Working in social media you can get a lot of flack, a lot of people will tell you what you can do better, and what you've done well. Mostly the former. A lot of people think they understand how social media should look for an average brand, and sometimes they do! Feedback is always appreciated, but running social media for something like a church can be a lot different.
First Baptist church of Jacksonville is among the largest churches in the city. It is definitely one of the oldest, and continuing to grow in recent years, since decline in the 2000’s. With almost 14,000 facebook likes and 3,000 Instagram followers, the church has a large online presence for those in the Jacksonville area.
Here are some of the social media best practices for a church…
DO’S AND DON’TS:
1) DO — Post on a regular basis. One post a day is sufficient with all of the events the church offers every month, there is plenty to post about. Whether the post is a simple image from a sermon, with a great quote, or a sermon video clip.
2) DO — Post in around lunch or dinner time, or on the Sundays between services. This is when most of our church members are online and on social media.
3) DON’T — use stagnant punctuation. It is better to come across too happy in a post than not happy enough.
4) DON’T — always respond to comments, although it may drive engagement, it is better to leave some comments alone given a majority of comments are in agreement to the post -such as “amen”.
5) DO — Share the post from the other pages FBC hosts, such as the kids ministry or youth ministry. Although those ministries have their own Facebook pages, it is good to show the continuity d all the aspects of FBC.
6) DO — Share microcontent. If a member tags FBC in their Instagram story on a Sunday morning, share it to the story of the FBC account. Showing the excitement of members and followers is a good thing.
BEST PRACTICES
1) It is better to show faces of smiling people and general church life more often. As great as it is to show pictures of pastors, we would rather share the excitement of church members to show the loving environment that is FBC.
2) Use a color scheme. The Instagram feed should look roughly the same. Lots of blue and purple on the main feed, lots of orange on the youth feed, and lots of purple on the kids feed.
3) Hashtags don’t matter in this situation. People will follow FBC if they are a member, and our social media is mostly used to share the good news and information about upcoming events. When posting about an event use hashtags related to that event. If not posting about an event, hashtags such as #FBCJax is better than #Jacksonville. The goal is for shares of posts to put the post on more feeds, not draw attention from any part of the country.
Social media can be a huge undertaking, but keeping things consistent is key. Always be exciting. If you see a post from a church that sounds happy with a bright image, vs a church that sounds lackluster with clipart as their image, which would you rather go to?
