Social Media 101

Everyone is talking about Social Media and how to get it into your church. Of course that makes sense because thats where the people are right?

Right. Except like everything in this world, you have to know what you are doing before you get involved.

Make a Plan: 

You wouldn't start a business without having a plan of attack, so why would you pitch a marketing ploy without the same kind of planning and energy? Don't be fooled by the ease at which you can get online. You need to know what tools are available and how to use them. There are tons or resources available on what social media is out there and how to use it like Hubspot's How to distrroy your competators at social media ebook which are a great starting point. Also the tools listed in my post on Twitter Basics has some awesome online tools to help make a Social Media Marketing plan.

Schedule Media Time 

Time is so precious these days, and the time of a volunteer, pastor or fundraised employee is even more valuable. So media and the web tend to get left behind and are seen as something you feel guilty about not taking more time for. So Stop it!!!! Schedule time once a week, or once a month to blog, tweet and post on your Facebook. Many of these tools allow you to post things in the future or in multiple places, so you could write a years worth of blogs in advance and have them auto post every month. Posterous for example is a blog site that you email your blog post to, and it formats it on your blog + can send to 20+ other social media sites - so to do social media may be as easy as setting up one of these accounts and sending an email once a week. There are lots of ways to save you time, but you have to spend a little bit first.