I recently launched the Social Media Evangelism Movement, and I’ve already had a few people want to use the techniques to grow their ministry. It’s not quite the same thing, although there is a bit of crossover, so I decided to write this post which is tailored to people who want to use social media to grow their ministry.
I am using techniques I used to grow my blog back when I was monetizing (now my sole purpose is to spread the gospel and I’ve stopped trying to make money on it, unless something is quick, easy, and falls in my lap), but modified to specifically help those with a Christian ministry.
1. Create a Facebook group, not just a page.
Creating a page is great because you can create events and even pay to promote some of your content. The difference with a group is that there is more community. The reason is that in groups, all the members are encouraged to share, whereas a page is primarily designed for one person to share. Also in a group you can host watch parties, where you invite people to watch a video with you, and you can even go live just in that group.
2. Use Facebook Live creatively.
I know everyone is nervous about going live on Facebook, but you can use that to your advantage. Because not everyone is doing, but everyone likes to watch live videos, you have a better chance of your live video being seen that just a regular posted video. Plus, the algorithm likes it when you go live. Think about using Facebook Live to video events as they’re happening, meet with a group of your friends to pray and share it on live so that people can join you in prayer on the internet, go Live for about 5 minutes or so to share a short encouraging word specifically aimed towards the people in your ministry.
3. Schedule your posts and use sermon sayings for content.
You can schedule content on Facebook and Twitter. Instagram, too, but that gets a little glitchy for me. The reason why you schedule is it’s better to have posts spread out than all at once. Also, you can take 20-30 minutes a week to schedule out a post a day on all your platforms and then not have to worry about it for the rest of the week. On Facebook you can schedule content right in the Facebook app/website. Here’s screenshots (from a computer, not a phone) of how to do that:
Create a post from your BUSINESS PAGE just like normal, but change “Share Now” to “Schedule.”
The next screen will look like this:
You can change both the date and the time, and then hit “schedule.”
For Twitter, I recommend an app called “smart post.”
A great way of using Twitter is to share short snippets from sermons. So if your ministry has an event, or just a regular meeting and someone is speaking, share short one or two-liners. For example, Pastor Durso just shared at our church’s sectional meeting, and he had a bunch of great one liners. Here are a few:
See how I tagged the person who I quoted to give them credit. If they’re on that same platform you can do it, too.
Another one is here:
4. Design images in Adobe Spark or Canva to share on social media.
You may be blessed to have a designer who creates all your content for you. But even then, they probably aren’t creating posts every day. Share quotes from sermons or the Bible in a beautiful format using the templates provided by these apps.
5. Share from other, bigger ministries.
In the blogger/influencer/social media marketing world, we have what is called the 80/20 rule. That means you share 20% of your own posts and 80% of other people’s posts. You don’t have time to be creating all that content on your own, plus your ministry is probably very small. Find similar ministries to your own and you can even schedule their posts to be shared. This is how you do that:
Find a post you like from the ministry. Then:
Click on the time stamp. That’s the circled words “Yesterday at 8:00 AM.”
That will open in a new window with just the post. Then:
Click on the address bar (circled in red), then select all, and copy the URL.
Then go to either the Facebook Page or Group for your ministry, and create a new post:
You can see how I added my own caption and then pasted the link to the post right under.
Then you can schedule the post as previously described. Obviously if you are sharing immediately you do not need to copy the link and schedule.
For Twitter you can share posts as well. If you want to retweet later instead of immediately, do this:
When you find the tweet you want to share, click this little “v” in the top right-hand corner and then click “copy link to Tweet.
You can then copy the link directly into your scheduling app (such as Smart Post).
6. Share testimonials from people in your ministry on Facebook and Instagram.
God is doing a great work in your ministry. When we hear someone else’s testimony, it stirs our faith. Interview people in your ministry, and then share the highlights. When you post, avoid long posts without formatting breaks. Instead, do a paragraph break after every few sentences, even after one sentence if you want it to stand out. For example, something I shared on my personal Facebook Page a while back:
See how it’s broken up and formatted so it’s easy to read? Would you rather read that or this:
Some actual news for your newsfeed: “The persecution and genocide of Christians across the world is worse today “than at any time in history,” and Western governments are failing to stop it, a report from a Catholic organization said.” What you can do: 1. Pray for not only the protection of Christians, but that God would use persecution as a means to spread the gospel. 2. Share this all over social media so it remains in the forefront of public consciousness. Many people do not even understand the reality of the persecution of the church. 3. Give to organizations like The Voice of the Martyrs – USA that give aid directly to persecuted Christians.
The longer paragraphs tend to get skimmed over in social media.
If you want more information on growing your social media, check out my free guide: The Social Media Cheat Sheet.