How to Use Social Media for Your Church Part 2: How

Last week I talked about why we should use Social Media for your church.

This week I am going to talk a little bit about How to use Social Media.

Different Social Medias to use:

Facebook
I suggest to start with Facebook. It is the easiest to use, and one of the most-used social media.

– Your Personal Facebook Page

This is a profile, that is yours personally. It has your picture and all of your personal info. Really, only a person should have a profile.

– A Page

Your church should make a Page. There are a lot of neat things you can use to talk about your church with a page.

Make sure that you are sharing and liking and commenting on your page’s posts as yourself.

If you are an admin of your churches Facebook page, and you comment on a post, you will automatically be commenting as the Facebook Page, UNLESS you change the settings to comment as yourself.

You can see in the picture posted below, that right above and to the right of where you would comment is a small thumbnail of your profile picture. If you click on it, a dropdown menu appears and you can choose who you will comment as, yourself, or as the Facebook Page.

If you comment as yourself on a church Facebook page. It is a great way to promote community as well as get some free, natural engagement.

So, every time that anyone comments on a page’s post, all of their friends will see that post. The more comments and interactions that a post has, the more people will see it.

Example: Lets say your Facebook Page posts a picture of your church building with your service times. A new first time visitor comments, asking how early she should get there if she has two kids to check into their respective classes. Your Facebook Page could comment and that would be perfectly acceptable. BUT, if the person who leads your check in station comments with her personal page, and explains how long the process usually takes, and says, I am excited to meet you on Sunday. Then, Sunday comes and the new visitor is greeted by the check in coordinator and she now knows someone in the church. She has a face to the name. Powerful stuff.

– Ads

Facebook Ads can be powerful. You can make a specific ad for a group of people, based on gender, age, what they like, where they live. You can boost a post, or an event, or you can make a specific ad.

– Pictures / Videos

Facebook really responds well to pictures and videos. I will talk more about each of these in one of the next sections.

– Events

You can make an event on Facebook for any event you have at your church. I am always amazed that more churches do no use this feature.

Twitter
Twitter is great for text. 140 characters is the limit for Twitter. You can use pictures, but they should be the correct size for Twitter, or they will look a little weird.

– Hashtags.

Twitter is where Hashtags thrive, you can use them other places, but they originated in Twitter. If you are promoting a family Christmas Eve Service here are some example of hashtags you could use: #church #ChristmasEve #Family #FamilyService #Minneapolischurch

Instagram
Instagram is pictures and videos only.

If your youth groups does nothing else, they should at the very least have an Instagram. I know several teenagers that the only social media they use is Instagram.

Side note, you can link your Churches Facebook and Instagram, so whenever you post on Instagram, it will post on Facebook.

Pinterest
Pinterest describes themselves as a digital cork-board, to save your ideas. I have heard of churches using pinterest, just as a fun way to share creative ideas.

Canva.com
Canva’s purpose is empowering the world to design. It is very easy to use, and it also makes nice images. I have a graphic design background and I use Canva all of the time. In fact, 95% of the images that are on Superchurch.com are made with Canva.

It is fast, and already has nice looking layouts. All you have to do in is input your info. It also has different layouts that are specific to Facebook, Instagram, or email headers, flyers, seriously, tons of stuff!

Canva is free, with an optional upgrade.

Wordswag
Word Swag is an app, it is $5. You can add any text that you want and it will make nice looking text images.

Anything that you are doing you should be talking about it on Social Media. Tell people about it.

Trust me, I know how busy life in the Church can be. You are planning, training, ministering. But don’t forget to post it!

That is why I made this picture, so you won’t forget to post it. Print this out and put it on your desk. (PS, I made this in Canva, in like 5 minutes)

So when you are in the middle of planning your Halloween event and you do not know what type of candy to buy. Ask! Hop on Facebook and make a poll, or just simply ask what type of candy to buy.

There is so much information here. I am going to stop here.

In the next post I will talk more about what to post. Click here to read it.