Which Social Network is the Best for Your Organization?

Is it Facebook and their one billion users? Is it Twitter and their easy-to-use network? Is it Pinterest and their Pictures and Videos? Is it YouTube and their massive video network? Which one is it? Well, the answer is simple: the best social network is whichever one your organization knows how to use. That’s the hard part for organizations to grasp when they start social media: start with the network that your staff knows best. Consider these four key points.

One. The Social Network your organization should be on depends on your content and capability to use the network. If you have a just a small amount of content, a few photos, text updates and videos, and the people you have on staff know Twitter best, then start on Twitter. If you have people on staff that are familiar with Facebook then use that social network and push text, video and photo updates there. Use whatever network you have people familiar with and your content will work on.

Two. Repurpose your content for each network. Once you have decided to use more than one network, you can repurpose the same content for multiple networks. For example, if you have a motivational quote from your pastor’s sermon, you can take that quote and put it out on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. You can then take the quote, put it over a picture of your pastor preaching and then put that picture out on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest. Also, you can use the actual video of your pastor saying the same quote and put that video clip out on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube. So you see, different types of content can go on different networks.

Three. Each network has its own community and its own best way to use it. For the sake of time, many organizations will have their Facebook posts go to Twitter or their Twitter posts go to Facebook. While this does conserve time, it takes away from the uniqueness of each network and hinders genuine growth on the network that stuff is being pushed to. Usually, the network that stuff is being “pushed to,” is the one that’s not being monitored. Therefore people that want to interact with the business on that network are not being answered because that network is usually just something that is being fed content and not attended to.

Four. You don’t have to be on ALL of them but it’s good to be on as many as your staff can handle. If you can only be on one network, then make the most of that network until you get the ability to expand to more.

For more information on this and other Social Media topics, get your copy or How to Get One Million Social Media Fans today.

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Social Media Strategy Tips for Churches

The most difficult part about using social media is maintaining consistency. Too often an organization sets out to harness the power of social media but ultimately loses interest over time, often because they discover that it’s more work than they had anticipated, or other pressing needs come up and the social media project falls through the cracks.

Consistency is vital if you want to maintain a social media presence. Just as with your website, if you don’t update your sites regularly with fresh content, people will lose interest. Set a strategy for your social media project and stick to it.

How Much Time Can You Spare?
Start by analyzing your staff and how much time each can devote to your social media sites. Different staff members will be suited to different sorts of social media. Some may prefer to sit down once or twice a day and post to your Facebook page, while others will enjoy posting frequent tweets through your Twitter account. Decide exactly which sites you will use, and who will handle them.

What About Content?
Social media is an excellent forum to repurpose content from your web page. Think about how news media use sound bytes, and do the same. You can use short video clips from sermons, quotations, announcements, photos – anything from your website is fair game. This is a great way to entice people back to your church’s website to read the whole story or watch the whole sermon.

The good news is, your staff can spend maybe an hour or less each day preparing the content they intend to post. Then they can take just a few minutes several times a day to actually post the pre-prepared material. By posting at different times during the day you reach a great many more people, as people tend to check their social media sites at different times during the day and evening.

24 Hour Posting
You can also use free software from Hootsuite.com to schedule posts any time of the day or night. Hootsuite works with Facebook and Twitter, and will allow you to set up dates and times for your posts to those two social networks. You can even schedule a whole week – or month’s – worth of posts ahead of time, which will save you a lot of time and energy and make sure that your message gets out, no matter what. This is a great way to reach night owls, shift workers, people in other time zones, and especially people who may be awake at odd hours due to stress or depression.

When managed properly, social media is an excellent communication tool. Take advantage of it to get your message out to the whole global community!

For more information on this and other topics, get your copy of “The iChurch Method Volume 1: How to Advance Your Ministry Online.” or The iChurch Method Volume 2: Changing the World When You Login or even sign up for the iChurch Method Online School.

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Is buying fans/followers/views Social Media Prostitution?

Over the last two years there have been quite a few companies that have sprung up that allow people and companies to purchase followers, fans, views, retweets, repines and a variety of other social media services. These services have been utilized by major celebrities, political figures as well as companies and brands. It wasn’t until recently did the services come to light and start to receive scrutiny from the social media networks as well as other social media experts, but it was only a matter of time before quick fix options became a business (social media services is now on its way to being a 100+ million dollar industry in just a few years).

Facebook continues to update and adjust it’s advertising services and allows you to bid on CPC campaigns to get more fans, which seems to be an elaborate approach to buying fans, is it not? Twitter’s advertising solution allows you to promote your account in user’s stream and thus get more Twitter followers and yes, this service costs, so isn’t just another way to buy fans? YouTube gives you the opportunity to setup video ads that appear before people watch YouTube videos which after they watch there’s a call to action which can include asking them to subscribe, this service costs and gives you YouTube views and subscribers, so isn’t that another way to buy them?

Personally, I have developed social media strategies to help companies build their following using content strategy methods, specific delivery times and two-way interaction but I do understand how social media services you purchase can be useful. I think it all comes down to this, when you purchase services, it’s for perception, to appear bigger than you are and get people to follow you based on that, but the relationships are unreal and non-existent. But when you build your following in a more organic manner, then you develop true relationships with them and create a longer lasting, mutually beneficial online social media relationship.

Which goes back to my title, if your goal is to just get fans in numbers, then take the prostitute route and just pay for it and get the immediate results. But if you want to develop a true interactive online social media following then you have to put in the time and work it takes to wine and dine them, advertise to them, promote posts and tweets and tell them you really care.

For more information about Social Media check out How to Get One Million Social Media Fans by Jason Caston.

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