Why It Might Be Hurting Your Organization To Have A Twitter Or Facebook Account

We all know the drill, right? If you’re going to be a church or other organization that is relevant you have to be on Twitter or Facebook because that’s where all the people are. And so churches sign up for Twitter accounts and proudly put their link on their website…..and then what?

We feature ours prominently on our church site.

I read this post here on the MickMel Blog where he talks about the damage that a lot of these churches are doing to their reputation by using social media (i.e Twitter, Facebook, etc). How are they hurting themselves? Because apparently many churches are not actually active on them and don’t listen to people’s responses or questions on them.

He decided to do an interesting experiment with some churches in the Atlanta area that feature their Twitter links on their page. He did something simple: he asked a question about the time of their weekend service. Guess what happened? Out of eleven churches that he asked only one responded.

Here’s the point: many churches are supposedly using these social media products, but they’re not really listening. They’re using them only as broadcast tools.

I have to admit, I would have been one of those churches that he didn’t get a response from. We have a church Facebook page. Our church Twitter page is @carrollwoodsda. And it’s easy enough to find out if someone wrote on Facebook. But it’s not so easy on Twitter. You see I, like I assume many of “those” churches do, have my Facebook and church Twitter page synced. So I’ll update through my church Facebook, and it will automatically update to my church Twitter account. If someone asks a question via Twitter, I’ll never see it, because that’s not an account I log into regularly.

So what to do?

He recommended signing up for a website that will alert you automatically if someone user your church Twitter handle in a reply or mention.  This post from Mashable gives a list of five services that will alert you if your account is mentioned. I ended up going with Twilert. It’s really easy to sign up, and you can have it alert you for multiple Twitter mentions. For example, I put in our church Twitter (@carrollwoodsda), but I also included a new account I created for this blog (@modernekklesia). That way if someone tries to contact me through those venues, I’ll get an alert.

So if you have a Twitter account for your organization, you really need to sign up for one of these alerting services. Nothing will make you look worse then to be an organization that doesn’t respond back.

So have you heard of these services before? Does your church have a Facebook or Twitter account? If you do, I’d love to check them out. Share your links in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Why I’m Keeping My Facebook Account
2. Digital Boundaries in the Church and Why I’m on Facebook and Twitter
3. The Value of Twitter vs. Facebook
4. Twitter For Churches and Non-Profits?
5. How Businesses Are Using Twitter To Reach Customers