Social Media: Engagement > Quality

Earlier this week I wrote a post about social media scheduling (you can check it out HERE) that lots of people interacted with. So it seems that social media for many is a never full beast that we are responsible for constantly feeding it like I do. If you are not on it, you fall behind really easily.

So now you have a schedule, that is half the battle, now what do you post? What types of things should you be putting up there? I think the rule should be…

Engagement > Quality

I think people get freaked out because their stuff is not the prettiest, or they have no design background so they don’t post things. 1) There are plenty of apps to make things look better – Over, Unfold, WordSwag, etc and 2) you are posting for your students, not others. Granted, it does help when you step up the look. I encourage it, but going for engagement should be the #1 focus.

But what types of things do you make to get the best engagement with your students? What does engagement mean? I would say any interaction with your youth and their friends.

Here are a couple of thoughts that might be helpful in the types of things you should create to engage your students on social media:

Creating content that they can share with friends. When you see a funny meme or a funny video, what is the first thing you do? the first thing I do is send it to my wife because I want her to laugh with me. It is the same for our students. Think through funny or challenging things to engage with.
- I don’t think we are the best, but we are being intentional, check out our ministry page HERE)
Ministry is a service = Giving people what they need. Everything we do is to give students the truth of Jesus in hopes that Jesus grabs their hearts like he did ours. The church is a service-based organization like it should be.
Making content is a product = Giving people what they want. When we think through social media content, giving people what they need comes behind making things they want. This is how you engage them where they are at. So this is the meme, funny video, find out what is trending and make things that are already popular that drive students and friends to your content.
Sooooooooooo……We need to give students what they WANT to see/hear so we can sneak in things they NEED to see/hear. This is where you can make sermon clips, message reminders, powerful testimonies, etc.
If you drive them to engage with the things they want to see/hear they might stick around and look at all the things they NEED to see/hear and they will engage with that as well. (We have begun doing this on our own youtube channel HERE).

We for sure are still working through this idea but we have seen some good engagement through it and it’s growing. The shares are getting higher, which the things they NEED are being seen and heard.