Creating Your Community’s Public Image with Facebook

By Samantha Stultz If your Tres Dias community doesn’t have a public Facebook page, you are missing a free and astonishingly effective marketing tool, as well as a way to build credibility for your community. A public page is seen by anyone who searches for it. It says clearly, “We are an open, loving ministry, not a secret organization.” It tells about the Tres Dias experience, announces dates for upcoming weekends, inspires with videos and testimonials of people sharing stories about their weekend and fourth-day walk. If your community’s open reunion groups organize activities such as bowling parties or seeing a Christian movie, announce these events on your public Facebook page.
If you have the mistaken idea that setting up a Facebook page is a daunting task, click here. Facebook walks you through their easy page builder. You will have your page built in 30 minutes or less (more emphasis on the less). Once you have your page, take time to consider the things that you should, and should not post. Before posting anything, ask yourself, is this something someone besides me would like to see? Personal political opinions, GoFund me pages, and prayer requests should remain on your personal Facebook page, not the public one. Here is why — most of the people that see your Facebook page have not attended a weekend. The intention of your public Facebook page is to make potential candidates aware of Tres Dias and engage your volunteers. Keep your content high level and don’t exclude people. Every post should have these three attributes:
  • A photo. Check out these two postings. Both provide links to the same President’s Letter, but one has a photo and one doesn’t. The one with a photo had far more interactions (likes, comments and shares) than the one without.
                       
  • A brief posting. The text should not be lengthy – three lines of text should be the max. Anything longer should be a newsletter story or a blog post. You can link to stories in the Tres Dias International newsletter and your local newsletter.
  • Something intriguing – don’t just scrape the bottom of the barrel for content. Instead of stating something like “check out photos from our last team meeting,” craft a positive message like “We are blessed to see the leaders for our next event come together.” People who are not members of the community won ‘t know what a team meeting is.
Coming up with content can be difficult, so we have compiled an online resource with free images, videos, and articles that you can begin posting to your Facebook and other social media pages. Keep checking back, because we like to add new content monthly. For articles to post: click here. For images and videos: Click Here Samantha Stultz is webmaster and manager of social media for Tres Dias.