Using Social Media For Churches
Jacob Tapia
1. Keep posts short. People are mostly scanning through their feeds and don’t usually take the time to read through long posts. Keep it simple and get your message across in statement and question forms that are brief 1 and easy to read.
2. Include a call to action. Ask, “What do I want the reader to do?” in order to come up with the “next step”. This could be encouraging the reader to click on a link, share, or tag the post, etc.
3. Post pictures. Include old pictures dug up from past directories, recent event photos, and promotional pieces for current/ future church/ministry events. Photos generate activity and are more easily shared and interacted with on Facebook/Twitter. If you have multiple photos, don’t post them all at once but put them out over a period of time to generate interest and expectancy from your followers. Also, post them on your timeline instead of making an album in order to get more views on your wall.
4. Tag people. Use tags to get people involved and talking about the post. When people are specifically tagged in a post, they will be more inclined to comment or share.
5. Post continuously. The minimum a person should post is once a week for a ministry or daily for a personal post IF they want to keep their ratings/views up.
6. Use the promote options with Facebook in order to reach more people. $5-$20 can go a long way to connect with people in your area if you are a church or with your contacts if youare promoting your ministry. You might consider budgeting a certain amount each month for promoting your site/page but remember to ALWAYS include a call to action with your promotions.
7. Repost/like again. The great thing about Facebook/Twitter is you can bring things from the past into the present by liking, commenting, and reposting. Use this to generate views, likes, and comments on something that connected with people in the past or to generate interest without posting new content.
8. Check-in. Use the check-in option for your church’s page and ask people (during announcements, on a pre-service slide-show, in the bulletin, etc.) to check in to your church. This check-in will show up to all of their friends and is a great way to advertise the church in a non-confrontational way.
The above article, “Using Social Media for Churches,” is written by Jacob Tapia. The article was excerpted from page 5 of the Illinois District News.
The material is copyrighted and should not be reprinted under any other name or author. However, this material may be freely used for personal study or research purposes.
