We know that social media can make a staggering difference in church growth, but what happens when the buck stops with you as a staff member—and you also have a long list of other equally important tasks in a day?
One word: Teamwork. Assembling, equipping, and leading a dream team may be the answer to your prayers! More than likely, you are surrounded by a large number of willing workers, from teens who know more about Instagram than even you, to elders who have finally mastered the art of Facebook.
Here are 5 tips for building the social media team of your dreams.
1. Simplify The Process
If your usual start-to-finish process of building content, posting it, and monitoring engagement is an intricate winding road using 14 tools, apps, and platforms, then it may be hard to find volunteers willing to jump in. Making it easy for them ultimately makes it easy for yourself.
Consider using a scheduling software like Hootsuite or CoSchedule that will allow a volunteer to post to 3 social media accounts at once. When possible, create a large queue of potential posts to choose from, rather than creating one at a time. Simplifying the process can save you and your volunteers a lot of miscommunication, without sacrificing brand integrity.
2. Start With People You Know
It is important to launch your team with people you know that you can trust, especially if you work for a large church and don’t know everyone. In essence, you are handing over aspects of your church’s brand to this team, which is a big responsibility. Launching a cold call for volunteers can make it difficult to separate good judgment from enthusiastic but careless participation.
It’s much better to begin with 2 or 3 people that you know have the best interests of the church at heart and already has a mutual respect established with you. This is will allow you to communicate well, and trust that they are invested. Involving unknown people opens you up the possibility of a volunteer abandoning their responsibilities without notice.
3. Get Around A Table Together
As often as possible, get your social media team together in one room. Eating together and playing games will allow you to get to know each other, which will ultimately yield better teamwork.
On a recurring basis, collaborate and brainstorm ideas, allowing every person’s creativity to shine. As the leader, make sure that every person feels valid and that their ideas are heard and valued. To increase skill level, educate yourselves together on best practices and the latest trends by reading articles together or watching videos. Discuss opportunities for improvement and troubleshoot problems together.
Most importantly, delegate tasks for the upcoming week or month. As the leader, it is your responsibility to clearly communicate your expectations, so that everyone leaves knowing their job.
4. Begin With Small Tasks
When you give assignments to your team, at least at the beginning, make them simple. Presumably, you’re not working with highly-trained marketing professionals, so start with something that requires no expertise.
“Pick 5 photos of last night’s event in this Dropbox folder for us to use on social media this week.”
“Invite the users who liked this post to like the church’s Facebook page.”
“Monitor this hashtag and like each post.”
Once they have completed an assignment, give encouraging feedback. Offer correction when needed. Communicating in this way will develop their skills, and learn your expectation and standard.
5. Publicly Ask For Skilled Artists
Chances are that your auditorium on any given Sunday is littered with creatives. Use social media, announcement opportunities, and networking to find skilled professionals or talented amateurs in your family of faith. Graphics designers, photographers, and visual artists can elevate an organization’s social media presence immensely.
And when you find these creative geniuses? Don’t take them for granted. Divide the labor, give them creative freedom, and keep open lines of communication. The last thing you want to do is take advantage of volunteers and make them feel like their service is their only value.
CMG Social Can Help You Look Awesome
Looking to take your church’s social media content to the next level? CMG is here to help. Each month, we release over 100 new social graphics that make it easy to look great on your pages. Our CMG Social library is full of 1200+ graphics, many that include editable Photoshop files, that are ready for you download now.
View CMG Social Library
