No matter how long you have been involved in Freemasonry you will have noticed many changes happening within our organisation. Freemasonry is almost going through a rebrand. We are now very much open to the public and people are becoming more and more aware of our charitable donations and also what we do during our meetings.

One method of communication that has really taken off is the use of Social Media, namely Facebook and Twitter. I am a keen user of both and manage the accounts of my two craft lodges. I also post on the Berkshire Provincial accounts. I would encourage all lodges and members to use both of these, they are very easy to use and will really help your lodge to gain publicity and hopefully recruit new members. My Mother Lodge (Old Sunning) is a great example of how members and the lodge can benefit. When I joined the lodge many of the members were not used to I.T and certainly not in to social media. The lodge didn’t have a website either. The Lodge had gone through a patch of decline and was almost going to surrender its warrant. The lodge managed to gain two new members who in turn brought many new members to the lodge, I am pleased to say Old Sunning is now doing really well.

I mentioned at a committee meeting about social media and a lodge website. At first some of the members were understandably unsure and a bit hesitant about starting any of it. After a bit of discussion it was agreed we would “give it a go”. It has all worked really well and raised the lodges profile and has also produced an easy booking system for visitors to the lodge. Many of our senior members have now joined Facebook and are loving it, I have to say they post more photos and updates than me!! UGLE has produced guidelines on using social media and are encouraging members and lodges to do so. Why not give it a go?? Below is some information about using Facebook and Twitter….

Facebook: www.facebook.com

Facebook is probably the most used and well-known form of social media, it is very simple to use and gives you the ability to share your news, photos, videos to friends and family. You can be as public or as private as you like and you can choose who is able to see your information. You can set up a personal page and then separate pages for your lodges or other interests. Again lodge pages can be public, you can also set up private pages for lodge members only if you wish. Below is a YouTube video on the basics of Facebook.

I would suggest you attempt this first initially you can be more productive with this than Twitter

Twitter: www.twitter.com

Twitter has become increasingly popular with lodges and members. Twitter enables you to post short information bursts to your followers of 140 characters per message. Once you get used to it you will be surprised how much information you can get over to your followers. If you have ever watched the news, weather and wondered what the @ symbol before a name, it is a twitter “name” and you can follow that persons tweets. Once you have joined you can search for people you are interested in and follow them. This applies to lodges and provinces.  Here is another video on using Twitter

I hope you find the information useful, you have nothing to lose and if you don’t enjoy it you can just delete your profile and that will be the end of it. Once you get into it feel free to follow me!! I can be found on Twitter using @Berks_Mason and @MarkTheMedic or Facebook.com/BerksFreemason or Facebook.com/MarkTheMedic

Enjoy!!