Churches have a unique advantage and opportunity in my opinion to most organizations when it comes to communications and marketing.   Why?  Because the church has endless content that is uplifting, gives people hope, acceptance, love and comfort.  People are looking for answers and the Bible has them. 

Having a communications plan will help you develop some key messages to focus and build strategies around, give your staff and volunteers a road map to follow and build momentum from your successes.  It also means your resources are going to be used efficiently and effectively, tasks are assigned with people being held accountable and most importantly, effort is not given to strategies that do not align to the mission and larger goals of the organization. 

Develop a Social Media Strategy:

Like any new initiative, a social media strategy requires planning and adoption to succeed. In the last article we talked about how you can help your staff and volunteers use and interact with your social media accounts, but you also need to develop a social media strategy, as part of your larger communications strategy, for your church or organization.

Here are some questions to answer:

• What is your Church trying to achieve with your social media?  Engagement? Outreach to new audiences? Promotions? Education and ministry? (Btw…all of these are good choices).
• What are the benchmarks of success with your social media plan, and the timeline for achieving these benchmarks? 
• How will you evaluate whether your strategy is working?
• How often will the strategy be reviewed and evaluated? How will that be decided and by who?

Ideally, you want to have a diverse strategy.  Diverse content, diverse channels, and diversity reflected in your posts.  Meaning, post varied content, from varied people and perspectives, and use more than one channel.  Different demographic groups, as in other areas of ministry, engage on different social platforms.  So, consider your congregation and where they are most likely hanging out on social.  Then you can prioritize the channels to focus on.

Social media is a combination of a lot of things depending on what you choose to post and a little creativity in copywriting, design and storytelling can take you a long way.  But don’t be intimidated, there are a lot of content creation programs and aids to help you with your design and presentation.  You will still need to provide the copy, but there are a lot of templates on Canva that will make your content look great. 

One of the reasons churches struggle with social media is most of our posts are promotional in nature.  A lot of churches are not utilizing social media enough to preach and teach.  Some are very savvy at utilizing social media to connect to their different audiences and for announcements, promotion of events and services.  But how many of them were actually using these channels to preach and teach the word of God. 

I would guess not many, and Nona Jones agrees in her book, From Social Media to Social Ministry: a guide to digital discipleship.  She talks about the paradigm shift that the church needs to embrace from using a social media plan to bring people into the building to a social ministry strategy where the church goes to the people to minister to them where they are at.  Even if that’s online. 

If COVID taught us anything, it was that we could meet and have meaningful fellowship in an online format.  Was it different?  Yes.  Although for some, it was even better, and many churches will be continuing some of their online programming because it was so well received.

What to Post and When

Make sure you schedule your topics and stick to the schedule. Specifically, you want to get the right balance of content that will appeal and engage to your audience. That’s the point of the plan. So, stick to the plan, or revise it if you are not seeing the results you want. But note that in your evaluations so you can adjust for other campaigns moving forward.

For Example:

• Educational Content (50%) – Content that is educational and relevant to the weekly topic
• Service Content (20%) – Stories about the work you are doing in the lives of your congregation, missions, community outreach and other programs. Stick with the theme of the week.
• Giving Content (15%) – Giving related content (ways to give, donor testimonials, giving campaigns).
• Stewardship and Reporting (10%) – Reporting about giving and how their donations are
• having an impact (where and how). This might seem similar to number 2, but this info should be specific to dollars raised in current and on-going campaign.
• Humour & Inspiration (5%) – You always want to include some random posts with humour, interesting reflections on news or events, or posts of inspiration.

Posting Frequency:

Most industry experts say not more than once a day, but you don’t need to post every day.  People’s feeds are full, so good content and posts a few times a week can be equally effective. 

A lot of organizations do post 2 or three times a day, particularly larger churches with multiple ministries.  If you are going to post multiple times in a day, it is imperative you vary your content and coordinate your posts with other authors and ministries.

Find a posting frequency that is sustainable for your church and then just keep showing up every single week.  That’s the secret to building meaningful relationships online. 

Whatever social media platforms you decide on using, make sure you are engaged in them with your followers. People are following and engaging with your posts because they want to have a two-way conversation. Social media is intended to be a conversation. We can interact with our favourite charities, consumer brands and celebrities in real time. The church needs to find a way to be a part of that space and be ready to have a conversation with its followers too.

So, here’s my advice for managing multiple social platforms at your church:

• Pick one social platform where the most people in your church are active
• Generate engagement and conversations on that platform
• Find a posting schedule you can sustain (a year at least…ideally three)
• Once you are comfortable on the one platform, add another. 

I would recommend you find a way to engage your youth online, which means platforms other than Facebook and Twitter.  These tend to be an older crowd.  You will have to look at channels where young people are like Instagram and TikTok.  If you have youth in your church, ask them where they are and if they can help you get this going.  I can assure you they will be delighted to help.

Engagement…Be Real

You should have two goals for the social media strategy at your church:

1. Reach publicly
2. Engage personally and authentically

Most churches understand the public broadcast reach of social, publishing posts on your pages and profiles that can be seen by the world.  This is the part of social that is visible.  So, it’s easy to follow the channels of vibrant churches and see what others are doing.  For example, Saddleback, Connexus, and Celebration Church.

The authentic engagement is often where we fall down.

But the churches that are building vibrant communities online are doing so by connecting personally through direct messages, emails, chats, and more.  In other words, they are providing community and conversation to people looking for answers. 

Why Does It Matter?