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Your Social Media Voice Needs Rules…

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Back when Social Media mainly consisted of Chatrooms, Myspace, my blog was on Xanga and Facebook had yet to become a major player; I had a professor tell a class that I was in, that we had to decide what our online voice would look like.

How would we conduct ourselves?
What were our rules of engaging?

He insisted that at some point in the future, potential jobs would look to our social media presentation of ourselves to decide if we would indeed be a good addition to their company/organization.

He stressed how much it mattered how we presented ourselves online… I remember very little from that class, but that discussion has stood out to me for 10+ years.

Fast-forward to today.

Social media can get exhausting.

There is a never ending plethora of soap boxes, opinions, emotions, facts, “facts”, images, politics blah blah blah blah.

Fatigue.

But, let’s be honest, there’s also puppies, funny memes, jokes, beautiful pictures, interesting things, movie/tv show trailers, touching stories, actually keeping in touch with all of life’s ups and downs, and great conversations…

There is connection and a real sense of community when social media is done right and well.

However, let’s be real here, it can all get overwhelming and exhausting trying to wade through it all.

I have been thinking a lot lately about Social media etiquette, and how SO many people seem to not have pre-decided rules for engaging… Likely because they have just never thought of it before.

Here are some suggestions for rules of engagement, some do’s and don’ts to consider:

  1. Assess:
    ~Is your post Inclusive or Selfish? – Meaning, does it encourage community and engaging or is it “look at me” or “listen to me” selfish style.
    ~If your post is not inclusive, how can you change it to be more engaging and involving of others? – Trust me, make that change.
  2. Stop Doing These Things:
    ~Never post when you’re angry… As in, just don’t do it.
    ~Never respond or debate when you’re angry.. You will be incapable of communicating clearly.
    ~Debate in general. Stop debating on social media. – Your pride becomes more important than the person you are debating with. – Knock it off because your “rightness” will never be realized by the other person.
    ~Everyone gets sucked into debates now and then.. it happens to the best of us. – But for real, let’s all just stop it and move back to in-person debates if they are necessary.
    ~We (errrbody) are all tired of the soap box rants. – Stop telling people on the digital stage what you think about polarizing topics… Not. Helpful. and definitely not insightful.
    ~ Stop sharing inappropriate things that you wouldn’t show or say in proper settings (or show/say to your grandma).
  3. In fact, let’s just all agree to stop posting when we have any dramatic emotion other than happy… Avoid. Abort. Delete.
  4. Can We Just All Do More:
    ~Posting of things that are funny, inclusive, brings people into conversation and digital community.
    ~Share loving things, encouraging things, interesting things, helpful things, funny things.. Good things.
    ~Puppies and kitties – These are great, when in doubt: cute it up.
    ~Funny/ridiculous/embarrassing personal stories that show your life isn’t perfect! – No really, these types of posts would make the world a better place for all of us.

So much of what is now  “acceptable Social Media engagement” has replaced communication that is actually supposed to be done in a personal face to face conversation.

People are saying and posting things that they have no business sharing with your cousin’s best friend’s mom because it happened to be liked or commented on by a mutual friend or two.

Things are said that would be considered with much more wisdom “in real life” if that person was sitting in front of them.

Feelings are disregarded too easily online because we can’t see the facial expression of the person we are interacting with… We actually care less and love them less. Basically meaning, we fail.

Keep in mind, this is just my opinion…. like everything else online: Consider and take it, leave it, share it, take parts and leave other parts… But, for the love, please consider something new for your rules of engagement!

It is time we ALL re-assess our rules for online engagement.

So, what are your rules of engagement?

How are you intentionally creating your digital voice and presentation of self?

What are you doing to add to or detract from the online world?

Do you say things on social media that draws people into community or
are you saying things that more closely resembles reality TV?

Take some time and consider what your social media etiquette should be and how you should/n’t engage.

Social Church Summit

I do not often post informational things or “work” style things on my blog, but I felt like this was a better and more useful Social Media Platform for sharing the content from the #SocialChurchSummit earlier today.

Some of the notes below are directly from the summit, other portions are me expounding on the information to help clarify or adding my own thoughts and recommendations.

Also, this is not a total or complete transcript or notes from every point made. This is a compilation of the ones I found to be the best and most important.

The first speaker was , and he shared about content strategy:

Content must have a solid strategy.

He shared five strategies that they utilized:
Inspiration – Churches have lots of inspiration to share! Scripture, pastor or speaker quotes, theologians etc.. All can be put to graphics, videos, meme’s etc..
Information – Churches have lots of information to share, groups, events, needs, etc..
Communication – Social media is meant to be SOCIAL. Which means things should be shared, retweeted, liked, commented on, responded to etc..
Diversification – Diversify between platforms. Obviously there simply isn’t time to cover ALL social media platforms, but choosing a few to focus on is very important.
Consistency – Posting and sharing on a regular basis is crucial to engage with the people you are trying to reach and connect with, as well as the congregation that already attends your church.

Different platforms need different messages.

“We would never close our church doors, so we would never ‘close’ our social media.” (We should be consistent and open to communicating with people in this way)

Next, the real questions is, Ok, so we must use different platforms, and change the message depending on the platform. How and what does that mean and look like?

Where to say it?:
Start by learning the basics of Facebook, then learn how to adapt that to other platforms.
Start with a Personal Profile. This will be your personal voice and face in the social media realm.
Second is a Page. This will be the corporate voice and face of the organization in the social media realm.
Third is the Groups function. In groups is where community really happens on Facebook.
Each of these are different and serve different purposes.

@seancannell shared about Marketing and Content creation…

“Good marketing won’t make up for bad content.”

Content:

  1. Know your audience
  2. Provide value
  3. Level up your production
  4. Engage your audience – Calls to action

Marketing:

  1. Optimize your videos for discovery – Name things well, tag them with key words, anything that will aid search engines to find your video.
  2. Maximize your social media channels. – Post and promote across several channels.
  3. Don’t just publish videos, build a brand. – Build a catalogue that is strategically tied together so that everything you post builds upon what you have posted previously.
  4. Review your YouTube insights. – What’s working and what’s not?.. What gets lots of views? What is not getting searched? Did a particular tag work well?

What is your Brand? Simply put, it is what people think and feel about your church/ organization.

“Content is fire, Social media is gasoline”

You can learn more about ways to utilize Youtube at your church from: Youtubeforchurches.com

@HaleyVeturis  shared about Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat, and how churches can use them effectively.

Instagram is similar to twitter but with images and videos (and no character limit)

  1. This is a fun way to connect with your audience – be sure to Follow Back.
  2. Use quality to get to quantity – Take a bunch of pictures, and post the best one. She suggested Afterlight as an app to use. Personally I also use Picstitch to create collages.
  3. Spread out your posts – 5x per week up to 1-2x a day
  4. Hashtag it. (What is a hashtag?.. The pound sign: #) – Why use a hashtag?.. It creates digital “file folders” for searching, so everyone that used that same hashtag will be added into the same “file”. – Use them to create fun or funny things. #IAmAwesome #- Make everything one word, and no punctuation is useable.

Pinterest is a virtual idea bulletin board. You can create boards for different ideas.

  1. Organize and categorize your boards. For example, “The Word” board she created has typographic scripture.
  2. Provide useful content – The “wisdom” board has content from pastors/speakers/theologians.
  3. Youtube video boards
  4. Connect with your pinners – Follow back
  5. Use strong key words – Be sure to use good searchable keywords
  6. Pin and Repin (aka share)– “Become a curator of great content”

Snapchat is an app that allows you to view videos and pictures for up to 60 seconds at a time before they go away.

  1. Usually the pictures are something you share with a friend throughout your day that is fun/silly/random.
  2. Not for churches or organizations, it is more for individuals.
  3. It is important to note that Snapchat keeps all pictures, and people can screenshot, although you are given a notification when they do.

How do you manage it all? After all, because it is social, you say things, then people respond, and then you have to respond again! Sometimes it can get overwhelming.

Be sure to:

  1. Monitor your time. (Not just with Social media, anything that takes time should be monitored.) Be sure to carve out specific time. – Many spend too much time on Social Media wasting the time that should be spent elsewhere.
  2. Set goals and develop systems for how best to approach social media.
  3. Empower people – It’s suppose to be social and interactive, but you don’t have to do it alone. You will be more successful if you do it together as a team.

Personally I have struggled with absent-mindedly going to my social media sites… So, how do you prevent absent-mindedly going to Social Media? I recommend installing the SelfControl app to help.

FaithSocial is also listed as a resource able to help churches. (They also were a main sponsor of the summit) @mick_twomey 

“It’s important to embrace both your current and future people where they are at.. Online.”

“Too many people are targeting outreach with people who have never engaged with the church before.” – You must switch how your church communicates.

Where are the churches really struggling with social media? – The ones who are struggling tend to because of resource issues. Social Media can be a pretty daunting experience because it takes time and effort to put it together and pull it off.

“Engagement and Effective Growth are tied together.”

Physical presence is critically important, but you have to be more than physical in order to be successful right now.

@djchuang shared some of the churches that are succeeding with Social/digital media:

  1. LifeChurch.TV is the most known church for social media and innovation. – They have a team set aside specifically to develop the missional use of technology. – They are also the ones that created and launched the Bible App Youversion.
  2. Mars Hill Church – Seattle
  3. Crosspoint Church – Nashville
  4. Gateway Church – TX – They also have the Table project, and it is free software for churches!
  5. Community Bible Church – TX

He DJ said that Domain extensions are going to become more popular, and the internet will no longer be just .coms.

I can think of a few other churches that I would add to this list as well, but for now I won’t add to his list.

“It’s all about storytelling – How do I get the message across on this platform?” – @garyvee – If you cannot be the best storyteller, then you need to find someone who does and can be the best storyteller on social media.

His theory and approach to social media is: Delegate a lot of the ‘not as important’ things to other people. And, we spend at least 2 hours a day on things that truly don’t matter as much because we are used to doing them, leisure, habit, laziness etc..

“Your customers are living on these platforms.” – So why would you not engage them here? – My personal perspective is that if you are in ministry (and in business) you do not get a personal view of social media, you are to suck it up and engage at the ‘modern day’ watering holes of the people who need you. Social Media is not about you when you are in ministry, it is about others… Just my personal perspective.

Outreach through In-reach.

Regardless of your personal view of social media, reaching out socially IS real, and IS personal. The more personal and relational you can be with others, the more you will connect and help them also to outreach and more effective.

The sponsors for the summit were:
FaithVillage.com
ARC Association of Related Churches
Media Fusion
Group.com
VanderBloemen Search Group

I hope that this was helpful.
If you have any questions or would like some more personalized help with your social media, feel free to contact me. Be sure to follow me on Twitter @kpbback or my Facebook page: BackIn Consulting

Go to Twitter and type in #SocialChurchSummit in the search bar and you will be able to see thoughts, comments, questions, and people engaging in the summit as well to broaden your understanding and connect with others.