06
Mar
Facebook for Churches – New Facebook a Game-Changer
Author: Paul Steinbrueck // Category: Social Networking, church marketing ideas
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.
In the last article, I wrote about how Facebook provides a great opportunity for the church to market itself through their members’ network of friends. We talked about how members can live out their church lives on Facebook, like they live out the rest of their lives and by doing so, can be telling their friends about Christ and their church in a natural, non-invasive way. Not only it is non-invasive, but it’s also free which can be very nice is todays ecomonic climate. So, I thought this post I would list some ideas of ways your members can do this. I’d encourage you to bring this up with your church members and encourage them to actively use Facebook to promote your church and share the love of Christ with their friends. 
Facebook has become the most popular social networking website on the Internet. Millions of people have a profile and most people have lots of friends. Their friends may range from family members, to people they work with, to friends from college or high school. Most of your church’s members who are on Facebook have friends who are not church members. So, how can this help you in your church marketing strategy?
Facebook is a great way to connect to your church members and have your church members connect to each other. Facebook can also be a great way to distribute church information, devotions, and articles. That’s because Facebook has applications which allow you to syndicate your church blog through either a Facebook Page or a Facebook Profile. If your church doesn’t have a blog, I highly recommend your start one. It’s a great way to communicate with your church members. Even if you don’t have a church blog, you can still use this feature to syndicate other articles. 
In our last article I talked about creating a Facebook Page for your church. Facebook Pages are good, but there are some features in the Facebook Profiles which are not available in Facebook Pages. Unfortunately, these deficiencies have seriously weakened the effectiveness of Facebook Pages for churches. So, for your Facebook church marketing strategy, I recommend creating both a Facebook Page and a Facebook Profile. 
If you are a person (and most of us are) you can create a Facebook profile to reconnect with old friends, stay in touch with family and friends and meet new people online. Churches, on the other hand, cannot create a profile as profiles are restricted to individuals. Churches have to create a Facebook Page which works a little differently than a profile.
In our continuing our discussion of Church Marketing within 
Over the past several weeks we’ve been looking at church marketing in 
