It can be a part-time job to create church Facebook page content, but it has become an indispensable part of establishing your church plant online and in your community.
The first and best thing you can do for your church Facebook page is posting interesting and useful content. “Content is King” has become such a buzz phrase that there were scads of images (like the one I chose above) that include it, all on the first page of my search results. And its power is in the non-sales nature of the approach: people increasingly hate to be marketed at.
The next best thing you can do is to find a volunteer or staff person who will own this and create church Facebook page content without you having to do all the heavy lifting.
Come up with a plan so that you can be intentional and strategic. If not, your approach will be inconsistent, haphazard, and probably ineffective. Use these ideas to cook up a strategy with your volunteer or staff ‘Facebook champion’:
I’ve Got Rhythm
Pick 5 to 7 topics or kinds of posts that you’ll put up each week. Such as:
- A re/post about your city
- A post about your next church event or gathering
- A re/post about another nonprofit doing awesome stuff in your area
- A post summarizing a recent event at your church
- A post with a provocative followup question to your latest sermon/lesson
- A silly re/post just for fun
A weekly rhythm like this helps you 2 ways: it gives you categories to think in as you find content elsewhere, and it gives you a mental checklist to make sure you’re posting lots of diverse content every week.
A big shout out to Sonny Smith at Detroit Church for the inspiration on this one!
Schedule Ahead
You can use that rhythm in conjunction with Facebook’s scheduling tool: instead of clicking publish when your post is ready, click the drop down on the publish button and choose schedule. You can actually schedule all 6 posts for the week in one sitting. Just space them out to go live one each day.
A word of caution: there are 3rd-party compiling & scheduling tools out there like Everypost and Hootesuite, but I’ve read that Facebook has found a way to systematically devalue your posts if you use them. Better to stick with the built-in tool, or not as many people will see your posts.
Worth 1,000 Pictures
If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, then a video is worth a 1,000 pictures. There is a general consensus that videos are much more effective on Facebook than pictures or memes.
Probably not every post should be a video, but any of the rhythm topics above could be video or picture, really, so be sure to get some out there.
The good news is that we live in a YouTube society, so perfect video production isn’t a requirement. You can shoot a pretty good video with a modern smart phone.
Give Them Something Useful
You want to help people, right? One of the many ways you can do that is to create free downloads or eBooks to post. There is a careful line to walk here so that you don’t come off too salesy. But maybe a simple download is part of what somebody needs in that moment, like:
- How to Fight Fair in Your Relationships
- Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen?
- How to Forgive Someone
Encourage People to Share
Back to “Content is King”: the reason it’s important is because people will share it with their circles of friends, coworkers and acquaintances on Facebook. The whole idea of a video ‘going viral’ is that people share it without your having to ask them to.
But in the early days, you’re probably going to have to outright ask people to share your posts. So ask people on your Launch Team or the regulars at your church to interact with and share your posts, and explain why it’s important: it creates awareness and opportunity for you collectively as a church.
What other creative ideas have you seen?