Do you follow St Paul’s on Facebook? (Our Facebook page is here. ) It publishes a mixture of things, ranging from notifications about upcoming events, links to interesting Episcopal-news, humor, links to the blog, check-ins, and commentary. It is managed by a team of SPC members and staff, who do much of the posting. The wider community may also post on the Cathedral facebook page, although Facebook puts those comments on the right.
How useful is the social media as an outreach tool? Turns out, it’s pretty darn useful. We recently looked at the last month’s statistics for Facebook and found some interesting facts.
642 people like our facebook page, and therefore see it on their timelines. About 370 of these are from greater San Diego; the others are from a wide diversity of places across the US, and even further afield from countries ranging from Kenya to Mexico!
People who like our page have an age distribution similar to the congregation, and are more likely to be men.
But our weekly “reach” is much bigger than those “likes”. Any time you share, like, or comment on a post, your friends see that activity (called “viral” ). In fact, our weekly reach is nearly 6000 people overall, about 1/3 of whom are in southern California. A substantial fraction of these are younger adults, and they are equally divided between men and women.
What does this tell us? Well, obviously social media helps us reach further into the community. Lots of people are finding out about us, because you comment, share, or like the page or a post. So, simply by liking our Facebook page, you help increase our visibility and outreach.
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| “Organic” is those who directly like the page or a post. “Viral” is people who see our material indirectly, via a friend. SPC does not participate in “paid” pages. |
How can you help? If you are a facebook user, please be sure to “like” the SPC Facebook page. Equally important, choose “like” for any posts that particularly appeal to you. Don’t be shy about commenting on them, or sharing those posts on your own timeline.
And remember, thanks to the openness of social media, we never know who we may reach. This is a great opportunity to evangelize in a positive way about our faith and our community!
