Most church communications departments (if they even have one) are understaffed and underfunded. There are many things that take priority from salaries to utilities to missions and more! With social media becoming more and more engrained into our lives as each day passes, those serving in communications roles (paid or not) have to run at a pretty fast pace to keep up.
Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them. It recognizes the new power of the best consumers to ignore marketing. It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention.
Before going any further, if you haven’t read anything by Seth Godin before, stop reading this blog and go pick up one of his books. The man is brilliant.
This concept of permission marketing is one that’s not new to businesses. Back before mass production began, store owners were experts in their field and customers trusted them with questions they had. Bookstore owners had read every single book they sold and could tell you what happens and whether or not it’s worth a read. When mass production of goods began to grow, so did mass advertising. Television and radio ads were all about grabbing attention from the masses tuning in. It was no longer about the relationship but making sure people heard about your product.
I’ve read countless articles on social media strategy over the past few years and there is quite a bit of agreement regarding best practices. The problem I’ve found is that much of the advice out there is written in about as generic of language as possible. Today we’re going to look at two major strategies for your church or ministry as you continue to develop your online presence.
While social media provides us an opportunity to better engage our followers, generating content to get the conversation going can be somewhat difficult. While posing questions and sharing funny statements might get the ball rolling, sometimes your base needs more to comment on. Videos and pictures definitely are great places to start and frame a strategy around, but there is also a third option that scares most people: blogging.
At this point I’ve explained that my department created a fun video for our church and we did heavy promotion through Facebook ads. What I’ve yet to explain, however, is why we even made it in the first place. While fun, random, humorous videos easily catch my attention, I also don’t have the luxury of allocating resources to a personal project at this point. We really wanted this video to be a win.
