The Church and Social Media Part One

While we have had the church bulletin, newsletter and occasional mailings since the founding of St. Mark Presbyterian, the Communications Committee has been working on other ways to communicate with our members and the world community about God’s message and St. Mark’s missions.

There are many ways to communicate:  by phone, traditional mail, e-mail, blog, Facebook, Twitter, The Patch and other internet bulletin boards, newspaper, bulletin, bulletin boards, posters, yellow pages, face to face, annual reports, the website, fliers/brochures, billboards, message board in front, door-to-door, street signage and even our van when it is transporting people. . . 

All of these methods are important and we have used all of them (with the exception of billboards).  To use only one to publicize our church or an event would be extremely limiting. But, to use all of them for each event would be over-doing it.  When determining how to best promote a program or event, it’s helpful to consider:

Who do we want to reach? (Audience)

How much do we want to invest in publicizing the event?

How much bang do we get for our buck from various forms of advertising?

Why do we want to publicize it?  What is the purpose?

How timely is this method of communicating?

How widely do we want to promote this event?

Most of our traditional forms of communicating have some limitations to consider:

Newsletter

Audience:  Only to those who are on our mailing list

Cost: printing costs, mailing costs for those mailed, secretarial time to assemble

Benefit:  Can use names and phone numbers because the audience is limited

Timeliness:  Monthly, cannot be revised after sent out

Purpose:  To announce events, report events that have already happened

Bulletin

Audience:  Only those who attend worship

Cost: printing costs, secretarial time to assemble

Benefit:  Can use names and phone numbers because the audience is very limited

Timeliness:  Weekly, cannot be revised after sent out

Purpose:  (Aside from Order of Worship) To announce events

Website

Audience:  Only those who visit our website regularly

Cost:  Our host Elexio is paid a fee yearly

Benefit:  Reaches out to the world

Timeliness:  Can be changed and referred to at any time

Though all of these traditional forms of church communication have strengths and weaknesses, the limiting factor in all of these methods of communication is that they don’t promote interaction among members—they are primarily a one-way method of communication, i.e., we are talking “at” our members, rather than with them. The growth of social media, however, has opened up several new lines of communication.

Social media is a type of online media that expedites conversation as opposed to traditional media, which delivers content but doesn't allow readers/viewers/listeners to participate in the creation or development of the content.