3 CONTENT TIPS: RECAP, INVITE, PROMOTE
Are you struggling to remain consistent in your social media promotion? Most organizations are. In a previous post we talked about the importance of creating a content calendar. In this post we’re going to focus on three simple ingredients to help you and your marketing and communications teams to stay on target:
- The Recap
- The Invitation
- The Promotion
BUT FIRST! CHRISTIAN CONTENT MARKETING TIP: USE CONTENT YOU ALREADY HAVE ON HAND
Let’s suppose you’re about to launch a new sermon series on the book of James. To prepare for this you’ve probably outlined some notes, built a few key points, and you might even be streaming your services (okay you’re definitely streaming your services!). These are all assets you can use to actively produce content around the 3 simple themes of recap, invite and promotion. Again, over the course of a quarter, you could easily be generating a minimum of 36 pieces of content (3 per week). My guess, however, is that once you see how easy this is, you’ll create much more than that.
Keep in mind that these are just suggestions. You don’t have to do all of them, or you may not have the resources to be able to do them all. Figure out what you can do with the resources you have and scale up or down as appropriate. By the way, at a minimum, you’ll need to have a nice high-resolution image to work with. You could use your logo if you’re without additional images, or you could have somebody take pictures during service projects or (if you’re back to them) in-person services.
1. THE RECAP
Monday Morning
Start by posting your main points /key takeaways from yesterday’s sermon to Facebook and Instagram. Test this as a static post, or as a video to see which format gets the best results. If you are live streaming your sermon, Monday morning is a great time to ensure that this has been cross promoted to all of your social media channels.
Did you over-research your sermon? Have some content that got cut? This is GREAT MATERIAL for sharing. This is kind of like the Bonus Credit scenes at the end of each Avengers movie. It’s always relevant to the plot, and I guarantee you SOMEBODY needed to hear this reminder.
Wednesday – Mid-Week Reminder.
This is a great opportunity to make a mid-week connection. We recommend a quick bullet point list of the main takeaways or a quote in the form of a meme. If you’re not promoting the upcoming setlist for worship (Worship Wednesday), you could post a song that your worship team performed last weekend.
2. THE INVITATION
Tuesday – Services Invite
If you haven’t already created invites for your upcoming services, this is a great time to create the invite for the upcoming Sunday. Be sure to post this with an image, and tag your staff. We recommend developing a set of creative assets just ahead of the launch of the series to be used as promotion throughout the series.
Wednesday – Other Church Activities
Have a mid-week activity like a Men’s/Women’s Group, Youth Event or Encounter Night? Wednesday is a great day to make to send out the invite for upcoming weekend events. Or, if you’ve got a mid-week activity, this can be a day-of reminder.
3. THE PROMOTION
Monday – Calling All Influencers
This is where we go viral. Every organization has a connection to influencers. We were created to be in community and people love to promote what they are passionate about. So leverage this and invite some of your more influential staff and/or regular attendees to promote out to their friends.
Take that image you’ve created for promoting your series, event, or ministry, and write some quick info about it. Start with why, then work through, who, what, when, and where. Post, tag, and remind your team to share. Remind them to tag their friends. Remind them to cross-post to other social media channels.
note: this HAS to be more than your leadership team, and it also HAS to be authentic. If you’re jamming comments from the same 5 people on your social content and you think this is somehow “embracing the algorithm” you are wrong. That strategy is like closing 5 people into the same room and shouting at each other. Nobody outside that room sees it, and when they do it just looks LOUD!
Worship Wednesday (Fan Favorite)
Honestly, this is my favorite. And it is probably because at my heart I’m a worship guy. So worship is super important to me personally. But here is the deal – new people (and newer people) want to feel included. They want to know what to expect.
By Wednesday you should already have your worship setlist for the upcoming week. And if not, it is time to work on your process.
Worship Wednesday is a great way to drive mid-week connections and to invite people to “lean-in” and become more regular attenders. Posting your worship setlist alongside an image, or even linking to the artist’s page, allows those in attendance to feel a bit more comfortable at the next Sunday service. Keep calling all of those influencers to help promote, tag, and cross-promote.
Another version of this is to have a member of your worship team “go-live” with some authentic spirit-filled worship on Wednesday nights. One of my local churches does this and I love it! I love it because I get to see the heart of the worship leader.
Anytime - Boosted Posts - Paid Media
At some point, you will hit a cap on the number of people you can reach through your organic page posts (those posted to the followers of your page). At some point, the other tactics you’re using such as event invites and all of the other tactics we’ve outlined above will be maxed out.
It’s time to pay for additional reach. Running a paid media campaign ensures that you are reaching new people. Targeting makes it customizable and helps to align with your core values. We recommend running for a minimum of 2 weeks for initial testing and believe that this should an “always-on” strategy.
As you can see, there’s tremendous potential to reach new people in social media. You can easily take a single image, single event, or single mission and create an abundance of assets to use in promotion.
We’d love to work with you on your next project, and we hope this information can help you to reach more people for Jesus!