[Editor’s Note: This is the third quadrant in the Social Media Engagement Matrix]
One of the biggest trends in communication assessments for individuals as well as at marriage conferences and self-help books is the ability to understand one’s self in relationship with others. One major outcome of these assessments is the concept of introverted and extroverted people. While we make a correlation in our relationship hemisphere of the social media engagement matrix, we are only relating to the fundamental ideas behind them in terms of passive and active styles of relationship engagement.
Characteristics
An introverted social media engagement is passive in connecting with others, as they hope that conversations begin, but only when the visitor starts the conversation. Many of these types of posts have amazing quotes from a Sunday sermon, a renown Christian, or a Scripture that can be thought provoking, brand building, becoming content experts. While not always the case, many introverted posts create strong and meaningful relationships because the visitor is engaging first and has potential for establishing long lasting and fruitful relationships.
Pros and Cons
In looking at this model, I want to give you a true view of what it means to have the Come See Us mentality of posts.
Benefits
This quadrant of the social media engagement matrix has a lot to offer that can be extremely enticing.
- You Already Have The Content If you are doing the work for everything else within your church, you already have all the content you need to draw from. With a couple of tweaks to put content into 140 character form or a great quote on an image for Pinterest, you can have some major stuff to share. Check out the best practices for where to draw from with great content.
- These Relationships Have Strong Potential If you sit in church leadership at all, you know it is hard to find those people that are willing to take initiative or have the drive to initiate the conversation about service, faith conversations, or new and better ministries. The people that comment on these introverted posts have higher than normal potential for doing great things and so you need to make it a priority to be intentional with your dialogue. Have a post on what it means to evangelize and someone comes up with a point that goes beyond what you were saying? They may be perfect for an evangelism project you are starting or a resource for your preaching on evangelism that you can use for sermons and training.
- Branding Focused As we shared before, you get the ability to construct the primary message of what your church is about. In this passive relational approach, you can quickly become content experts on this branding message you are trying to convey. This is not about pride, but about the ability to speak into the conversations surrounding your ministry and bringing in likeminded people that may want to attend your services, serve in your ministry outreaches, and step into leadership roles where they would thrive because it is their calling.
- Refining All Your Content One of the best strengths about this approach is the side effect it can have on your church’s message overall. If you are drawing on content from different places like sermons, bulletins, training literature, and more, then you may finding yourself improving upon that content to make for great social media posts. That refining process with be great for your social media posts, but if you remember to plug that content back into the source you drew from, you are now improving the overall content everywhere in your church, making for a better message.
Drawbacks
Unfortunately, this model fails in many different ways that may outweigh the benefits.
- Are You Just Talking To The Air? There is a concept within social media circles that describes people with low engagement and minimal social media reach but high volumes of content as people that are marketing to the air. Introverted social media posts have strong potential to do this. We start talking, but no one is listening or engaging. We spin our wheels, but without engagement traction, it would seem a waste. This model is overall great, but will only be effective amongst the other quadrant postings as well.
- Not Enough Content This style of posts is very reliant on the quality AND quantity of posts. An initial investment for social media may be very easy to do because you have so much untapped sources of content. But after a couple of months of posting, if you are not replenishing those sources of content or finding new places to draw from, you are either going to have to duplicate content or struggle to develop something else. This is where most social media strategies fall shorts.
- Slow Growth Because we are focusing on the content of our relational conversations with people, we may be saying great things that will help us grow the reach of our posts as well as the new social media posts, but the rate at which we do so will be much less than the active marketing and relational posts that seek out new people.
How Churches Use This Model Wrong
Introverted posts have the ability to accelerate at the quality of posts. The concern is when social media account managers begin to let that standard of quality slip because they do not have enough posts to share. We soon begin to have to meet quotas of posts that do not relate well with their audience, muddy the branding message you are trying to communicate, or repost old content. This lack of quality control for the sake of more content will diminish the effectiveness and only a solid strategy for where content comes from, who will be frequently providing content, and a stubborn quality control process will ensure continued success here.
Best Practices
Because we are looking at places to draw great content, the more sources we can draw from, the best changes we will come across a golden nugget that absolutely has to be shared and less of a chance of us sacrificing quality to meet a deadline. Some great places where content may already be created include: your church’s websites, training for volunteers, past and upcoming sermons, pictures and videos for promotional videos, blog posts, quotes and Scripture from different messages given, prayers at weddings and funerals, and random conversations at business meetings, discipleship meetups, small groups, and passing conversations within the church and outside of it. Further, you can find people that are leaders in your church, passionate and knowledgable sources of information, and simply great at creating content for online use. Set up a way for them to regularly submit you content both crafted for social media posts as well as raw content that you can construct. Do not create content alone.
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