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April 7, 2021

What Social Media Channels Does Your Church Need?

By New Churches Team

When I started managing social media for my church, one of the mistakes I made was thinking that every user, every person in the pew, was just like me. I preferred to use Twitter, so I assumed everyone in my church did also. I invested the first six months of my time on Twitter. I ignored Instagram and Facebook, because I thought everyone used Twitter because I liked Twitter.

After six months, I realized nobody reacted to anything I put online and I was getting no traction anywhere. That was a problem. No one was clicking on links. I wasn’t getting any replies. It was silence. So, I took a step back and asked myself if I was trying to push something that no one was using. I found out that our people were actually on Facebook. I quickly rerouted my strategy and put all my effort on Facebook and eventually Instagram.

I want to help you avoid the mistake that I made. So, how do you determine which social media network works best for you and your church?

Hard Data and Soft Data

Part of this determination will be figuring out where your people are. You can do this by:

1. Survey. Find out what social media channels your people prefer by taking a survey online or on paper. Ask them what social media networks they use. List several options and ask people rank them in order of preference. Use this to get your hard data.
2. Analytics. Look at your website to see where people are coming from. Are they coming from Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram? You can find that out by using your websites analytics for how it is functioning.

Some of it will be looking and listening to what people are saying and doing.

1. While people are at your church, see if you notice what social media channels people are using as they are sitting around and waiting. Do you see people on Facebook or Instagram?
2. Ask people questions in one-on-one conversations. How do you consume your news? How do you find out what is going on in your family? What is the first thing you check in the morning?

How Does It Scale?

By looking at hard data and soft data, you can set a strategy for how to move forward.

To read the remainder of this article, and to listen to the entire video training with Darrel Girardier, click here for the full video and post.

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