It should come as no hidden surprise that nearly everyone around us is using a smartphone and capturing a larger audience is dependant upon you embracing that idea and learning how to work it to your church’s advantage.
In a recent study done, over 3.2 billion users are active on one social networking platform or another. Whether it be on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and a whole host of other available networks.
Nearly every church I have worked with over the years has always had the same outlook on using social networking as a way of reaching more people, which is sad. The most common response I hear is that they look upon it as being evil.
It breaks my heart. Churches who are not actively using any social networking site are truly missing out on the ability to reach more people who have already been to a church but won’t go back because of them feeling like people were fake or they may have had a bad experience. How do we as a body of believers expect to reach these people to win them over to Jesus if we are not actively seen in their neighborhoods (social networking sites) and begin to develop a relationship with them?
When it comes to capturing a larger audience from the local church perspective, I feel that many of our local churches have become lazy in this arena. Sure, we have heard pastors across our community mention to follow their church on a Facebook page, but are we truly using it as an effective means to perform our outreach ministries?
Furthermore, by not engaging with the very people you need to be reaching out to, you are opening the gateway for those who do know how to capitalize on the power of social networking to detract them from even engaging with you.
Posting content to any social networking site cannot be done in a nilly-willy fashion. You have to be as intentional with your post to social networking sites as you are when it comes to preparing for your morning sermon on Sunday morning.
Many pastors that I know spend several hours throughout the week in preparing for the upcoming message to deliver during the morning worship service.
Posting to social networking sites requires a little planning and knowing when the best time to post content is for the vast majority of the audience they are trying to reach. Don’t just focus on the people from your church who are following your Facebook page, make it about the people who you don’t see sitting in your pews during any given Sunday. Remember, this is about reaching those you are looking to attract.
Now there’s a line that I hear from a lot of pastors. I fully understand that many pastors are for a lack of better words, one man bands. They’re responsible for delivering the message, home visits, visiting the hospital, weddings, funerals, Bible studies, and the list could go on for days.
WAIT! There is a solution to this dilemma. How many of you have teens in your church? I venture to say that there are at least 2 or more in every church. You can almost safely bet that they are walking wiz-kids when it comes to the mastery of social networking sites.
Every church leader I have worked with has always made statements like…..
“I wish I could get more of our teens actively involved in our ministry” or
“Why isn’t our youth program growing any more or has slowed down” and
“Kids don’t seem to be interested in going to church in today’s times”
You see this kind of image nearly everywhere you go. Teens and the millennials gathered in groups and taking photos like there’s no tomorrow.
Why aren’t you putting together a team that works with the teens to be the leaders of your social networking sites? Trust when I say that the level of creativity that they will bring to the table will open doors of opportunity of ministering as you have never experienced before.
Certainly you don’t just want to hand over the reins until you can establish that this newly created team has proven themselves.
However, once you are confident with their capabilities and that they are acting in a way the supports the global mission of your church, you will begin to see an overwhelming increase in the expansion of numbers for new growth in your church.
The greatest level of activity of all the Social Networking channels combined happens to take place on Monday mornings.
This just makes sense. People have been out doing various things over the weekend and they want to catch up on the latest happenings that took place with their friends but as well as within their community over the weekend.
The next highest level of activity occurs on Wednesdays. Have you guessed why? It’s because they are starting to make plans for the weekend.
If you’re not promoting the great things that happened from Sunday morning on Monday, you’ve lost a perfect opportunity to cause a stir, if you will. If you want to have more people participating in your events, why aren’t you posting well in advance of when the event will take place and asking people to indicate whether they are coming or not.
If your engagement levels on any social networking are enclosed with procrastination, you can certainly bet there will no interest in any of your events.
It’s no hidden secret that images truly are worth a thousand words. People respond to what it is they see. Whether it evokes feelings of excitement, sadness, peace or a whole host of other feelings.
You can write the best post that you think contains all the right words, but if there isn’t something within it that represents your thought visually, you can almost bet that nobody is going to take time to give you a “Thumbs Up” or “Like.” It’s just the way our society has been groomed in the world of social networking communities.
I can spend all day on the topic of capturing a larger audience and many times it falls onto deaf ears. I encourage you to take a look at an article that will provide you with the breakdown, network by network, so you can see for yourself the areas of opportunity that exist to have a greater impact for your church or ministry.
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