Webinar: Engage Congregants with Social Media and Digital Marketing

Faith-based organizations are no different from any other group—their growth and engagement requires savvy use of strong graphics, social media, and digital marketing. In order to support the growing number of church marketers who use PosterMyWall to create marketing and communications materials, we invited a quartet of experienced ministry marketers to share their expertise in a webinar.

Hosted by Camille Jamerson , CEO and brand consultant at CDJ & Associates, the hour-long session provided expert insights and best practices. If you missed the webinar, we’ve summarized some of the key takeaways for you. Or even, better, watch the full webinar video below.

Molly Pelic, Google Ad grant manager, Church Marketing University kicked off the webinar by sharing her experience with Google Adwords Grants. Key takeaways from Molly’s presentation include:

· Google offers $10,000.00 per month in in-kind advertising from Google Ads.

· Eligible organizations can sign up at www.Google.com/grants.

· Churches can use the grants to reach new congregants who are searching online through Google.

· The trick to success is to select relevant keywords that match the search terms your target audience will choose.

Matt Snyder is director of communications at First Baptist Church of Decatur, Georgia, where he oversees the church’s online presence, social media, and communications. Matt talked about his personal experience—including what social platforms work best for what purposes:

· Certain types of content do best on each social media platform. Matt suggests you experiment to see how things perform for you, then create a separate plan and calendar for each platform. (Watch the webinar to learn what Matt posts on Twitter versus how he uses Facebook.)

· Don’t overwhelm your audience by posting too often. If you do, your audience will miss a portion of what you post. You can tell when you’re posting too often because overall engagement will decrease.

· Sometimes the best posts are when you just take a segment of a larger service, presentation, or conversation and share that.

· Audience behavior shifts over time, so it’s important to continue to monitor and measure your results

Matt Snyder is the director of communications at First Baptist Church of Decatur, Georgia. He is responsible for the roughly 600 active-member congregation’s communications, social media, and the church’s website.

Jemal Mosley, social media marketer and website consultant whose clients include Bethel Baptist Church and Mount Lebanon Baptist Church closed-out the session by sharing how he uses PosterMyWall to create stunning visuals. His recommendations include:

· Pick an image that gets the point across for people who don’t read.

· Upload your own graphics, images, and fonts to customize your graphics.

· When you add your own images and graphics to PosterMyWall templates, always make sure they are high quality. (People correlate the quality of your graphics with your church’s image.)

· Don’t limit your template search to the religion category. ANY PosterMyWall template can be customized to fit your purpose and by expanding your template search you are more likely to come up with something original.