Your best approach to the social networks is to find ways to connect your web site to the social grid and it is fairly simple to do so. Continuing to use Facebook as our example, here are the basics for expanding your web presence beyond your site and into the social grid.

• Use a social bookmark block on your site, allowing yourself and others to easily add posts to your social network profile
• Activate RSS feeds for any and all modules on your site. RSSFit can provide additional feeds that modules may not
• Create a personal profile on Facebook for yourself and a page for your church or ministry
• Optionally, create a Facebook group for your church or ministry

Those are just the preliminaries. As part of this exercise, you also need to determine the purpose of both your site and the Facebook page (or other social network) and the role each of them will play in your ministry.

• After you have set up your church's page on Facebook, go to the Notes tab and edit the settings for Notes. There you will find the ability to import a blog. You can only import from 1 feed, so select the RSS feed from your site that is most appropriate for your ministry. Now, when you post a new item on your web site, they will show on your Facebook page, too.
• If you wish to add multiple RSS feeds to your page, you can add other applications, like RSS-Connect and Simply RSS. As you edit your page, there is a section for More Applications. Click on the edit (pencil) to browse and search for more applications.
• If you also have Twitter account, you can get and send Twitter updates with Facebook. Just search for the Facebook Twitter application and add it to your page.

Now you have the basics for connecting your church web site to the realm of social networks, along with the steps to get there. If you have some examples of how your ministry is using Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or any of the other sites, please leave us a comment and let us know what worked for you.