Have you ever heard of swipe file? It’s a place where you keep ideas that you love that other people have pulled off. The concept being at some point when you need an idea, you go to your “swipe file” and see if there’s an idea that you can replicate.
I’ve got a swipe file in Evernote. Every time I see an idea love, I clip that idea to Evernote and tag it. Then when I need to come with an idea to promote something on social media, or create new content for the church or myself, I search my swipe file.
If you don’t a swipe file, then you need to start one today.
Don’t know where to start? That’s okay, I’ve got you covered. Below are twenty-five ideas for your church’s social media that you can swipe right now. Copy them somewhere, like Evernote or a word document, and use them whenever you need an idea. Here you go:
- Share a Bible study tool: Show your church congregation free tools like Bible.com or Biblestudytools.com.
- Share an outside resource: Share a resource like book or website to enhance a subject your church is currently studying.
- Share how your worship service is put together: Have your worship leader and pastor talk about how they construct a worship service.
- Fill in the blank posts: Have some fun with your audience and them fill in a post like “The worst Christmas present I haver got was _______.”
- Share older content: Don’t let great content go forgotten. Find some of your best performing content and bring it back out and repost it.
- Share behind the scenes photos: Staff meetings may be boring to you, but it might not be to your audience. Church members love to see their staff in action.
- Share data with your church: Talk about the number of baptisms, salvations and other decisions happening in your church. This could be a good time to create an infographic.
- Talk about a hot topic: Look and see what’s trending on Twitter and see if there’s a topic that your church can speak to.
- Go beyond Throw-back Thursday: You can take your congregation back to the old days whenever you want. Old school photos of kids in Sunday school are always a winner.
- Share who’s behind the social media: If you’re the one running your church’s social media, talk about who you are. Let them know a real person is running the social media for your church.
- Share where your staff is on social media: If you have staff on Twitter, let your audience know. Post a list of staff that are on Twitter.
- Let church members write captions: Post a photo and then ask church members to write a caption under the photos.
- Let your church members as questions on Facebook: You might be surprised with what they ask. Don’t assume your church members are always in the know.
- Have your pastor tease the next sermon: An easy way to do this is to post a video on Facebook or Instagram. You can also post a video on Periscope and doing a live question and answer.
- Write a Frequently Asked Questions post: I’ve got a list right here for you to start with.
- Do a group wide challenge: 90 Day Read Through the Bible?
- Use social proof: Encourage others to share your church’s best content by showing them that’s already popular. They’ll be more likely to share it if others have done the same.
- Give calls to action: It’s okay to ask for likes and retweets.
- Take an online poll: Use a tool like Survey Monkey to ask your congregation what they they think about a subject.
- Ask for photos: Get your church members to submit photos for Throwback Thursday.
- Give shout outs to volunteers: Give them some love on Instagram.
- Feature your church staff: Give your staff five questions to answer and then post that as a blog post.
- Embed a spotify playlist: Embed a playlist from spottily of the music from last weeks worship service and share it on Facebook or Twitter.
- Give a virtual tour: Show a tour of the backstage of the worship center or video studio using Periscope.
- Hold a contest: Can think of what to name your next sermon series? Hold a contest.