Personalize FORMED with Custom Content

Custom Content: Your Best Friend for Promoting Engagement on FORMED

Your FORMED subscription offers a wealth of great Catholic resources to strengthen your faith community. However, to achieve this goal, it is essential to ensure individual users become engaged with FORMED, starting with their initial login.

New subscribers often need a little guidance as they begin exploring FORMED. The amount of content can feel overwhelming, and they may be unsure where to start. Sadly, some never click that first video or audio, and consequently miss out on the many wonderful resources that can help lead them closer to Christ.

The solution: Custom Content! Custom Content provides YOU, and fellow leaders of your FORMED subscription, an easy way to personalize your FORMED account and point users in the best direction.

Imagine directing your users to your parish/school or organization website, straight from FORMED. Or featuring audio of your pastor’s homily on your community’s unique Community page! Add immediate links to FORMED resources your organization is presently using for easy access. It’s up to you how Custom Content will work for your needs.

FORMED and Your Community – All in One Place

Custom Content provides a vital bridge between the walls of your parish/school or organization and your member’s phone or tablet. Leaders are finding Custom Content to be a valuable tool for orienting and unifying their users in this virtual space. With your entire community logging into FORMED, your FORMED Community page and its featured custom content become the glue that binds them together – one shared space enabling you to amplify your message.

Additionally, Custom Content offers a one-stop, comprehensive page where members can access everything they are looking for, including FORMED materials currently being utilized inside your organization, as well as other resources outside of FORMED.

Learn How to Use Custom Content

Custom Content, quite simply, allows you to feature content of specific interest to your community on your Community page. Moreover, FORMED allows up to 10 leaders the ability to use this tool! Once you publish custom content, this extra content becomes visible to all your members as recommended units on your Community page. Creating custom content units is incredibly quick and easy.

Learn how to connect to external resources and use the Dashboard to create Custom Content

Learn how to use the One-Click Method for Custom Content

See more Tutorials

Best Practices

Leaders who have found success with Custom Content have given us a wealth of best practices to share with the FORMED Leaders community. Start implementing these great ideas on your FORMED Custom Content page today!

Highlighting Content already on FORMED

With Custom Content, it’s easy to showcase content on FORMED you find most helpful to your members. Leaders recommend choosing FORMED content that is:

Liturgically relevant
Used regularly by parish ministries and leaders, providing easy access
Related to your priest’s homily or other specific ministries within your parish
Most popular among your parishioners

Connecting to External Content

Many leaders are using Custom Content to direct users to resources outside of FORMED. These links may include:

Your parish or school website
Sound Cloud audio links to your pastor’s homilies
YouTube or Vimeo videos related to parish or diocesan events
Pope Francis on Twitter
Other helpful Catholic websites, such as Vatican.va

Update Your Custom Content Regularly

Allow multiple leaders the ability to add content
Be strategic about the ordering of your Custom Content units
Content units in the top three positions are likely to be viewed most often
Regularly alternate the order of units to help attract attention to highlighted content
Update your Custom Content monthly, bi-weekly, or even more frequently to train your members to keep coming back to view the latest additions

With Custom Content, driving engagement on FORMED is easier than ever before. Join the conversation on our FORMED Leader’s Facebook page to learn and share more best practices for this exciting feature!