A lot of what we focus on here at Church Marketing Online is reaching out to share the Gospel and bring people into your church.  But it is also important to reach out to those who are already in your church.

I’ve seen many a church who did some great work in outreach and were bringing in lots of new people, but the church never seemed to grow.  The reason was that they were doing such a poor job with their existing members that people were leaving as fast as new people were coming.  Not good.

There are many elements to keeping people as members of a church. Read more…

I was reading an article over at MickMel.com entitled, “You Can’t Fake It On Social Media“.  The thrust of the article is that for social media to work for an organization, you must actively engage with people through social media.  You can’t fake it.  But is that really true?  Can you fake it? Read more…

Earlier this week Bing announced that they were rolling out some great new features which integrate Facebook into their search results.  These features influence search results, show you your Facebook friends “liked” pages, provide for Facebook interactions with your friends while searching.  You can read more about the features here, “Bing and Facebook Launch New Integration Revolutionizing Search“.

While there are a lot of cool features Bing has announced, there are something that can really benefit churches greatly.  Here’s how… Read more…

Social media is a revolution.  At no other time in history has a message or news about an event or even video of that event been able to be spread to so many people so quickly.  Consider the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Within 12 hours of the quake, there were over 4.5 million related Facebook posts from every continent (except Antarctica).  Millions of people posted to Twitter with the rate of related tweets getting to over 1,200 tweets per minute.  Within a few days there were over 9,000 earthquake related videos posted to YouTube and over 7,000 tsunami related videos.

From Death to Life: Read more…

We’ve talked a bit about hosting online events, but what about using real world events as online events?  Should churches allow or even encourage members to use Facebook or Twitter in the church? Read more…

Earlier this week Paul Steinbrueck (Christian Web Trends) posted a two part article, “18 Ways Pastors Can Ruin their Reputation on Facebook” which I mentioned on our blog here.  Yesterday, he followed that article up with things Pastors should be doing on Facebook called, “8 Things Pastors SHOULD Do on Facebook.”  There are some good tips.

Check it out: Read more…

Online communities are a great opportunity.  Getting members connected through Facebook and Twitter is great.  But as much as all these online activities can help build community, real-world, in-person meeting is still very important. Read more…

Social media, especially Facebook, is fantastic opportunity for churches and Pastors to connect with church members and members of their community.  But, like most things, Facebooking as a Pastor can cause more harm than good if not done right. Read more…

I came across this interesting post on the Church Marketing Sucks blog about poll of church members/staff and their church’s activity on Facebook.  The sad result was that only 37% said their church fosters regular interaction through Facebook.  Not good.  Considering how many millions of people are on Facebook, a real opportunity is being missed.

http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/2011/02/facebook-strategy-poll-results/

What is your church’s Facebook strategy?  Are you on Facebook at all?

A couple days ago, Facebook announced some major changes. Users now see this notice at the top of their “homepage”

Changes to the Home page are coming soon
Learn about the new features ahead of time. This is happening soon; check out the home page tour now.

It looks like changes to the look and organization of the homepage are being made and the wall is getting another makeover.

But Facebook announced an even more significant change – to Facebook “Pages,” the facet of Facebook designed for businesses and organizations. This news is a total game-changer for churches.

Read more…