Christmas is the time of year when those who are not connected with God are most open to God and to doing things with a church.
The possibilities are endless… Some churches host a multi-night Christmas production, others a traditional Christmas Eve service, others experiment with other kids of Christmas outreach event…
See 12 Christmas Outreach Event Ideas for Churches for more ideas.
While personal invitations will probably always be the best way to invite someone to a Christmas service, social media is also a very effective way for churches and their members to spread the word about Christmas events.
Our team here at OurChurch.Com started kicking around ideas, and before we knew it we had…
25 Ways Your Church Can Use Social Media to Promote its Christmas Services
Things you can do right away
1) Use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc to recruit a virtual street team, people in your church who are engaged in social media and will help lead efforts to promote the Christmas
2) Create a social media promotional schedule in Google Docs. Share it with your street team, get their input, add to it & improve it based on their input.
3) Create a Facebook event for your Christmas service(s).
4) Post the event to your church’s Facebook page.
5) You & your virtual street team share the event on your personal Facebook profiles & encourage others to do the same.
6) Post the event to any other social media profiles your church may use (Twitter, Instagram, etc)
7) You & your virtual street team share your church’s post promoting the event on your personal profiles (Twitter, Instagram, etc)
8 ) Run Facebook ads to promote your Christmas events
Create a promotional video for your Christmas service, and…
9) Put the promotional video on YouTube
10) Share the YouTube video on your church’s Facebook page.
11) You & your virtual street team share the YouTube video on your personal Facebook profiles and encourage others to do the same.
12) Share the video to any other social media profiles your church may have (Twitter, Instagram, etc)
13) You & your virtual street team share your church’s video promoting the event on your personal accounts on those same social platforms (Twitter, Instagram, etc)
Reach out to other local organizations
14) Find local online guides that have event calendar. Submit your event, embed or link to the YouTube video.
15) Find the Facebook pages for your city, chamber of commerce, & other local community organizations. “Like” their page. Then post the Facebook event to their wall if you can do that in a non-spammy way.
16) Find on other social platforms (Twitter, Instagram, etc) profiles for your city, chamber of commerce, & other local community organizations. Send them a DM & ask if they would share your post about your Christmas production.
If your Christmas services / events span more than one night…
17) Post pics from the first night to your church’s Facebook page. Be sure to tag as many people as you can. Tagging will cause those pics to show up on those people’s profiles for them and their friends to see.
18) You and your street team share those pics on your Facebook profiles.
19) Post some of the pics to your church’s other social profiles (Twitter, Instagram, etc)
20) You and the street team, share those pics.
21) Create a video that includes footage from the opening performance & short comments from people afterwards saying good things about it. Post the video to YouTube.
22) Share the opening night video on your church’s Facebook page
23) You & your virtual street team share the opening night video on your personal Facebook profiles & encourage others to do the same.
24) Share the opening night video using your church’s other social accounts (Twitter, Instagram, etc).
25) You & your virtual street team share your church’s posts of the opening night video on other social accounts (Twitter, Instagram, etc).
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Partner with our team
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Comment and Discuss
- Which of these social media tactics is your church using this year?
- What other ways can churches spread the word about services through social media.
Continue reading Your Christmas Communications Playbook
Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com
Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.
An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.
Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication.
21 Comments
Great post Paul.
I wish I could get a virtual street team together. Something strategic and goal orientated – for something just like a Christmas series. People don't seem to get it, they don't see the bigger social media picture.
All this (all the points) is something that Church leaders and social media involved volunteers should get together and talk about. Not just do, but plan and plot.
well that's my opinion 🙂
love that term, btw – virtual street team, VST FTW
Thanks Phill. I think you're right… churches could be much more effective if they planned and strategized their use of social media instead of it being an after-thought. Right now at a lot of churches once an announcement or video is created it's like, "Oh yeah, throw that up on Facebook too while you're at it."
And I'm gonna have to blog more about virtual street teams. It's an idea that deserves more thought & discussion.
yeah, that's it.
I think churches just don't know what it is that has to be planned or what the practical steps are.
It should be formalized to the point of assigning hours of the day to engage in social media and what to highlight and discuss.
Related questions are asked, an effort is made to seek out people you have the same issues.
A plan to spread the load in terms of people and time of the day. No sense that everyone tweets over lunch and then gives up.
oh and not just flooding the Social Networks with links and cold calls to attend.
engagement is key.
Maybe there is a misunderstanding of the term engagement.
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I really liked some of your tips.
"virtual street teams" is a great idea. Most of us are already socially networking anyways. Why not incorporate all the media platforms you can in to an event?
keep up the good work
Thanks!
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Thank you Bo Paul for that great information. We will apply it it in our invitations this Christmas. Remain blessed
Thanks Ohakosim. If you implement some of these ideas, I would love to hear more about what you decided to do and what impact it had. Maybe you could post a comment after Christmas with an update.
street teams is a great idea, but how would you select people to be in the street team?
by number of people they can leverage the promotion to? e.g number of followers?
=)
H P, that's a great question. I'm doing to write a post this week about virtual street teams since it's a big idea that hasn't been discussed much.
Excellent post, Paul! I cite it in my 2 part series, "Planning A Christmas Service" at Faith Based Media 2.0 http://kennethelillard.wordpress.com/. Look forward to reading more of your insightful posts! Be Blessed!
Thanks for the mention Kenneth! I'm glad you found the ideas helpful.