Church Marketing Sucks

Easter is coming fast. I don’t know about you, but holy smokes Batman! Here are some quick social media ideas for Easter to get your church noticed in the noise around Easter:

1. Create Shareable Content

As social networks increasingly create strategies requiring you to pay to reach your audience, a very smart way around their paywall is to equip your community with the graphic assets to share content on their own feeds. More reach with less budget. Who wouldn’t want that?

2. Use Video

Facebook and Twitter have launched an assault on YouTube. Facebook recently surpassed YouTube for the most desktop views per day. Expect mobile to follow soon. To increase for profit businesses and nonprofits adoption of video, Facebook seems to have taken the reach limitor off video—for the moment at least. Exploit it while you can.

3. Go Behind the Scenes

In the lead up to Easter one way to generate buzz is to take photos or video of the upcoming Easter services/presentations without giving away the whole story. Give people a sneak peek.

4. Go Viral With a Photo Booth

We have done photo booths for our major outreach services and it is a great way to reach more people in a very family friendly way. Check out how we did it here.

5. Keep Your Social Feed up to Date

Is old sermon series headlining your platforms? Make sure your branding is on time and doesn’t hang around too long so it becomes out of date. As we approach Easter, you should have Easter info dominating your social feed. (Need some graphics to share for Easter? We can help.)

We talked about the simple idea of putting Easter service times on your website. Do the same for social. On both Twitter and Facebook you can “pin” a post to the top to make sure it’s always the first thing people see. Pin your Easter info to the top of your profile.

This also extends to your church website. There is nothing worse than a potential visitor visiting your website from your social media presence and not being to find what your church is doing for Easter. Ask yourself, can they see it in 3 seconds? How many clicks does it take to get them to the right information (Pro tip: If it takes more than one click, you’ve lost most of your audience).

Another way to make your church look out of touch and dated is to leave your Easter promotions up for weeks after Easter. It screams, ‘we don’t care.’ I’m sure this isn’t your church right?

6. Celebrate Your Volunteers

Your church is more than just a building. Your church is all about people and many of those people serve faithfully. Why not celebrate your volunteers? By tagging them you also tell their friends that your church appreciates them. Oh, and your church is also now in their friends’ feed. That is pretty cool free exposure.

7. Create Sticky Quote Photos

Have content generators on hand throughout the Easter weekend . You can capture the insightful sticky phrase from your pastors. A photographer can take some photos of your speaker(s). Your designer can design a quotable quote graphic. Put them up on your social feeds after the services. The insights that resonated with the audience at the time are very shareable and will spread through your community’s social networks.

8. Create a Hashtag

Create a fun hashtag and promote it in your services and your communication channels in the days leading up to your Easter services. Something like #EatMoreEggs or #ThereIsNoSuchThingAsTooMuchChocolate or #HamOrLamb. You get the idea. It doesn’t have to be super spiritual. It’s simply about finding a fun way to engage people. (Pro tip: Initial cap your hashtags so they’re easier to read.)

9. Create a Thunderclap

Create a social media message and a compelling photo to share with the Thunderclap service. Email your congregation and ask them to lend their voice to the post. This is a great way to get a message out at a certain time.

10. Build a Volunteer Social Media Team

Easter is a busy enough time. Ask around to see who is interested in photography or helping out on social media. Look in your feeds, see who is on there all the time. This is a great way to identify potential volunteers.

Your Turn

Any last-minute tactics you would recommend on social media for Easter? Got questions or queries? Comment below.