19 Ideas For Your Church to Use Social Media to Interact With Its People

Do you worry about people inside your church as much as those outside?

You can use social media to reach people inside your church, too.

Social media isn’t just for church outreach

Most discussions about social media and the church focus on the ability of tools such as Facebook and Twitter to help a church reach people or how to “market” a church.

Let’s take a look instead at how social media tools can be used to reach people inside a church (don’t forget that people inside the church often need to be reached just as desperately as those outside).

Using social media for internal communication like this is distinct from use for outreach, though similar in many ways.

Using social media inside your church

The similarities with using social media internally are that you’ll also be social, interactive and conversational. You won’t simply be broadcasting information. Focusing on what your audience needs to hear is just as critical as when you’re doing outreach, as is the importance of engaging them, capturing their attention and getting them to respond or take action.

Just because it’s communication inside your church, don’t think you’re limited to the “church newsletter”-style of information or presentation.

Church newsletter-type information is fine to pass along (though not everything is well-suited for social media). But going no further doesn’t let you use the internet to its full potential.

Reaching “out” inside

Effective social media-based communication within a church involves both passing along critical information and reaching out to members of a church (to engage them in 2-way dialog).

I recommend looking for ways to do both.

4 getting started tips

Here are a few tips for getting started (regardless of the tools you’ll use):

1. Before starting any new communication channel (such as launching a Facebook Page), find out whether your church’s members are already interacting online. There may be no organized effort, but there may be groups of interconnected people on Facebook.

Get involved in these conversations already taking place.

2. Listen at first. I don’t mean eavesdropping (which is a foreign concept in social media anyway). I mean really listening to what’s going on, what’s being talked about, what issues people are facing, and so on.

This will be incredibly more valuable to you than simply jumping in, saying “I’m here, listen to what I have to say!”

3. Don’t awkwardly interject yourself into every possible interaction online. Let’s face it, your aim isn’t to remind your people that “pastor is watching” so that they’ll watch what they say.

4. To save time (this tip will be extremely valuable to you): don’t feel you need to read every word written. It’s not the way social media works. There’s no expectation that everything written must be read by every person connected to the author. (Bonus points for you if you remember this point when you start posting your own material.)

For more help getting started, check out the article “6 Strategies for Getting Started with Internet Tools at Your Church”.

Lots of ideas for social media inside your church

I also want to give you a bunch of ideas to get you thinking and to show you what all I mean by “internal communication”.

It’s not intended to be all-inclusive, just a list to get you thinking. And I’d love it if you expanded it by leaving a comment!

It’s also not intended that every item is something that you, as pastor (or whatever role you may be in), need to be personally involved in. Some things you should be or may want to be involved in. Other things can be managed by others.

Remember when implementing any of these, just about every one ought to be presented in a way that encourages interaction.

• Post your sermon audio
• Post other recorded audio or video messages
• Express your viewpoint (especially when done in a teaching way) about issues (especially complex ones)
• Post an idea and look for feedback
• Conduct an online Bible study
• Conduct other online discussions
• Spread church newsletter-style material
• Discuss progress of one of the church’s ministries
• Discuss progress of some church-wide project or activity
• Share interesting, insightful, or provocative (in the sense of challenging your church) things you’ve read
• Keep church members up to date on things they want to hear about
• Help build relationships, encouraging members to get to know one another better
• Communicate with those difficult to reach or those unable to be with the church family physically. This can include shut-ins, the elderly (an ever-increasing number are on Facebook!), students away at school, members serving in the military, and members who have fallen away (or are in the process of falling away)
• Get a “buzz” going (and build enthusiasm) about an upcoming event or worship service
• Follow-up with new members (can be combined with teaching)
• Broaden the definition of “church” we’ve used here to include groups of churches (denominational, local, or whatever), and then use social media to communicate between churches for growth, reinforcement, support, etc. A great example of this is the Church Social Media blog and Twitter discussion topic (#chsocm)
• Teach something
• Bring attention to some issue or social need
• Share your passion for a topic

Reaching out and in

Social media’s opportunities for churches go beyond reaching out into the world. You’ll also get opportunities to reach inward, building a sense of community and family.

Add your ideas!

What other ideas can you think of or have used or seen used?

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Tagged as: audience, get started, ideas, social media, strategy, tips