Social media is an incredible tool to bring visitors to your church and increase communication with your congregation. Yet, it can also be a time-consuming task as you juggle various other ministry responsibilities.
Streamlining and automating your social media efforts will save you time and stress. If you don’t know where to start, begin with these four church social media tips.
Bulk Planning
Take a few hours each month and map out the month’s content to save yourself last-minute posting anxiety. Align your plan, or content calendar, with your church’s events, updates, and outreach efforts. If you have full details for the church bulletin, create your related complete post and graphics so you can copy/paste the post. Next, look at the rest of your available days to post and fill in a few days with encouragement, scripture, worship songs, and placeholders for church-related posts.
Bulk planning like this saves you energy later in the month when you don’t have the time or mental space to think creatively amidst other responsibilities.
Schedule Your Posts
Scheduling your posts is a lifesaver when you are heading out for vacation or preparing for Christmas service. Use third-party apps like Hootsuite or MeetEdgar to mass schedule your posts on social media. You can include images, hashtags, website links, and tags like you would in the original platform. Be aware that when you use some platforms to schedule, the post may include a small sentence “Posted by Meet Edgar” (or whatever your platform of choice is). If you want to remove this small-print notification, you can typically upgrade to remove the notification or if it’s Facebook, you can schedule directly from your Page’s account.
However, just because you automatically schedule posts doesn’t mean that you can schedule and forget about your social media presence! Still login in to your church social media accounts and respond to any comments or questions.
Delegate a Social Media Staffer
Identify a social-media savvy or quick-learning church staffer or volunteer to manage your social media accounts. Instead of having multiple people manage accounts trying to communicate about posts, updates, and comment responding, one person should oversee social media outreach. That staff or volunteer can then delegate post creations, channel management, and more.
Use Design Tools
If you are not creatively inclined and don’t have the time (or budget) for high-level design tools, there are tools created just for you to design professional, engaging social media images. And just because you are not a designer doesn’t mean you should not include graphics with your posts—Facebook posts with images get 130% more engagement! (BuzzSumo)
Tools like Canva provides preset image sizes and templates for almost any social media platform. Choose from a variety of images, colors, icons, and design tools to bring your graphic to life. Import your own church logos or graphics into a template and export it in PNG, JPG, or PDF format.
Tools like Piktochart, Infogram, and Easel.ly are easy-to-use tools to create infographics for social media, website, or even printing. If you’re looking for a quick way to bring quotes or scripture to life, use Recite or Pablo. Memes are a good way to show your church’s funny and human side, but you don’t need to spend more than five minutes creating your meme! Try out Meme Generator for a quick and easy meme design.
Sign up for a free demo or a free 7-day trial to see how ChurchSpring’s Social Media Scheduler included free with any church website builder can help you save time.
