My Notes for #WFX Keynote: 10 Ways Social Media Can Grow Your Church Deeper, Larger, Wider, and More Connected

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These are my real notes for the keynote I am delivering @ WFX (Worship Facilities Conference & Expo) today in Atlanta.  If you attended WFX you saw my live demonstration of these strategies.  If not, I will try to add some layers to the strategies below for you soon.

Social media has been absolutely essential for Courageous Church since we launched in January of 2009 (actually it was big for us even before we launched).  Today I wanna share some of the transferable principles and practical steps that we’ve taken with social media that your church could do today…with very little money and just a basic understanding of how to use the internet.

I’m going to share at least 10 ways you can use social media to grow your church…

Deeper – (I mean Discipleship)

Larger – (I mean Attendance growth)

Wider – (I mean all types of Diversity)

More Connected – I mean more connected with each other, with staff, with the vision, etc. :-)

Before I jump into these strategies let me give you 4 quick thoughts and bits of encouragement.

• Our worship facilities @ Courageous Church pretty much suck and we’re still growing larger, wider, deeper, and more connected.  We use what we have really, really well (be faithful over a few things principle).  You can use these principles today no matter what your facilities look like.

• The church has natural strengths that will help you build community within the world of social media if you tap into them.  I will share some of those today.

• Phenomenal use of social media + (plus) bad sermons or rude ushers or poorly planned services, or kids that get their fingers cut off in kids ministry, etc. will always = (equal) people that spread the word faster about how much your church sucks.  Do the basics well and just above average use of social media will equal the results you’re looking for.

• These strategies will work exponentially better if the leaders of your church are fully engaged.

Here we go…… 10 Strategies – some of these will grow your church deeper and more connected, some will grow your church larger and wider, etc., but all of these will grow your church.

FACEBOOK: I say double down on your commitment to Facebook.  It’s growing, people are not leaving, and I strongly believe that churches are only scratching the surface of what can be done on Facebook.  The people that attend your church are likely on it and the people that don’t attend your church or any church anywhere that you want to reach are definitely there.  It is a real part of peoples lives.

(Silly bonus thought: Your church should have a Facebook page and pretty much make it just like LifeChurch’s page, but without videos from Craig Groeschel :-)

1. Facebook ads. They are SUPER SIMPLE to create, cost effective, effective, targeted, and just all around rock in my opinion.  We use them often to promote big events, sermon series, outreach efforts, and just get the word out about our church in general.

2. Facebook Groups for Your Small Groups/Ministries.  We create private Facebook groups for all of our small groups (married couples, women, men, SAHM’s, single moms, etc.) and they keep people connected, informed, etc.  It also helps create friendships, bonds, etc.

3. Facebook Events for Your Special Events.  We create Facebook Events for pretty much every event and sermon series we offer.  We invite everybody we can and encourage every member to invite everybody they can every time we create an event.

4. Facebook Birthdays.  Sooooo simple! I regularly go to my front page and see in the right hand corner whose birthday it is and wish them a happy birthday!

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TWITTER – I would also double down on Twitter. It’s growing, it’s improving, it’s viral, it’s easy.

5. The least used tool on Twitter is search.twitter.com/advanced and it has the potential to do amazing things for churches. Find people in your city that need prayer, tweet them, follow them, pray for them, and follow up with them.

6. Create a free text messaging news update option by asking people to text: Follow (your Twitter name) to 40404.

7. Instantly interact with visitors, attenders, friends of your church on Sunday by searching the name of your church, your church Twitter name, the name of your pastor, etc.

8. We tweet directly our local newscasters & newsmakers – television, radio, print media when we think we have something newsworthy and it actually works.

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More Options

9. Social Media Blitz – when we have something we REALLY want people to know about, in the same hour or two we tweet it multiple times (my personal & church accounts & leader accounts), we Facebook it (status updates, notes, ads), we post it on my blog, we mass email it, we use every tool available to spread the word.

10. Some Experimental Ideas -

• Churches need to find creative ways to use VERY popular deal websites like GroupOn, ScoutMob.
• Have dozens (or hundreds or thousands) of people write positive reviews of your church on review websites and on google reviews or google places.
• Find ways for your church website or creative microsites to come up when hurting people search for stuff hurting people search for.  Church people tend to search for church stuff – hurting people that don’t attend your church don’t search for church stuff.