If you are here on Church Marketing Sucks, you are in the right mindset for this upcoming book by Meredith Gould, The Social Media Gospel: Sharing the Good News in New Ways. The book has something for you, whether you are just starting out and wondering if your church should be on Facebook and Twitter, or if you have been doing this social media thing for a while and want to better your team’s approach.
The book is well laid out with super short chapters; two to three pages are nice and easy to cruise through, and also helps break up concepts while connecting specific details. I think if you have been using social media for a while, you can probably bounce around a little more than a newbie and focus on what’s most relevant to you.
As Meredith states well in the book, social media is a tool that must be selected and used with “purposeful forethought.” She does a great job presenting this case early on in the book. You need to know who you are as an organization and what your goals. This book helps you get there with helpful insight, questions and examples.
“‘We need to use social media because everyone else uses it’ is not a strategy. Social media in and of itself is not a strategy. Social media is a tool that must be used with purposeful forethought.”
The Social Media Gospel is a light and easy read for anyone on a small church communications team. Even you larger churches can get some great ideas from her insights on policies, procedures and metrics.
As David Hansen writes in the foreword, “Be brave, be bold. In many ways, the church is blazing new paths with social media. Now is the time to do a new thing, to proclaim God’s word in new and exciting ways.”
More:
- Read our interview with Meredith Gould about The Social Media Gospel: Sharing the Good News in New Ways.
- Buy a copy of The Social Media Gospel: Sharing the Good News in New Ways.
- Read our review of Meredith Gould’s The Word Made Fresh: Communicating Church and Faith Today.
- Read our getting started interview with Meredith Gould.
- Learn more about the #chsocm chats on Twitter.
Meredith Gould
July 17, 2013
Hey Matt! Thanks for your review. I absolutely wanted to write a light and easy read about a topic that often gets bogged down, either it murky theology or soon-obsolete tech details. And I wanted to write something that would be useful for those starting out as well as those who have been using these tools for a while. So grateful that highlight this in your review.
Chris
July 24, 2013
Great idea for a book. It’s pretty incredible how drastic the marketing strategies have changed in the last 10 years. Our church is a pretty avid user of social media and the impact it can have on the youth has been pretty remarkable. Tweet or Instagram a picture of a small group at a skatepark, the kids just start flocking to you! Definitely interested in checking out this book!