Why social media matters for churches

Social media is not the only digital marketing strategy that you can use to reach out and achieve your church's goals - whether they are to grow in number, better disciple your members or just become known in your area.

But it is a uniquely powerful tool for a few reasons.

One: cost. Social media is free to use. Unlike printing postcards for a letterbox drop, paying for an ad in the local paper or creating some big signage, setting up on social media is free! You can invest some money into it for even better results but even with no money behind it all, you can still achieve great results.

But the main reason why social media is a great tool is because of the audience available to you on social.

Let’s take a look at this Venn diagram, which shows you a variety of different types of communication you may use:

As you can see, this diagram shows that social media straddles both your internal audience – your existing members – and an external crowd of potential members (potential new brothers and sisters in Christ!) That means it’s a high impact digital marketing tool, with opportunities for both your internal and external audiences.

Let’s look closer at these audiences, which we’ve broken down even further into YOUR PEOPLE, THEIR PEOPLE, and ALL PEOPLE.

Your people

For your people, social media is a fabulous tool for a number of things. Odds are, many of your members will already be using social media, so it’s a great way to meet them where they’re at and reinforce the messages you’re already sharing on your internal communication channels. It’s also a place where you can encourage your members to reflect more regularly on God’s word, what they’re learning at church, and prompt them to pray.

Social media can be a yucky place, full of negativity, gossip, crudeness and also just useless, time-wasting stuff! You can be a light of positivity and godliness to your people on social media by bringing them positivity, biblical messages and inspiring, faith-filled content, which can ‘bless’ their feed.

Plus, for your members, being able to engage with - like, comment, share - your content on social media enables them to feel a sense of belonging and ‘church pride’. Now, we don’t mean sinful pride - we mean the pride and joy that comes from seeing a community you love doing great work, and knowing that you’re a part of that. This is the type of emotion that prompts people to engage with you on social media. There is a level of self-curation inherent here too - people engage with and share things that make them look the way they want to be perceived by their peers.

Now, why is that something we want? Well, social media is just what its name says - it’s inherently social. It’s not a one-way publication like a magazine or website - it’s a network. And that means that when you use it well and tap into this power, and your people engage well with your content, you will inevitably reach their people.

Their people

The power of social media is that it’s not just a publishing tool - it’s a NETWORK. This means that we can make the most of this network and use it for outreach. That means getting your current members involved in sharing your social content with their networks!

If a churchgoer is regularly sharing or even just liking or commenting on posts from their church, their friends will see this, laying a helpful foundation for future conversations about church and the gospel. If you do your social media well, you can actually empower and equip your current members for outreach!

Social media companies recognise the power of referral - that’s why when you’re scrolling through your feed, you’ll see your friends' names first on any posts they’ve liked.

All people

But of course, social media is useful for your communications to all people - not just those with a pre-existing connection to someone who is already part of your church.

Why? Well, social media adds credibility, especially for Gen Y and younger. For this generation, who often got to Facebook or Instagram before they'll go to a website, if you’re not on social, do you actually exist??

Being active on social media also shows you’re active in your work today. If having a website is like having a front door on the internet, being present on social media is like having the lights on and music playing – shows you’re open for business and ready to welcome visitors.

The next reason why social media is important for all people is because of something called domain authority.

You've probably noticed that when you Google a person or organisation, their social media profiles pop up quite high in the search results. That's because of something called 'domain authority', which basically means that Google prioritises trusted domains in their algorithm. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and many other social media sites have high domain authority, if someone Googles your church, your Facebook page will come up fairly high in the results, perhaps even higher than your website. Don’t let them stumble upon an empty, out of date page!

Summing up

We can think of social media like this diagram.

Inside your inner circle sit you and your people. But in their circle sit a bunch of their people who will see you interacting with your people and potentially then enter into the circle as well. And beyond that are all people, who are looking in at the interactions happening inside the circles and making judgements about your church based on what they see happening.

We can’t think of any other type of communication that fosters such complex and potentially fruitful interactions between different audiences and your church!