So you thought about doing social media for your church, ministry and/or blog? Looks easy enough, right? You have already been using Facebook and Twitter for a while, how different can it be for you to take some ideas for posts on social media for your brand and implement them effectively It’s not that easy and requires a completely different approach. The reality is, that we jump from a personal use to a professional one like it is truly easy. Yet there is a social media gap that professionals in churches and ministries need to be aware of. Just as every subway and train station has their own “mind the gap” space to ensure no one gets hit by the train, we need to be careful to leave room as well.
We will be going a bit deeper into each of these steps below to mind the social media gap effectively. That being said, here are the six steps to give you an idea of what is coming up:
- Dreaming of the Initial Ideas This is only the beginning of entering into the process. Here we need to define what they know about social media, what goals they have with social media, who they see as doing social media right and wrong, why they want to even do social media, and any other hopes and dreams with social media (and maybe looking at the reality of what social media can do). [Read More]
- Creating the Foundation This stage looks at what platforms would be best for your ministry, what kind of posts would be best, who the target audience would be, putting measured values to our previously defined goals, and a strategy on how we are going to achieve this.
- Defining the Content Processes Here we look at where the content is coming from, who is in charge of posting, how frequently posts should go up, how posts should be constructed, what special activities and events should be on the list, and how far out posts are to be expected to be posted.
- Measuring Success Who gets the reports and who makes the call to change your strategy if it is not working? How do you know if your falling short? Have an analytics report set up for leadership that gets them the right numbers as well as know where you are getting the statistics for all of the networks you are active on.
- Developing Relational Social Media Social media is only a marketing and spamming tool until you engage with people. Here we want to find out who is going to be responding to comments and reshares/retweets, how one would engage with negative responses, who are allies on social media, who are industry leaders to connect with, and how frequently you plan to engage with other people and business accounts.
- Making Course Corrections The term correction might sound like a bad thing, but the reality is that corrections could be that you have already out grown your process and you need to make your goals bigger, find more sources of content, increase your levels of engagement, and have more people managing the accounts.
How do you mind the social media gap?
[Image via Steve Bowbrick]
Sanjay Kumar Negi says
Nice steps.