Social Media

Should your church have a social media strategy? 

Should your church (or you) have a Twitter account?

Should your church (or you) be on Facebook?

If you answered “no” to any of the above questions, it is time for you to do a Google Search on social media strategy.  Many businesses and individuals are realizing the power of social media and networks.  As a business, a church must consider the absolute reality and stickability of social media in order to reach out to your constituency as well as potential church members.

First, let’s define social media so that it is clear on what we are discussing:  Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.(Wikipedia definition)

Facebook  has over 400 million active users and 50% of them log into Facebook at least once a day.  The average user has 130 friends.  Twitter has milions of users and now more than 1 billion tweets are sent out each month.  If a church’s goal is to reach people, then it needs to be where the people are spending their time.  Obviously, a church needs to utilize these tools to connect.

Conservative Example:  If a church staff member or church has a blog, current and potential church members will eventually be driven to the blog (because it would be linked to your web page).  By allowing the distribution of the blog posts with a simple tool like Add This (which I will post about later), the message you are delivering can potentially reach thousands of people.  Let’s say if 30 of your members decide to re-distribute a blog post through Facebook or Twitter (and there are many, many other social networking sites), and they have an average of 130 friends or followers, then you can reach 3,900 with that message in the click of a button.  This should excite you, and it should arouse a sense of urgency in you to implement a social media strategy. 

Engaging your community: Another advantage of social media is the method of engaging your community.  Most churches have about 50% of their members in attendance.  One of the main purposes of the church is to engage its community and make disciples.  The example above can also be used as an example of engaging community.  If you have a 1,000 member church and 500 members have missed on any given week, you still have the ability to disciple them through social media such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as a blog.

The following two pastors have implemented a social media strategy.  I believe both Ellis Orozco (my pastor at FBC Richardson) and Bill Shiell (a childhood friend and pastor of FBC Knoxville) both are on the cutting edge of church social media strategy.  There are many other pastors and churches that are taking advantage of social media.

Ellis Orozco’s Blog:

http://www.kerooso.blogspot.com/

Bill Shiell’s  Blog:

http://firsthoughts.blogspot.com/

Both of them are also on Facebook and Twitter, as well as other social networking sites.  You can visit their blogs to get to their information and to connect with them if you would like (I encourage you to do so).

The bottom line is this:  If you or your church are trying to find creative ways to reach out to current or potential members, and to deliver information in a format that is cost efficient and cutting edge, you need to consider a social media strategy soon.

Check back frequently or subscribe to my blog for the following continuation of this conversation:

• The Power of Anytime, Anywhere
• Message is always available
• Go where the eyes and ears are

Collin W. Harbour

collinharbour.com

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