How does your Church use Twitter?
Many larger Churches have a robust Twitter account. News, views and upcoming events, are contently bubbling on the Church’s Twitter. Of course, these are the same Churches that have media personnel on staff.
What about the smaller Churches that don’t have a paid media staff?
Build a Twitter team!
If your Church is on Twitter or needs to be, it’s because you already have a good deal of Church members who are on Twitter, so finding experienced, able Twitter users shouldn’t be difficult.
Assigning a Twitter account to one person can put a lot of pressure on them. This usually leads to burn-out, and before you know it, what once was a bubbling Twitter account, turns dormant, and when there is a Tweet, every thinks, “My Church is on Twitter?”
By building a Twitter Team, you can spread the labor.
Many Tweeple make Tweeting light.
If only five or six team members would Tweet just once a day, your Churches Twitter will come alive!
Here’s what you do:
- Choose a team leader (that would be you, the one reading this!).
- Assign each member with a specific task/topic.
- Use Hootsuite or a Twitter buffering app.
You must have a team leader who can keep a pulse on things. Is everyone keeping-up with their commitments? What do the analytics look like?
As for your Twitter Team Tweet assignments, here are a few ideas (I’m sure you can think of more!)
- Christian World News
- Missionary Updates
- Church Events
- Daily Scripture Verse
- Daily Awesome Blog Post
- Church Bulletin
- Can you think of anything, else?
In fact, you could implore the individual responsible for putting together the Church bulletin to schedule Church bulletin items throughout the week via Hootsuite or any other Twitter application that can be used to schedule Tweets. It’s as easy as copy and paste! #Bulletin
Get a group of vibrant Twitter users, find-out what their Internet strengths and interests are, and you’ve successfully created the most awesome Church Twitter Team your congregation has ever seen!
[Image via Will Pate]
Darrell says
I am loving this blog. I mean loving it a whole lot.
I think this is a brilliant idea, and something we have talked to some of our clients about!
Good stuff guys, keep it coming.
Eric Dye says
Thanks Darrell!
Matt says
Twitter is not just a one way information relay, it’s an engagement tool. With twitter you can engage with people that you might not normaly encounter in your everyday life. There is a great opportunity to find people seeking thruth through twitter and then interact with them. Some people pour out their lives 140 characters at a time, and all we need to do is reach out to them and let them know someone hears them and that we care.
We recently started using twitter to find people searching for church’s and then invite them to our’s if local and to our internet campus if distant. This has been highly affective, and has started many conversations. Here’s a blog post I wrote describing what we do: http://seaofgeek.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/stop-waiting-for-them-to-come-to-you/
If more churches reached out to tweeters this way, we would have less seekers and a lot more followers (twitter pun intended).
Eric Dye says
That’s excellent, Matt!
Thank you for sharing! (A great post, too) I hope everyone heads over and adds this to their Church Twitter Team strategy.
Great stuff!
(I’m always up for a good pun. You get +10 Pun Points)
Phillip Gibb says
yeah, we tried that. Except people lost the team concept and it was left to one person. Most of the time it was just used for pushing the church blog content and highlighting the coming and current series.
Would be great to get it started and to get more engagement and team members.
Phill Tran says
I agree with the need to circumvent burn out with a team. I think Jesus even had few.
With a social media team, it is important to keep the team focused by doing more than just business. Building a community to build your community helps keep the energy going and the mission alive.
Jay Caruso says
I agree with the need to circumvent burn out with a team. I think Jesus even had few.
Haha. Love that.
Eric Dye says
Phillip, Phil, Jay … you guys are awesome.
Jay Caruso says
Great idea. Unless of course you attend church with a congregation that is about as tech savvy as Ma and Pa Kettle.
Seriously. There’s a small segment of people in our church that engage in social media beyond Facebook (which isn’t all that social since most people limit the people they interact with) and handful that use Twitter.
Our Worship pastor will often joke that our church is a year or two behind the latest technologies.
I am going to try and change that by offering up a radical proposal for bringing them up on tech and also some new creative initiatives so some prayer would be appreciated.
Eric Dye says
SKA-DOOSH! Caruso is in the HOUSE!
Seriously. That’s awesome.
(That should make some good blog posts, man :-))
Kenny says
We have created a basic social media guide and briefing doc for volunteers (and staff) who jump on board content posting on FB & Twitter. Even for our online services, our church online ministry volunteers go through a basic training sequence with a services coordinator (who’s a volunteer too) so that we have a consistent voice and approach to engaging with people who come to our church.
As for practical tools, I personally like using http://www.bit.ly/twitterbuffer for timeless content (quotes, questions, etc) and Hootsuite for time-sensitive content (events, etc) and TweetDeck for live interaction. We use Google Alerts, RSS Feeds and other tweet services to monitor content topics. Some of these are twitterfall, tweetbeep, twilert, etc.
I’m leading a webinar for Redeemer’s Entrepreneurship Initiative in NYC this week on a lot of these same topics. Would love to hear from others on what’s working or what’s not.
Eric Dye says
That’s serious!
This is a great information and ideas for both those that already have a team, or are starting to think about starting one.
Good stuff, Kenny. Good stuff.
Paul Clifford says
I think a lot of churches already have social media teams, they just don’t know it. A bunch of people tweet at our church even though we don’t have a team. When we had a conference at our church, I greeted everyone who used the “#TheUprising” hashtag and friended them, even though no one asked me to. I think it’s a great way to connect.
BTW, I’m about to start my second book (after “Podcasting Church”) about tweeting in church.
Paul
Eric Dye says
Cool!
richard johnson says
I just love the idea of their being a volunteer team that is designated to communicate the various values of the church. It would be great if this team was also empowered to equip those ma and pa congregants with using facebook, twitter and dare I say…Google Plus!
Eric Dye says
YES! That’s awesome, Richard! A Social Media Team! #FTW!