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Social Media Resolutions for 2012

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Resolution 1:  Set one specific social media objective to begin with

Keep your social media efforts focused on your ministry and keep it mass-media oriented. Make a list of your priorities as a ministry and make sure your posts meet those criteria.  Most likely you’ll need to get familiar with social media and play around with it for a little while before you find the perfect way to use it for your ministry.  Make sure you keep your target demographic and your congregation in mind to ensure the best chance of establishing a real connection.

Resolution 2:  Find the right way to use social media for your church

This is what Mari Smith, the Pied Piper of Facebook, says: “The main reason people fail in social media is lack of a strategy. There’s so much confusing and conflicting advice out there, it’s easy to get lost in the social media jungle. By having a clear objective, developing a strategy to accomplish that objective, and measuring milestones along the way, you’re bound to have better results.”

• What can you say that will grab your community/congregation’s attention?
• What is the best way for you to say it?
• Where is the best place for you to start saying it?

If you’re unsure, the best place to start is by using your website or a page on your site like a blog as your “hub.”  It’s important to remember that your social media strategy needs to be custom fit for the unique message you want to communicate to your community.  Focus on your ROI, or Return On Investment (of time and resources).  When you have a specific objective and start using social media in the right way, it magnifies the effectiveness of your overall outreach efforts.

A good take-away is this:  Don’t waste time using other people’s social media tactics. Find a social media strategy that connects your business to your audience.

Resolution 3:  Keep your social media social

Once you’re able to keep to the above resolutions, you will be able to focus on keeping it social.  You have to remember to maintain a personable and relationship driven approach to any and all types of media.  Like I said, focus on your Time ROI.  The right message that aligns with your ministry goals in a social media marketing strategy can save your organization time and resources spent elsewhere on outreach efforts.  It also makes your more personal acts of outreach more effective.  Remember:  Don’t waste time sending messages that don’t work. Find the right message for your church and, above all, be social.

Resolution 4:  Maintain your focus on your overall outreach strategy

There are a couple of reasons that social media can waste your time:

• It is a social environment.
• Ministries need to create a social presence and it can be hard to find the balance between ministry/doctrine and community/relationship.

Don’t get stuck in the traps when adapting your outreach to social media. We’ve seen through research that building buzz and excitement in your virtual community can translate to real results in your physical community.  Focus on building relationships online and communicate that you can meet needs people feel or that you can answer questions they have.  Social media outreach creates stronger relationships with the people in your market.  It can be used to reduce apprehension and pique the curiosity of more people and in less time than with most other outreach venues.  This only helps and invigorates your in-person approaches for outreach.  Also, part of staying focused is avoiding getting sidetracked.  The world of social media is full of shiny objects waiting to grab your attention.  Try time-blocking an hour a week to knock out a few posts to be sent out later.  This will allow you to adapt social media to work for your church and your work flow.

Resolution 5:  Don’t bite off more than you can chew

I know this never happens with outreach, especially for vision-driven pastors and ministry leaders bent on conquering the world this year, but let’s pretend for a second like it does.  Experts say that trying to be everywhere on social media, especially right off the bat, is a big time waster. Social media is made up of numerous different places where people hang out, and these places all have different environments.  Please don’t try to be everywhere all at once because you won’t know what to say or the best way to say it.  You need to walk before you can run:

• Research to find out where your ministry can be effective
• Observe what people are saying and how they’re saying it
• Listen and adapt your message to fit in the conversation

Be sure to keep your message custom and personal.  You should communicate with a relevant voice and add your own social touch to all of your online outreach. As long as you can choose your posts wisely and make sure to add some social juice to them, you’ll reap much more than you sow.

Don’t try to jump into all social media platforms at once.  I suggest you start with a Facebook fan page and get good at driving people to your website.  Then take on Twitter and see how you can get all three working together with the fewest number of messages possible.  This can be a fun game.

So that’s what I recommend for 2012.  It’s true that social media can be a powerful tool when used properly by a church.  There’s no need to be scared of the conversation as long as we take it a little at a time.  Also, remember that being proactive and taking initiative, doesn’t mean biting off more than you can chew.  Keep your message social, inviting and relational to remind the masses why we do what we do.  And, above all, keep your eyes on the prize.  Don’t get caught up in the fads of the day.  Find the right site for you initially and achieve one small goal at a time.

I hope this has been helpful for you.  If you have any questions about this post or any of the tools faithHighway offers to help you in your social media efforts, you can reach us at 877.703.2484.  We’ll talk to you soon!

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My favorites from their list are:

WorshipHouse Media- 12 Days of Christmas.- Visit their site on the days marked with a bow on their calendar and unwrap your free gift.

Igniter Media-  Giving away a free Holly Branch Loop

Muddy River Media- All their stuff is free. They’ve got Christmas Trivia slides, music videos and more!

My additions:

Amazon.com- 25 Days of free Holiday Music- visit this site each day for a new Christmas song.

CreativeNerds.co.uk- Give your website a splash of holiday with these Social Media Christmas Icons

Not only are insights tracking how your page fans are interacting with your page, they can track the total reach of your page.  Meaning, it tells you how many of your fans’ friends saw your content.

Here are some definitions and useful information to help you understand what you’re looking at.

Weekly total Reach- the number of people who viewed your content within the last week

People talking about this- The number of people who have created a story about your page. This includes  when someone likes, comments on or shares your posts.

Virality- the percentage of people who have created a story from your page post out of the total number of unique people who have seen it.

Reach- The number of unique people who have seen your post

On the left side of the screen, if you choose “likes,” you’ll be able to see where your likes came from.  For example, if someone liked your page from a mobile phone or from another page, it will tell you how many people did so.

The analytics can go pretty deep. Play around with them. If you have questions, feel free to ask us!

We are facing a challenging time in our nation today.  It seems like every time I turn around, one of my friends, family members, or someone I know is losing their job.  It’s easy to use this as an excuse to stop investing in outreach and evangelism, but is it really a valid excuse?  I have found in my own ministry experience that this is the time when people are really hurting and looking for answers.  I really believe this is the church’s time to shine.  The economy may be uncertain, but we have a hope that is certain.  So why not communicate The Answer to people online?

According to Harris Interactive, over 35% of Internet users are online seeking spiritual answers… the second highest search activity ahead of finances, gambling and dating, second only to pornography. With so many in your community looking for God and meaning online, with an interactive website your ministry can provide the answers.

So how can you provide The Answer people are looking for?  By utilizing your church’s website and posting your sermons online.  faithHighway provides a cutting edge media center, called SermonFlow Social, that empowers churches to post their sermons online in a relevant and easy-to-use way, but the media center doesn’t stop there.  After posting them online, your church members can get onto your website and re-post them on some of the most visited websites that are out there: Facebook and Twitter.  There are over 750 million people on Facebook today and that number is still growing.  SermonFlow Social empowers Pastors to become a Pastor to thousands, literally overnight.

I was speaking to a church last week about how they were using their website to reach people and I heard a really great testimony.  The Pastor shared with me that just 2 weeks ago he got an email from a man from Afghanistan.  This man shared in his email that he was a devout Muslim but had been listening to his messages via his media center, looking for answers.  After listening to 2 or 3 of his messages he was convinced that his current beliefs were wrong, and he ended up giving his life to Jesus!  He went to his friend’s house the next day and secretly got baptized in his bathtub!  All because he was looking for answers and decided to Google Christian churches and listen to some sermons online!  I was really encouraged by this testimony, and I hope you are as well.

I really believe that your church will find the same thing by having an interactive website and media center and posting the Truth online.  This Pastor I was speaking with never saw that one coming, and you may not either. The fact is that you never know who is looking for answers online.  If you’re not uploading your sermons and utilizing your website, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to reach people with the Gospel who otherwise may have never heard it!

Bible Gateway- Display a verse of the day on your website or have it feed into a news feed on your site.

BibleReader-  It’s an easy way to study the Bible on the go. Features include: verse highlighting, personal notes and Greek and Hebrew translations.

Gratitude Journal- Keep a list of 5 things you’re thankful for each day

Prayer List- Request Organizer- An app that lets you track and store prayer requests

What is a custom Facebook page? It is a great way to enhance your presence online, especially when it comes to social media. By customizing Facebook, you create better opportunities to make connections with your audience and have a better chance of grabbing their attention as well as driving traffic to your website. For churches and ministries specifically, you can highlight specific events and use the most visited website in the world as a way to increase awareness about what is going on in your ministry. Much of a custom Facebook page has to do with continuing the brand that you have running through your website.

If you have a specific brand and target audience on your website but don’t continue that to Facebook, oftentimes people can get confused. People might not trust your Facebook page or won’t see it as the “official page” if there is not a consistent brand from website to Facebook. Also, a Facebook page for a church that looks the same as every person has a tough time standing out from the crowd.

Many ways a church can continue their brand into a custom Facebook page is by using the church logo, a banner or header, or a prominent picture from their website, as the Facebook profile picture. Another important part is creating a welcome page or landing page that people will visit when they come to your Facebook page, especially from external links. This is a great area to include a video or some flash that will get people excited about the ministry and even provide a direct link to the church or ministry website.

A custom Facebook page comes down to the “feel” a visitor will have and ultimately the feelings they have towards the ministry. What a church does on Facebook, now says a lot about what kind of ministries they have going on and the overall quality of the ministry. Since more than 750 million people are now on Facebook, you have an almost limitless supply of eyes to catch. If networked properly and with a member base that is committed to using Facebook as a means to market your church, you can draw more people to your church website through a custom Facebook page than from any other source.

We tend to cringe a little bit when we combine church and marketing in the same sentence. We don’t want to “sell” people church. They should be drawn to us naturally, right? Well, how are they going to know that you’re there, if you don’t tell them? Marketing is a must for any organization. You’ve got to get your name and mission in front of people or they’ll just keep living like they always have.

So, the big question…do you choose a social media marketing campaign or do you stick to traditional marketing? The answer is probably “both.”

The good news is that social media marketing campaigns can be relatively inexpensive and you can craft them to fit any size budget. You set the demographics and your budget, and then let the social media sites do the rest. Easy. Plus, when you hit your daily budget, your ad turns off, so you’re guaranteed to not spend more than your budget allows

So, just where can you setup a marketing campaign?

Facebook

You Tube

Linked In

Facebook

Twitter

Myspace

As always, our team of consultants is ready to help you, should you have questions. Don’t hesitate to give us a call.

What’s the right type of information to share and what is the wrong kind? How do you decide?

Facebook is a gold mine for identity thieves.  If your account is unprotected, anyone can scrape your personal information easily. Your name. Your birthday. Your phone number. Address. Your family members. Your workplace…etc.

The more personal information you post about your whereabouts and activities, the easier it is for you to become a victim of identity theft.

For example, say you do online banking. You have your account protected with a couple of questions you have to answer before you put in your password. Let’s just pick one: “What’s your mother’s maiden name?”

So, then a thief logs in to Facebook, finds your account…and guess what! Your profile shows you’re mother is, “Janet (Smith) Thomas.” Bingo- answer to your banking question. Mother’s maiden name: Smith.

That’s just one example. Also, think about your status updates…You make the friendly announcement that you’re going to that Fundraiser to raise money for Orphans next Friday night. It’s a good thing. You want your friends to come. And you probably even want them to know that you’re doing a good thing by helping orphans. That’s like leaving your house unlocked with a sign that says, “hey, I’m gone, come on in and take what you want.”

While it is a good idea to protect your information by using the most secure privacy setting, you have to remember that the web is not 100% infallible.   It’s becoming more and more of a target for identity thieves. Think before you post and just because it’s Facebook doesn’t mean you have to share it.