So how did your church do this year? No, I’m not talking about attendance or giving, I’m talking about your church’s social media. Wait, you do know how your church did, right? If not, don’t worry it’s not too late to conduct a social media year-end review.
In the next few weeks, our church’s social media team will sit down to determine how we did on social media this past year. It will be a fun challenge to revisit some of our best and worst moments and figure out how we can serve better in the next year. I love this kind of stuff.
Conducting your own social media year-end review is not that hard. You just need to gather the right information and ask the right questions. Curious how to conduct one? Well, if you want to begin to truly understand last year and begin planning for the New Year, I’ve laid out what the key ingredients are of a social media year-end review.
Determine Your Key Performance Indicators
An essential element to any social media strategy is understanding your Key Performance Indicators. Key Performance Indicators, or KPI’s, are the numbers with what we measure to determine the success of our social media strategy. When you know what your KPI’s are, then determining how you did last year is easier to do. Think of KPI’s as mile markers on the highway. They let you know where you going and how close you are to your destination.
KPI’s in social media can be anything from likes, retweets, comments or clicks. Of course, what they are is dependent onto which social media account you’re referring. For every one of your social media accounts, there needs to be some sort of KPI attached to them.
Once you determine what your KPI’s are, then you need to use various tools to pull the numbers together. Some social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook have analytics built in. It’s just a matter of logging in and downloading the information. If you want to use a third-party service, you can use a service like ThinkUp which gives you some unique insights into how your Twitter and Facebook account preformed.
One benefit of a KPI’s is that it helps you eliminate the fluff when thinking through our social media. When I say fluff, I’m referring to the emotional attachment that you have with your social media networks. For example, I love Twitter so I have a tendency to focus on my church on the on that social media account. However, when I look at our KPI’s, then I realize that my time is actually better spent on Facebook and Instagram. You see, I became emotional about Twitter and KPI’s help me cut through the emotion and stick to what was really working for our church.
Determine Who Sets the Standards
Another way to determine if your year was success, is to compare yourself to another church similar yours. Now wait a minute, don’t I normally tell you not to compare yourself to other churches? You’re right I normally do. However, when I say not to compare yourself to other churches I’m referring to comparing your church to one that is no way like your church.
In this case, I think it’s more than okay to compare yourself against another church. The difference is that you need to find the right church or churches against which to compare yourself. Find churches that are similar to yours in terms of culture, beliefs, size, and demographics. While you’ll probably never find an exact match, you can more than likely find a few against that you can compare yourself.
When you find these churches, take a moment, and analyze their social media presence. What are they doing well? What can you replicate? Should you reach out and have conference call or maybe coffee with someone from their church to learn from them? (Note: You’ll be surprised how many churches are willing to open up about how they do things, just ask, and see what happens).
Determine Key Moments in Your Social Media
Now that you have your KPI’s, take a moment and determine what your bright spots were from this last year. What moments stand out? What moments or content didn’t meet your expectations and why? When you look at the moments that were a success, can you replicate them again next year? Are there key tactics that you can apply to their moments?
Determine Your Expectations and Reflect
What were your expectations for last year? Did you meet them? You may not have had clear expectations for this last year, but you probably had some expectations as to how the year would go. Maybe you hope that your church’s Pinterest account would take off, or maybe this year you want to increase the number of Facebook likes. Take a moment and reflect on last year.
Determine What to Let Go
Take a moment, look at your KPI’s, and determine what’s not working. This may be hard to do, given your attachment to certain social media networks, but this is a time to be honest about what didn’t work.
Once you determine what didn’t work for you, it’s time to ask the hard question about whether or not you should let go. Should you let go any social media tactics that didn’t work? An even tougher choice, should you retire an entire social media account?
Determine What to Ramp Up
Once you’ve determined what to let go, you’ve hopefully created some capacity to increase what’s working for your church. Maybe this means spending more time on a certain social media accounts, or increasing a tactic that worked.
One way I evaluate what to ramp up is the 80/20 rule. This 80/20 rule says that 80% of your success comes from 20% of your effort. While the numbers aren’t always 80 and 20, you will find that there are certain things that you will do that will give you the greatest return. Identify those things and ramp them up.
Sounds like a lot to do, doesn’t it? Yes, it can be a bit overwhelming but it’s well worth your time. Reviewing and planning your social media can have a great impact in your success next year. Take the time, follow the steps above, and get ready to have a great year.
Have you reviewed your church’s social media this year? What did you find? Click here to share below.