Engagement on Your Ministry Facebook Page

If you are a religious organization, parish, diocese or Catholic organization, your members and potential members expect that you will have a Facebook Page. It is a given. But having a Facebook Page is not enough, it needs to be an effective Facebook Page.

A Facebook Page is effective when people interact with the posts. On Facebook this interaction is called engagement and it refers to whether people Like, Comment, Share or Click on something you have posted. You may not get engagement on every post, but if you seldom or never get engagement, you are missing the point on Facebook.

Facebook is about building relationships through engagement. If your Posts are not engaging, their Reach (the term Facebook uses to refer to the number of people who actually see your posts) will decrease over time. This happens because the Facebook algorithm favors engaging content and shows that on timelines over content that it deems non-engaging.

How to Increase Engagement on Your Facebook Page

• Focus on your audience. What inspires, encourages, offers them insight into your mission and hence adds value to their lives? Post that.
• Use videos and photos often. Posts with videos (especially original videos uploaded directly to Facebook-called native videos) and photos (especially of member activities) get the highest engagement (that is: Likes, Comments, Shares and Clicks) on Facebook. Informative graphics or picture quotes are in this category.
• Use text-only posts sparingly. They are the least engaging.
• Post quality content. Put some thought into your posts. Make them interesting, enriching and concise.
• Post regularly. You are building a relationship on Facebook and you need to be posting frequently enough to stay connected (no less than 3 times a week), but not so frequently as to be a pest (no more than 3 times a day).
• Keep promotional posts, which are designed to get people to register, attend, volunteer, donate, etc. to a minimum or around 10% of all your posts. Promotional posts are about what you want them to do. With Facebook, our priority is to deliver what our audiences want. See point number 1 above.
• Experiment with different kinds of posts or content. Over time you will learn what engages your followers. Use that kind of content as often as you can.
• Scan the Internet for useful information that your followers might not find on their own. This is especially helpful when there is some current event or topic related to your mission or the Church at large that is generating a lot of interest. Pick the best articles or posts (this is called “curating” the content) and share the links on your Facebook Page adding your own introductory comment. Make approximately 20% of your posts curated content. Good content will engage your followers.

What do you find increases engagement on your Facebook ministry page? Please share it below. Thank you.