The updated "Social Media Revolution" video by Erik Qualman is a fast paced, fact filled, and eye opening. Beginning with the question "Is Social Media a Fad?" it goes on to show, through a variety of statements about current social media use, how social media is here to stay.
Although the video was more intended for businesses, it got me to ask the following question. What does the "Social Media Revolution" mean for the church? How does it, or should it impact how we do advertisement, outreach, publications, even worship services?
In the video he mentions 42 different statements. I want to look at five specific facts, or statements, and see how they can have a huge impact on how we do things.
96% Of Adults Under 30 Are On A Social Network-
I have been working at churches for 15 years. In that time I cannot tell you how many times I have heard the phrase, "How can we reach out to our young adults and college students?" Any one doing missions knows you have to go into the mission field, learn their language and live where they live. If you are trying to reach this segment of the population you need to engage in social networking. Set up a facebook page, sign up for twitter and then use it. Do not just do this for your organization. People will "like" an organization, but they will interact with a real person. Youth directors, pastors, lay people need to dive in and interact online.
Fastest Growing Facebook Demographic is Females 55-65
If you thought that social media was just a way to reach the young adults think again. Grandma is online checking out photos of grandchildren, and keeping up with her family and finding her own circle of online friends. We need to use social media to help our churches reach out to them too. Create a facebook page for your UMW group. Post videos and photos of their grandchildren singing "Jesus Loves Me" online so they can show them off to their friends.
The 2nd Largest Search Engine is Youtube
There are many churches who already are posting sermons through Youtube. I think we need to go further though. People are all searching for something, they have questions. How can the church use videos to help answer those questions. What about a video of a couple who have adopted, or a girl who made the choice to put her kid up for adoption? We had one of our members share her testimony about almost losing her sight, and how it totally changed her perspective on work, family and faith. (See Renewed Vision Video)
78% of People Trust Friends Recommendations, 14% Trust Advertising-
How much do we spend on advertisements. Do you place ads in the newspaper, yellow pages or school programs? What if instead of spending so much on advertising, we spent it giving our members a variety of ways to invite their friends? According to one poll, 79% of people attend church because someone invited them. Why not then spend our time, money and resources creating tools that help our members invite someone?
Maybe instead of creating a newspaper ad, we create invitation business cards for each member that have the church information, times and locations. Maybe instead of taking out an ad in the school sports program we invest in a facebook ad campaign that targets friends of youth who go to our church. Instead of a television or radio spot, create a youtube video that can be embedded, shared, liked, and emailed.
We Will No Longer Search for Products and Services, They Will Find Us Via Social Media
Are we still waiting for people to walk into our doors? According to that survey only 3% said they just walked in. What if we the church found people, instead of waiting on people to find the church. Through things like facebook, twitter, and youtube we have an incredible opportunity to reach out, and reach into the community. I recently started adding people in our town to my twitter feed. Many of them add me in return. Now any time I mention anything about my church, it is sent to their feed. I have many friends on facebook that do not go to church. When I post a video, or photos on my page they see that also.
You can also use those means to find people in your community looking for a church home. Set up a twitter search for words or phrases like "new in town" "looking for church" "methodist" "name of your church" and see what others are saying. You can then just send a quick hello, and invite them via twitter.
Social Media is here to stay, and we are going to have to embrace it, and use it in order for the church to reach out. I have shared just a few ideas on how we can do that, but you probably have some that are even better.
What would you share? What do you think?
You can also connect with me by
Facebook- www.facebook.com/rgmmusic
twitter- www.twitter.com/rgmmusic
Youtube- www.youtube.com/rgmmusic
Gmail- rgmmusic@gmail.com
(from phyllis martin on facebook) I love the idea of sharing children's choir events, etc. over facebook with grandparents, etc. I can see a problem though with obtaining permission to publish from every child's parents. Some organizations have a line on their registration forms that requests permission to publish the child's image in newspaper, church media, etc. While this works well if everyone gives permission, do you want to search every shot for the one child that permission is denied? What are the legal issues involved?
ReplyDelete