CSL 018 – 10 Simple Tips to Improve Your Church Facebook Page

Isabelle Faletti (00:55):

Hello? Hello everybody. Welcome to ChurchSpring Live episode 18. Wow. We’re almost at 20 episodes. That is crazy.

Rohn Gibson (01:05):

Crazy!

Isabelle Faletti (01:05):

I know, I can’t, I can’t believe that. Hey, while we are waiting for some others to join us on this live stream. Go ahead and introduce who you are. So introduce your church name and your location and the comments below. I see. We already have a couple of doing that, so thanks. Yeah. Let us know who you are and your church name. We always like to see who who’s joining us. It makes it makes it more of a conversation instead of a, a one way presentation. So while we wait for that I do want to welcome some new members of the ChurchSpring family. Welcome Mountain Zion Church from Illinois. We have Plymouth Presbyterian Church from Minnesota. I went to school in Minnesota, so I chose someone on purpose. Yep. and then this one’s for you, Rohn, Ohio from Kingdom Living Christian Christian Church from Ohio.

Rohn Gibson (02:04):

Go Bucks!

Isabelle Faletti (02:08):

So welcome, welcome to ChurchSpring to those new members. For those of you who are new to ChurchSpring Live, my name is Isabelle and joining me today is Rohn Gibson co-founder of ChurchSpring.

Rohn Gibson (02:21):

Welcome everybody. Welcome to fall by the way.

Isabelle Faletti (02:23):

Yes. Welcome to Fall! I have. Let’s see, how can you see.

Rohn Gibson (02:27):

It’s hiding back there.

Isabelle Faletti (02:27):

It says Hello, fall. Good. Old Target special.

Rohn Gibson (02:32):

So you have to be honest. Have you had any pumpkin spice? Anything yet?

Isabelle Faletti (02:36):

You know what I haven’t, yet. , I know. I know. I kind of rebel against the pumpkin spice craze that is so popular here, but I do have a Starbucks gift card, so I might just need to treat myself this weekend. I’m going leaf looking. I live in Colorado, so that’s a big activity that we do in Colorado we go “leaf looking”, that’s what we say.

Rohn Gibson (03:02):

Is that the official name – “Leaf Looking?”

Isabelle Faletti (03:02):

It is amongst my friends. So if I have any other Colorado people tuning in today, if, if it’s different for you, then that’s okay. Uif you, if you are new to ChurchSpring,uwe have a very simple mission. We help churches build intuitive, affordable, and frustration free websites.

Rohn Gibson (03:27):

Yeah. So there you go. That’s pretty much the end of the promotion for today. So anyway, we are just thrilled to have you all on and I want to give a quick shout out, Pastor Ron thanks for joining us. You’ve been in our prayers. Thank you for submitting that prayer request. And a brother will definitely uphold you in our prayers for health, as well as your church plant there. Faith Alive church. Welcome. We’ve got Erica joining us. Let’s see, from Victory City Church in Riviera, Florida, man. That sounds nice!

Isabelle Faletti (03:56):

Yeah, it does.

Rohn Gibson (03:59):

We’ve got Walter joining us. God bless you all too. We’re thrilled to have you here. Pastor Ron again. Yeah, super excited to have you here. One Hope Christian Fellowship, DJ again, Faith Alive Church, Lighthouse Ministries. We’ve just got a great great group joining us here today. So we are just blessed to have each and every one of you here. We are going to change up the episodes a little bit. So this is a little bit of a different type of thing that we’re going to be doing moving forward. Our episodes have been pretty long and that’s kind of an intentional, because a lot of the topics that we’ve been diving into just require more time. But we’re actually going to be shrinking up the episodes a little bit and just really making them shorter, more power packed episodes.

Rohn Gibson (04:47):

We’re going to be in that 30 to 45 minutes. We’ll see Isabelle, how we, how we hold that down. But it’s going to be a power packed episode, but we’re not going to waste time. We’re just going to jump in. Okay. So number one, we want you to engage with us, ask us questions. We, we’re gonna we’ll we’ll address as many as we can throughout the episode, but we will try to hit all the questions that we miss or just go past here at the end of the episode. So if you have questions, we want to answer them. We want to engage with you. So please put them in the comments and we will get through as many of those as we can. If we say anything that you’re like, I totally agree with that. Give us a, like give us a heart.

Rohn Gibson (05:23):

That would be awesome. And again, if you have to jump off for whatever reason, or maybe there’s somebody in your church that manages in this instance, social media and you think, man, this would be a fantastic episode for them to check out number one, text them right now and say, Hey, you need to go on ChurchSpring’s page and join me for this. If that’s not possible, then you can very easily send them the replay. And that’s ChurchSpring.com/CSL018 – CSL for ChurchSpring Live. So anyway, we’re not going to waste any time. We’re going to jump right into it today.

Isabelle Faletti (05:58):

Yes. Awesome. I am excited about this episode. I love social media. I love how social media is an incredible tool for the church. And Facebook itself. It is truly one of the top platforms that can actually drive traffic to your church website. So we’re going to be talking about 10 tips that you can really easily implement after this live stream to update your, your church page and ultimately again, drive traffic to your website. This topic actually came out of our most popular blog article that we have on our ChurchSpring blog, it’s called I think 10, 10 ways to optimize your church Facebook page. We consistently get a ton of traffic to that, to that blog article. And on the ChurchSpring support side, we consistently have customers or even members or people who are not yet members of ChurchSpring ask how do I use Facebook for my church?

Isabelle Faletti (07:09):

So I know that this is a super important topic. I see it every day. So yeah, we’re going to just dive in and give 10 tips. I know you’ll have questions as you listen in, and I want to hear your questions. Or if you use a certain tip that we’re talking about dropping in the comment, let us know. We want to encourage each other. This is a community here. So use the comments as you would as kind of a conversation around the coffee table. Alright, so Rohn kick us off. What’s the first tip that people can do.

Rohn Gibson (07:44):

Yes. Number one, make sure your live stream streams to your Facebook page. Okay. So we’ve talked about this a lot on previous episodes, but Facebook is a powerful tool when it comes to live streaming. So a couple of tips there with live streaming is make sure that you engage people with your live stream. So even from the pulpit or the stage, wherever your context of your, your gathering is make sure that you’re engaging people who are watching your live stream and social media and other ways have call to actions. Tell them, say, I say, good morning, welcome people in the comments below. It’s an amazing tool, but the reach of a live stream through social media is just incredible. I mean, even in my own context, I go to a relatively small church. And when we go back and look at the views of people who have watched it, sometimes it’s multiples of the people who actually watched it live.

Rohn Gibson (08:40):

So the engagement and the reach of a Facebook live stream is absolutely incredible. And then one just small tip there is make sure for your live stream that you actually create a Facebook live tab. So we share a link in the show notes of this, right to the Facebook help page that gives you as like a three step process. I think you were mentioning is about going, it’s been a little while since I’ve done it. But going on there, creating that live tab and the beautiful thing behind the live tab is this Facebook no longer requires people to be, are to have a Facebook account, to be able to watch live stream videos. Okay. So if you have your Facebook live tab, what you can do is actually go create a URL redirect on your church website. So it could be your church.org/live and forward that to your Facebook live page. And somebody doesn’t have to have it. They don’t have to be logged in or anything and they can watch your Facebook live stream. So that Facebook live tab is super important and very easy to set up. So again, we’ll link over to those instructions. So you can go and do that. Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (09:52):

And it, it is really easy Rohn. You, you told me that it was easy and this week I created one for ChurchSpring. Cause I figured we should be taking our own advice. Right. And I had planned 15 minutes of my day to do it. It took me about five minutes from beginning of Googling, how to do it and implementation. So make sure to add that to your list for everybody who’s listening.

Rohn Gibson (10:15):

Yes. Yes. All right. Number two, engage with your followers. Social media and Facebook is not just a one way communication, like I’m blasting out, but then if I get questions, I’m not going to follow up with them, make sure that you engage with people on your Facebook page. And secondly, make sure that to engage with them, give them a call to action. Okay. So that call to action could be, be registered for this event. It could be, you know, go check out the events going on or watch the replay of our service or whatever that might be, but give a call to action to make sure that you are driving people to take a next step. And one of those next steps can just be click on the link to go visit your page, to watch whatever that comment comment might be. Cause again, and we’ve talked about this ad nauseum in the past, but just quickly, Facebook is an amazing ministry tool, but it is not meant to be your church website, your church website, that houses that is your digital home base. That’s where all the important information regarding your church and is the most Up To Date thing on your church. Okay. Facebook is an amazing tool to engage with people and also to drive them back to that main ministry tool, which again is your church website. So make sure you engage with your followers and it’s just not a one way blast communication, but a way that if they ask questions, you can engage with them.

Isabelle Faletti (11:49):

And if you’re new to the term “call to action basically that means you were, you were asking people to do what you want and like super layman’s terms. What is your goal of that post? If that’s for them to listen to that sermon that’s on your website, tell them click here to listen to this sermon. Very simple. You don’t have to get fancy, just type out exactly what you want them.

Rohn Gibson (12:18):

Yes. And a great example of that is actually number three on our list. And that is sharing, ask your members to share your content. It’s one of the things, I mean, literally from the stage, you know, if there’s a special event coming up or whatever, it may be, ask your members to share the content we’ve got, obviously Christmas is coming up. We’ve done a couple of episodes on that. Yes, it’s early. It’s just fall. We get it. However it is a big significant time for the church. So make sure that as you’re posting information about upcoming events or things going on at the church that you invite and encourage highly strongly encourage the members of your church, not just to come and be consumers, but to actually be active in an easy way that they can be active is just to share the content and invite their network of people that they’re connected with to whether it be your local gathering, if you’re able to meet or even just to join your live stream, it could be at the beginning of your live stream, asking them to share it, you know, on their Facebook page or create a watch party or things like that.

Rohn Gibson (13:26):

So make sure that you’re engaging your church in the work of ministry, even through something as simple as asking them to share content, such a simple, simple thing that everyone who has a Facebook page can do.

Isabelle Faletti (13:43):

Yeah. Sharing is caring. That is what they teach you when you’re, when you were a little one – it’s still true in this digital age, Thanks, Grandma!

Rohn Gibson (13:53):

Yes. Yes. All right. Number four, you’re make sure that your profile picture and your cover photo are up to date. So your profile picture is the, will be the most seen picture out of any image you post on your Facebook account because every time you post, if it’s a text post of an image post, whatever, they’re going to see that little profile picture there. So I would encourage you that either number one, your logo, your church logo, or a simplified version of it. We know some, some logos we see are quite complex. So you may want to have just a simplified version that just as a, an icon that people know when they see that, who that is obviously that it’s your church. So make sure it’s up to date and that it’s optimized that it’s not cropping it off some weird way.

Rohn Gibson (14:41):

So you really can’t tell that it’s your church. So make sure that you do that optimize your profile picture, and then secondly, your cover photo, your cover photo. Number one, if you don’t want to update it regularly, just have it be something that represents your church really well. So it could be a picture of your church. It could be even a picture during worship time, whatever that might be. Have it be something that’s easily identifiable as being connected to your church, that cover photo. If you want to do a little bit more advanced side of things, it can actually be a really great tool for you to use, to promote. It could be a sermon series. It could be something you could even update every week as you go. And you add the events to your church website. Maybe you have specific graphics for a sermon series.

Rohn Gibson (15:25):

You could update that, put a little call to action. Hey, join us this Sunday or join our live stream, whatever that might be. But that’s a great tool there as well, as far as that cover photo. So again, if you’re not gonna update it every week, no worries. Or even every quarter or every month, that’s all right. Just make sure that whatever cover photo you have, it’s easily identifiable to your local gathering. And if you’re ready to take it up a notch, use that as a tool to promote events and sermon series at your church.

Isabelle Faletti (15:55):

Yep. Yeah. And I’m going to add a bonus tip on that because I like bonus tips. Go ahead and use canva.com. I talk about that a lot. But it is a free online tool that you can resize photos. So for your cover photo specifically, you do want it to be the recommended size that Facebook gives so that it will optimize or automatically adjust to different screen sizes. So on your phone or on your desktop. So go to canva.com. I’ll link that in the show notes, when they give you a template already for Facebook cover photos, they actually give you like predesigned templates. So you can just drop in your event information or your upcoming info that you want to include. And so you don’t have to be a designer to do this. I’ll – look for that in the show notes. It’s a really fun tool.

Rohn Gibson (16:49):

Yes, yes. Awesome. We really need to do like the deep dive into Canva. I think that would be powerful thing. So if you’re interested in us doing more of a like hands on episode on even some of the basics, like how to create a Facebook cover photo using Canva, let us know, say yes in the comments to let us know that that’s something that you would absolutely be interested in learning more about. It looks like we’ve got some people, Faith Alive Church,

Isabelle Faletti (17:16):

DJ. I do love Canva. We love Canva over here at ChurchSpring, Jen, on the customer support team. She’s also always referring people to Canva cause it’s so simple and it’s, they create beautiful images. So you feel and look like a designer and you don’t really have to have any, well, you don’t have to have any design knowledge. So it’s one of those tools that I always recommend to churches. Who, who has a smaller team that may not have a full time designer?

Rohn Gibson (17:44):

Yeah. All right. Well, we’ve got some other fans in here. Barbara’s a fan. Yes. An excellent tool. Awesome. So we will put that on our list of some things. So you can look forward look forward to that here in the days to come. So number five, regrouping here. That was good. I was a little rabbit trail for us. I like it. I like it. I am the King of rabbit trails. So anyway. Yeah. And you didn’t say “Amen. “

Isabelle Faletti (18:08):

If well, thinking if you get me talking about Canva or social media, then I’ll be the queen of rabbit trails. So,

Rohn Gibson (18:16):

There you go. All right. So, number four was, make sure again, update your profile picture and your cover photo number five is update your about page. So there isn’t about tab there. So go in and update it, add the pertinent information there, your mission statement, description, your contact information. Make sure that that’s updated a lot of churches. Just kind of, don’t like, it’s just there, but it’s not even updated. And while again, back to the point of, you know, Facebook, yes, it’s a great ministry tool. You want to engage there, but your main ministry source is still your church website. It doesn’t mean that you don’t want these other sources to represent your church well, so make sure that you update that about page again, mission statement, other pertinent information, especially around COVID and just different, special events going on at your church. That’s a, that’s something that don’t treat it like a closet and it just kinda whatever I put there is there it’s something that you want to make sure you check in on every quarter or so I just make sure that your contact information and all that, that critical really description kind of information about your church is still up to date.

Isabelle Faletti (19:24):

Yeah. I really love that analogy. Don’t let it be a closet that you just throw things in. That’s also a reminder for everybody to clean out your closet, then, it’s more than church website tips. This is a house cleaning tips here.

Rohn Gibson (19:44):

Oh, there you go. Over deliver at ChurchSpring. I don’t know. I don’t want to put that one on my to do list. My wife would say you absolutely need that on your to do, but yeah,

Isabelle Faletti (19:54):

She’s listening right now. She’s creating a honey-do list.

Rohn Gibson (20:02):

She’s putting an “Amen” in the comments!

Isabelle Faletti (20:02):

That’s great. Well I want to talk about our number six tip here, and that is to create a content calendar DJ from Faith Alive. I’m going to go on a rabbit trail- DJ says “Leave the closets out of this.” I don’t know. Is that a reminder?

Rohn Gibson (20:20):

I got a little uncomfortable when we talked about Debra being on here and talking about my closet. So I’m with you Faith Alive DJ. I’ll second that motion. All right. Let’s keep going.

Isabelle Faletti (20:31):

A content calendar. This is super important to any social media account. I’m specifically for a church website. So if you manage your Facebook page, a content calendar can really help prevent any overwhelm. So if you’re listening and you’re thinking that’s a lot I need to be doing, I have so much in, you need to be posting on my Facebook page. A content calendar can keep you focused and not get distracted. It’ll also help you identify what you need to be posting on your Facebook page. So as we’ve talked about already your search website, that is the main hub but you also need to be pushing out what’s on your website to your Facebook, to the different marketing channels that you have. And so your content calendar will help prevent double posting. Even if you have multiple people managing your Facebook accounts.

Isabelle Faletti (21:30):

And, and we’ll just keep you keep you focused so that you want me to go on all over the place. But also add some variety of posts so that you won’t accidentally look back the last month and see that you just posted the sermons and forgot to post any of your events that you have coming up or any inspirational quotes or announcements that you have. We talked in pretty lengthy detail about a content calendar in a previous episode of ChurchSpring. It is episode seven. I will add that in the show notes, if you did not attend that, that episode or if it’s, I mean, it’s been awhile. I highly recommend to go back, listen to our ChurchSpring library. We talked about how to reuse content. We give a example of what a content calendar is, and we actually give away 101 social media posts.

Rohn Gibson (22:28):

You don’t want to miss out on that. We will link that up. So you need to write down one note from this. And that is the good thing about the show notes from episode zero one eight, and then we’ll link it back to all these things that we’re talking about. Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (22:42):

Incredible tool for that. And along with your content calendar actually leads up to our seventh point events. So Events are super important to be posting on your Facebook page. So when you add your event on your website, that is step one, step two shipping to post it on your Facebook page. If you’re a flourish member, we offer a social scheduler. So you can very easily write within that event on your website, schedule it to Facebook. You can schedule as many as you want over the next couple of months. So if you’re scheduling your Christmas events right now, or a Thanksgiving event you can create that event on your website and then schedule a post to automatically post your Facebook page now for December. So you don’t even have to think about it.

Rohn Gibson (23:31):

Yeah. Your future self will thank you. Let the present self do the work that your future self can thank you. So you don’t have to even be thinking about, Oh, it’s Christmas time and let’s be honest, there’s a whirlwind of activity happens many times. Your, your future self will thank you for scheduling now.

Isabelle Faletti (23:50):

Yes, it’s true. Help out your future yourself. And then kind of another level that you can do with the events is when you have a special event or a holiday event coming up, such as Christmas you can actually add a Facebook event. So what I talked about earlier, you’re creating your event on your church website and then you’ll push you’ll, you’ll post that onto your Facebook page. But what I’m talking about now is actually go on your Facebook page and on, depending on what format you have on your left side or your top banner, you’ll see something that says events create a new Facebook event for a couple of reasons. One of them is that it’s a great reminder for your church members to be aware about community events. And they can also share, like we talked about before they can share that event with their friends, with their out-of-town family that will be coming into town.

Isabelle Faletti (24:56):

I can share it with my friends who may not go to church, but I know that they are looking for Christmas Eve service. And it’s a very low key way to invite people. I invite my friends to Facebook events pretty frequently. My young adult group at church. I just created a ton of events that I can easily share with friends who may not attend my church. It also, when you create an event, it’ll also appear in the main Facebook calendar section. So when a family is looking for something to do this weekend, they go to their events. And Facebook automatically pulls up recommended events based on their browsing history. So if they’ve been looking for family friendly events, then your church VBS, your church-family-friendly event could actually pop up. So it’s a great outreach tool that you can use again for kind of special events. You still want to be driving people to your traffic, to your website. So you can add for more information to register, go to our website. That would be your call to action.

Rohn Gibson (26:07):

Awesome.

Isabelle Faletti (26:08):

Yeah, it looks like they had a question or real quick from Larry. He says, “Do you include something like top 10 musts for any event calendar?”

Rohn Gibson (26:20):

So we don’t, but that’s a great idea.

Isabelle Faletti (26:22):

Yeah.

Rohn Gibson (26:23):

Larry, Larry wins Larry wins the award for the best future content, a recommendation here. So thank you Larry, for sharing that idea, but that’s, that’s a great thing. Cause I mean, we could easily, we could. Yeah. So we’re going to circle back to that because I think that is a super powerful thing that the combination, your church and effective church website and all the tools that are built in inside a ChurchSpring specifically, and this would still be relevant, even if you weren’t a ChurchSpring user, but then leveraging social media to do that. That would be great. So Larry, thanks for that. And yeah, I love that. Let’s see Faith Alive Church. Why don’t we keep on going? I’m going to try to see if there’s a, Oh, here it is. If I have a weekly event and schedule it to post to Facebook, it disappears after the first week why I have a weekly event, let’s circle back around to that question. I think that’s related to the social scheduler. So we’ll come back to that.

Isabelle Faletti (27:20):

Yep. And yes, we’ll come back to that, but I won’t yet.

Rohn Gibson (27:25):

Hey, DJ, sit tight. We’ll we’ll circle back around to that here at the end. Yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (27:29):

So again, events for number eight, frequency and relevancy, this may seem like a no brainer. But the Facebook algorithm loves when you post frequently, your Facebook followers love when you post frequently. So use that content calendar, continue to push content, to keep your members up to date of what’s going on in your church. It also has to be relevant to your Facebook followers. Because again, we want them to share, we want to, we want your followers to engage with you, but if it’s not relevant, if it’s not about your church, if it’s not about, if you’re not posting sermons or quotes or events or leadership updates, it’s not going to be relevant or even influential to your members. So whenever, when you’re creating that content calendar, when you’re thinking, should I post this on my Facebook page think, is it relevant to my church and also think frequency?

Isabelle Faletti (28:33):

So if you posted something today, this morning, you can still post it this afternoon or this evening. That’s just fine. Yeah, we, I could, we could probably have another live stream about frequency for sure. Yeah. and then for number nine, link to your website, we’ve already talked about this throughout our tips here. But I feel like this is a, what is the number one reason? What are you wanting to do with your Facebook and that is to drive traffic to your church website. So don’t forget when you’re posting a picture, when you’re posting a quote, a sermon pull quote, always link them back. And when I say link, I mean, you can just copy paste your website URL. Again, we have a social scheduler in the Flourish plan at ChurchSpring. So you won’t ever have to worry about, Oh, did I add that link to that sermon I mentioned on Facebook? You can just go into your, or your blog article on your website, click post to Facebook and even Twitter schedule it and kind of forget about it, but don’t really forget about it because you want to be engaging with people on your Facebook.

Rohn Gibson (29:54):

And that’s one of those things you get so busy in ministry. I can’t tell how many times I’ve seen churches that would post, Hey, make sure if you miss the service on Sunday, you know, to watch the replay or watch the service online and they don’t link anywhere. So it’s just the perfect opportunity to, you know, again, connect those dots and drive traffic back to that resource where they can get whatever the content is that you’re looking for. So anyway, just a good reminder, make sure you’re linking to your church website and those posts.

Isabelle Faletti (30:22):

Yep. Yeah. Oh, so important. Our last tip here is could it be a little scary for some people, but we’re talking about it. Are you ready? It is measure, we’ve talked a lot about setting goals for your church website that also is relevant to your Facebook page. You don’t want to be just putting out content, pushing out posts and being blind about the impact of it. So there are two ways that I recommend to measure what’s going on with your Facebook page and ultimately what’s happening when those Facebook followers are visiting your website. So the first is Facebook actually has a, an analytics tool built right within the platform and it’s called a Facebook insights. If you’re new to that, I recommend starting there. It’s a really good starting point. It’s laid out pretty pretty well. And with Facebook insights, you can learn more about your Facebook posts and your actual Facebook followers, so you can even learn what the best time of day is for you to post based on when your people are following.

Isabelle Faletti (31:41):

You can look back at all of your posts that you’ve posted on your, on your page to see which performed the best. So then that can help direct your, your future content for that content calendar again you’ll see, wow. That summer barbecue, that really got a lot of engagement or that livestream got a lot of engagement or shares. Did we do something different that time? And then you can do some research to look into that. The second thing for measure that I recommend is Google analytics that may be intimidating to you or even confusing. And that’s okay. I’m not going to talk in depth at all about that because we’re actually going to be talking about this over the next couple of weeks. But Google analytics is a good, a good option that you can see what is happening. When my Facebook followers are hitting my website, what are they doing? Are they visiting my website more? Where are they from? How long have they been staying on my website? So there’s a wealth of knowledge that you can do with Google analytics based on your Facebook traffic. And again, re well, I won’t, I won’t give it away yet, but we have a special guest coming who will be talking about Google analytics.

Rohn Gibson (32:58):

Yes, yes. And I think I would just highly encourage you. If, if all of this just seems overwhelming, just don’t, don’t be overwhelmed. We’re going to guide you through the major things you need to know. If you’re not familiar with the Facebook insights, you can do a search for Facebook page, Facebook insights and Google. You know, you’ll get the link over to Facebook where you can walk through that. And then Google analytics, as Isabelle mentioned, we’ve got some good stuff coming up for you on that. So definitely stay tuned, but you want to know what’s going on. Measuring is so important. So many times the worst thing is not knowing. Yeah, well, in the, in the world that we live in specifically in digital communication, you can know a lot. So utilizing these tools can really help you understand, are we reaching people, are people engaging with our content?

Rohn Gibson (33:42):

Are people utilizing it? These are all the things that even we look at to say, okay, how effective is even ChurchSpring Live? Are we reaching people? How many people are watching it, types of content, how many people show up live versus offline or not offline, but after the live event. So anyway, if you have any questions that I know we’ve got some great questions that have come in and we’re going to circle back, and this is going to be the time for that. So if you have any questions specifically relate them and you can ask otherwise as well, but specifically related to Facebook page, optimizing your Facebook page to drive traffic to your church website and really to become an important ministry tool for your local gathering, feel free. Go ahead and drop your questions in. And I’m just going to do a quick recap while you’re putting your questions in.

Rohn Gibson (34:28):

So number one, again, as we look at ways to optimize your church, Facebook page: live stream, make sure you’re live streaming. You’ve got your Facebook live tab. Number two, engage with your followers. This isn’t just about one way communication. This is really about creating that conduit of communicate back and forth communication with potential visitors or even members of your local church. Number three, make sure that you’re asking your members to share content. Number four, make sure that you’ve got an optimized and updated profile picture as well as of cover photo. Number five, your about page, make sure it’s up to date. Don’t let it be that cause that that never gets cleaned out or updated. So check it out, go visit it, make sure it’s up to date and make those changes on your about page. Number six, content calendar, go check out the free resource we’ve talked about with episode seven.

Rohn Gibson (35:19):

I know we had a question about where do I get these episodes? We’re going to answer that question just in a moment. Number seven: events, make sure that you’re using those Facebook events. The actual events feature in Facebook for special events specifically number eight: frequency, consistency, and relevance. So I’m just going to leave that one there. We’ve got tons of resources. We’ve talked about that again. We’ll link that up in in our show notes, number nine, make sure you link to your church website and posts. Don’t get so busy that you forget to do that one little piece. It’s like it’s like in a football play, getting to the one inch line and stopping. So make sure that you go into the end zone and make sure that you put that link in there. It’s college football season. We have these college football analogies. That’s just how it works here. That’s how we roll. So number nine: link to your church website and your posts and number ten: measure utilizing either Facebook insights actually I’d recommend both, but minimum Facebook insights. And then also Google analytics can be a fantastic, fantastic tool here as well. So Isabelle, where are we at with questions? How are we doing?

Isabelle Faletti (36:32):

We’re doing good. We have from, I don’t know, how do you say his name Dion

Rohn Gibson (36:42):

Or is this, is it Diane? Is this a, so hopefully, hopefully we’re right here. So,

Isabelle Faletti (36:48):

So you ask: “I’m on my laptop and this looks great. Awesome. love the church logo above both your video frames and how each point is showing on the bottom of the page.”

Rohn Gibson (37:00):

Yeah. And this is, this is part of Stream Yard. So stream yard makes it super, super easy. That’s how we’re able to pull in comments and all those things. You can go check out, streaming our, go to ChurchSpring.com/streamyard. And we take you right over to them. If you look at our, I think it was streaming for beginners. We actually talk about several of the super simple tools that you can use to do what we’re doing. So they use what’s, it’s a background. So that’s where the church bring logo and kind of that background around our videos. Then you can pull in multiple video sources, you can pull on comments, you can pull in points, the little preview video that plays with the countdown clock, as well as the outro video that plays giving people an overview of ChurchSpring, super, super easy to do a Stream Yard.

Rohn Gibson (37:51):

If you’re just getting into streaming in your ministry. Honestly, I would love to do an episode on Stream Yard and just how many ways it can be utilized in your ministry. I mean, you can do prayer services online. There’s so many things that you can do online with stream yard. So I sound like a total stream yard salesperson because it has been such a powerful tool. We wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing right now without stream yard. So go check out streaming our church, bring.com for slash stream yard. And it’ll take you right to where you need to go. So that’s how we are doing that.

Isabelle Faletti (38:27):

Um we also have a question from Antoinette. Would you schedule sermons as events?

Rohn Gibson (38:36):

Yeah, so they absolutely should be on your church website. So I know we’re talking about social, but just in case I want to make sure we’re clear. It absolutely should be on your church website. It would be ideal for them to be on your Facebook page. I know that may be daunting for a lot of people and it just won’t stay updated. So I would say at minimum, you want to do the big events, you know, like your Christmas Eve service, those types of special events. If you’re doing community outreach events, those sorts of things to make it really the virality, there’s a kind of a built in when I say virality, I meaning easy for it to be spread. Okay. Well we all, we all should know what that means these days, but really easy for it to spread no mask required. So for those events having it, and then obviously if I say I’m going to go, then it shows on my Facebook page so other people can see it. So I would say definitely for special events. And if you can, I mean, that would be great. If you could do it for every single service, but that can be a little intense. So anyway. Yeah. Good question. Great question.

Isabelle Faletti (39:41):

Really good question. We had a question from Joe, “I’m on my son’s Facebook account. I need info on adding a donation page.” So it sounds like that your, your donation page or give page that should really live on your church website. Again, that’s where you’re driving your traffic to from Facebook. You can definitely have a call to action to post on your Facebook page directing people to your Give page on your website.

Rohn Gibson (40:14):

Yeah. And just, just one quick thing there. I think it’s easy when we start talking about donation pages to just think of the page where people enter their credit card, and there’s way more to effective giving than just the page where they put in the credit card. Cause some people may not have a credit card. Some people may want to mail in a gift or, you know, give them other alternative options to give. So, we recommend having a page on your site that actually shares about the mission of your church or your organization, if it’s a nonprofit and then giving them several different options that they can participate financially through your ministry. So just some thoughts there that you can think about. There are many ways to do to giving the actual processing of credit cards. I mean, there’s endless ways. And we, if you’re, if you’re a church or even a nonprofit and you’re looking for like what what’s ones would you recommend reach out to us? We’re more than happy to talk about the credit card processors and actually some people that can help you with that. So don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Isabelle Faletti (41:16):

Um DJ, I wanted to follow back up with you and your question. “If You have a weekly event, schedule it to post to Facebook. It disappears after the first week.” if you could just go in, go ahead and send in a support ticket to our team in, in your ChurchSpring website, that way we can really dig into exactly what you’re referring to and help you out a little more hands on that way. So go ahead, DJ, and send us that, that support ticket, reach out to our team and we’ll make sure that we, we answer any questions that you have about that.

Rohn Gibson (41:48):

All right. Any others I’m going to get rid of this user here. That’s this is the first, this is a first for us having to block a user. Don’t really like doing that. Yes. Yes. We’ve got a whatever anyway, whatever. Anyway. Okay. Let’s keep going here.

Isabelle Faletti (42:07):

And so yeah. Any other last questions, make sure to pop it in. I do have one last thing to add. I know, can we have 11 tips? I’m going to make sure that your Facebook page for your church is a church business page. So it is not a personal account. I run into that pretty frequently with our members. They will link to their Facebook, what they think is their Facebook church page. And in reality, it’s actually a personal account. There are a lot of differences between a Facebook personal account and a Facebook – it’s called a business page. That’s what Facebook calls it or a page. So make sure go ahead right now. Well, not right now after this, go ahead and check out if, what your Facebook page for your church, how that’s created You want to be able to have access to Facebook insights. You want people to be able to search for you. You want your events to appear on the calendar. You want to have ads, even Facebook ads. Eventually you can do all that. When you have a Facebook business page for your church, you cannot do that on a personal account. Yeah, I, I can go a long time about this, so I will stop myself

Rohn Gibson (43:33):

110%. Totally agree. All right. So we’ve got this question. I want to come back and revisit it from Nora. So I want to practice what we preach here. So I could easily tell you on our Facebook page, there’s a tab where you can go and watch videos of past episodes. I’m not going to do that. What I’m going to tell you is go to ChurchSpring.com/blog, B L O G, and maybe Isabelle. You can whip up the quick, a little graphic at the bottom here. So this is magic of Stream Yard. Again, churchspring.com/stream yard if you’re interested in that. But churchspring.com/blog. And on there, it’ll have all the old episodes with the numbers on there. So it’s super easy to find out. One of the reasons I tell you to go to our website, isn’t just cause I’m trying to get you on our website.

Rohn Gibson (44:17):

It’s because we give you the show notes there, with all the links to the resources. We also give you a transcript. Some people they just like to read it and kind of process it. So all of that information will be there. So again, ChurchSpring.Com/Blog, and it’ll give you all the past episodes. You can see the titles of those and then pick which ones. But specifically for this episode, if we have referred to past ones, we will link to those past ones in the show notes. So you can stay tuned for that. And we will let you know here. So let’s see.

Isabelle Faletti (44:53):

Yeah, we have a question from Walter here. If we should change our live stream by Facebook. So Walter, a I saw your question up here and I pull that. Okay, so you asked right now we live stream by way of YouTube from our website. Should we change it to Facebook?

Rohn Gibson (45:09):

Yeah. So what I would highly recommend you do is if I had to choose between one or the other, I would choose Facebook. So if you’re in a place to where it’s a one or the other I would choose Facebook for a lot of different reasons that we don’t have the time to go in here, but we talk about a lot of that and previous episodes. So I would choose Facebook as number one, if you would like to stream to both, you can. So there’s a service actually called restream. I believe it’s restream.io. And basically what that allows you to do is to do one broadcast to multiple places, depending on your setup. Like right now we are -Stream Yard allows you to go to, I think it’s five different (and actually they may have increased it recently), but five different outlets.

Rohn Gibson (45:52):

So right now we’re streaming the two. We’re streaming to YouTube and to Facebook all at one time. And it’s just all included. So you don’t have extra things you have to bolt on. So depending on the context of your specific live stream set up you may even want to look at, you know Stream Yard as a potential option for that. So if you have more information that you can share there, Walter, on your setup, do you have a encoder or is it you’re on a phone you’re streaming from a phone or even your computer like this sitting in front of a webcam? If you could give us more context on that we might be able to help you, but if you have a more advanced setup, Restream would be a good option. If you’re more on the basic kind of beginner side Stream Yard would be could be a really good option for you there as well. So, yeah.

Isabelle Faletti (46:42):

Yeah. And again I’ll add these in the show notes for restream for stream yard. That’s why I need to do the Stream Yard episode. All right, Larry. Yup. I like it. We might just do a stream yard episode, a Canva episode oh man. I can’t wait.

Rohn Gibson (47:00):

Yeah, this is going to be great. I really nerd out when it comes to a lot of these tools. I’m so super excited. Yeah. Webcam Walter. Perfect. If you’re using a webcam stream yard, it’s a no brainer churchspring.com/streamyard. Go check that out. On there they have a free plan and I think actually on their free plan, they let you stream to multiple if I’m not mistaken. So anyway, go check it out. They have great support. And honestly, if you have questions, this is one of those. We don’t typically answer a lot of questions regarding third party tools, Stream Yard. We’re, we’re very in on that tool. So if you have questions and you’re your ChurchSpring customer, you can reach out to us through support. And we’re happy to answer the questions we can answer the questions we can. There we go.

Isabelle Faletti (47:51):

Yeah. I do want to pop up DJ from Faith Alive. Where did that go? Okay. There we go. So DJ, you commented about the Facebook church page. So it sounds like your church Facebook page is actually personal account instead of a business account. You can actually change a personal account to be a business page. I only know that because I’ve helped a customer with that very process. And Facebook has thought about that. So I I’ll add that in the show notes because I’m sure you’re not the only one who just realized that what you thought was it was a public page is actually a personal account. So I’ll add that in the show notes, I’ll link to Facebook’s instructions of how you can very easily change a personal account to a public page.

Rohn Gibson (48:48):

Alright, perfect. Well, it’s time to take action. So number one, what is something that we’ve talked about today? And I’d love to see some comments on this. So what is something of, one of the 10 or 11, because Isabelle was decided to add a little extra guys you’re going to take, I love it. What’s something that you can take action on this week that would help you reach people through social media, through Facebook specifically, and just to improve your Facebook page. I’d love to hear what is a commitment that you’re going to make this week. We actually need to add this to our agenda, a weekly commitment. What is your weekly commitment that you’re going to make this week? So one thing you could do that could be a specific action item would be create the live tab on your face or on your Facebook account.

Rohn Gibson (49:34):

So again, we’ll link up to that to give you that kind of three-step instructions on how to do that. Super easy to do love it. Larry – measure. I took action from last week. That’s awesome. Good, good job. Walter would love to hear more about what specific actually to –the landing page. Awesome. Praise the Lord as great, good job, Walter. Good job. All right. Add the Facebook page. Great. So let’s take action this week. Let’s not just have this be a, you know, a 30, 45 ish time episode where you come here. Let’s take action. So I know we had somebody I’m actually, we answered one of the questions, Nora So Nora you’d mentioned you volunteered to do Facebook. Awesome. Thank you for doing that administering at your church, not just being a consumer, but actively involved in ministry. That is so awesome. So your website is cheap.

Rohn Gibson (50:21):

It’s not up to date. I hope you’re not using ChurchSpring because it’s super easy to use. So if you’re not using ChurchSpring, I would love to invite you to join us. And I know we have many people every single week that join our episode, that aren’t current members of ChurchSpring. And that’s great because regardless of whether you use our product or not, we just want to help use our gifts and give our gifts to share them with you, that God’s given us to share them with you. So then you can go use them to make an eternal impact in your community. So if you’re not a current member of ChurchSpring, and maybe you’d like, Hey, I just like to try it. Well, that’s great. You can go to churchspring.com/trial, sign up for a free seven day free trial, kick the tires you get full access and you can go give it a shot, see if it’s worth it for you.

Rohn Gibson (51:08):

I know he has made to comment in the past, if you do it, just plan on using it cause you’re going to love it, which is awesome. I love it when it’s not my words. You know, as the creators of this thing, but anyway, also, if you just want to see more, I feel like I’m not quite ready to do the trial yet, but I just like to learn more about ChurchSpring, go check out churchspring.com/demo. You can join myself as well as our cofounder. And we have our team in chat. Jen and Isabelle, who will answer your questions as they come up during business hours. So go check that out. Churchspring.Com/Demo. And we will literally show you how to go from having no church website or a bad out of date, church website to having an up-to-date church website and less than 90 seconds. So we are yeah, we’d love to invite you to join us for that. Any other questions or things we need to answer here?

Isabelle Faletti (51:55):

No questions, but some awesome commitments that are coming through. I love this. I think this is one of the most the, yeah, this is the most commitments we’ve ever had. So Tom, you’ll be live streaming to Facebook, Nora: updating photo and check if it’s a business account. We have a couple of those, actually. Another one “changing our Facebook page to a business account.” “What a relief we’ve been struggling with this for over two months. Now we know. Thank you.” You’re welcome. If you do have any struggles with that, just let us know whether you’re a ChurchSpring member or not. I want to help you out with that. Yeah.

Rohn Gibson (52:34):

This is great. A great broadcast. Wonderful praise God. That is our prayer that God would use us to bless you. That you can take it, reach people in your community with the hope of Jesus. That that’s what, this is all about. This isn’t about Facebook. It’s about using that as a tool, as a conduit for ministry to reach people for Christ. And we’re just blessed to be able to have you all in our community. It was so awesome. Even one of the questions that was asked somebody in the community answered it, man, that just Oh, that’s just awesome. So, alright. Do you want to watch a replay again? Churchspring.com/CSL018, to check that out and all the resources, everything we’ve talked about, this video, everything will be very easily laid out, laid out on that page for you to check out. And then I want to invite everyone to next week’s ChurchSpring Live. I’m not going to be there and I’m not going to be there because actually I’m going to be out of town because, and I wasn’t even planning on sharing this, but I’m gonna share it anyway. Because yeah, God’s worked even in my own family, I’m getting emotional, just talking about it. This is awesome. But anyway, God’s working in my family to be part of a church plant. So we’re going to be out of town.

Rohn Gibson (53:56):

It’s good how the Holy Spirit works and kind of drives you to tears, isn’t it? Hmm. Yeah. Oh God is so good. So anyway, so I’m going to be out of town for the next couple of weeks and a great friend of mine. I have known him for years. I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside him and just really in a lot of different capacities. And I am thrilled that next week, Peder Aadahl my good friend, Peder is going to join us. And specifically next week’s conversation is going to be a beginner’s guide to Google analytics for your church website. Okay. So you do not want to miss this. I know we talked about it as far as Facebook insights and Google and how you can use that. We’re literally going to give you the basics, remove any confusion. There will be no excuses.

Rohn Gibson (54:51):

So if you’re ready to remove any excuse of how to get Google analytics set up on your church website and actually how to use it. So now, you know, again like I was talking about earlier, sometimes the worst place to be, it’s just not knowing, well, there are many things you can know in digital communications and Google analytics is a powerful tool for that. So show up next week. My good friend, Peder is going to join Isabelle, Peder, I can’t brag that guy up enough: pastor’s son, a heart for the Lord, a heart for ministry, a heart for the church, works with several churches, helping them specifically in the area of digital communication, how to measure things, how to leverage Facebook advertising. It is a gift that we, that he has graciously volunteered to come online. We’re not paying them anything. He’s coming on because he wants to be a blessing to you and your church.

Rohn Gibson (55:39):

And man, I cannot wait to have him on. So you don’t want to miss it next week. The time is going to be a little different. So don’t forget this. We are going to be at Tuesday, September 29th for episode zero one nine. So again, Tuesday 10:00 AM, central time, September 29th. Join us for what is going to be an amazing, amazing episode. I can’t wait. Honestly, Peder is such a good guy and I cannot wait to connect you all with him. And this is kind of part of our ChurchSpring & Friends, right? So we had Zac Novak on expert in live streaming. Now we’re bringing an expert specifically in the area of Google analytics, Google ads, Facebook ads, some amazing episodes up in the coming weeks. And I’m telling you, you don’t want to miss it. People, people pay a lot of money for the things that Peder is going to be sharing with you all over the next couple of weeks. I mean, it’s just, it’s going to be incredible.

Isabelle Faletti (56:37):

Yeah. We are literally going to share our screen and walk you through how you can set up your Google analytics. This is one of the most frequently asked questions we get of how do I work Google analytics, because it can be intimidating. And we hear that and we want to help. So we are going to take away all of that confusion, all that frustration, because let’s be real. It can be frustrating when you’re trying to figure out analytics on this, this big new tools like this big engine that you know can work, but you don’t actually know where’s the on button in this thing. So don’t miss it. Put it into your calendar Tuesday again, Tuesday September 29th.

Rohn Gibson (57:20):

Yes. Well, it’s been wonderful hanging out with you all today. Man. Such an encouragement. I hope I hope we get even remotely close to what we get on these episodes. Cause it’s so encouraging to see you all making these commitments and I’ve already taken action on some of the things that we’ve talked about to reach your community with the gospel. Man. That is so exciting. So we look forward to seeing you all next week again next week, Mark it on your calendars and you’ll get alerts from us. Don’t worry. Tuesday, September 29th at 10:00 AM, central time, we look forward to seeing you then. So God bless you all and we’ll see you next week. Bye everyone.