New Social Media Pages Created for Church Leaders

Contributed By Eric Murdock, ChurchofJesusChrist.org News and Events

Article Highlights The Church has created personal pages for members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve on Facebook and Google+.

These pages will act as an official social media presence for the Brethren.

You can find a list of links to their Facebook and Google+ pages on the Sharing via Social Media page on search.ChurchofJesusChrist.org.

“These [social media] pages will allow people to find the modern words of living prophets more easily.” —Jared Covington, senior adviser over social media for the Church

The Church has created social media pages for members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve on Facebook and Google+. These pages will be maintained on their behalf by the Church and act as an official social media presence for each of them.

You can find a list of links to their Facebook and Google+ pages on the Sharing via Social Media page on ChurchofJesusChrist.org. Jared Covington, senior adviser over social media for the Church, said the Church created these pages to “give people a safe place they could go on Facebook to ‘like’ the pages of the Brethren.”

Those following these pages will receive regular updates on the ministry of each of the Brethren. “The Church will post links to talks, articles, videos, and other relevant content on their behalf,” said Dale Jones, a spokesperson for the Church.

Brother Covington said that the goal for these pages is to show people content on ChurchofJesusChrist.org that they may not have found previously. “It allows us to highlight content that is tied to specific brethren. Our hope is that members will really dive in and feast upon this content.”

Although page likes are not the main goal, there are definitely reasons for liking these pages. “These pages will allow people to find the modern words of living prophets more easily,” Brother Covington said. When you like the Brethren’s pages, he explained, their content will be in your Facebook feed, so you can readily view it and share it with others.

Liking the pages also “makes a public declaration to your friends that this is what you believe. … It is a subtle declaration of your faith. You can be actively engaged in showing your beliefs and sharing them with your friends through the simple action of liking or following a page.”

Besides the obvious spiritual and missionary benefits of having these pages, an immediate benefit that has already been seen since the launch is improved search engine optimization (SEO). This means that when people search on the names of the Brethren, the top results are more likely to come from official Church content, both in online searches and within social media networks.

Before these pages were created, 45 unofficial Facebook pages existed for President Monson alone, said Brother Covington. Creating official pages helps members know which pages are maintained by the Church and protects individuals from fake pages, he said. (To know whether or not a social media site or page is official, look for the Church’s logo.)