Add 40 Facebook Likes in 30 Days
It doesn’t matter how many outlets you use to communicate, your audience must know where to find you. It doesn’t matter how good the design is. It doesn’t matter how eloquent the copy is. If they don’t know where to look, they won’t use it.
For the month of July I decided not to assume that our church new about our Facbeook page. I wanted to take a full month to educate them not only on where we could be found but what they would find when they arrived.
We are a church of about 1700-2000 depending on the time of year and our Facebook page had 1,634 likes when I began my push the first week of July. By the end of the month, July 31, we had increased our likes to 1,674. We added 40 likes in 30 days. If you include the week prior to the first August Sunday we reached 1,689 likes.
Full disclosure: we did have a couple promoted posts during this time period but Facebook Insights revealed that those promoted posts only accounted for 3 likes during the entire month.
How We Did It – Only Facebook
The secret to this success is very simple. We decided to promote only Facebook for the entire month of July. We didn’t talk about Twitter, YouTube, our eNewsletter, website or anything else. Everything we said and did in regards to promoting church communications was about Facebook.
How We Did It – Content on Facebook
Not only did we tell people about our Facebook page, but for the entire month we told they what they could expect to find on our Facebook page. Though we used through several promotion channels, I think our greatest success came from our Sunday program. Take a look at the image below.
You’ll notice that each week we share similar items but the point isn’t different content but rather good content. Here is what we promised individuals who trusted us enough to open up their feed to our content.
- Volunteer highlight and appreciation
- App updates with new information
- Behind the scenes pictures
- Message quotes
- Getting to know the community
- Sunday pictures
There are 4 posts in particular that I want to draw your attention to. I’ve embedded them below. Each of these were part of a monthlong series we did where we had a question each week and we handpicked different members of our church to answer those pictures. It was compelling content that engaged those who already liked our page, but more importantly, it enticed those who had not liked our page to visit our Facebook page and possibly like it.
Communication Strategy
Our success is attributed to our communication team having a strategy of pushing Facebook as a source of news and information for an entire month. We coordinated all messaging and content around the idea of “we want people to know our Facebook page exists.” For us, it was a success. Real visible ROI.
Now It’s Your Turn
Which communication outlet could you spend time telling your church about? How will you entice them to want to check out out online? Do you have a presence online that would be an amazing resource if only people from your church knew about it?
