STEPS TO STARTING. the New Year Strong on Social Media

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1 STEPS TO STARTING the New Year Strong on Social Media

2 INTRODUCTION December can be a polarizing month when it comes to digital communications. For some, it s a pretty relaxed time as your audiences or organizations may be out for vacation about half of the month. In other contexts, especially church contexts, December can be one of the busiest months of the year, as all sorts of communications demands pile up around holiday events and Christmas celebrations. Regardless of what December may look like for you and your team, it is the best time to begin planning your social media strategy for the new year if you haven t already. Social media, s, blogs, and all other areas of digital communications can be overwhelming without a clear strategy. What better time is there to make sure the stage is set to brainstorm and create content that engages and serves our audience than the turn of the new year? The following is a simple 10-step process to start the new year strong on social media. Using our digital communications efforts to serve others and the Kingdom requires intentionality. We will not stumble into selfless, servant-hearted social media use. We have to take careful, planned steps to accomplish our goals and serve other people. Let s learn and start the new year well together. Chris Martin Co-Creator of LifeWay Social

3 PRAY FOR WISDOM. It may sound trite or cheesy, but it is necessary for any of us who hope to use social media for kingdom good. As you sit down later this month or early in January with the people on your social media team, you must spend time in prayer. Ask the Lord to give you the wisdom to use your skills in the most effective ways possible. Ask that He would reveal the needs of your audience and give you the grace to serve your audience well. Ask that the Lord would bless your efforts and keep your hearts pure as you seek to be effective. Ask the Lord to protect your minds against mean people and other difficulties that can come with social media. If you don t bathe your social media strategy in prayer, you will cause your own failure. Begin all content planning with prayer. Write down prayer requests regarding your efforts and refer back to them, praising God when your requests are answered. Definitely pray for your own heart, but don t forget to pray that the Lord would open the hearts of your audience to how he might use your content.

4 SET YOUR GOALS. As you set goals for your 2018 social media efforts, consider two primary goal categories: qualitative goals and quantitative goals. These two sets of goals are very different, but both are important to building a healthy online presence. Qualitative goals pertain to the quality of connection you make with your online audience. Quantitative goals pertain to the number of engagements you receive online. These two kinds of goals are related, but you may accomplish one set of goals while not accomplishing the other. For instance, if you purchase five thousand followers for your Facebook page, you may meet your quantitative goal for the year, but your qualitative goals may suffer. Qualitative goals focus more on how well you are addressing the needs of your audience, whereas quantitative goals may be more related to the number of followers or likes you have on a page. Both sets of goals are important. We will be tempted to care about one more than the other. When it comes to setting quantitative (or data-driven) goals, set goals that are difficult but not impossible to reach. Set the bar high, but not so high you re hopeless. Be sure to track the progress of qualitative and quantitative goals. It is tempting to only focus on the numbers, but the stories and s of encouragement are important to track, too. Take the time to figure out what data points you should be tracking. A lot of data is available to you on all platforms, pick the metrics that make sense for your goals.

5 DESIGN A STRATEGY. This step seems simple enough, right? Designing a strategy seems pretty easy, but it can actually be quite difficult. Designing a strategy means deciding what social media platforms on which you should focus. Designing a strategy means figuring out who is going to manage the blog and how often you re going to post content on the blog. Designing a strategy means creating content calendars and other plans. This step may seem simple, but it really generates the most work. It is crucial to doing effective ministry on social media and cannot be ignored. By having a strategy, you ensure that all of your efforts are aligned and focused on accomplishing the goals you set in step two. While it may take a lot of work to create a strategy on the front end, not having a strategy can create more work down the line. Do not try to design a content strategy if you have not clearly defined your goals. Your content strategy should direct you to create content at the intersection of your gifts and your audience s needs. Make sure your content strategy sets you up to deliver more value to your audience than you ask of them.

6 BRAINSTORM UNIQUE CONTENT. Really, step four goes hand-in-hand with step three. As you design a content strategy, you should be brainstorming unique content to implement that strategy. If a content strategy is a skeleton, the actual content is the blood and guts it is what makes the skeleton (the strategy) come alive. Brainstorming is a ton of fun and could be a great team building experience. Whether you re in a church, an organization, or even on your own, you can make a brainstorming session a fun activity with your colleagues or friends. Go to a coffee shop, rent a cabin nearby, do something fun, and get out of the monotony of your daily routine to get some good ideas flowing. It would be wise to involve some people in the brainstorming process who you would consider part of your target audience. Starting an Instagram account for new Christian moms? Invite them. Creating a blog for Christian businessmen? Host them for a lunch or dinner. Make brainstorming fun! Order food into the office or get out of the office and go someplace fun. Invite creative people outside of your team to give their input on your brainstorming process. Identify what makes your brand/voice unique and brainstorm content that you are specifically gifted to create.

7 CREATE ENGAGING CONTENT. The stage has been set. The skeleton has been combined with its blood and guts and now it s time to breathe life into the plans and strategies you have spent so much time developing! This is where the fun (and the hard work) begins. No matter your role, you need to be creating content that is interesting to you, because, if you aren t interested in your own content, you re going to burn out before you can see any fruit of your labor. While you need to be interested in your own content, it is equally, if not more, important for your content to address the needs of your audience. All of us have different audiences online: churches may be reaching their communities, non-profits may be reaching potential donors, schools may be reaching prospective students, and more. Regardless of who makes up our audience, we have to create content with them in mind lest we serve our own interests above the interests of others. Engagement is perhaps the most important metric on social media, so we should be creating content that encourages engagement. The most engaging content you can create is going to be found at the intersection of your audience s needs and your gifts. Creating content can be time-consuming. Block out some time to eliminate all distractions and create content.

8 EVALUATE YOUR STRATEGY. As you get into the new year and you have created content, maintained your strategy, and tracked your goals, you need to take time to evaluate your plans and how you ve implemented them. We have to be willing to hold all we do online with an open hand. We cannot get so attached to our content or our strategies that we become unwilling to change. We should continually remember that content can be improved or a process can be made more efficient. We all make mistakes of various kinds when it comes to creating and implementing social media strategies. We compound those mistakes when we do not fix them as soon as we identify them. We cannot be so prideful that we are unwilling to alter our plans in an effort to do better ministry and serve people with the utmost effectiveness. Don t evaluate your strategy until you ve given it three or six months to be carried out. Make sure you evaluate your strategy with the right quantitative and quantitative metrics. Set aside your hopes and biases and let the data speak for itself, otherwise you will taint your evaluation.

9 TEST EVERYTHING. Once you feel confident about your strategy and you are creating relevant, engaging content that is serving your audience on a regular basis, it s time to start running some tests. Running tests can teach us a lot and reveal small steps we can take to improve our efforts without overhauling our entire strategic plans. It can cost money and time to run tests, but it s worth it, as testing helps prevent wasted efforts on ineffective ideas down the road. Test Facebook ad audiences to see which one is best for you. Test subject lines using features like MailChimp s A/B testing. Once you feel confident about your strategy and overall content rhythm, do as many tests as you can in various areas so that you can always be improving. Failure in social media strategy is nothing to be ashamed of as long as we learn from our failure. Testing is all about learning from failure. Don t settle in on just one Facebook ad audience. Test a bunch of different ones in different contexts and find the best ones. Test different types of blog titles: numbered lists, questions, imperatives, and more.

10 RESEARCH AND LEARN. Social media is always changing. It is nearly impossible to keep up with the latest changes to every major social media platform, let alone the work it takes to evaluate if those changes have any effect on you or how you carry out the strategy you ve created. Unfortunately, most of you are so busy carrying out the strategies you ve created that you don t have the capacity to keep up with the changes and how they may affect you. This is why the LifeWay Social blog exists. I want to do everything I can to help you stay up to date on the latest social media changes. If you aren t able to keep up with some of the major social media news sites out there, my hope is that LifeWay Social is a simple outlet that serves to keep you informed on the latest social media news. Read the LifeWay Social blog regularly we want to make the research and learning process easier for you. Listen to great podcasts like Social Media Examiner s and others. Ask questions and answer others questions in the LifeWay Social Insiders Facebook group.

11 ADAPT TO CHANGES. This step is simply the second half of step eight. What good is keeping up on the latest social media updates and changes if you don t adapt your strategy to those changes? As you read articles on the LifeWay Social blog or other social media websites, take the time to consider how changes to social media platforms may affect your strategy and adapt to those changes. In the same way that step six can be painful, adapting to changes in social media platforms can be painful, too. This is why we must hold our content and our strategies with an open hand. If our goal is to ultimately serve people and use our online efforts as ministry opportunities, we have to be willing to let go of pet projects or processes and do what is best to serve the most people with the best content. We may be tempted to selfishly maintain the status quo and not adapt to the changes in social media platforms, but we must not give into this temptation. As you research and learn, ask yourself, How does this social media platform s change affect my strategy? and adapt accordingly. Do not cling so tightly to the strategy you created that you are unwilling to change in order to succeed. Ask others how they are adapting to changes on social media and apply their changes to your context.

12 CHECK YOUR HEART. You ll notice that this list is bookended by steps that require us to break from our strategies and content and examine our hearts. As we design strategies and create content, we must be checking our hearts because we are engaging on social media with God s kingdom in mind, not our own. Whether we re managing our own content, the content of another person, or a larger entity like a church or organization, we will be faced with a myriad of temptations, most of which will entice us to see ourselves as better than we are. Checking our hearts is going to look different for all of us depending on our contexts. One of the most universal ways we can keep our hearts in check is by having colleagues or friends who meet with us on a regular basis to check in and ask us probing questions that require us to examine our motivations. Pray and ask God to reveal your sinful motivations to you. Have coffee with a friend regularly who will tell you if they see you pursuing selfish gain over selfless service. Repent of when you have made social media all about you and re-orient your efforts to the needs of others.