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Staffing The Social Media Guru (EDITed) (add funner graphic, connect phase)

The Social Media Guru

The Social Media Guru’s main job is to generate engagement on social media platforms and send the traffic to the church website where it will be converted (names, emails, and/or phone numbers are collected).

I observed this disconcerting trend among Social Media Gurus during my time working with churches: many of these individuals have little marketing training, and falsely believe that “Social Media Marketing” alone is sufficient marketing. In reality, Social Media marketing is only a small skill within the Connect phase of the ministry marketing funnel. It is a type of marketing designed to create a specific result, but it’s certainly not the end all be all solution to your marketing needs. 

Social media marketing is also known as traffic generation marketing. This means that the Social Media Guru specializes in sending traffic from social media platforms to the digital church (website). Social Media Gurus who falsely believe that social media marketing is all there is to marketing, they usually generate good interactions on social media, but then fail to send those excited people further toward the core of your ministry. 

I once had a client who posted about his product, and it went viral. He had tens of thousands of views on his post in a single weekend. The only problem was that he didn’t leave a link from the post to the product, so even though his post was very popular, it was not successful marketing. This is what we call a flash in the pan–something that looks impressive, but ultimately accomplished nothing. Like the other members of your staff, the Social Media Guru needs to be trained to understand the full marketing strategy or your church will be a flash in the pan. Here are some of the tasks your Social Media Guru must be capable of: 

  • Culture: The Social Media Guru should understand the culture and etiquette of their selected social media platforms, which are like “digital countries.” 
  • Finding Their Audience: The Social Media Guru should know how to find people who aren’t involved with your church on its given platforms. Social Media Gurus who don’t understand this concept will frequently post to their church Facebook page without bringing in any new followers. Why? Because people who don’t go to that church also won’t look at their social media page and see all their posts. The Social Media Guru must know how to find your target audience in other groups, pages, or threads, and add value that will draw them in using hashtags, keywords, and similar features.
  • Content Creation: The Social Media Guru should be able to create platform-appropriate content that generates measurable interactions with your church website. 
  • Generate Website Traffic: The Social Media Guru should be able to provide targeted calls to action and incentives for social media users to visit the church website (traffic generation marketing).
  • Reporting: The Social Media Guru must be able to measure how much traffic they are generating and sending to the church website monthly. They should then give their report to the Marketing Director.

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