Experimenting with the Internet: Facebook

As I begin my new role as the Internet Pastor at Trinity Baptist one of my top priorities has to be Facebook. Almost everyone I know and probably you know is on Facebook. You are likely reading this blog because of a link from Facebook. Some friends were joking with me the other day that I must be on Twitter and Facebook all day by the amount of posts that I make and my response was: "Well, it's my job." It's almost strange to think that being on Facebook is my job, but how huge of an opportunity do we have to interact and deepen relationships through this incredible social networking resource!

About a year ago or so I began realizing how powerful this tool was especially in reaching college students. Our college ministry has grown from 2 to over 200 in less than 2 years and a lot of that growth is due to outreach on Facebook. We invested minimally in Facebook ads and began creating Facebook event invites making it easy for Segue attenders to invite their friends. When you ask around at Segue about 90% of the attenders are involved whether they heard about it from Facebook or came with someone who heard about our Monday night gatherings on Facebook.

Facebook is constantly expanding though and the demographics are changing. Currently the highest % growth of any demographic within Facebook are women over the age of 50. Facebook seems to be sticking as well with 70% of those who try it continue to use it where Twitter only has about 40% who stick with it.

As I begin to figure out how to use this resource for Trinity Baptist Church I have begun by creating a fan page. On the fan page I went ahead and inserted some pictures, I linked the Twitter page and YouTube page thanks to Involver, and will continue to seek to develop this resource in the coming weeks. My challenge is now to get our congregation involved and hopefully use it as a connector for both our congregation and the city that we are seeking to reach.

As I continue to experiment, I would love your suggestions, thoughts, ideas, concerns, etc. I am constantly looking for tools similar to those that Involver has created. Please go and check out our Facebook page and share your comments!