New Year’s Social Media Plan

Okay the Christmas rush is through and Advent too! Now we turn our focus toward the new year and typically making resolutions, goals as well as plans.

Let’s start with resolutions surrounding setting aside time to curate content to share on your church social pages every month. I’m a little late this month, but usually on the 20th of every month I set aside a day to write down what I’ll be sharing in the month ahead to share with my followers. You can use an old school calendar or you can create one using Google.

Start setting goals that link your social media posts to a specific goal that you want to reach and are using social media to help. For instance if you are doing a stewardship campaign work with the team on promoting the ministries that you are calling members to lend their time, talent and treasure to. Embed a button or link that pushes followers to a place to make their stewardship renewal. Then compare your renewals through social media over the years and or the overall number.

Plan your posts ahead of time using a tool like Hootsuite or Later so that you can schedule all your posts ahead of time. Set aside time to create plan elements like designing your graphic artsy post using Canva, writing blogs, recording video posts, going live!

So, we are just days away from the New Year, but it’s not too late for you to resolve right now to set a goal to grow your social media pages in 2018, set a goal of getting at least 10% of your congregation to follow your pages and implement a public relations plan to do so by making pulpit announcements, bulletin items and ask for ministry promotions of your pages.

Now, let’s look at what to post for January 2018 using my “5 Things Every Parish Should Post” strategy.

Pope, Pastor, Priests and Deacons

Every month the Pope has a mass intention that you may share on your pages and encourage people to pray for. This can be found online for January the intention is to pray for the Religious Minorities in Asia That Christians, and other religious minorities in Asian countries, may be able to practice their faith in full freedom.

Daily Inspirational Messages

Find a resource that you can share a daily message of inspiration. There are many social media titans in our Holy Catholic Church who share a daily message that you can simply share from their page to yours with a click. At my parish we are fortunate enough to have a video taped minute message from our pastor. The videos are recorded for a full two weeks ahead and then scheduled as daily posts. You can also find a book that you may share attribution from and simply transcribe the message into posts. You can create daily or weekly theme to create posts around.

Saints

I always visit the Catholic Culture website to get a list of the Catholic Saints feast and memorial days for the month of January. It also lists the Church monthly devotions, that’s how I know this month is devoted to the Holy Name of Jesus. Changing the cover photo to reflect the monthly devotion helps to evangelize and educate followers about our church culture. If one of the feast or memorials is the namesake of your parish be sure to capture pictures of the unique statues in your church building or on campus to create your graphic.

Parish Behind the Scenes

Many of us think after the stroke of midnight on December 25th that Christmas is over, but it’s not! The Christmas Season is Christmas Day through to January 8th. Then the season of Epiphany begins. As your Christmas decorations are taken down capture video or pictures of the process to share. How will your parish decorate the liturgical environment for Epiphany and it’s not too early to think about planning for Lent. When do you order palms and will you make a call for old palms to be burned for this Lent’s ashes?

Parish & Community Life

The month of January has also been synonymous with “right to life” themes and participating in walks or supporting pro-life centers. Capture video or pictures of participation by members in these activities and share them on your pages. It’s also Catholic Schools Week January 28th and here is a link from NCEA with resources already designed to share on your social media pages.