Social media marketing strategy for churches

1. Exploring Social Media for the Church Brad Davies Director of Web Services Dunham+Company

2. About Dunham+Company

3. About Dunham+Company Dunham+Company creates and executes highly successful fundraising strategies for you to  fulfill God’s call on your ministry. We work alongside you to: • Development the ministry “brand”  • Integrate of all markeFng and fundraising efforts e.g. direct mail, newsleIers, online,  collateral • Major donor development • AnalyFcs of markeFng and fundraising effecFveness • Radio and television program development, syndicaFon, and support

4. Social Media for the Church Overview: • Size of Social Media and its impact on culture • How to approach Social Media • Applications • Things to look out for • Tools

5. Social Media for the Church • Mark 10:1 - Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them. • Christ covered every part of Canaan and we to have been commanded to reach the ends of the earth, engaging people where they are.

6. What is Social Media

7. What is Social Media

8. Social Media is Big As of January 2010: • Facebook claims that 50% of active users log into the site each day. This would mean at least 175m users every 24 hours. • Twitter has 75m user accounts. • LinkedIn has over 50m members worldwide. This means an increase of around 1m members month-on-month since July/August last year. • Facebook currently has in excess of 350 million active users on global basis. Six months ago, this was 250m… meaning around a 40% increase of users in less than half a year.

9. Social Media is Big As of January 2010: • Flickr now hosts more than 4 billion images. • More than 35m Facebook users update their status each day. • Wikipedia currently has in excess of 14m articles, meaning that it’s 85,000 contributors have written nearly a million new posts in six months. • Photo uploads to Facebook have increased by more than 100%. Currently, there are around 2.5 billion uploads to the site each month. • There are more than 70 translations available on Facebook. • On Facebook the average user had 130 friends.

10. Old Spice Man Fastest growing viral video campaign of any product.

11. 147, 246,770 views Most views of any sponsored channel on Youtube. Old Spice Sales rose 107% the month following the ﬁrst airing of the ads.

12. How to Use Social Media • If you want to reach new people with your message, you would be crazy to eliminate the option of using social media in your ministry. But it’s important you understand that communicating through social media is not a one-way conversation. You need to be prepared for the give and take.

13. Questions to ask before you get started • Are you committed to keeping your content updated with fresh material? • Are you willing to be open and candid about the good and bad in your ministry? • Are you ready to relate to people no matter how receptive or antagonistic they are to your message? • Are you willing to be patient when results don’t happen overnight?

14. • Are you prepared to work hard to understand the people in your networks? • Are you ready to reinvent your use of ofﬁce time? • Are you ready to listen and not just talk about yourself? • Are you prepared to mix a little of your personal life with your online ministry presence? Source: Chris Forbes, Guerrilla Marketing for Nonproﬁts

15. Getting Started

16. Steps to follow: 1. Listen 2. Research 3. Participate 4. Market

17. Step 1: Listen Google Alerts: www.google.com/alerts

18. Twitter Search: http://search.twitter.com http://Tweetbeep.com

19. How to Use Social Media • Good content is the currency of Social Media. What gets published gets circulated by many.

20. Step 2: Research Ask your congregation what social media sites they use

21. Step 3: Participate Facebook • Create your own proﬁle • Set up a Church fan page • Search of areas on your community is congregating • Join groups and causes

22. Step 4: Market Facebook • Post photos online • Optimize for search • Use speciﬁc search terms to title the picture with the help of Google’s Keyword tool. • For example, search Dallas Baptist church to show the search terms pop up. Use those terms to title the photo.

23. Step 4: Market Facebook • Use the best images to showcase what you’re trying to accomplish • Takes time to put this together, to grow your church or grow your Social Media Audience • Simple to start, slow to build

24. Risks: • You don’t own your content • Increases your exposure to wolves • Gossiping • Information Disclosure Risks • You can be taken out of content • Get too personal with people online • You are going to make mistakes, be prepared to deal with those situations

25. Tools • Most popular sites: • Facebook • Twitter • Youtube • MySpace • Flickr • Delicious • Blogs Entries • Title is the most important, 87% of people click on a blog entry based on the title. Funny and Humorous tend to be the most successful.

26. Advanced Tools • Mashable.com • Tubemogul.com • Search Engine Watch • Tubetoolbox.com • Tweetadder.com • Bookmarkingdemon.com • Tweetsearch • SEOmoz.com • Sphinn.com • Gallucci.net • Google Keyword tool

27. Contact Me: • Brad@dunhamandcompany.com • Twitter: Bradjdavies • Download this presentation at: www.slideshare.net/braddavies