With social media, the Church has an amazing opportunity to reach out to people in unprecedented ways – helping to share the Good News not just in our local communities, but all over the world. There’s a huge conversation happening digitally right now, and churches should be right in the middle of it!

When you set out to create a social media strategy for your church, it’s easy to think too small. When you use social media personally, to share updates and photos with friends and family, you may not think of all the other ways these social sites can and are used by businesses and yes ministries to expand their reach, increase front-of-mind awareness and yes see more visitors.

With social media, the Church has an amazing opportunity to reach out to people in unprecedented ways – helping to share the Good News not just in our local communities, but all over the world. There’s a huge conversation happening digitally right now, and churches should be right in the middle of it!

The basics: Posts vs. Ads

Posts

If you have a Facebook or Instagram account, and you share a picture of that amazing plate of pasta you ate last night – that is a post. When you post something, you can specify who gets to see the post and most of the time it will be limited to online “friends”. Depending on your security settings, if you tagged your location or the person you ate with or the restaurant where you got the pasta, people who like and friend them will also see your post.

Likewise as a church with a social media account, when you share about your Easter services, the people who follow and like your church will see that post – which is good. That is also why it’s a good idea to ask your church members to share your posts on their social media accounts – it will help spread the word.

In fact, Facebook rewards you for posting on your site – the more your church posts conversation-starting, engaging things the more your church will show up in people’s feeds. That is why a daily automated Facebook posting service like Outreach Social is a great idea.

Ads

Social media ads are a form of advertisements that are displayed on the feeds of social media users. On Facebook they show in the feed with all the other posts by your friends but they say “sponsored”.

The great thing about social media ads is that people outside your digital church friends can see these ads. In fact, when you place a Facebook ad, you can even target specific geographic or demographic areas!

Should your church be using social media ads?

Yes, absolutely! If you want to reach people in your community, social media ads are the best way to do this. Ads are paid efforts that allow your church to take advantage of demographics, location, and interests to make sure that you’re talking to exactly who you want to reach!

For example, if you want to get the word out in your area that your church is having a marriage enrichment event, you probably don’t want to target people who are divorced, widowed, or unmarried. Social media ads allow you to only speak to people who might be interested in the event.

But wait- isn’t it expensive you might ask? Nope! The minimum you need to spend is $2 a day. Now, of course, it’s possible to spend more than that, because the higher the spend, the more people the social media ads can reach. Try and find a reasonable solution that’s within budget.

So how do you start using social media ads?

Setting up social media ads on Facebook is relatively complicated. New policies set up by Facebook recently force users to be verified by Facebook to run ads of a religious nature, and it can be a very long process to get verified. To get the most effective results without the hassle, use an experienced professional to create and manage the ads for your church.

One great resource is the new Outreach Everywhere service. We now offers social media ads for churches. We are authorized and verified by Facebook to use these tools and create targeted social media ads specifically for churches like yours!

Introducing Outreach Everywhere

Ads are a way for churches to cast a wider reach and more actively engage with the people they need to be talking to. It’s hands-down the most effective way to do digital ministry and get the word out about your church this Easter. The most powerful social media strategy is multi-channel (several methods) and multi-touch (number of times a person sees the ad).

With Outreach Everywhere, we’ve created a strategy that hits all of these points by integrating several social media channels, printed invitations and web content. This new service is designed to help your church’s messages and events be seen and heard!

What’s included with Outreach Everywhere?

Postcards

Regardless of how effective and important social media ads are, the only method that remains 100% effective at reaching every home in your area is direct mail. Currently, only about 70% of people are on social media, and while that number is growing all the time, it’s doesn’t cover absolutely everyone. But everyone does have a mailbox and recent statistics show that even young people review and save mail they are interested in. Additionally, the invitation is lasting and can be checked multiple times in hard copy form instead of someone searching for a link.

Social Media Ads

This is the best way to reach a younger audience because social media is where they’re spending their time. It allows your church to talk to exactly who you need to be reaching, and it allows for detailed tracking so you can see just how effective your efforts are. Remember, people spend up to 2 hours a day on social media and it’s the main conversation platform. Churches need to be a part of that conversation.

How does it work?

With the two touch-points included in Outreach Everywhere (postcards & social ads), your church will be able to reach 5,000 or more people in your community three times each (That’s 15,000 views of your social media ads!).

About the same time your postcard mailing is arriving in homes, ten days prior to your church’s Easter celebration and service, the Outreach team will set up and run your social media ads to the same geographical area that your postcards were mailed to. The ads will run on Instagram and Facebook, even if your church does not currently have an Instagram page. The online ads will send people directly to your church website!

The best part? We do all the work for you! You don’t have to worry about anything – we will even send you some  tips and tricks to make sure your website is optimized for your ministry outreach efforts

By Marissa Williams

Be a digital missionary! Any church, any size can use social media effectively. You can do it!

Crafting a Good Social Media Strategy

Social media isn’t just a place to talk about yourself or your church events. It is a massive opportunity for you are your members to minister to others. 58% of non-Christians say someone has shared their faith with them via social media. People who may never have a gospel conversation in person, will engage in a gospel conversations on social media. Yet only 28% of people feel comfortable sharing their faith online! So how can you encourage your members to talk about faith? By setting an example.

Here are some basic dos and don’ts for your social media strategy:

• DON’T just post church announcements and updates. Often for any organization, people check out social media channels first so it’s a great way for people to get a feel for what your church culture is. If you only have internal announcements, they may not feel welcome or like they could be a part of your group.
• DO create your very own digital missionary strategy. Make it unique for your church! Share things that encourage engagement, share behind the scenes content, or just share some fun pieces that people will want to see!
• DON’T try to do it all. Remember- strategy is key. It’s about doing less to get more. Don’t stress yourself out and try to master every social media channel all at once, we know they can seem really complicated.
• DO: Integrate social media with daily communication in your church. Make sure to tell people about it! Talk about it every Sunday, encourage people to check in on locations, put it on church collateral, make it on all of your communication platforms. Be intentional about which ones you want to focus on. Youth ministry can be an especially effective place to share this information. Make it easy for people to find you!

Getting Started

Step 1: Who is your audience? The most important question you need to ask when crafting a social media strategy is: who is this for? Your church probably already has a “target audience” that is based on your geographic location, demographics and key ministries. Now you just need to apply this same principle to your online audience. There are three main audience buckets to focus on: Your local community and neighbors, your congregation, and the broader digital community at large.

Step 2: Which Social Media Channels? Start by figuring out which social media channel (s) is right for your church. There are three main channels you should know about and when creating a social media strategy it is important to distinguish between them and understand each one’s strong points in order to make sure your church is being effective across the board.
Facebook– the most common social media platform, a lot of churches have FB pages, and it has the most users of any social platform. Additionally, Google and FB play together. When people Google your church, they usually see your Facebook profile as one of the first results, and that matters, because that’s where people will look first. Facebook is great for:

• Sharing announcements (yes, you need to do this too, you just need to make sure it’s not the only thing you’re doing!)
• Sharing photos and videos
• Across the board, videos get the most engagement. You can use a smartphone for video recording, you don’t need to have a videographer produce the video for you.
• Engaging graphics with quotes, scriptures, questions- something that people will like and interact with. (Outreach Social, in particular, is a great place to start with this!)
• Links to your website- direct traffic where you want it to go.

Twitter- is a great way to interact with your community in small ways that really add up. It has a huge audience and can make people feel connected to your church in a really personal way. However, because of character count limits, it’s not ideal if you want to communicate a lot of details. Twitter is great for:

• Quotes, blurbs and thoughts
• Trending news and hashtags- this is a great place to use that church hashtag we talked about earlier!
• Retweeting- engage with your community by retweeting relevant news and community stories.
• Twitter is for short and pithy thoughts. You only have 240 characters, so no paragraphs here!

Instagram- is the key channel if you want to reach younger audiences. It’s a great place to post regular updates, videos, pictures, and live feeds. Remember though, Instagram doesn’t allow for you to post links, so it’s not meant to be a redirection tool. Instagram is great for:

• Quality photos of events
• Instagram stories
• Hashtags- you can reshare posts with relevant hashtags. Also, be sure to use hashtags of your city on every post, Instagram will show people in your area those posts on their feed. It’s a great way to be seen!

Step 3: Create a strategic content calendar. A content calendar is basically just a plan of what information is going to be posted on any given day. You can create this calendar 30 days at a time and schedule posts ahead of time on most platforms so you don’t have to worry about any daily upkeep and posting!

Try the CEO strategy: Curated, Engagement, Offer method:

• Curated posts: find stories from other websites or social media pages that you know your congregation will love. Share happy local news or updates or interesting stories about the larger Christian community (Faithit, Faithwire, and Christianity Today are all great places to start.)
  • Good news from your community will gain a lot of traction. People rally behind causes they care about. There’s so much good news out there in the midst of all the bad, that it’s worth sharing!
• Engagement: graphics with beautiful quotes or scripture. Give people something to interact with (likes, reshare, comments- that’s what engagement means on social media.) And remember, the more engagement your page has, the more people in the broader digital community will see it. That’s true across all platforms on social media.
• Offers: This is the place where you share church announcements, upcoming events, promote a sermon series or share updates about what’s going on and coming up at your church. This is important, but post fewer of these than the rest.  Facebook, in particular, will penalize pages with less visibility if they do nothing but share links.

NOTE: You can get a FREE content calendar template from Outreach to get you started!

Applying Your Social Media Strategy to Easter

When you’re thinking about content for your social media, remember to always keep your audience in mind. What will those three main audiences want to see on social media and how can you share the message of Easter with all of them simultaneously?

To reach your local community:

• Use an Easter-specific hashtag for your church: #churchnameEaster
• Share about activities leading up to Easter Sunday. Make it specific to your community: egg hunts in a public park, spring carnivals etc..
• Create Easter-specific Engagement posts to get people talking. For example ask the community: What is your favorite Easter tradition? What’s the best jelly bean flavor? What’s your favorite technique for dyeing eggs? Get a conversation going!
• Tag local news or local businesses your church or members of your congregation are connected with. Springtime is a great time for good news when it comes to local news channels. If you’re putting on a volunteer event or partnering with a local nonprofit make sure to let people know on social media how you’re connecting with the community on social media.

To reach and empower your congregation

• Share updates about Easter Sunday events! For example, Is there a special time for Easter Sunday services? Let people know on social media and get the word out.
• Equip your congregation to be digital missionaries. Create posts and events that can be shared to personal pages by your church members – check out Outreach Digital for automated digital posts.

To reach a larger online audience

• Share uplifting quotes that inspire people or ask fun questions that create conversation. They don’t have to be all scripture all the time but make sure they’re something that aligns with what your church believes.
• Video! Remember, video is king on social media. Share a weekly video taken on a smartphone of a pastor at your church sharing an uplifting brief message or just inviting people to come join you on Easter Sunday! They can be personal, uplifting messages that say to people “hey, I hope you’re having a good week, I’m thinking of you!”
• Curated news. Everyone loves good news and good stories. Find some that you want to share with people!

By Marissa Williams