Our church Facebook group has over 170 members and up until a few months ago discussion was flowing on a number of subjects on everything from the sermon on Sunday to flavours of jam. Now it’s gone very quiet. Discussion has dried up and has been replaced just by the occasional notice.
So, armed with Survey Monkey a quick little review of the group was conducted.
Considering the size of the group, only 29 completed the full survey. Of those that responded, the majority (55.6%) are in the 12-30 age group, with another 30.6% in the 31-40 age group.
Most (75%) access Facebook at home and for less than one hour per day (50%). Only 16.7% access Facebook for more than one hour per day, with 33.4% using it between once a week or two to three times per week.
What was interesting is that 59.3% are accessing the church group less frequently than they used to. Some have stopped looking at it altogether (11.1%), while the majority only view the groups pages two or three times a month (40.7%). However, there is one person who’s going there every day.
While 76.2% said that they liked the discussion threads, and 57.1% used it to find out about events 55.6% are claiming that there’s no longer anything on the group pages that are of interest to them anymore.
What’s possibly more concerning is that for a social forum, 38.5% said that they don’t feel that they can contribute. That ranked joint top for things that people didn’t like about the group with ‘My friends don’t use it’.
So how to attract people back to the group. 82.6% of responses said that they would like to see more sermon discussion on the group. 73.9% wanted more social stuff and 65.2% wanted ‘news’.
From the comments attached to the survey, it’s clear that some people join Facebook groups just as a badge of belonging. So a group may have a number of members, but only a small percentage will be actively involved.
It’s clear that many people are happy to comment, but only if other people are taking part. Examples of comments are, ‘Not much discussion happening these days, not sure what to start as a new topic!!!’ and ‘would visit more if other people did’, implies that people are prepared to join in but it relies on others to initiate discussion.
Summary conclusions.
Facebook groups are very often a badge that people wear to show belonging.
People like the groups to be able to check up on their friends and what is going on, but it relies on some active participants to keep the conversation flowing.
Overall, people are keen on using the church Facebook group as a place to discuss sermons and invite people to social events.
If the group is active it will be used, if it goes inactive it will die.