For a few years now I have consistently advised youth groups and a lot of other small and medium sized parishes and organisations that Facebook pages, and not websites, are the way forward for the 21st Century.

Let me explain what I mean...

If you have a website then people need to know it's there. They then need to bookmark it and they need to go back to it and check it every so often in order for them to see the stuff you are putting up there. Okay, so this is a little easier if you've got RSS (which is a must) but it's still not easy. The fact is that most people don't just think to themselves 'hmm... I'll just check the youth group website before I go to bed to see if there's anything new up there!'

You convince yourself that they'll do just that, but they really won't. Okay, so a couple might do that once a week or so, but most won't. People don't check websites every day, or even every week unless they are really, seriously devoted to organisation or unless the website is awesome. And, I mean seriously awesome, not just with a really good Wordpress theme.

Communicating in the 21st Century is about getting your message to where people are. It's not about putting your message somewhere and hoping people come to that place. In fact, never mind what century we're in, communication has always been that way.

And that's where Facebook comes in...

Facebook is where young people and young adults are. It's where they go. It's what they check several times a day and it's a huge part of how they live their lives.

And that's why having a presence on Facebook - which your young people will visit a lot - is better than putting a website on a small corner of the web and hoping that they'll stop by.

You have to do a bit of work to get young people to 'like' your page, but once you've done that, you don't need to rely on them stopping by. You've just got them. When you post something on the page it appears on their timeline, and there's a good chance that they'll see it. You can set events, post photos, start discussions and do a lot more besides.

Trust me on this... unless you are a huge organisation, or unless you have MASSIVE plans for your website, you are far, far better just getting a Facebook page. You can even do targeted (yes, paid) advertising on Facebook to reel in a few more!

[image hotlinked from Flickr user lawtonchiles]