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Should my church have a Facebook Page or Group?

Facebook pages and Facebook groups both have very great, practical applications, but for maximum effectiveness, you’ll want be sure to choose the one that best suits your church or groups’ needs.

Facebook Pages:

A page gives you the most control over the content and is most effective if you would like to announce or share information. It has the best reach and is publicly viewable and searchable.  Anyone can like your page and see the information you post immediately.  Your information can be viewed even by people who don’t like your page.  If someone posts to your page (not comments) only their friends can see what they posted – it’s not shown to your whole audience, unless they click on ‘reviews’.

 

Facebook Groups:

A group is best for discussion.  As the group admin, you can post in your group, but others in your group can also post and get the same exposure.  This is great for small groups, bible study groups or life groups and can be a great communication tools for teams within your church, like your youth leadership team or usher’s team for example – someone may use this group to say “Hey, I’m scheduled this weekend, but I can’t make it.  Can someone cover for me?”

Often groups can be locked so you have to approve people to become a member before they can see information, or you have to approve their comments before they’re published.  You can also have open groups where anyone can join anytime without needing approval, but they are often filled with spam and trollers since there’s no moderation.  (if you’d like to see an example of a closed group in action, check our our Church Marketing Ideas Facebook Group.)

 

My recommendation:

I would recommend a Facebook page for your church.  It allows someone to ‘like’ your page, or see content before they like your page to see if your church may be a fit with them before they even visit.  Creating a group not only creates the sense that they need to be ‘approved’ to connect with you on Facebook, and for reputation management, the page gives you the most control over what is getting posted to your page. (Click here to create your Facebook page.)

Use Facebook groups for your life groups, small groups or team communication.  Think of it like an online chat group.

 

If you’d like to see both, check out our GROUP and our PAGE.

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By Adam McLaughlin

Adam loves helping churches and businesses discover marketing ideas that are consistent with their values, loves coke slurpees from 7-11 and would love to speak at your conference or event!

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