Six Ways Faith-Based Organizations Can Connect With Members Via Social Media - A Webinar With Matt Snyder
First Baptist Church of Decatur’s Matt Snyder Shares Six Best Practices for Using Social Media to Connect with Members of Your Faith-Based Organization
With so many social media platforms to choose from, connecting with the members of your church or faith-based organization can be challenging. “It takes trial and error to figure out what works for your audience, but when you get it right, you can create real engagement and community,” said Matt Snyder. As director of communications at First Baptist Church of Decatur, Georgia, Matt is responsible for the roughly 600 active-member congregation’s communications, social media, and the church’s website. He’s had that role for just over three years, so his experience includes both pre- and during-COVID-19 tactics.
Matt also shared his expertise during PosterMyWall’s recent webinar, “How to Engage Congregants with Social Media and Digital Marketing” Matt also shared with us some of his best practices for using social media to connect with your faith-based community.
Six Best Practices for Using Social Media to Connect with Members of Your Faith-Based Organization
1. Know what your objectives are
How you approach social media depends on what you’re trying to achieve. First Baptist Church of Decatur uses its social media for several purposes. These include driving people to its website to learn more about its programs and to view its content; attracting new members; and since COVID-19, creating a place for the congregation to gather and interact.
Matt creates separate strategies for each of these objectives. He uses posts on Facebook and Instagram to drive people to specific content on First Baptist Church’s website such as video recordings of Sunday services and Wednesday bible study. For attracting new members, he makes sure the Facebook page and website remain current.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Matt used First Baptist Church’s public Facebook page for engagement. But after COVID-19 made meeting in person impossible, Matt started a private Facebook group open only to members of the congregation. “This private site has become an online living room for the church family. Younger members actively engage with members in their 70’s and 80’s. It’s very cool to see that,” Matt said. The private group has been so successful that even after COVID-19, Matt expects to retain the group.
2. Experiment and measure to figure out what works best for you
Matt stresses that the best way to connect with congregants online varies based on your audience’s age and your congregants’ personal preferences and proficiencies. “You need to constantly test different sorts of posts on different platforms and see how people respond. It often doesn’t perform the way you expect it will,” he said.
Matt stresses that you can’t expect the situation to remain static. People’s online habits change over time so it’s important that you continue to monitor and evaluate. “We just keep experimenting and revamping our strategy based on what works,” Matt said.
He also noted that his audience’s online behavior changed when the COVID-19 pandemic started—then shifted again as people became acclimated to sheltering in place. “When the pandemic started, we increased to posting three-times a day and all of our posts did well. But after a couple of weeks, people started to experience internet fatigue and the posts stopped doing as well. Now we’ve cut back to just one post a day,” Matt said.
3. Ask your target audience about its preferences and behaviors
Sometimes the data doesn’t tell the whole story. Matt says some of his best insights have come from conversations with congregants. For instance, Matt says that the data indicates that most of the engagement on Facebook comes from congregants 55 and up—which would lead one to believe that millennials don’t care about Facebook presence. But the opposite is true. Younger new members all say that the first thing they did when they started to consider joining the congregation was explore its website and Facebook page. “Even if they aren’t engaging on Facebook, our younger members and prospective members perceive maintaining an up-to-date Facebook page as important,” Matt said.
4. Tailor your content to what works best on each platform
Not every type of post will perform equally in all locations—so take some time to determine what sort of posts perform best where.
Instagram is where First Baptist Church reaches 20-somethings. “What works for us there is scriptures, quotes from staff blogs, and sermon quotes. We get almost no comments and when we do, it’s older members who are commenting,” Matt said.
Facebook is where First Baptist Church gets its best energy and its biggest engagement. “Facebook drives the most traffic to our website, and it’s our public bulletin board where we share information about events and links to our sermons,” Matt said. Sometimes, Matt will create a video that is just a part of a service—such as a musical number—and post that.
In Matt’s experience, Twitter is where the culture conversation takes place. “We’ll post something that communicates how we feel about something, such as social justice, or where we allude to a political topic without actually naming it,” Matt said.
5. Create a strategy not just for each platform, but for each event you plan to promote
Matt said that for the big events, such as the annual Fall Festival, Movie on the Lawn, or even Vacation Bible School, he plans his social media promotion strategy two to three months ahead of time. Each event might target a different audience, so each event will require different promotion techniques online.
6. Explore boosting and paid ads
Matt has had good results with both boosting and paid ads—providing he makes his choices strategically. For instance, if a post is starting to take off on its own, Matt will wait for it to generate a minimum of ten organic likes. Then, if it’s something he thinks is worth boosting, he’ll boost it.
“We have used Facebook ads for specific, targeted events like our Vacation Bible School and when we host movies on our lawn. If you target the correct demographics, it really pays off,” Matt said. For example, First Baptist Church did a camp program where 97% of the kids who attended came from the broader community—not the church’s membership. This was achieved through a combination of direct mail to the community and Facebook ads.
Ready to learn more? Matt contributed his expertise along with experts at the webinar, How to Engage Congregants with Social Media and Digital Marketing, sponsored by PosterMyWall , the FREE webinar took place on July 14th, 2020 at 1 p.m. Eastern and is now available to watch online. In the webinar, Camille Jamerson, CEO and brand consultant, CDJ & Associates and three church marketing experts (including Matt) discuss:
· Which social media platform is best for what purpose?
· What you should be posting to social media and how often?
· How do you make sure your graphics stand out without investing a lot of money creating them?
· What is a Google Grant and how can it benefit your congregation?
