Social Media and the Church

A couple of weeks ago I had a meeting with the Development Leader of the church I go to, The Oaks, regarding Social media and the Church. The meeting was basically to brainstorm about how the church can use social media more effectively and have a more effective presence online.

I know this is not super extensive and I may be able to come up with other crucial points in order to take the best advantage possible of the resources that are currently available. But for now, these are some of the points I shared with him.

• Social Media Beats Automated Publishing: It is okay to use Twitter and Facebook to publish content, but these sites are mainly built for social interaction. A personalized message along with posts or sporadic tweets about things that are going on in people’s lives will go a long way.
• Don’t Just Publish, Communicate: As part of a church with such strong media it is not surprising that many members utilize Twitter and Facebook. Many of them, me included, usually tweet from Church, at events or even stating that we are on our way to @the_oaks. These are great moments to engage in communication with people, respond to their tweets or retweet them and let them know their value.
• Look Around and Improve: There is a huge amount of great Churches with a healthy social media presence, it is a great idea to follow them and see what is their approach and and see how we can use it and improve upon it.
• People Love Free Stuff: Many companies are doing this and it has been successful to get their name around. Giveaways can be a great way to have people retweet you and through that get more people to follow you. This can be a good idea but we need to be careful not to over-do it. Once every month or two months should be good.
• Twitter is What You Make It: One of the best things about Twitter in my opinion is that its simplicity allow us to make it whatever we want it to be. Brainstorming on this can bring great ideas on how we can be more effective and reach a greater.
• Tweet The Service: Whenever a service is going on I believe it would be nice to have someone in the service tweeting some of what is happening at the moment: message points, important news, people getting saved or baptized or even some song that is been played. This can give people a sense of life in the Church that will motivate them to visit. 1-5 Tweets a service would be a good amount to start with, some people that get tweets to their cellphone may feel it’s too much but most people don’t use those notifications from tweets, just mentions. You can even ask questions to the Twitter followers from the service and reply on real time. I believe that could make for a great experience.

Is your Church involved in any social media efforts? What are some other things that you would add to this list?