Jeremy Smith offers ideas for online engagement:
Churches are in the thick of the holiday season this Thanksgiving time, but it is already time to be thinking of the Advent season. Why not jump on your social media strategy for December? Just recovering from your turkey coma? We have ten tips for your church on how you can connect effectively this Christmas season.
- Schedule out The fact is that the whole church is going to be very busy this Christmas season, this includes the church tech group. To help alleviate this, consider scheduling out your social media posts. I recommend doing it directly because Facebookpenalizes third-party apps, but Twitter and Facebook both have this built-in to their web app.
- Warm wishes from staff Create a video of 15-20 second clips where the church leadership, paid staff, lead volunteers, and church elders or other appointed positions give warm regards to the congregation, community, and world. Offer up words of hope, grace, and prayer as you create this video that will be online for the whole world to see.
- Stream the service I never get tired of saying this, use Google+ with your church’s G+ page and stream the Christmas, Christmas Eve, and even New Years service for those that might have traveled to be with friends and family. This allows others to still be engaged if they cannot find another church to worship with.
- Run a Facebook Ad Has your church experimented with Facebook Ads before? If not, now is the perfect time to reach out to those in your local area and engage with them to attend a service. Between Easter and Christmas, these are two high visitor days that you should be capitalizing on. Use the ability to target friends of friends as well as location specific areas. At the same time, this is probably where your ads are best served as impressions and not CPC (cost per click). Need more help running a Facebook Ad this Christmas? We’d love to help you get the most bang for your buck.
- Use the geo location aspect of Graph Search Whether you are in a big city or small community, you probably want to know what is going on with events you can collaborate on, attend, or promote. Facebook’s Graph Search allows you to show off posts that have been shared and are within your area. Use it to look up exclusively congregation-specific or a bigger reach of the whole community.
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