The biggest challenge for any school or church engaging in social media strategies is the seemingly overwhelming task of getting started. Like anything else that seems difficult to do, the best idea is just to DO IT! Ten to twenty years ago schools and churches never even considered having a website. Today, if they don’t have a website they are way behind the curve. Managing to jump that hurdle for most schools and churches was a major accomplishment and now we are saying that they need to do even more? Yes!

Many administrators and pastors grew up in a time where it was enough to have a great reputation and put out some banners every now and then and the people would come. Maybe they even went so far as to have their parents or congregation invite, in person, visitors to come and see what it’s all about. Today…that’s not good enough.

Social Media has inserted itself into our daily lives in such a way that it has become a career all it’s own. Companies now hire social media experts with as much care as they hire their IT people. Would any major company out there now find themselves without a Facebook Fan page or a Twitter account? Let me tell you about my week. Our Comcast package includes our office phone service. Last week we realized that it was out. Every time someone called they were told our number had been disconnected! Of course I was beside myself! I tried all the customer service folks, the supervisors, etc. Seven days later it is still out and I am looking at the traffic coming to our website and wondering how many calls we have missed! I posted on Twitter a small ”sample” of my frustration at Comcast…lo and behold my tweet immediately caught the attention of “Comcast Bill.”

Comcast Bill is in Philadelphia…I am in Memphis, but he reached out from a tweet with a Comcast hashtag (#Comcast) and said he could help. He then had “Comcast Will” contact me and he immediately found the problem and it will be resolved today! Hooray! And all because I posted on Twitter and they were watching.

All that is to say…people are watching; your parents and congregation are watching. Would you ever, in a million years, decline an opportunity to reach out and engage potential new members? The message here is…DO IT.

Here are some tips for social media strategy to help you get started and jump that hurdle!

Social Media Strategy For Schools and Churches

1. Set YOUR specific objectives.
2. Create a your strategy and merge seamlessly with other communication strategies.
3. Establish listening and monitoring strategy.
4. Develop methods for your responses and how to engage
5. Measure your effectiveness and captures
6. Create a Social Media Policy for your organization

I once heard of a tale about a man with two wives, one young and one old. The young wife, not wanting to be seen with an old man, picked gray hairs off of his head everyday to keep him looking younger. The “older” wife (she must’ve been a cougar) did not like being mistaken for his daughter. Each night she would pluck out the dark hairs from his head, leaving only the gray. Before long the man that could not choose between two wives found himself quite bald and unattractive to either of them!

The moral:

Don’t try to be everything to everyone; know your market and your audience and you’ll be the apple of their eye. Try to be all things to all people and you’ll find yourself lonely and bald!

To that end – we redesigned out website, EnticeAdvertising.com, redefined what we want to focus on and we’re not going to go bald! We’re pretty proud of our new look and hope that you visit us often to see our most recent projects and keep up with what’s going on!

You can also keep up with us on our Facebook Fan page, Twitter, LinkedIn and on SmallBizMemphis.com. Check us out! We hope to keep our blog quite interesting and lively. Please feel free to read our blog, subscribe to the RSS feed and share it with your friends!