Is your church social media strategy lagging behind the times – or is it nonexistent? Either way, if you're struggling to tackle creating and posting social media content for your church, you're not alone. In this comprehensive guide, we'll walk you through the benefits of using social media, eight steps to create a powerful social media strategy, and some frequently asked questions.
Social media and the church may seem on opposite ends, but churches should include social media in their marketing strategy for several reasons.
So, how does social media help churches? As you’ll see, churches can benefit from social media’s outreach, relationship-building, and affordability.
In this article, we’ll delve deeper into these and other benefits of social media and share a few social media tools and tips to help you raise money for your church.
Social media isn’t going anywhere. Since younger generations have grown up with these tools, their connection and use of social media have increased from previous generations.
Here are some notable social media statistics based on usage across generations.
This growth means churches must find ways to make it work for them. The following benefits can help convince church leaders about the importance of including social media in your marketing plan.
The first and most obvious reason to start with social media is the number of users. 9 in 10 internet users use social media every month. The number of people your church can reach using social media cannot be matched by anything else.
This outreach can help you spread God’s word, share your church’s mission, and connect with more people who need your help.
The best way to reach a new audience is with content. Thanks to the Bible and personal salvation stories, you have a lot to work with as a church. Social media lets churches spread these stories and God’s message using text, images, and videos.
The strength of sharing your message in different ways means you can connect with diverse groups of people on their level. That’s where the next benefit comes into play.
Social media isn’t just about spreading your side of the story. The strength of these platforms is in relationship building. The average social media user uses 7.2 different platforms every month.
This gives your church seven different opportunities to reach each user.
Depending on the platform and how users interact, you can build and strengthen separate communities that can benefit from your message and share it with even more newcomers.
Engagement is the number one reason people use social media. Whether users want to connect with new people or friends and family they’ve had for years, social media allows them to interact with them regardless of the location.
Businesses, nonprofits, and churches can connect with people worldwide, spread their message, and gain feedback from different generations.
Churches that engage their social media followers can benefit from people liking and commenting on posts, sharing their messages with friends and family, and raising money for projects that catch their attention.
The first step is to create a plan. This will include goals, schedules, deadlines, and budgets for everyone on your team. It’s best to find help carrying out your social media plan to get different viewpoints and ensure you meet your deadlines.
In the beginning, it’s best to create SMART goals. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.
As you determine which goals you hope to meet, you’ll want to add smaller tasks for teammates to ensure you can stick with your goals. The benefit of using volunteers for a social media plan is that you can choose people who regularly use each platform and better communicate with the demographic.
Part of your social media strategy is finding the right platforms to speak with different populations. In the beginning, you’ll want to start with one or two. The more popular platforms are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and now TikTok. You’ll need to choose the platform that best fits your followers.
If most of your supporters are women in their 30s and 40s, you’ll want to create a Facebook account. Men in their 30s and 40s are on Twitter, but that may change.
Instagram is the best platform for younger moms and women in their 20s, so if your church has a preschool, you may want to create an Instagram page. Finally, if you have a solid youth group, it’s crucial to look into Snapchat and TikTok.
Pro tip: Scour your donor database for more information on each demographic, donor, giving amount, and past involvement. Donorbox allows churches to segment donors in its database based on location, giving frequency, campaign interest, and more. You can also easily pull reports on your new donors, donor overview, LYBUNT (Last Year but Unfortunately Not This), etc. As you learn more about each of your supporters, this information will help you create targeted posts and ads on various social media platforms.
Another way to help you decide which platforms to choose is to ask your congregation. Send emails or add something to your Sunday programs to see where most members and attendees spend their time online.
You can send regular surveys to get followers’ feedback on several things. These pieces of information will help you create posts for your social media accounts. You will know exactly what your congregation is expecting from you, and what you can talk about on social media to help.
Pro tip: When you receive responses on your surveys and polls, you should store them on your donor database. With Donorbox, you can easily add communication notes to each donor record. Just select the channel and direction of communication on the tool and add your survey response for the donor. It helps keep track of every communication and lets your social media team find out donor preferences.
As we discussed, a primary benefit of including social media is forming communities. The best way to do this online is to create and use different accounts for different groups and activities.
Since most Facebook followers are women and tend to control the family’s calendar, many social media professionals recommend using Facebook for general updates and events.
TikTok is growing with Gen Z and younger, so if you hope to encourage more online involvement with your youth groups, you can start recording and sharing short videos here.
Pro tip: If your younger church members are raising funds for your church’s peer-to-peer campaign, ask them to create short videos talking about your church and why they are helping you. This way, they can reach out to their friends on TikTok for more donations and invite more p2p supporters for your campaign.
Now that you’ve chosen a few platforms and understand who you hope to talk to, you can create a schedule for you and your team to follow.
With several different platforms, you make scheduling easier on yourself with tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, etc. and giving volunteers posting responsibilities.
You’ll also want to keep in mind what to share and what not to share when creating your social media schedule or content plan. Some quick and easy ideas to share include:
Remember, social media is forever, so you must know what not to share to ensure you don’t have more trouble in the future. A few of these no-nos include:
Something you can never share too much is visual posts. The biggest benefit of social media is there are no hard and fast rules.
Creativity is the name of the game, and the best way to show your creativity is with images and videos. A few ideas to get your creative juices flowing include –
You can also use tools like Canva to create event flyers and infographics to show how donations impact your church. Each visual post should also include links to your website or specific landing pages so people can find more details.
Your job doesn’t stop with posting. Social media is a conversation with your followers. The posts that you share are a way to start a conversation. You want to find ways to keep those conversations going.
There are a few ways you can do that, like:
As you become more active on social media, you’ll want to track how well it’s working. It’s essential not to get too lost in the weeds, but there are things you should look for, including –
As you track these numbers, keep your original SMART goals in mind. Are your posts getting you closer to those goals? If you notice fewer people responding to your posts, it may be time to make changes. Don’t be afraid to research what other churches are doing and learn from them.
Creating a social media calendar doesn’t have to be overwhelming. There are several free and affordable tools to help you plan out and add posts.
Hootsuite is a well-known social media tool that helps organizations schedule posts across different platforms and change the post for each audience.
This tool also lets you set up separate boards to monitor your accounts and see new comments and activity.
Hootsuite has a free 30-day trial to help churches like yours better understand how well it works. After the free plan ends, plans start at $99 a month for one user and 10 social media accounts.
You can also apply for a nonprofit discount of 75% on social media management tools.
Tailwind is an excellent tool for churches that want to get into Instagram. This company focuses on creating captivating designs for posts, and their free plan lets you schedule up to 20 posts per month on platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook.
Churches can upload pictures, and Tailwind will use your brand colors, fonts, and logos to create a compelling design.
Paid plans with Tailwind start at $15.99 a month. They offer a 50% discount for registered charities and nonprofit organizations. Learn more here.
Buffer is the best tool for beginners that want to grow their social media strategy. It works with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest and lets you schedule up to 10 posts per channel.
Their Shuffle Queue and posting schedule make creating an efficient social media plan an easy task. Buffer’s free plan lets you manage up to three channels and includes planning and publishing tools, a landing page builder, and an AI assistant.
Paid plans with Buffer start a $6 a month. They do offer a 50% discount for registered nonprofit organizations. You have to complete a form and submit a request here.
Social media should be primarily for conversation and engagement with your audience, but as these tools have developed, many nonprofits have found excellent fundraising success. The following 4 tips can help your church raise money using social media.
Fundraising events give donors a specific way to support your church. Facebook makes it easy to create event pages. You can add a cover photo using your church’s branding colors, fonts, and logos. Churches can collect funds via Facebook and receive a check or include a link for supporters to purchase tickets on your website.
Donorbox Events lets churches create customizable event landing pages and ticketing forms. You can redirect people to this page to buy tickets online for your church event. The ticketing form you create on Donorbox can also easily be embedded on your church website.
It’s easy to add unlimited ticket tiers to your ticketing form on Donorbox. You can set ticket quantity, purchasing deadline, tax-deductible amounts for each ticket tier, and more. Your church can also accept donations right from the ticketing form and ask donors to cover the processing fees for more revenue from your ticket sales.
When you create fundraising campaign pages for your church, make sure that they can be easily shared on social media platforms. This can be achieved with social media buttons.
This helps add social proof to your campaigns, and more people would be willing to donate.
With Donorbox, your fundraising, crowdfunding, and peer campaign pages are equipped with social media buttons. All it takes is a click and your supporters can easily share your campaigns on social media. Here’s an example for you to get a better understanding.
Social media has created and streamlined a fundraising tool previously unavailable to smaller organizations like many churches. You can use it to turn your passionate members into fundraisers for your cause in only a few steps.
To start with, create a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign. Donorbox Peer-to-Peer lets churches create a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign page with a simple toggle of a switch. You can have a button added to this campaign page that enables anyone to choose to fundraise for your church (and you can also invite supporters from the tool).
Now, post this campaign on social media and encourage your followers to become your fundraisers. They can click a link to your peer-to-peer campaign and click the button “I want to fundraise for this” to sign up and create their own fundraising pages to raise money. Check out what a peer-to-peer enabled campaign page looks like on Donorbox.
Learn More about Donorbox Peer-to-Peer
Pro tip: Storytelling is the best way to reach newer audiences. When you create a campaign, find a personal story or two to help show how donors’ support can change lives. Ask your fundraisers to share their personal experiences with your church when they ask for donations, too.
One way to effectively connect with supporters is via instant message. After posting an appeal, you can see who’s responded and who hasn’t out of your online followers.
You can then send a quick message to those that didn’t, asking if they saw your post and would want to help. You should include a link to your online donation page or event page.
Sample message:
Hi Samantha,
I’m not sure if you saw our post last week, but we wanted to make sure you knew about our family fair being held next Saturday in our parking lot. The youth groups are making and selling homemade treats, and the children’s Sunday school classes will put on a performance. I’ve included a link to our website where you can buy tickets or purchase treats.
Social media has changed our way of life and isn’t going anywhere. Churches that find ways to connect with their members and a new audience using social media platforms will see results and can raise more funds than they expect.
If your church has trouble connecting with younger people, social media can be an excellent way to get your foot in the door. Remember, don’t forget to get creative and have fun when starting a conversation.
We’ve written several articles on how nonprofits can use social media for fundraising and what tools they should use. Check them out as well as church-specific articles on the Donorbox Nonprofit Blog. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a handpicked collection of our best resources in your inbox every month.
Want to learn more about Donorbox? We have a dedicated pillar called Donorbox MinistryMatters to help churches and their ministries. As part of this, we develop and offer innovative and effective digital fundraising tools for churches. Learn more on our website.
Sign up to start fundraising for your church today!
The best social media platform for your church depends on who you’re trying to reach. For example, women traditionally keep track of the family’s calendar and feel responsible for their spiritual growth, so Facebook and Instagram may be good starting points.
However, if you are trying to reach the younger generation, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok would be more viable options.
The frequency of your church’s posts mostly depends on what you’re trying to accomplish, but there is enough research to give you a general overview of many social media platforms:
As you begin to post and monitor how your followers respond, you’ll find the best time to post for your church, but in the beginning, you can use what many social media professionals have found to work:
There is no limit to what you can share online. Here are some ideas to get you started:
Follow the facts! All social media platforms have tools to help you monitor your followers’ responses to your posts. After you begin regularly posting on social media, do your due diligence, track which posts get the best responses, and learn more about your audience.
Kristine Ensor is a freelance writer with over a decade of experience working with local and international nonprofits. As a nonprofit professional she has specialized in fundraising, marketing, event planning, volunteer management, and board development.
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Kristine Ensor