What is successful social media for churches?
Here’s a secret: it’s great to get social media “likes” for your church. It shows your congregation and community are engaged. That’s wonderful!
But there is a bigger goal you should aim at: shareable content. A “share” or “repost” is worth far more to your church than a “like.”
Here’s the idea: your church will want to experiment with social media content. That’s just a basic requirement of doing social media well. As you experiment, you’re trying to do a few things. One of the things you’re trying to do is create content that “goes viral” (at least, a little viral) within your community and beyond.
You want content that spreads across the internet for the best reasons, bringing more people to your church or its online presence. That happens via “shares,” not just “likes.”
Shares do a few things for you that are difficult to do for yourself.
First, shares amount to an endorsement from whoever shared the content. And as you surely know, when someone who loves your church tells others about it, that’s very powerful. People trust their friends and family more than they trust your church.
Second, shared content is free attention for your church. You’re letting the “social” part of social media do that work for you, expanding your reach organically.
Here’s a tip you can use in applying this lesson: content that is shared by one person is closer to content shared by dozens of people. Chances are, you’ve made a lot of content that gets likes from your followers. But as you experiment to crack the code of shareable content, an early sign that you’re experimenting in the right direction for dozens of likes is when you get one or two shares. Keep making content like that. Learn what is shareable about that post, and use that insight to improve.
One more tip:
What categories of content are more shareable for churches? Think about inspiring stories of faith, community outreach events, uplifting messages from sermons, or behind-the-scenes glimpses of church life. Consider sharing testimonials, volunteer opportunities, or information about upcoming services and programs. Visual content, such as photos and short videos, often performs well.
At Capital Hope Media, we help churches communicate more effectively by focusing on Three Areas: Branding & Identity, Communications Planning, and Content Creation. If your church is struggling in one of those three areas, schedule a meeting with us, and let’s see if CHM can help your church improve its outreach and engagement.
