Special days in the church, such as Easter and Christmas, mean reaching your community in new and unique ways. Having a social media plan can enhance the effectiveness of these outreach programs, helping you remaining faithful to "preach the Gospel". This interactive session will present an outline for preparing and implementing a social media campaign, regardless of past technology experience. Strengths and weakness of social sites will be discussed, along with tools and resources to implement the campaign.
Presented at the All Church Ministries Conference (Southwestern Assemblies of God University), March 1, 2014
6. March 1, 2014
NTD All Church Ministries Conference
#maxconvo
The church should reflect concern with
both spiritual and social matters.
Evangelize the lost
Worship God
Disciple believers
Show compassion
7. March 1, 2014
NTD All Church Ministries Conference
#maxconvo
But, we have a problem.
• Decreasing religious involvement is one of the
reasons for this countries decline in the value
of relationships.
• The day has passed when the church stood in
the circle of community influence by virtue
of its position.
8. March 1, 2014
NTD All Church Ministries Conference
What if…
…there were a public place for a church’s
voice in the community?
…there were a public place where a church
could show the love of God?
…there were a public place where a church
could present themselves to others?
…there were a public place where a church
could speak?
34. #maxconvo
Determine posting frequency
• Twitter
• 3-5 original Tweets daily
• Also Retweets, Replies, Mentions, Direct Messages
• Facebook
• 1 time a day
• Occasional posts on other relevant Facebook pages
• Also respond to comments/requests
• 2 blog posts weekly
• Email
• Monthly to start
• Can move to bi-weekly/weekly depending on event
When you combine the decline in the value of relationships and this decline in status, it is tempting for pastors and churches to focus on their congregations and forget community involvement.
These are the basic things to understand.
Social media is simple. Social media for events is simple. But, it’s just not easy.
(Pic – social sight logos)
(Pic – Start line)Start with some questions.
(Picture – Big question mark)
Strategy - a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.
Create a Twitter account (free). Twitter is the platform that will allow you to get the biggest benefits of social media for promoting and publicizing an event. It’s the most used tool by participants and organizers to communicate and share their impressions of and comments on the sessions during an event. Make sure that your Twitter account has been customized with your brand so that visitors can identify your organization.
See pic descriptions
Evaluate Your Social Media Presence
Evaluate your current social media presence and the direction of conversation.
Create content Buckets
What kind of key words?
Now, where are you going to put it all?
Create a content calendar
Choose a calendar platform
See pic descriptions
Where does all this stuff you have been doing end up?
Define a Twitter hashtag for the event. Hashtag are used to centralize messages around a specific word on Twitter. You can read more about hashtags on the Twitter support site.Try to create a hashtag with name that is unique. Because the creation and use of a Twitter hashtags are public and free, have an as unique as possible hashtag minimizes the risk that it will be used for purposes other than for your event. You can simply do a search for the hashtag in Twitter to see if it is already used by others.
Create a Twitter account (free). Twitter is the platform that will allow you to get the biggest benefits of social media for promoting and publicizing an event. It’s the most used tool by participants and organizers to communicate and share their impressions of and comments on the sessions during an event. Make sure that your Twitter account has been customized with your brand so that visitors can identify your organization.
This is a church page. You can build your event on a Facebook pagePost on event wall and send updatesinvite others to your Facebook event through emailInclude the event in your organizations Facebook pageShare your event on relevant Facebook pages and groupsPrompt live check-ins to your event on Facebook
On church website, create an event pagelink to your social profiles.Include share linksTrack social media performanceEmbed a live Twitter feed, YouTube video or Facebook live stream
Create an account on a social video platform such as YouTube or Vimeo. These online platforms allow you to store your videos and then play them in a video player which can then be inserted into your website or into a blog post.
Promote the event on social media and in your newsletters following your content calendar.Communicate the hashtag of the event on all event marketing materials (brochures, banners, emails / confirmation emails, tickets, badges, etc.).Promote the event on all your social networks two weeks before and put the emphasis on the speakers (make links to their bios if they are on the website of the event) and on the program of event.Invite your audience to sign up for the newsletter or the event to stay informed about the practical information and other news.