You Can Get There From Here

. . . but you need a plan by DJ Chuang

Digital technologies and social media are an integral part of our everyday lives —even to the point of helping shape entire societies, as in the 2012 Arab Spring protests. Yet is the Church strategically using social media for the sake of the gospel?

Everyone can have a voice in the public square online. But to use social media effectively as a church, you need a strategy. Without one (yes, I’ll confirm your worst fears), social media can easily consume all your waking hours and can feel pointless. And without a person on-point overseeing your efforts, your social-media activity can easily lose out to other competing ministry priorities.

Even if your church is using social media already, that doesn’t mean it’s effective. A well-thought-through social-media strategy will keep your church on track to best steward the resources for which it is accountable. Whether you’re knee-deep in Tweets, status updates and video posts, or just getting started, consider these essential questions —who, what, where, when and how —as a framework for developing a powerful strategy that will help fulfill your church’s mission:

Whom Do You Want To Connect With On Social Media?

Picture four concentric circles of possible audiences: your church attenders, people in your community who don’t attend your church, a particular group of people around the world or the whole wide world. Each circle would take a different approach to connect with them effectively.

For example, while a church attender would want to be informed about church activities, people in your community might not be. For this article, let’s assume you want to connect more actively with your church attenders. These questions are also powerful if you’re aiming at a broader audience via livestreaming or Internet campuses.

Who Will Run Your Social-media Strategy?

Who among your church staff and volunteers can best connect with those you’ve identified as your audience? Social media thrives with collaboration, and a team of volunteers can share the fun of posting status updates with quotes and photos. Yet it’s invaluable to identify one point person (either staff or a committed volunteer) who will coordinate communications with everyone involved.

Here are the traits to look for: trustworthy, collaborative, adept at communicating with a diverse audience, active learner and tech-literate, along with other traits that apply to any ministry leader. This person doesn’t have to be a “techie ” (knowing how to build an app or manage a database) but tech-literate (able to follow instructions for using technology). Include this person in the crafting of your social-media strategy.

What Is Your Goal For Social Media?

Setting a primary goal gives you a point of focus for deciding what to do, what not to do, and how to guide the content and conversations. Your goal could be any of the following:

• to be more connected with your church attenders during the week
• to reach new people with the gospel
• to provide spiritual encouragement
• to offer information about upcoming events
• to engage unchurched people in your local community in a similar cause
• or something else that better fits your church’s mission and culture.

What Will Be The Voice Of Your Church?

Developing a voice for how your church communicates and what it shares is the crux of the church communication challenge. If your church is making church announcements using social media, it’s OK to have an organizational voice. If your church wants to engage people conversationally, use a personal voice, because people connect more meaningfully with a person than with a branded entity. (If you have several people managing the church social-media account, convention is to add one’s initials at the end of the status update.)

One of the questions I hear often from church leaders is: What do you do when people talk back with constructive (or not so constructive) criticism? Since much of social media is in the public view, consider these things in further developing your voice:

understand the nature of social media —what you post online goes out instantly, globally and permanently, so think twice before you click “enter. ” don’t stay silent —if you don’t say something, other people will make up a story while your own story remains untold, and your silence can come across as being disengaged and uncaring. take criticism as an opportunity for conversation —engage with people by thanking them for their corrections and concern, offer clarification when possible, and always let your words be seasoned with grace. Some churches will want to define their social-media guidelines or policies to avoid confusion or chaos. Here’s a useful list of sample social-media policies for churches and ministries.

What Kind Of Content And/or Conversations Will Best Engage Your Audience?

Consider how to both post and engage: post interesting and relevant content for your primary audience as well as engage them in conversations. How can you repurpose existing content, such as sermons and Bible studies, missions-trip recaps and lively youth-ministry videos? And how can you create new material? What types of questions might best engage your audience, strengthening relationships and sparking spiritual conversation? Check out other churches’ social-media sites to see where the most activity occurs.

Remember, you need short-form communication —140 characters about a great resource; three-minute video to spark thinking; pithy quote from your sermon that links to the full-length message. Make it easy to share, so that your quality content spreads beyond your church walls.

Where (which Social Networks Will You Use)?

Facebook and Twitter are the two most popular social networks1, so a good number of people in your church and community are likely on one or both of them. Other popular networks include Google+, Tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram. Hint: You don’t have to be everywhere; start with one social network and make sure you’re effective before adding a second one.

Start where your people are. Ask informally during fellowship times or set up an online survey (i.e. SurveyMonkey), and keep the survey short. One small-church pastor in Montana recently told me that he had a pretty good hint for where to start when people started asking him, “Is the church on Facebook? ”

When Will You Post Content?

Those most active on social media are probably checking it at least once a day, so to engage them, your church would want to post content at least once a day too. Social-media tools are maturing, so you can pre-schedule the content —load a week’s worth of content in one sitting—using a social-media dashboard such as HootSuite.

Use a content schedule to plan out the type of content for each week and every day. One church called Lifechurch.tv used to post a short update or story from a different ministry each day of the week: Monday was youth ministry, Tuesday was children’s ministry, Wednesday was a reminder from the sermon, and so on.

To engage your audience better, have a healthy mix of church-centric content (sermons and announcements) and conversation starters. Add photos and videos as well as text, and see what best engages your audience and meets your goals. Tweak your schedule according to how people respond.

How Will You Measure Success?

Your social-media presence is actually more measurable than a radio or newspaper ad. Embedded into each network are various tools available to the administrator, to track, for example, how many are sharing with their friends your Facebook posts or retweeting your original message on Twitter2. You don’t have to guess whether your youth-ministry video went viral or not.

You can also keep your own tally of how social media opens up offline opportunities for prayer, counseling or discipleship. By tracking all of these numbers, you can gauge how effective your church’s social media is at reaching your related ministry goals.

Answering these essential questions will give your church a practical framework for crafting an effective social-media strategy. Don’t be haphazard in your engagement online. The door is wide open to use social media to better fulfill your church’s mission for the sake of the gospel.

To dig deeper into social-media strategy, investigate the resources available in “Online and Offline Resources.”