Seven Helpful Stats on Social Media and the Church
Matthew Warner, who writes for the National Catholic Register, talks here about the use of social media by Catholics, and gives us statistics that indicate little use of Social Media by Catholic priests, maybe because of a mistaken idea that they have no time to write a blog, or that they will have little effect… But they are wrong, as Matthew tells us.
His last statistic is:
“68% of local church members want to connect with their church via social media. This is the crux of the matter. And this statistic is only rapidly getting bigger and bigger. If you’ve been holding out hoping that this whole social media thing is just a passing fad, it’s time to wake up. Regardless of what you think about social media, how much you like using it, or whatever other hesitations you have about it, people want to connect with their parish using it. You can either help them out. Or you can deny them. Those are your choices.
I would very much like to start a blog, but I have quite a few impediments. I don’t know how to use my digital camera very well; my media director in Opus Dei tells me that blogs without pictures, videos or statistics are not read by many people, if at all. I am trying to overcome these obstacles little by little, but I am afraid, not fast enough. I do know that so many people that I know cannot be reached anywhere else, but one can always find them in Facebook or some other link in the internet.
Hi, Teresa! Thanks for your comment. You can always ask Wendy and me for tips
Good luck.
Matthew posted this on his blog (same address as here):
How “Catholic” should you be online? BY MATTHEW WARNER, Tue, Aug 24, 2010
Can you be too Catholic? Is there an appropriate time and place to be so very Catholic? Are there times when you need to cool it with all that Catholic stuff? Especially when interacting with others online?
Are you ever afraid of offending somebody with your “orthodox” Catholicism?
If you have any kind of online profile, whether it’s on your own blog or a simple Facebook account, you may have asked yourself at some point, “How Catholic should I be?
[...]
These are all natural questions. And we are all still learning the proper etiquette and what makes for effective evangelism online. The one hard and fast rule that you can take to your online bank is that there are no hard and fast rules on the untamed digital continent.
[...]
Back to the original question. How Catholic should you be online? It’s really the wrong question.
Being Catholic is who we are. Not just how we express ourselves. We are to always and everywhere be 100% Catholic and 100% faithful to the Church. No exceptions and no compromises. That’s an easy answer.
I think the real question at the heart of these issues is: How do we share our faith genuinely and effectively online?
Read the full post @ http://www.ncregister.com/blog/how-catholic-should-you-be-online/
All the best!
Wendy