I just picked up this video from our Web Director and Online Campus Pastor, Vince Marrotte. When it comes to social media, Vince is all over it. Watch this video, it’s definitely worth your time.
Question. How much is social media integrated in your ministry? If it’s not, get with the times people. You’re missing the boat. A year ago I launched a blog for our families and just recently a facebook page for the Children’s Ministry. We’ve recently started using twitter to communicate news and information as well. However, I feel that there are so many more ways to communicate to our volunteers, our leaders, our kids and their parents. What new social media strategies are you incorporating into your ministry?
Just saw this video earlier this morning- good stuff. The question is- how much are our kids immersed in this social media & how careful do we need to be when introducing this to families?
It’s very involved in our ministry. Our church has a page, our children’s ministry has a page. It’s even our main form of communication to volunteers. Our volunteer schedule is on facebook, the small group lessons for them to learn are on facebook. All videos that we create and show in services are uploaded to facebook. We have a twitter account (we don’t have a hashtag yet!). My main form of communication with parents is on facebook!
It’s definitely integrated.
Cool stuff Matt! You’re beyond us right now. I might have you show me how you’re using facebook for some of these things as we haven’t taken that deep of a jump into the world of facebook to do all these things yet.
Good point Alex. There is definitely a line here. If 90% of my volunteers are on facebook, I’m probably going to use it as my method of communication. However, I need to be mindful of those who aren’t as many who aren’t are not there for good reason. Good thoughts.
Being that I HATE facebook…I’m still seeing that having a fan page for our #kidmin area’s might help direct traffic to parts of the trinitykidsplace.com website that we are creating.
I just need someone to hold my hand throughout the entire process…
.-= jonathan´s last blog ..The Kid Whisperer =-.
I do a lot of social networking stuff for LifeWay.com.
Social media has been integrated more and more. Many of the people we’re trying to reach are on social media and so if we want to effectively reach them, we need to use social media too.
On of our greatest tools is our Twitter (@LifeWayUpdates). I love sharing ideas in that environment.
I’ve noticed some resistance to social media. It’s often viewed as not credible and not an essential way to communicate. What I’ve personally found, though, is that social media is abundantly effective.
One of the most effective websites I’ve come across for church use is Planning Center. You can find it at http://www.planningcenteronline.com. I’m in the worship arts department. We use Planning Center to coordinate all the people, schedules, songs and contact information needed to run a church service. It’s not social media, per se, but it definitely is a step up from a calling tree or even a mass email.
I don’t know if kids’ ministers would find as much use in it as the worship arts department, but I definitely thought it was worth mentioning in case you could use it somehow.