40 Questions About Church Social Media

“What are your top 2 questions about church social media?”

That was one of the questions we asked in the recently conducted Church Social Media Learning Survey.

If you’re a detail person interested in reviewing all of the questions submitted, I’ve posted them here for you organized by category. This post is intended to supplement the primary post Analyzing and Answering the Top Church Social Media Questions.

Leadership

• How do we shift the mindset from zero dollars invested in spreading the Gospel on the internet to at least allowing a reasonable amount?
• How to be effective when you have to deal with pastors, councils, synods and others who want to see and discuss everything before it goes public?
• How do I teach my boss (pastor) who doesn’t even own a tv or smart phone that this stuff is important?
• How do I teach other staff that what I do impacts their ministry.
• How can I get my churches to see it’s worth spending money on?
• How to explain to Church Leadership/Clergy what content works best for the medium verses what they think or want to post?
• How do I help to improve the social media of my faith community if I am not an employee and paid to complete those responsibilities?
• How do I convince my church leadership that #chsocm is necessary, not dangerous?

Congregation Engagement

• How do we get members of a congregation to participate?
• How do we overcome congregation’s attitude that the internet is mostly pornography?
• How do we move from broadcasting to more engagement?
• How do we engage our people better?
• How do we teach them as we learn?
• How can I get church members to be social media ambassadors for our church?
• How do I engage other volunteers to assist with #chsocm with a common goal and consistent messaging?
• How do we encourage the people who are “content creators” in other facets of life to help do that for the church, so we’re not always just piggybacking on what secular culture is putting out?

Strategy

• How do you make an effective strategy?
• Should church social media be done in-house or outsourced?
• How effective can it be, positively and negatively in church growth and missions?
• What are churches like us doing? The big budget mega church examples/advice are interesting but so applicable/scalable downward.
• Since I just started a new position, my top questions are doing a communications audit and who at this church uses social media.
• How do we get our social media efforts out beyond the people who are already looking for it?
• What’s the secret to moving congregation from print communications to digital communications?
• What adjectives describe the most well-received “voice” for congregations as they seek to connect beyond their own members? [I’ve seen “light-hearted” work. Anything else?]
• What are the ways congregational/organization accounts on Twitter or Instagram build relationships with individual accounts? [Conversations between a church and a person seem odd, so how do you engage if you post for an organization? Is it simply by favoriting and retweeting?]

Tools & Tactics

• My budget is $0. What are the best free resources available for expanding my church’s social media reach?
• How do we do it more efficiently?
• What are you using to listen to the conversation around your brand [church]?
• How do you stay ahead of Facebook’s algorithm updates?
• How to maximize value on a shoestring budget
• How can I lessen time spent sharing to allow more time for content creation?
• What are the best ways to automate some of the work?
• tech questions. Always. not the social media per say, but the nuts and bolts of how to make/create/code, what tech things to use, which app or program works better, working with widgets, etc. etc.
• How to best determine the type & timing of posts to garner the best organic interaction and which are the best for paid promotion?
• What’s the best iphone app for short film editing?
• Ways to promote the church better

Metrics

• What is the best measure of “effectiveness”?
• Is there a way to compile self-reported results of churches’ social media efforts?

Misc

• What are the 3 biggest mistakes faith organizations make with their social media efforts?
• What are the 3 biggest obstacles/fears people encounter when trying to initiate/improve their social media impact?

Does anything stand out to you in the questions? Are there any questions you’d like to add?

For more discussion on these questions, click over to Analyzing and Answering the Top Church Social Media Questions