I decided to end it. After six years since our first encounter, our relationship had grown far too personal. Oh don’t get me wrong; I did not cross the line with any one person. I crossed the line with one thing: Facebook. Or perhaps I should say Facebook crossed the line with me when mere acquaintances started knowing far too much about my personal life through my posts and pictures. Still, in Facebook’s defense, the issues in our relationship travel a two way street, given that my list of friends exceeds 1,000. But since I can no longer discern whether Facebook has an inappropriate relationship with me, or vise-versa, I will remove my personal page and replace it with one a little more professional in order to allow Facebook to witness more of my relationship with Christ than my daily relationships with friends and family. My hope is that my mere acquaintances will start talking more about my most recent blog post than my most recent vacation. After all, if Facebook in itself is an avenue for eMinistry, then perhaps I have failed my friends by not simply pointing them to Christ, but by filling their news feeds with fluff.
So I am announcing that I have decided to strictly have a fan page on Facebook to bring more attention to my life as a writer who writes about my thoughts on God and life. My plan to implement a more purpose driven page will take place in stages over the next couple of weeks:
- I will invite each of my Facebook friends to join my fan page along with a note saying, “I’m glad we’ve been Facebook friends, but I’m closing out my personal page to open a fan page for myself as a writer. Please check it out and hit the like button! Thanks!” Just go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/Leaha-Shaikh/181808788595760
- I will transfer my blog posts to twitter and to my new Facebook fan page through www.twitterfeed.com. I will also tweet about this change.
- Once my friends have all been notified, I will close out my existing Facebook account.
Meet e4e author Leaha Shaikh and read Leaha’s posts on e4e.
eQuipping for eMinistry 
Hi Leaha, unless things have changed with Facebook, you will still need a valid personal Facebook page in order to operate any Facebook fan page, group page or community page. Of course, you can remove all your friends, make the page as invisible and private as you can so people don’t try to interact. Post a post online saying why the account is not being used, and to go to the fan page. But don’t actually close it, or you lose the fan page too, or at least the means to post anything to it, or administer it.
I think you could do a temporary ‘suspend’ on your personal facebook page – my daughter does this near exam time. And just leave it in operation.
Blessings
Tony
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Leah, I love your heart. I’m with you. I don’t need to know where you went on vacation, what you picked up at Publix today or even what’s for dinner at your house tonight. However, I’d love to hear more about what inspires you. Which stars are you reaching for and why? Maybe we’re reaching for the same stars. Please post again and let us know how it goes.
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Hi Tony,
Thank you for the heads up! I appreciate your input. This is the second time that you have really helped me with logistics! Blessings, Leaha
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Thank you, Anne Marie, for the support! I will keep you posted for sure!
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Just to give you a little update in case you have thought about starting a fan page to promote any of your eMinistries- Facebook has made it easy! On the right side of my fan page there is a link that says “invite friends” so I am in the process of clicking on each of my Facebook friends to invite them to like my page. On the left side there is a link that says “Share” and I have been able to post on my own wall an invitation for friends to like my page.
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I think you understand part of the dynamic . . but you are missing part of it as well.
If I was a Romanian facebook fanatic campus staff, I would have:
one facebook page for ministry – with my real name
one facebook page for supporters – with my “American” name
perhaps one more for family – with some nickname.
Now Cristi – my favorite facebook user – just has one account, but he has his friends organized in Groups.
A friends group, a supporter group, an evangelistic group, a “hey lets play volleyball this afternoon group,” etc
And every time he posts he consciously determines his audience.
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I like what Leaha’s doing and I like what Cristi’s done. My Facebook page is heavily ministry-based with peeks into my life so people get to know me.
I have several different pages, but don’t see a lot of activity on them.
I’ve wanted to make sure my lists are accurate and be more intentional about posting to specific lists of people when appropriate. I’ve found over 30 family on FB and want them to be exposed to my ministry, but not flooded with it (they probably are now). Facebook doesn’t make it easy to edit lists as far as I’ve been able to tell, so I haven’t done anything about this yet.
Also, the new “Subscribe” feature makes it possible for people to follow my profile.
So, I’m not sure I would go the same route as you, Leaha. I’ve considered these different things, but not made any kind of decision. I’ll be interested to see how this goes for you… then again, Facebook may change yet once more…
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I hear what you are saying, both Curt and Sus. And I think this is part of the beauty of Facebook-that we can taylor it and tweak it to our own personal needs-whether we have one page or two, five groups or 25 groups…and I too have found putting people into groups is an effective way of communicating. However, I personally have come to the place where I no longer want so much of my everyday life broadcasted to all my 1,000 friends. Instead, I want my friends to be impacted more so by the things God puts on my heart that I post to my blog with scripture. So in an effort to “de-clutter” I am going this route. Since I wrote this post for e4e and started my fan page, my blog has had the second highest number of viewers in its history, according to the statistics that blogger provides. That’s good news. But, only about 10 % of my friends have actually “liked” my page, so I instead of deleting my personal account, I am changing the privacy settings to make it so that my 1,000 friends can only see my posts (which mostly consist of my blog posts) so that my blog can still be read from both my personal page and my fan page… And if I get significantly more “likes” for my fan page, I will look further into de-activating my personal page.
Thanks for your input and feedback-I think it’s great that you are maximizing Facebook’s potential to meet your needs as you communicate to your friends, family and those you minister to.
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A quick note to Curt and everyone- After talking further with a friend yesterday about the benefit of groups, I have started one called Blog Talk. It is an open group inviting people to dialogue about topics we all blog about! Please take a moment to join & comment! http://www.facebook.com/groups/273040852774074/
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