During my time at Mars Hill | Ballard, we doubled our attendance on Wednesday nights and saw our annual events go from 40 students to 75 (and a few that were 150). I believe one reason for this is our extensive use of Facebook events. We made one for everything, including our weekly gathering. They are what we used to promote, provide information for and communicate our event happenings.
This wasn’t all that easy, however. It took some trial and error before we found a good strategy. The truth is, Facebook events are very easy for youth leaders to make. And for the students looking at them, they are even easier to ignore. We have a plethora of them under our events tab, most of them we don’t even look at.
The question is, how do we create Facebook events that stand out, creating as much awareness as possible about the things we’re doing?
Here are some ideas that worked for me:
1. Spend a lot of time on the picture
The graphic has to pop. It needs to be dramatic, colorful and catch the eye.
It doesn’t matter if the picture perfectly represents the details of the event, as long as it is at least related to the event.
I use stockphoto.com and google.com/images. Flickr.com/creativecommons can be good as well.
2. Create a short, accurate title
The tendency is to make some wacky title with a hundred exclamation points. In my personal experience, these are the types of events that get overlooked and not taken seriously.
The title ought to be a simple and answer to the question: “What are you inviting me to?”
Here are some examples of good titles:
For a service project: Serve the City
For a bowling activity: Bowling at Royal Pin
For a movie night: Movie Night: Hunger Games
For a scavenger hunt: Seattle Wide Scavenger Hunt
For a worship night: A Night of Worship
But to be clear, “WE ARE HAVING A BOWLING TOURNAMENT DOWNTOWN!!!!!!!” is not a good name.
3. First, tell them why
Don’t start the Facebook event description off with details on transportation, what to wear or how much the event costs.
First and foremost, take a few sentences and tell people WHY they should come.
Here’s an example for a Facebook event for a Christian concert:
The Rock ‘n Worship Road Show is one of the most epic experiences in Christian music. They have an unbelievable line up of world class musicians who pack out stadiums nation wide. At this concert you will get to worship with Lecrae, 10th Avenue North, Mercy Me and some other incredible bands. Plus, music sounds best in a massive arena while surrounded by your friends.
4. Give step by step details
This is mostly for the parents. They DO look at these events.
The problem is most events have so many details it’s easy to get them all mixed up, which frustrates people.
So we need to learn to give all the details as accurately and quickly as possible.
My suggestion is to do something like this in the middle of the post:
Who:
What:
Where:
When:
Cost:
5. Promote the event
You can do this by posting a status about the event and tagging the event in the status.
For Example, “We’re hoping 50 people come to @eventname with us! Invite all your friends, the deadline to sign up will be here soon.”
This will give people another chance to click on your event, creating more awareness.
I also recommend posting about it from your church’s other social media profiles that parents may follow.
When you announce the event at youth group, mention that the Facebook event exists.
In addition, mention the Facebook event in any other promotions you do like videos or blog posts.
6. Message the guests
You can message all the guests you invited to a Facebook event. I wouldn’t do this very much, because you’ll start annoying everybody but one or two messages can be really helpful reminders for people.
I advise sending out one message about a week before the event. Use it simply to get the event in front of the student’s eyes again. Greet them, tell them why you’re excited about the event and give them any details that need to be emphasized.
Do you find Facebook events to be helpful? Do any of these tips help you? How do you use social media to promote what your youth ministry is doing?
TheMarque says
This is a great post. Pretty inspiring and encouraging. Going to try some of these ideas…
By the way…this “floating” digg bar or whatever on the left hand side is absoutely terrible! i tried to read this post in Chrome and i couldnt because this is covering up the text and there is not a close button! Had to reopen this page in safari and then use safari’s built in “Reader” feature just to be able to even read this post. that floating social box has got to go!
seventy8Productions says
Thanks for sharing. I’m going to have to see if I will have to remove that since +20% of browsers use Chrome!
TheMarque says
Actually…it may just be an issue with people who are using networks by proxy where Facebook is blocked. Looks like the FB “like” caused an error and so it lengthened the width of the bar so I couldn’t read. It looks fine from other networks. So I wouldn’t worry about it.
seventy8Productions says
Thanks for the update. Two weeks ago, I had a Twitter button on there that “broke” on Chrome and had to remove it, so it is good to have viewers who inform me when such things happen. There is no perfect solution, but I GREATLY appreciate your commitment to telling us when you saw something, even if it was very unlikely to be a big issue in the end.
TheMarque says
No problem! I know how these things go!
TheMarque says
This is what it looks like
Frank Gil says
Great post!!!