Are you doing the right thing for your church’s social media?

Most ministry staff that are assigned to social media start by learning it all on their own. While there are community groups available for communicators to find help from other ministry workers, there is still a tendency for church staff assigned to handle the church’s social media to do everything carelessly. To help make you aware of what not to do in social media, we’ve gathered the most common mistakes church staff are doing.

7 Mistakes Your Church Should Avoid:

 

1. Using social media to dump only promotions and announcements.

Throwing our message “out there” into the digital space without hanging around for the conversation… makes people want to block us. It’s that simple.” Church Tech Today

 

2. Not having any digital presence.

The biggest mistake of all is avoiding social media altogether. If your church hopes to reach people, you need to be where people are. Digital media is an increasingly significant part of our culture. Ignore it at your own risk.” Orange Leaders

 

3. Ignoring what statistics tells you.

The myriad of social platforms all have some type of Analytics to help the church understand what posts are getting the most interaction with their followers, or which posts are getting shared the most. That information is key to understanding what messages resonate with your church body when they are living their lives out in the world and not sitting in the pews.” God’s House Marketing

 

4. Portraying an edited version of your church.

Your church doesn’t want to see a wrinkle-free botox version of your church. Be an authentic version of who your church community is. Don’t be a plastic fantastic fake. People see through that a mile off.” Church Leaders

 

5. Being unresponsive.

The best way to guard against this mistake is to have a team of people who can communicate with each other regularly about who is due to be “on duty” at any given time to respond to comments, replies, or messages for the church’s social media accounts. It is important that churches get this right, perhaps more than anything else a church does on social media.” Baptist Press

 

6. Having no strategy.

Not knowing what to post, when to post, and where to post can lead to less engagement by your audience online. A quick rule of thumb for church accounts: Try to keep Facebook posts to less than four per day and public tweets to no more than one every two hours.” Ministry Today Mag

 

7. Posting the same content across all platforms. 

“…if you find yourself posting the same content across all platforms, ask yourself why you have all of those accounts. If you can’t use a platform to its fullest potential or you’re just showing identical content to the same people in multiple places, consider scaling back and focusing on the one social network where you can have the biggest impact.” Resource UMC

 

In church communications, especially in creating strategies, there is always room for improvement. Getting to know these 7 social media mistakes will help every communicator to better understand the right things to do for your church’s social media presence.

 

Is your church social media making any of these mistakes? Let’s talk about it in the comments below!