the Social Sidekick: Phoster

During the spring, our Student Ministry partnered with Young Life for a Dodgeball event.  As we were preparing to promote it, I called Mike, the Young Life Area Director about how they are promoting the event and if I could see one of their promotional “fliers”.

Mike replied to me by simply saying they don’t do fliers anymore and that they promote via text and social media.  It was at this point that I felt like an idiot and realized that even thought I think I’m social media savvy, I still miss opportunities.  Ever feel like this?

As I started to look at cool ways to promote our Student Ministry activities, Cory, a volunteer leader who is now an Intern, suggested we look at Phoster.

What is Phoster?  According to iTunes, Phoster is “a user-friendly application to create stylish posters and various invitation cards”.  You can use it “to create posters to promote and invite your friends at your party, concert, birthday etc. 
You will share your created posters with your friends via facebook, twitter, tumbler, and email”.

Sounds cool but how can we use it for ministry?  You can…

• stop using snail mail or even Facebook event pages and us Phoster as a quick and easy way to get invitations out to students (or those you are ministering to).
• send your Phosters out on your various social media outlets right from the app
• print your Phosters out and hang them up all over to promote what’s coming up.  You’ll look very creative and hip with these great templates and images.

The bottom line for me is that as Cory and I have been playing around with it, I’m really excited about using this because it is enabling us to get more information out to students in areas that they are involved in, quicker while also looking trendy.

But what about you?  Have you used Phoster before?  What are your thoughts on it, in particular with how you use it for ministry?  Or do you use another app that does the same thing that you like a lot?  Share below!