Hi, Anita.
Welcome home.
I am becoming increasingly concerned about the status of our social media platforms, especially Facebook and the website. I am afraid that we are missing some important opportunities. As you know, September is the beginning of the year when families resume going to church or are looking for new churches. Our platforms have been very quiet all year long, which will become more and more detrimental to our prospects of drawing people in as we come to the end of summer, presumably a very important time for our visibility. I am afraid that people will check us out on FB and our site and find that there is very little activity. For example: we might have had more attendance this Sunday had more people known that Amy and Eva would be performing.
Aside from the calendar and the addition of the sermons, as far as I can tell, there has been no activity on our website since the beginning of May. There is considerably less content now, as compared to June 1, since most of what I added in March, April, and May was deleted. We get a posting on Facebook about once every other week and some of those are repeats. I promised Jessica that I would send her content she could use. I stopped after having sent her ten candidates and she used only four of them. Queried as to what content she would use if I sent them to her, she gave me no response.
The problem is that she is the one primarily, perhaps solely, allowed to post anything and she is employed for only five hours per week. And she has other church demands on her time. She does not have the knowledge of who we are, the regular contact with what we are doing, or the devotion to the success of our church that we have. She has informed me that only she is authorized to post anything on FB and I have respected that. I am not making a judgment on Jessica's work.
None of that diminishes the vulnerabilities we create for ourselves by having such a small presence on the web.
I understand the importance of syncing up what we put on the web and what pastor candidates expect. I understand the policy of not employing members to perform church functions. I accept that there must be standards around what we put up anywhere. However, from the perspective of social media, the policy that results from adhering to these rules and attempting to get numerous people and committees to coordinate is doing nothing, waiting, and hoping for the best.
I continue to be eager to make contributions, especially to Facebook. I am told that Jessica does not have time to supervise me. If there is a need for supervision or to enforce standards, then let's find some people who can review the content I create.
Please let me know what you think of possible solutions to these lost opportunities. I appreciate any attention you can spare for these issues.
Thank you.
Chris
Chris Sullivan
612-616-5059
andromeda88@comcast.net
www.notthatitmatters.net
www.chrissullivanwriter.com