Mediaboss Marketing

By Michele Dargan

Daily News Staff Writer

Updated: 7:56p.m.Saturday,March10,2012

Posted: 5:52p.m.Saturday,March10,2012

When Renee Boger attended a seminar on social networking for churches two years ago, she came away with one clear message.

In todays culture, making our presence (known) online is do or die if we hope to grow beyond our church walls, said Boger, communications coordinator for The Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea. Its come to a point now that if you dont have a presence online, no ones going to know about you. Youre competing for people. If youre just a building, its not good enough anymore.

But having a website is now the bare minimum for any house of worship.

Island churches and synagogues are using social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Meetup.com to interact with congregants and draw new people to their house of worship.

Boger said her job has changed dramatically from when she started designing and putting out the church newsletter six years ago. The Sunday leaflet, weekly Bethesda Happenings and the monthly Bethesda Bulletin are distributed electronically and on Bethesdas website.

My job has taken on this other side of social networking, with a good portion of my time spent updating our website, Facebook and Twitter, Boger said.

Read the original post:
Houses of worship tap social media to help build congregations, faith