Facebook recently gave churches, businesses, and other organizations the critically important ability to have updates, links, and photos appear in their “fans” news feeds. However, as I wrote about recently, this is not happening for most fans of older pages. After continuing to experiment with my church’s Facebook page, I think I’ve found a solution.
If a person goes to the organization’s Facebook Page and removes themself as a “fan” and then becomes a “fan” again, updates from the organization’s FB Page seem to begin showing up in their news feed.
The next challenge if you manage an old FB Page for an organization is how do you notify your “fans” and ask them to do this?
The “Send an update to Fans” FB Page feature doesn’t seem to work. At least it does not deliver a message to “fans” in the same way you can with a group or an individual. If you happen to also have a Facebook group for your org, you could get “fans” a message that way, though it’s likely some fans will not be members of that group. The only other option I can think if is to send each fan individually a message, which could take a lot of time depending on how many “fans” your org has.
If you run a FB Page dates back before the big changes implemented March 13, I’d appreciate any feedback or insight you may have from your work with FB pages.
Are your “fans” getting status updates, links, notes, etc in their news feed? Is the remove yourself as a fan and re-becoming a fan working for your fans? Any other insight or challenges?
Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com
Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.
An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.
Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication.
16 Comments
Hi again.
Yes. I checked it and everything is allowed/marked. It’s a pity Facebook doesn’t have a service for this king of support. 🙁
I recently attempted to create an advertisement for our Christian Happenings page. We are posting local Christian events and the group membership has really taken off. The advertisement was disallowed due to inappropriate advertisement targeting. The advertisement was targeting people in Massachusetts whose profiles contain Christianity related keywords (Holy Bible, Bible Study, Worship Team, etc.). I don’t see what is inappropriate about that- it seems perfectly targeted to me. Unfortunately, their is nobody to debate about their decisions.
I am wondering if they are discriminating against Christian groups and/or trying to prevent our growth on facebook. Perhaps our advertisement is targeting too many people, and they are worried that it would prevent higher paying advertisers from getting their advertisements viewed? I prefer to believe that it is the second scenario… That the number of Christians on facebook is growing and they are worried about how they will ever make money off of us.
I should also note that I was able to submit a similar advertisement a month ago, but it wasn’t a money maker for them. Maybe it is all about the money, and Christian advertisers aren’t filling their wallets.
Drew, did you try contacting Facebook? I know they don’t provide much (any?) help for FB users, but I would think they have support for advertisers.
I resubmitted the advertisement twice this morning and after removing the keywords “Glory” and “Spirituality,” the advertisement was accepted. I am not sure why the advertisement was denied twice prior to this, but it is running now (we have even had a few people click through)!
I know this post is over a year ago. I just created my Church page and I'm having the same problem. I tried changing the settings as suggested and it's still not working. We have over a 100 fans I can not ask them all to unlike and re-like the page. How embarrassing that would be. Has anyone come up with a solution or received a response from facebook? I've submitted the problem… no response
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