Developing momentum is the easy part in any social media/social networking engagement.
The challenge is keeping it, and unless maintaining momentum is part of your strategy, your campaign, project, or initiative will fail.
I can speak from experience (costly and damaging experience); it must be at least on the table when you begin to discuss your plan.
You see, everyone and their brother is interested and excited about using social media for your church, even people that you probably would least expect. All of them, though, aren’t ultimately responsible for keeping the excitement alive and kicking.
Sure you can develop as much groundswell and grassroots interest (take serious advantage of that), but you’ll need to push it forward, or at least find the people who will do it for you.
More strategy after the jump:
Serious Participation
One of the best ways to make sure that momentum is sustained is getting as many people involved as humanly possible.
“Easy!” you say? No. What I’m talking about is explicitly gathering a community of passionately-interested individuals, empowering them “officially” and getting them moving in the same direction, because “everyone” is involved in “social” media.
Just because everyone in your congregation is on Facebook doesn’t mean you’ve got a sustainable model. It requires direction, guidance, leadership, and seriously explicit participation.
A study done recently by the Corporate Executive Board shows research results that employees:
[…] mobilize around people, not companies – especially in an environment of uncertainty and corporate mistrust. Connecting with peers, namely through virtual social media platforms, helps employees understand the relevance of company goals, model behaviors, and share the resources they need to get their jobs done.
Is there even a better picture or model of ministry? We live daily in an environment of huge uncertainty and ambiguity. In fact, the Church has always thrived in those environments. What a great play we have here!
The point is that you should spend as much time devising a plan for maintaining momentum in your program as you do building it up for launch. It’s critical that you do, because “success” in social media is a “marathon” race, not a sprint; it’ll take time for you to even “know” whether you’re doing the right thing or making your target goals.
Here are some ideas that you may consider in terms of building out a sustainable plan and model:
- Make your ministry and social media more “human.” Sure, you’re an institution, but that’s not what people connect to. Make sure your model of engagement enables your staff, congregation, and everyone else to relate to people.
- Keep the bar of adoption extremely low. Read this article for more details. Make sure that your staff can easily sign up and start using it. Make sure that the visitors engaging with it can as well.
- Develop a culture of “openness“. See some of the other posts in the Executive Pastor’s Guide Series for more thoughts on this. Create a culture and framework that makes people want to share, want to invest in the platform, and want to invest in the experience.
- Create value. A social network that gives a healthy return and that creates deep “value” is a powerful mechanism for people to return, and ultimately for it to sustain itself. Read this and this for more thoughts.
- Staff-driven, not institutionally driven. Get people who are passionate to drive and to build because they will be the biggest evangelists. Make sure that they have all the resources that they need to promote and drive the experience.
- Market, promote, and let people know about it. Apparently a lot of churches and ministries do a terrible job of just letting the congregation know about what’s going on. Get the word out!
- Redesign your web properties to reflect social media (and sustainability) as a core value. Enough said here. Perhaps you need a redesign.
Keep it up and good luck.
[Image from YInto]
Jim says
strong ideas