In July of 2009, the leadership of Leadership Network were gathered for their quarterly planning meetings in Dallas. At some point in the brainstorming someone said, “What if we did an all online conference?” The idea sparked some energy and after a couple of hours the idea of The Nines was birthed. The concept included inviting a list of 40 high profile leaders in the church to submit a 9 minute video communicating what they felt was “the most important message needed by the church.” We dreamed that half of the 40 would say yes and that perhaps we could attract as many as 1000 viewers.
Just 3 years earlier, one of the early social media pioneers, Twitter, had launched. It was a fledgling organization, with little attention and application in the business world and even less in the church. But as was the nature of the team at Leadership Network in those years, we decided to add a quantum leap marketing idea to our innovation experiment of an all online conference.
The result? Marketed almost exclusively by Twitter, the first Nines Conference (9/09/2009) drew over 20,000 unique viewers. Perhaps even more impressive than the attendance was the fact that 75% plus watched what ended up being almost 12 hours of content (all the speakers said yes and this created a wave of leaders asking to be included) at least three hours.
Thanks for obliging me a memory of a huge win for our team, but you’re probably what’s in it for me? Good question.
Social media has incredible power. And this power can be for good … or not … as we have seen in recent days of buyouts, political divisiveness, sensorship and the like. So should the church abandon it’s use?
I recently hosted Mark Glesne, digital marketing specialist from Harper Collins Christian Publishing, as a resource for one of my Leadwell Cohorts. The invitation came at the request of the senior pastors in the group as they, and their teams, were struggling to find a good way to effectively employ social media as a part of their outreach strategy.
Mark began his presentation by saying, “Social media is not primarily a content distribution strategy but rather, first and foremost is about people. And at it’s core, it’s about storytelling.”
With this in mind, I think that there is still great potential to use the innovations of social media to meet people with the story of Christ.
Mark shared the following building blocks for building an effective social media strategy.
Planning should begin by a review of your history. What platforms are you using? What has been effective? What has not?
Identify audiences and their needs. Are you trying to attract new people who have never heard of your church? Or perhaps, you are attempting to get those who already “know you” as indicated by their follows, likes and reposts to move from online to into the building? What are the felt needs of each audience?
Develop strategy for each goal informed by your audiences and their needs.
Do as many as you can do well.
Calendar. Perhaps the greatest key to success is the intentionality that comes from a well planned and executed social media calendar.
Two more after a brief ad
Do you remember where you were on April 3, 2003? I was with Warren Bird and a group of multisite teams in Chicago at Community Christian Church. It was the inaugural gathering of the Multisite Churches Leadership Community. I had gathered 12 teams from churches that are now recognized as the pioneers of the multisite movement. Since that time, the movement has continued to grow. In fact what we dreamed about when we named our book, The Multisite Church Revolution, has become a reality, several times over. In the intervening years, Warren has continued to spearhead research for the movement.
The most recent project, “The New Faces of Church Planting and Multisiting” was launched early this year. Warren has completed a number of reports that highlight the latest learnings related to both multisite and church planting. I’d like to personally invite you to an opportunity to be one of the first to see the latest reports during our next LeadWell Accelerator: Multiplicationby the Numbers on November 17 from 10:00 until 11:00 am CST. Warren will be sharing the latest data and insights on multiplication topics including launch costs, funding sources, self-sustaining timelines and more.
You can go here to learn more details and to register for this FREE experience. Also receive a free download of the executive summary at registration.
Experiment with the creative elements used.
Measure, measure, measure. There is nothing more crazy-making to you or your team, when you invest time and resources into something and you are not sure why difference it makes. Based on the goals you establish determine what you will measure and then analyze the results. Be freed to abandon what’s not working and add resource fuel to the fires of what is.
Of course, social media is not limited to Twitter. Platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and more reach different audiences with different styles and engagement.
One of the newest applications that I am aware of is one launched just a couple of weeks ago, by Chad Moore, lead pastor at Sun Valley Community Church in the greater Phoenix area. Chad’s special project is a YouTube show called “Cigar Preacher.” The show is a series of conversations that Chad has with people about what it really means to share the Gospel with the culture around us, and a discussion about what matters most. And as you can see here, this show is just a part of their ministry to a variety of well defined audiences that are a part of the Sund Valley family and beyond.
What innovations in social media are you seeing? I’d love to hear from you and share your thoughts in future editions of Church Insider and Leadwell Next. Shoot me an email at greg@ligongroup.com.