Young adults have left the church and have flocked to Facebook.

Myspace is littered with teenagers and preteens. Stumbleupon has thousands of web geeks. But it is Facebook who currently dominates the young adult social scene on the internet.

The Facebook Niche

The key to facebook’s success has alot to do with its original exclusive nature. In the beginning, you had to have a college email address in order to join the social network. This led to dominance among its niche of social media among young adults. The college kids became part of an exclusive club and more importantly, they didn’t have to worry about the pesky teenagers whom lurk around Myspace.

Things have changed.

Now anyone can join Facebook.. and yet, it still dominates the niche.

Facebook Success

There are still thousands of young adults whom are joining the social phenomenon that boasts 64 million users. The current success builds upon its established position among young adults and two connections with Google’s design philosophy.Being the original innovator to its target audience may be the reason that Facebook maintains its success, but its continual growth in the niche rests in its simple design and inclusive philosophy.
Simple Design
Facebook, much like Google, has a very simple front page. You either login or you create an account. There are no ads and little alternative directions.

Once you login, the interface remains simple. You are shown any updates of your friends, event or group invitations, your installed applications and the navigation menu. There still is no advertising interrupting the useability of the site.
Community Creation
The social network juggernaut also uses another web 2.0 tactic to grow its domination in its target niche. It actually invites businesses and groups to add to the existing platform. You can create unique applications that will virally spread throughout the network. You can create a profile page or a group that individuals can join. There are even profile pages inside apps that others have created. Your imagination is the only limit to its usefulness for your church.

Your Church And Facebook

The true success of using Facebook for your church depends on how you view its use. Do you use it as an evangelism tool to get more young people to come to your services?

I would say no.

Contact Management Tool
The secret of Facebook (and most social networking sites) is to use it as a contact management tool for young adults.  You may never have hundreds of young adults whom flock to your church service on a weekly basis, but you might be surprised by how many sporadically come to your church services or events.

Whether or not you maintain a large young adult attendance base, you need to find a way to keep in contact with them.  This is where Facebook becomes extremely useful. 

Contact Forms

Lets say you put on a concert or mens retreat and receive 10-50 young people. During that event, you pass out and receive contact information forms. On the forms, you ask for their names, email addresses and any social networking aliases that they may have. Then let them know your church participates in social networking and provide a check box if they mind you adding them to your contact lists.

Permission
If they check the box and allow you to contact them for an invitation to your Facebook (or any social networking site) page then that is great. On the other hand, don’t push it onto people who don’t want your invitation. They will only become bitter and wouldn’t respond to anything that you send them.

Once your list begins to grow, then you have a direct contact with those fringe individuals who might be interested in your church, but don’t feel comfortable regularly attending. If you manage your messages and invitations well, this line of communication can be gold.

Email & Spam

Email and direct mail newsletters can be effective and still are needed, but they both share one thing in common: SPAM! On any given day, your contact individuals receive dozens of junk information through their physical and electronic mail box. We are trained to filter out the unimportant stuff and most email clients have anti-spam filtering built into it.

This means that there is a good chance that your email newsletters are being filtered as spam.

Good thing you have your Facebook contact list.

Golden Nugget Of Facebook

The beauty of Facebook and communication is that I can’t send or receive invitations to people whom I am not networking with. This means that every event and group invitation you send will probably be read, because everyone you send the invitation to will be an individual who accepted your invitation to network together.

Disclaimer About Invitations

Before you go and send invitations to thousands of young adults to send messages to about your weekly service, I want to provide a warning. DO NOT send an invitation to every service and every event your church puts on. Nor should you send invitations to goofy or stupid games or apps that you find.

 This will only create an a personal filter against your invitations and these individuals will most likely drop you fron their contact list.

Only Relevant Invitations
The key is to send invitations and news to upcoming events that are relevant and new to them.  People don’t need a weekly reminder to let them know about your service. Neither do young people need to know about the golf tournament for seniors you are putting on.

If you want to successfuly use Facebook as a ministry tool then be courteous to your contact list. You will receive an exponential increase in response to your events, if you only send one to two invitations every couple of months. On the other hand, you might have only or two  good responses every couple of months if you send invitations out on a weekly basis.

Related Reading

If this article prompted your interest in Facebook here are some related articles around the net about the use of Facebook as a ministry tool.

Church Marketing Sucks asks where is the Church on Facebook?

While I might not agree with its use, Lifechurch.tv has actually created a Facebook Church.

Churchblogger shares why he enjoys the potential of Facebook for churches.

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