Which Social Network is the BEST?

Here is a question that I am often asked when I am teaching ministries on how to best use Social Media, “Which Social Network is the best?” Is it Facebook and their one billion users? Is it Twitter and their easy to use network? Is it Pinterest and their Pictures and Videos? Is it Youtube and their massive Video network? Which one is it? Well, the answer is simple, the best social network is, whichever ones your church knows how to use. That’s the hard part for organizations to grasp when they start social media, start with the network that your ministry knows best. Here are the four key points I used from my presentation “Taking Your Social Media to the Next Level”.

1. The Social Network your church should be on depends on your church's content and capability to use the network. If you have a just a small amount of church content, a few photos, text updates and videos, and the people you have on staff know Twitter best, then start on Twitter. If you have people on staff that are familiar with Facebook then use that social network and push text, video and photo updates there. Use whatever network you have people familiar with and your content will work on.

2. Repurpose your content for each network. Once you have decided to use more than one network, then you can repurpose the same content for multiple networks. For example, if you have a motivational quote from your pastor’s sermon, you can take that quote and put it out on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. You can then take quote and put it over a picture of your pastor preaching and put that picture out on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest. Also, you can take that same quote, and use the actual video of your pastor saying the quote, and put that video clip out on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and Youtube. So you see, different types of content can go on different networks.

3. Each network has its own community and its own best way to use it. For the sake of time, many churches will have their Facebook posts go to Twitter or their Twitter posts go to Facebook. While this does conserve time, it takes away from the uniqueness of each network and hinders genuine growth on the network that stuff is being pushed to. Usually, the network that stuff is being pushed “to”, is the one that’s not being monitored, therefore people that want to interact with the ministry on that network are not being answered because that network is usually just something that is being fed content and not attended to.

4. You don't have to be on them ALL but it's good to be on as many as your staff can handle. If you can only be on one network, then make the most of that network until you get the ability to expand to more.

If you would like to learn more about “Taking your Social Media to the Next Level” check out the training package that was released just last week. Click here to get it NOW.