Church Has Strong Presence on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter

Like many large organizations, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints administers several Facebook pages, YouTube channels and Twitter accounts, each of which communicates with different audiences inside and outside the Church.

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the Church’s First Presidency, and Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles have recently spoken about social media’s power to communicate with others about the Church’s beliefs and practices.

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In 2007, Elder Ballard urged graduating students at BYU-Hawaii to use the Internet — including blogs and other forms of new media — to contribute to a worldwide conversation about the Church.

“We cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what the Church teaches,” Elder Ballard said. “While some conversations have audiences in the thousands or even millions, most are much, much smaller. But all conversations have an impact on those who participate in them. Perceptions of the Church are established one conversation at a time.”

The Church and its members contribute to the conversation and have steadily built a substantial social media presence. For example, according to the popular website AllFacebook.com (not associated with Facebook), five of the Church’s official Facebook pages are ranked among the top 100 in the “Church/Religious Organization” category — including two in the top 25. AllFacebook.com lists 2,970 pages under Facebook’s “Church/Religious Organization” category.

A screenshot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Facebook page, which has more than 464,000 fans

As of 13 May 2011, the following Church Facebook pages were included in AllFacebook.com’s top 90:

No. 10 — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (464,000-plus fans)
No. 21 — Mormon.org (244,000-plus fans)
No. 30 — Mormon Messages (150,000-plus fans)
No. 43 — Mormon Channel (111,000-plus fans)
No. 81 — LDS Newsroom (46,000-plus fans)

The Church also administers other popular Facebook pages, such as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (156,000-plus fans) and The Ensign Magazine (131,000-plus fans).

Also as of 13 May 2011, the Church’s Mormon Messages YouTube channel was ranked number 2 in video views (20,656,000) in the “Nonprofits & Activism” category. YouTube channels the Church administers include:

Mormon Messages (20,656,000-plus views)
Mormon.org (6,000,000-plus views)
LDS Public Affairs (1,505,856-plus views)
Mormon Messages for Youth (1,500,000-plus views)
FamilySearch (54,000-plus views)

In the microblogging world, the Church’s Twitter presence lit up during the most recent general conference, with more than 55,000 tweets mentioning member-related topics or conference. The term “#ldsconf” trended (became a popular term) as high as number 4 worldwide and in the U.S. The terms “Elder Holland” and “President Monson” trended as high as number 2 on Twitter’s trending terms. Other popular terms included “Our LDS” (from Elder Quentin L. Cook’s talk “LDS Women Are Incredible!”), “Elder Cook,” “Elder Bednar” and “Bishop Burton.”

The Church administers several Twitter accounts. You can subscribe to Newsroom Church news updates via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, RSS and email.