  It's in the format: facebook.com/"yourgroupname"

If you have 50 fans right now, you can get your custom url by visiting http://www.facebook.com/username/ and selecting your page there.  You can also get a custom url for your normal Facebook account here as well.

Step 5: Keep your page updated!

The more you keep your Facebook page updated, the more your church/group members will see your updates and news in their timelines.  Make sure to add events and "invite" members to them.  You can send mass Facebook messages (emails) to your members and even import a separate RSS feed (like website updates).  If used correctly, your Facebook page will become a social media hub for your organization where information can spread out organically to your Fan Page friends and their friends.