Agreed , you have to have members who use FB for it to matter . I can count on one hand who in my lodge uses FB . There is 3 or 4 of us and I am getting ready to cut that down by one due to that I am closing my FB account .
Bro. Ashlar, let me offer another perspective. When I started our FB page for my Chapter/Council, I had no idea how many members were on FB. It turned out that we have about 20 out of our total membership role of 160+. I ran the FB page as an experiment and we now have about 350 "friends". I've learned some lessons from FB page experiment that I can share:
1. Grand Lodge of Texas maintains a FB page and they share a lot of information (
http://www.facebook.com/#!/grandlodgeoftexas )
2. I "friended" several local community organizations. They now see us as part of the community and we see when they are planning significant community events. We now have visibility in the community on-line world and we do exchange tips and information as fellow community members.
3. We share photos of our members when they are recognized or achieve something significant (50-year Masonic Service Awards, Royal Arch Mason Degree, Installations, etc). These photos sometimes prompt questions from our on-line community of friends who are curious about "York Rite" and "Masonry".
4. We've had at least three inquiries from brothers traveling through Texas and looking for Chapters/Councils to visit along their way. We've also attracted local visitors, one of whom affiliated with us after his third or fourth visit.
5. We share information from other jurisdictions. We have the Grand Lodges of several U.S. and overseas jurisdictions as "friends" and its interesting to keep up on Masonic events around the world. It was through our FB page I learned of the web page for the Grand Lodge of the State of Israel- a fascinating page. I shared that link through our E-Trestleboard on our FB page and received several "likes" from members and friends.
6. I've built a Photo Album for Masonic clip art where I capture interesting Masonic emblems and artwork. I've opened that album to the Friends and Friends-of-Friends and I now routinely exchange art and comments with Masonic brethren around the world.
7. We also discovered several members that cannot- for various reasons- travel to Chapter/Council but were maintaining FB pages for communications with their family. They cannot make our meetings, but they communicate with us through FB. They appreciate our E-Trestlboard that I publish to a controlled "Friend" list twice a month.
We moved our experiment from that of information "push" to "information exchange" and now the benefits far exceed the cost of the time spent to maintain our page. I use the page for notices, event invitations, and the typical FB "stuff", but I think we gain a lot in participation with other Masonic and local community organizations. It started as an experiment, but now it is- to me- an important part of our overall Chapter/Council communications program and I report on it and it's successes during our Reports of Committees (interestingly, several members have created FB accounts since I began reporting).
I'm not trying to say "FB is a must" or "you have to have one", I'm merely trying to share some ideas for other ways to benefit from a FB page other than just member-to-member communications. Feel free to check out our FB page (if you have an account) at
http://www.facebook.com/helotesyorkrite
Obviously every Lodge/Chapter/Council/Commandery will evaluate FB according to their own needs and it may not be appropriate for every organization. I just hope everyone looks at all the possibilities as they go through their decision process.
S&F
BroBill