Using Social Media To Communicate With Brothers

Social media has become a highly effective method for lodges to communicate with brothers. Several social media platforms offer a great amount of connectivity options, including Linked-In, Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook. Because the majority of social media users have a Facebook account, creating a Facebook Group Page for your lodge to complement other online venues such as your lodge website provides several benefits.

·         First, a Facebook Group Page is structured to be for members only. This allows brothers to interact solely with other brothers, and administrators must be contacted to allow access to the page. A lodge’s Facebook Group Page might include members from the lodge itself, as well as brothers from other lodges who want to participate in lodge events and programs.

·         Second, Facebook allows members to create group events and send electronic invitations. This is a terrific way to reach brothers who are members of the group page, and lets event organizers easily send messages to invitees. The events appear as reminders to the members on their own Facebook home page, thus promoting the event and helping remind brothers of what is on the calendar.

·         Third, Facebook allows event pages to be structured to allow participants to post messages to the event page or upload photos. This is a great way for brothers to share their thoughts and comments, and trade photos from events.

·         Fourth, Facebook allows users to quickly see which brothers are members of the group, and which are not, so brothers new to the lodge or new to Facebook can easily be sent a note to ask to join the group.

Lodge websites are very successful in communicating events and other material information to brothers and the broader online community, in a formal, structured setting. Facebook Group Pages can add to this effort with a format that allows more interaction among group members in a less formal setting. The Facebook Group Page in turn can provide content for the lodge website; for example, comments and photos from events posted to the Facebook Group Page can be used to create items for the lodge’s website in the Lodge News Section.

A Facebook Group Page can be a great addition to a lodge’s communication program. The program is free, and like most technologies, it is constantly evolving, so you will need to keep up with the changes and enhancements. If you are familiar with Facebook and have seen how easy it is to create your own social network, you can imagine the many benefits of using social media for your lodge.