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

Welcome to Entice Advertising & Design, LLC – our rants, raves, gripes and quips…and maybe even some useful info every now and then. My first thought when beginning this blog was to research what makes a great blog. Our goal was to provide our readers/clients/friends with useful information about designing website and collateral material for their business or organization. But my first dip of the toe in the vast ocean of research found some chilly, uninspiring waters – the true motives behind blogging. Now, I’m not saying every blog is a bad thing – there are some great folks out there offering up some really good information and interesting ideas. I’m just saying don’t believe everything you read.

Being of warm-hearted nature myself I was shocked to learn that most (ok – a lot of them) are being PAID to ramble on, in the most outrageous ways, to draw people to a particular site for….wait for it….selling advertising! Yes guys and girls – blogging, in most cases is being used to sell advertising. The folks doing it are getting paid, the advertisers are paying for the ads and YOU are paying with your valuable time (that you can’t get back by the way) all in the name of the glorious dollar. Social media has become another money-making machine in the guise of what?…free speech? Well, we will accept NO ads, we will ask for nothing, we’ll offer no sales pitches here…we simply want to offer you quality content, reliable tips and tools for visual communication! We’ll answer questions for free and help if we can. If we happen to be humorous every now and again…that’s a bonus!