So, you want to jump into the social media world, especially Facebook, but you aren’t quite sure if you should create a group or page for your church. I’ve taken the time to do a little research into pages and groups and outline the differences in this post. I hope this helps. Feel free to post questions below.
Also if your church already has a page or group, please leave the link below for ideas on how groups and pages can be used!
What exactly is a page?
Fan pages are a way to promote your church. Pages are viewable to all Facebook users and allows anyone to become a “fan.” Pages are a way to promote an official product, person, group or organization. (If it’s unofficial, then you’ll need to create a group instead.) Administrators of pages are not mentioned on the page. Most people become fans of a page because they want to let people know that they support the product, person, group or organization.
What exactly is a group?
Groups are a place for people with a common interest to connect. Groups don’t have to be official…you can have a group for “People who eat frog legs.” The possibilities are endless for a group. Groups are more personal and allow you to have one or several administrators. Most people join groups to engage in conversation with other group members. It’s a more narrow and personal conversation that a fan page doesn’t allow.
Differences?
| Pages | Groups | |
| Post pictures? | Yes | Yes |
| Send group messages? | Yes | Yes |
| Post links? | Yes | Yes |
| Wall posts? | Yes | Yes |
| Status updates? | Yes | Yes |
| Discussions? | Yes | Yes |
| Open to the public? | Yes | Can be, doesn’t have to be |
| Who can join? | Anyone | You choose |
| Indexed in search engines? | Yes | No |
| Applications? | Yes | No |
| Create events? | Yes | Yes |
| Contact individual members? | No | Yes |
| Allow advertising? | Yes | Yes |
| Lists Officers/Administrators? | No | Yes |
| Contact information listed? | Yes | Yes |
| Meeting times/ address listed? | Yes | Yes |
Feel free to leave a link to your church’s page or group. I’d love to see how churches are using social media.
Photo by JakeCaptive
February 16th, 2010 at 8:01 pm
I have recently discovered that St Hilda's Anglican Church Katoomba has a facebook page (or is a group). It was setup by someone years ago but nothing is happening to it. I would love to have something happen to it but have no idea how to go about it.
February 17th, 2010 at 3:03 pm
Elly- You will need to find out who set it up in order to access the page to change information on it. If you can't find out who's account it was set up under, then I would suggest just creating a new group under your own FB account or create a FB account for the church and create the group or page under that account. A general account for the church would be easier so multiple people could have the login information and it wouldn't be directly connected to your personal account.
Link to create a FB page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
If you want to create a group, you can do so after setting up a Facebook account for the church. There will be a link to "groups" on the left side of the Facebook account. Click on this and then "create group." It's pretty self explanatory from there.
Hope that answers your question!