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Private Social Networks for Parishes

Submitted by Jeff Geerling on Sat, 10/08/2011 - 2:23pm
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I read a good post on the idea of parish online communities yesterday, over on Catholic Tech Talk (great site!), titled: Parish Online Communities: Private vs. Public. In it, Ryan Foley speaks about the value of parishes having private communities incorporated with their websites and parish member management systems.

I wrote, in response:

Coming from the perspective of having worked on a similar kind of project diocesan-wide (for priests), I have to say that creating an insular (parish-level, or even diocese-level) social networks is a serious undertaking.

We've tried twice to create online spaces (private social networks) for a particular population of the diocese, but both times, after an initial push by a few people that were forced into being leaders, the experiment failed. The reasons were many, but mostly boiled down to:

  1. Not enough buy-in to make it worthwhile (the people who were most active were those who were already using other communications channels to keep in touch anyways).
  2. Not enough 'space' (a few people posted a lot, causing many of the priests who would've otherwise been interested to stay out of the discussion).
  3. The 'just another network' syndrome; for many of the people who seemed they would be the target demographic, they quickly responded with complaints that we were simply asking them to manage yet another profile/persona, and one which didn't really provide them added value (compared to the small communities they were already in on Facebook, Twitter, and in real life).
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Why Twitter?

Submitted by archstl on Thu, 07/02/2009 - 9:37am
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@archstl Twitter Account page

The Archdiocese of Saint Louis started its Twitter account in December 2008, in preparation for the news of a new Archbishop. In tandem with an SMS message signup, a timely update on the website, a press release, and a few other methods of generating buzz, the Archdiocese was able to reach thousands of Catholics in Saint Louis and around the world with news about its new Archbishop within a matter of minutes.

Why did the Archdiocese choose Twitter, and what are some good uses for Twitter? Well, Twitter is by far the most popular 'micro-blogging' service, but that's one of many reasons why we chose to use Twitter for more timely news. We found Twitter to be helpful because:

  1. It is an immediate 'push' notification service; all of your updates are pushed out to each follower.
  2. It is unobtrusive; people can easily opt-in and opt-out—much more so than with email.
  3. It is ubiquitous; generally, those who use Twitter are connected on the web, on their mobile phones, and in other ways—your message can go everywhere.
  4. It is social; people can generate buzz for you—all you need to do is give the first effort, and if it is newsworthy, it will be re-tweeted and spread across many parts of the web.

Twitter is also extremely useful for live events, such as the Installation Mass of Archbishop Robert J. Carlson (on June 10, 2009). At this event, we had our Communications staff take pictures in a few different areas—our timeline was updated with pictures of bishops before Mass, a few pictures during Mass, and other tidbits that people may have found interesting. Continue Reading »

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