Emily W. Jensen: Bloggernacle Back Bench: The LDS Church's strong online presence

According to a recent LDS Newsroom blog post, “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” via the tracking site AllFacebook.com.

Um, wow!

Want to know which ones?

• 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)

Now let’s look at YouTube rankings:

“Also as of May 13, 2011, the church’s Mormon Messages YouTube channel was ranked No. 2 in video views (20,656,000) in the “Nonprofits & Activism” category. YouTube channels the church administers include the following:

• 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)” Wow again!

Finally, the newsroom blog looks at the official Twitter feeds:

“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 No. 4 worldwide and in the U.S. The terms ‘Elder Holland’ and ‘President Monson’ trended as high as No. 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.’”

So why is the church topping "the Facebook rating”? As this blogger explains to those not of the faith: “With stats like these, if you’re on Facebook, there’s a good chance you’re a friend with a Mormon. If not, you can visit any of the owned properties of the church and ask questions there. The advantage of that is you can ask real Mormons about their beliefs — the people you know, and the people you care about and trust. Now you can see why social media is so useful for the LDS Church.”

And this is not even taking into account the many, many faithful bloggers, Tweeters, and YouTube and Facebook users who are unofficially promoting the church and testifying of the gospel throughout the online world. Truly, members are taking Elder M. Russell Ballard’s charge to change perceptions of the church by having online conversations as well as using the social media tools recently talked about by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf to reach far and wide.

Just wow.

Now let me spotlight other new posts from this last week in the Bloggernacle:

Power pick: “My husband is an addict. His drug of choice is prescription pain killers. I am a co-dependent which means that my drug of choice is my addict husband. Through many miracles we have been brought back into the ever loving arms of our Savior again. Through his Atonement we have found hope and recovery.”

So explains this blogger who powerfully describes “How Our Family is Overcoming Addiction.”