OC’12: How to Prioritize Social Media in your Ministry

This seminar was led by Matt McKee.  Matt is a fellow blogger and founder of ROAR which focuses on mobile apps for Churches and Ministries.

SOCIAL. STRATEGY. Have Both.

Every civilization has tried to connect.  The world today is very connected. There are more cell phones in the world then tooth brushes.

We use social on a personal level but we have a hard time connecting socially on an organizational level.

Social Media is any digital communication.  It’s not just Facebook or Twitter.  It’s photos, YouTube, text messages, email.

Social Media redefines how we communicate.  “Text me don’t call me”.

Average person has 130 Facebook friend.  Average church has 70 fan likes.

When you combine an Online Strategy with an Offline Strategy you will have a greater impact.

We need to anticipate where people are now, where are they going.  Groups like Bufferapp.com and Hootsuite allow you to post and tweet on a schedule.  So you don’t always have to be online to be reaching out socially to people.  Anticipate when people are online and schedule a tweet or Facebook post.

We have to think critically.  Programs like Evernote allow us to store information away that we will be able to process later.

We need to interpret.  We are flooded with data constantly.  We have to take that data and connect the dots and send it out to people.  Google Reader helps collect the data so we can interpret later.  As an organization you have to filter information for your community.

Once we filter, we need to decide what goes out to our community.  Instapaper is a read later site that you can filter through later.

Then we align what you put on your blog, twitter, Facebook, etc.  Twitterfeed.com  allows you to send all your info out to all your outlets.

Throughout this whole process you will learn.  Get a team around you to help you.  Flipboard helps you see things differently and you can learn things.

To better reach your community in this day and age…to have a great impact,  you have to have a strategy and you have to be social.

As an Organization:

• You have to create a Hub.  Wordpess is a great hub for your community.
• Share your content.  Promote other’s content.
• Make it about your message
• Make it about people, not technology