It’s no doubt we live in a digital age and churches can struggle to keep up with the digital times. Facebook is a great social media platform that can greatly impact your ministry. Many churches take the first steps and create a Facebook page for publicity, but then do not know how to manage it effectively.

Here are some tips to help.

1. Create a budget and assign a staff member.

Decide on a budget for your social media, Facebook in particular. How much will you dedicate to Facebook advertising? Plan who will manage your Facebook account—this can be a volunteer, staff member, or a third party. The budget does not need to be extravagant, but it needs to be clear and used. Remember the adage: “Until it’s somebody’s responsibility, it’s nobody’s responsibility.”

2. Have a social media mission.

What do you want to get out of social media? Do you want to use it for outreach? Share prayer requests? Both? You need to develop a strong mission for how social media will add value to your church. Sit down with your team and develop a mission statement around which your social media presence will revolve. This will help dictate what kind of posts you need and how to best market your church.

3. Develop measurable goals.

Using your social media mission, create goals for your ministry. Make sure these are goals that you can measure and that you will Do you want to measure if people are using Facebook for information or if it is translating into actual Sunday visits? Find ways to track this data. Decide how often you will measure your goals and actually do it.

4. Consider both a Facebook group and a Facebook page.

Both options have different functions. The Facebook group can be used for members to post more personal prayer requests, praises and be in fellowship. The Facebook page can be used for church-wide announcements and posts that will bring in visitors. Using your mission statement, decide if you need both a page and a group. A page will be suited to outreach and a group to internal information.

5. Post frequently.

Post at least 3 times per week. This can be sharing articles, posting the sermon content for the upcoming Sunday, posting a link to the audio of the sermon, etc. Keep your page up to date or it will quickly become irrelevant.

6. Use graphics.

Using graphics on social media is key to grabbing attention! If you don’t have a social media manager or a graphic designer available, there are resources out there for you to create fantastic graphics for your church. Check out Canva.com and Unsplash.com or the WordSwag app. Use them to create graphics to catch attention in Facebook posts, sermon titles, events, etc.

7. Fill in the Details.

Be sure your Facebook page has all the details of your church including the times of your services! Have a phone number, address, email address, website, service times, denomination affiliation, links to other social media, and other necessary details on your Facebook page.

8. Plan ahead.

Did you know you can schedule future Facebook posts? This makes it easy to plan ahead. Choose one day and schedule the entire week with posts!

9. Engage!

Be sure to communicate with your audience. If you want them to engage with your posts, let them know! Ask them to “share” or comment. Always respond to questions and acknowledge many comments.

10. Audit your social media.

If you are doing this by yourself instead of hiring someone to manage your media, have a marketing professional audit your media and give you ideas of ways to improve. Feedback is your friend!