It’s a cliché, but I remind myself of it frequently—content is king.
Much like a scientist in a laboratory, I constantly experiment with content, trying to find what works and what doesn’t.
Pragmatically, I know photos, blogs and stories create the most interaction on social media, but is interaction all we’re after?
Good Content Leads to Community
What if interaction on social media was not an end in itself, but a means to an end?
The premise behind my church’s social media philosophy is that good content leads to interaction, interaction leads to affinity and affinity leads to community.
But it all starts with good content.
There are many things we’ve tried that have failed over the last three years, but there have been a few diamonds in the rough as well.
1. Sermon Doodles
We have a growing arts ministry at our church and so we commission artists (and “regular” folks) from the congregation to doodle during the sermon and then send us a photo of their doodle.
We then share this on social media with the hashtag #CACSermonDoodles. This has been a great way to give permission to our visual learners to engage with the sermon in a different way.
It’s also a good mid-week reminder of the content we covered during Sunday’s sermon.
2. Faith and Work Blogs
We’ve created a short, Q&A template that we email to folks in our congregation who we feel like are integrating their work and faith well.
We then take their responses and post them to our church blog. It’s been nourishing to read how each of these people incorporate their faith into their vocation.
Additionally, it has been affirming to these individuals that we would care about their work and share it with the broader congregation.
3. The Gratitude Project
We did The Gratitude Project in the 30 days leading up to Thanksgiving. We wanted to create something to highlight people in our congregation and what they were thankful for.
We intentionally asked them a question that would unearth a deeper response than what people usually say they are thankful for. Each day highlighted a different person and their story of thankfulness.
Without a doubt, this has been the most successful thing we have done on social media: #CACTGP
Creating Community
All three of these efforts seem random but there is a common thread: they bring the church together.
The church is not an event or a building but a people. And these simple content ideas serve in some small way to bring individual members of our church into a sense of being one, interconnected body.
If you’re struggling to find good content to post, ask yourself this question: what could we post that would give people a sense of connectivity and affinity?
And if you can’t think of anything, feel free to steal our ideas. I won’t mind.
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