For the "nones" Have you blended Web and Social media?

[jwithnell]

We're looking at a redesign of our church website. The current site has worked extremely well for folks who look just like us and know what to look for in a church. But? That doesn't do much to connect with our rapidly secularizing community that has many people with no church or Bible background.

On second thought, our community demographic (~33, small family or single, highly educated, wealthy but possibly house poor) isn't likely to be surfing the web: they're more likely out on social media.

So. I'm wondering if your churches have done much outreach through social media adver-posts. We do have a presence on social media, but posts are most likely to be shared out to folks like us.

I'm also thinking about a second portal to our website that would be reached either through this outreach or by SEO for terms more likely to be used by this targetted demographic. That way, we'd maintain what already works on the site, would have ever-deepning info for those who want to pursue it, can change rapidly just a page or two to blend with social media, etc.

If you've worked along these lines, I'd love to hear from you!

 

[ZackF]

We have a Facebook page but I don't how many people have found us through it.

 

[Bill The Baptist]

Running a Facebook as is very cheap and will reach a wide audience. You can even target your audience and measure things like how many people click on your website because they saw the ad.

 

[jwithnell]

Running a Facebook as is very cheap and will reach a wide audience. You can even target your audience and measure things like how many people click on your website because they saw the ad.

Bill, that's what I was thinking. Just about every day FB prompts me about doing a church ad. Have you done anything specifically for "nones"? I'm trying to think my way past the trappings of the emergent church, "it's all about you." But at the same time, we know the audience we're thinking about wants to connect and be active in service from the get-go.

(We're receiving guidance from our regional home missionary who has done research in our community.)

 

[Bill The Baptist]

Bill, that's what I was thinking. Just about every day FB prompts me about doing a church ad. Have you done anything specifically for "nones"? I'm trying to think my way past the trappings of the emergent church, "it's all about you." But at the same time, we know the audience we're thinking about wants to connect and be active in service from the get-go.

(We're receiving guidance from our regional home missionary who has done research in our community.)

You are a bit limited in the ad itself, it is really designed to drive people to a website. The best plan would be to have a high quality website that communicates what you want to get across. Might even be worth paying someone to do.

 

[Jack K]

You could do Facebook ads, but our church doesn't. I think the best way to get real traction via social media is... wait for it... to be social. If church members have unchurched friends out in the community, attend events out in the community, and then have a strong social media presence and start linking/talking about their church on Facebook, that will create interest! The message that "someone I know and like goes to this church" works better than almost any other message you might create.

Some members hesitate to mention their church in conversation with unchurched friends. But they won't mind taking a picture of the Sunday school page little Johnny colored at church, or the mystery meat that showed up at Wednesday night supper, or whatever, and posting it on Facebook. If you can train church members to think of such opportunities as ways to connect the church to the community and start conversations, always linking to the church's page, you can use Facebook to great advantage.

Does your church ever hold outreach or service-type events for the larger community? If so, supply a few photos or a nice graphic and make it easy for everyone in the church to share it on Facebook. That's the best type of social media attention you can get. My church sponsored a charity event last night, and people all over town (many of them not church members) were sharing it on Facebook. Social media loves special events.

 

[jwithnell]

Jack, we have a major stake in a community service group and have several other connections including organizations that use our facilities. You and I seem to think a lot because my initial write-up with recommendations on this project included personally engaging events in our very active downtown. On FB, we've been pretty good about pushing photos out with everything from crazy teens to OPC disaster relief.

I've been asked to focus upon what we do for the community and to help people "plug in" in the hopes we can create discipleship opportunities. My initial thought was that we'd need to do a total website redesign from concept up which, as you know, would take months to get right.

Bill, visitors frequently offer great reactions about our website, not realizing I'm the primary driver. But I'd say 85 + percent who visit our church are mature believers looking for a solid reformed (or at least Biblical) church. Even they represent just a tiny part of the 30 percent of those who are "religious" in our county (which includes Muslims, LDS, JW, RC, Sikh, etc. ).

I don't want to ignore our current audience. And anything placed out on Facebook would be at most a picture and one to two lines of text with a link going to what would be a new top-level navigation page, but not our landing page. It's this two-portal entry that I'm most interested in knowing if others have tried. And how you've maintained God's glory while using just a line or two to help someone to connect.

Thanks for helping me think this out.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Something related to the topic worth a look:
https://juicyecumenism.com/2017/02/16/churches-not-fear-nones/

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Not sure what platform you guys use for your website but I set up our Wordpress site to post sermons to our Facebook page and our Twitter account. We use our Facebook page quite a bit to communicate goings on and we've used the advertising feature of Facebook to promote certain events (which allows for a lot of demographic choices).

That said, I think a very clear presentation of what your Church is about is important on the front of the site and that it looks professional but I don't necessarily agree with the idea that the "culture" of the Church may be understood by those outside its borders. We certainly don't go out of our way to be obscure but Christianity itself is its own "world" and there's always been an enculturation process for those outside its borders to really "get" it.

Now, I'm not talking about things are sub-culturish - a Church that is so insular and into everybody being the same on secondary issues. But I am speaking about a clear presentation that the Church exists that men might come to know Christ, grow in grace, and go into the world with hope. Those are definitional ideas but very "odd" to people who don't even know what that entails anymore.

What has made us attractive to un-Churched people in our area is that we are kind and friendly. Those who have converted did so because it began with friendships and they realized that the Church, while its language and liturgy were "odd", had something. We couldn't really change the Word and liturgy for them but it eventually "stuck". That's what God in His grace did.

So I would say it's great that you have an outward focus to draw people in and I think your page ought to be clear but I also think that the clarity of who we are as a Church will always be puzzling to the world until they become "citizens".

 

[jwithnell]

Thank you, gentlemen. We were already on Squarespace before the primary role for the website passed to me a few years (and two major revisions of the platform!) ago. Yes, we've worked with pushing info out with automatic posts to Facebook, but could tighten the process. (Since posting the OP, I read that a quarter of the world's population was active on FB in the last 30 days. That's astonishing!)
I've also seen that multiple landing pages have become an accepted practice, even expected, for certain types of sites.
The "nones" article makes sense to me, but from a different angle. During such discussions, I wonder if "the young and the restless" are any more secularized and jaded than they were 50 years ago. Beatniks reading Sartre were hardly embracing evangelical Christianity. There's nothing new under the sun. I'll pass the article along.