I’m going to embark on a 9 or 10 part series (haven’t decided yet) on some of the key thoughts that every Executive Pastor needs to know about Social Media.
All of these posts will be definitely applicable for every one else as well, but please note that I’ll be surveying, for the most part, some of the 40,000 foot level ideas and concepts that need to be understood and leveraged.
There will be some obvious practical deployments and strategy as well.
Ready to be schooled? Here we go.
Strategy is Not a Tool
Social Media is something your ministry needs to be doing.The problem is with your strategy.
You see, it’s not that most people don’t have one, it’s that their strategy is a tool, not a long term vision or principle-based deployment.
When you’re strategy is a tool then you’re subject to the tool and it’s life expectancy, the ups and downs of a marketplace, the economy, the whims of the masses that don’t care about your ministry, and a plethora of other forces outside your control.
That’s not a good thing.
I hear so often from many people when I ask them about their Social Media Strategy this:
Our strategy is Facebook. Our strategy is Twitter. Our strategy is to avoid Myspace.
Wrong. That essentially means that your strategy vanishes the moment Twitter falls in the deadpool. Again, that’s not healthy nor sustainable.
Survivability
The simple fact is that it’ll take years for anyone to be able to see what tools and software applications will survive long term.
Unfortunately for us, sustainable life-change typically takes a lot longer than that, and if the tools that we use to move us forward a long that path are a crutch rather than corollary because then we stifle and impede personal growth.
The point is that you should not be overly dependent on any one tool set or platform technology. In addition, there is great wisdom in considering a platform and web tool which you can ultimately control on your own servers, so that you can determine it’s lifespan.
That’s why Open Source Technology is so important to the Church because it offers a natural life-support system intrinsically, rather than artificially. You can manipulate, grow, and build without worrying about survivability.
In addition, that’s why I’m such a personal fan of WordPress and the blogging medium for groundswell social media growth and appeal. WordPress is open source and the blogging platform won’t die on you due to external circumstances. That’s why I much rather invest and spend most of my time online in my blogs, rather than Twitter and Facebook, because God only knows when those will become old and deprecated.
It’s been famously said that John D. Rockeffeller was brilliant because he was able to get his money out of the stock market before the crash because he started taking tips from the local shoeshine boy on the corner. The lesson here is to listen to the congregation, and to the people’s needs, not just your management layer.
Keep an open ear out, because any good and self-respecting trendspotter has already started looking for some place else to go about a year before you even noticed the winds of change.
Finally, remember that it’ll take a while for anyone on the large scale to “notice” the next biggest thing. It takes time, which is a good thing, to separate the wheat from the chaff, to separate the fashions from the long-term trends.
It’s your job to determine survability. Your ministry is counting on it.
[Image from Matt, Demi, IntotheLens]
Daniel_Berman says
So what if your the trendspotter, rather than the one who can move heaven and earth in getting people to follow you? And why do I keep asking these extremely deep questions?
human3rror says
i'm going to write a post on how i have best developed groundswell… thanks for making me remember that… and why do i keep asking deep questions…? because i can…?
😉
JakeSchwein says
This is gonna be a great series!! Bring it
Scott M. says
Dang. You continually challenge me with top-shelf content. This post is insane.
I'm a church web strategy consultant and this is right-on with what I talk to churches about. They usually hire me to help them "get more effective on Facebook" or something, but their faces usually turn sour when I tell them that a Facebook strategy should play second-fiddle to a principled, holistic web strategy, which involves way more than just the tool of Facebook or Twitter or blogging or what have you.
I walk them through a six-facet approach, establishing principles that guide the rules of the strategy in each area.
Whoa, this comment was longer than I expected. Sorry, but good blog content brings out the chatter-box in me. Well done.
human3rror says
Great! Hang in there dude. you're doing great work for the kingdom… hopefully the next posts in this series will give you some more educational points to use!
john
Graham Brenna says
Very cool idea for a series! Lookin forward to more! 🙂