Digital Evangelism: Creating Community With Social Media  🔗 **Source:** [Digital Evangelism: Creating Community With Social Media](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbrkU0It8cM) > [!note]+ Document Notes > --- > tags: [digital-evangelism, online-community, social-media-strategy, church-communications, community-building, accessibility] > author: Brooke Canada > source: United Church of Christ > reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbrkU0It8cM > date created: {{date:YYYY-MM-DD}} {{time:HH:mm}} > --- > # 🏷️ Title: Digital Evangelism: Creating Community with Social Media > ## 🧭 Table of Contents > - [📝 Summary](#-summary) > - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) > - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) > - [📚 References](#-references) > - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) > - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) > - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) > - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) > - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) > - [❓ Questions](#-questions) > - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) > - [💡 Implications](#-implications) > - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) > - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) > - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) > - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) > - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) > - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) > ### 🔗 References > - [United Church of Christ](https://www.ucc.org) > - [Pew Research Center — Social Media Use in 2024](https://www.pewresearch.org) > - [Sprout Social](https://sproutsocial.com) > - [Meta Business Suite Planner](https://business.facebook.com) > - [Canva](https://www.canva.com) > ## 📝 Summary > - What happened: Brooke Canada, the UCC's social media specialist, runs a pre-recorded webinar teaching churches how to build online community and practice "digital evangelism" through social media, then takes live Q&A. > - Why it matters: Smaller churches with one-person (often the pastor's) social teams need a low-burnout, community-first playbook that meets people where they already are instead of chasing virality. > - Key stakeholders: Local UCC churches, pastors and lay communications volunteers, the UCC national marketing team, and the wider public the churches want to welcome. > - Risks and tradeoffs: Copyright exposure, accessibility gaps, account-security single points of failure, and staff burnout if you try to be everywhere at once. > - Bottom line: Pick one or two platforms where your people are, post consistently in a "we" community voice, make content accessible, and engage with others — community beats follower counts. > ## 📖 Main Content > - The opening case study reframes the whole talk: Canada's bilateral club-foot Facebook community (2010) grew from a local idea to 5,000+ parents and ultimately pressured the medical field toward a standard of care (the Ponseti method). Her thesis is that digital spaces can produce real movements, the same as physical ones. > - Platform choice is a capacity decision, not a trend decision. "Go where the people are" — Pew data shows YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram lead across all age ranges. The common belief that reaching young people requires TikTok is challenged; pick one or two platforms and grow from there. > - Content strategy: roughly 70% original / 30% curated, but "don't be a museum." Video is the gold standard; short vertical phone clips edited in Canva, church tours, staff intros, quote graphics from sermons, website links, and the underused Facebook events tool all count. > - Voice and identity: speak as the church ("we baptized Johnny," not "I baptized Johnny"), avoid insider jargon, use storytelling, and keep a consistent brand (one or two colors, a consistent font). > - Accessibility is framed as hospitality: alt text, readable captions placed clear of engagement overlays, spelled-out words instead of symbols/acronyms, one-click destinations, and listening to feedback from people who rely on assistive tech. > - Copyright: "when in doubt, don't share it." Credit artists, license music, share directly rather than re-uploading. > - Algorithms: your inactions matter as much as your actions; the Pride-content complaint example shows engagement trains the feed. The cited trend is a shift "from high volume algorithm-driven content production to intentional engagement." > - Management: brain-dump ideas, batch-create in Canva, schedule in the free Meta Planner, reserve weekly time purely for engagement, and recruit volunteers as admins. > - Community growth: post 3–5x/week, post at busy scroll times, use collaboration tools and tagging, and connect with other creators. A mended-Pride-flag post gained a church 130 followers in 24 hours. > - Contested/uncertain: she's explicit she's "not an expert in social media algorithms," and several Q&A answers (monetization, ad spam, music licensing) are flagged as outside her expertise or referred elsewhere. > ### 🗒️ Notes > #### ⏱️ [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbrkU0It8cM?t=0) Welcome and speaker intro > - Brooke Canada, UCC social media specialist, remote in Massachusetts; masters in digital marketing and data analytics; 15+ years using social media for churches, nonprofits, and advocacy. > - Chat icebreaker: name, church, location, favorite platform, favorite summer sweet treat. Pre-recorded, so she joins live in the chat. > #### ⏱️ [00:03:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbrkU0It8cM?t=180) The club-foot community origin story > - 2010 ultrasound diagnosis; no information, no standardized treatment, no one to talk to. > - She built a Facebook profile (pre-groups/pages), shared it with hospital staff, and it grew nationally and globally to 5,000+ friends. > - Active moms built nonprofits, safe-doctor lists, Angel Flight info, equipment exchanges, even children's books; collective pressure helped establish the Ponseti standard of care. > - Takeaway: "there's a collective strength in communities and we can make movements" in digital spaces. > #### ⏱️ [00:08:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbrkU0It8cM?t=480) Choosing platforms > - Decide by: where the people are, content features you can sustain, and your own capacity. > - "You can't be everything to everyone everywhere all the time." Pick one or two. > - Pew (sample ~5,000): YouTube, Facebook, Instagram top across all ages; TikTok/Snapchat close among younger users. UCC focuses on Facebook + Instagram for highest engagement. > #### ⏱️ [00:14:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbrkU0It8cM?t=840) Content creation vs curation > - ~70% original / 30% curated; curated content must still align with mission, vision, values. > - Think from the audience's perspective, not the congregation's — this is outward-facing. > - Video first: church tours, member profiles, meet-the-staff, ministry clips, GIFs, sermon quote graphics, website links, community-partner shares, Facebook events. > - Brook's best practice: photo carousels and reels beat static photos on Instagram. > #### ⏱️ [00:22:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbrkU0It8cM?t=1320) Voice, identity, and brand > - Use a community "we" voice even when one person posts. Baptism example: "today we baptized Johnny." > - Speak as if to a first-time visitor; avoid insider acronyms; tell stories. > - Brand = consistent look: one or two colors and a consistent font; Westfield UCC in Killingly, CT cited as doing this well. > #### ⏱️ [00:30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbrkU0It8cM?t=1800) Accessibility as welcome > - Alt text, readable captions (watch overlay placement), words over symbols, spelled-out acronyms, one-click destinations. > - "Listen to feedback from people who rely on these tools" — the most usable feedback comes from actual users. > - UCC Disabilities Ministries flagged as a good follow. > #### ⏱️ [00:35:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbrkU0It8cM?t=2100) Copyright basics > - "When in doubt, don't share it." Credit artists, link to them, license music, share directly. > - Example: a church reused a photographer's image twice with no credit = two violations. > - Resource: Heather Kimmel's "Copyright Compliance Basics for Churches." > #### ⏱️ [00:40:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbrkU0It8cM?t=2400) Algorithms > - "I'm not an expert in social media algorithms." The platform owners set and change the formulas. > - Your inactions matter as much as your actions; engagement trains the feed (Pride complaint example). > - Sprout Social: a shift "from high volume algorithm-driven content production to intentional engagement." You don't need to go viral. > #### ⏱️ [00:48:00](https:/ Welcome everyone. We're going to get started in just a minute. We're just kind of letting everybody enter the room first and then we'll get it started. Thanks so much for joining us today. Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to digital evangelism creating community with social media. I'll start off our time by introducing myself and I hope you'll do the same in the chat and we have some prompts to get you started. Share your name, your church, your location, favorite social media channel, and favorite summer sweet treat. I'll start. I'm Brooke Canada, social media specialist for the United Church of Christ. I live and work remotely in Massachusetts despite our offices being in Cleveland. My favorite social media channel is Facebook. I am a lady of a certain age, so it's where I started. There's a little nostalgia there. It's where I created my first digital community, and I love the robust platform features for both work and for connection. Um, and my favorite summer sweet treat is strawberry shortcake. And while you're getting to know each other in the chat, I'll share a little more background information about me. I started in UCCC at in 2022 as a social media specialist part-time, but have been exclusively managing our social media full-time since April of 2024. I have my masters in digital marketing and data analytics. Yes, it's an official program. I have over 15 years of experience using social media as a marketing tool for local churches, nonprofits, and as building as a building as a community building tool where I was part of a movement to change standard medical treatment for congenital club foot. And I'll share more about that later. When I created this workshop, I did it acknowledging that there would be people here with a vast variety of tech experience. There may be topics that are too basic for you and there may be topics that are too advanced. But my hope is that everyone will be able to take away something new and we'll all feel energized to create community. In this vein, I want to leave plenty of time for questions and answers. So feel free to use the Q&A tool at any time. Please also feel free to use the chat for sharing resources, connecting with each other, etc. This is pre-recorded, so I'll join you in the chat as well. Let's get started. I'm going to start today by sharing a personal story about the power of social media communities. In 2010, I found out in an ultrasound that my daughter would be born with bilateral club foot. It's a congenital deformity where both feet are turned inward and upside down. It's a condition that affects one in a thousand babies and treatment is necessary for the child to learn to walk and to increase mobility and decrease chronic pain. But I couldn't find information about it. I knew nothing despite it being a fairly common condition. And even in my search for information, there seemed to be a wide variety of treatment methods from bone breaking and restructuring with serial surgeries to stretching casts, foot and leg braces, physical therapy, etc., etc., etc. There was no standardized treatment method, and I also couldn't find anyone to talk to about it, including other parents who had been through this before me. Finally, I found a local club foot community in Ireland, but nothing in my local area. I So, I decided to create my own Facebook community. I created a Facebook profile before groups and pages were a thing, and I shared it with the hospital staff so they would share with local families, thinking that it would just stay pretty local, and did not. It grew nationally and globally fast and furious until I had a profile with over 5,000 friends and we were all parents of kids with bilateral club foot sharing experiences and the knowledge we learned along our journey. Not long after, Facebook created groups and pages. So, myself and a few other active moms in our little group shifted to creating a group and I went back to work full-time and turned control over to them. And at that point they were already in the process of creating nonprofits um withformational packets. They went on to create safe doctor lists, doctors who use non-surgical treatments and methods. They shared Angelflight information so that people could travel to these doctors. They had resources for insurance advice and support for those who needed it. They had equipment exchanges because medical equipment is not cheap and it's not usually covered by insurance. They had recommendations for clothing and care during treatments and postsurgery. And some of them even went on to write children's books. Ultimately, our digital community and connection put pressure on the medical community to create a standard of care for this common condition and that was is called the Ponetti method. It's a non-surgical method created by Dr. Ponetti about four 40 years ago. And I share all of this with you to amplify the message that we all already understand and that is there's a collective strength in communities and we can make movements and these types of things can happen in digital spaces just as much and just as often as in-person spaces. So, how do we create community in the everchanging social media machine? This is the question, right? How the heck do we do this? In this workshop, we're going to talk about some ways to create community online and to expand our reach beyond our own congregations, UCCC membership, and kind of become digital evangelists, which is not a new term. And there are many people out there that are already doing this. Whether they call it evangelism or not and we'll touch on some of them as well. Key focus points for today. We are going to talk about social media platforms. We'll determine which platforms to focus on. And I'll give my recommendations and maybe even my unpopular opinion about them. Content. What kind of content should we post? And a note about copyrights and accessibility. Algorithms. How does that all work? Social media management and scheduling. How do we do all of this with limited time and staff? Summaries. The summary and tips for building connections in community. How do we connect with each other and invite people into our pages and spaces? Resources. I will send you all a PDF with live links to the resources that we mentioned throughout this workshop along with a few extras and anything we shared in the chat today. And then of course question and answers. we will get to um as many of your questions as we can. And what we can't get to, I promise I'll give you a way to reach out and we can continue the conversation offline. So, how do you know which platform to use? Determining platforms to focus on should depend on a few things. Where are the people? Go where the people are. The content the content features. If you can't make videos all the time, don't focus on Tik Tok. your own capacity. Don't burn yourself out trying to have a presence on every single platform. You can't be everything to everyone everywhere all the time. So, just pick one or two platforms to focus your energy on and then build from there as you gain more capacity or more comfort. So, where are the people? Many people say they want to attract young people to the church and their spaces and therefore they need to get on Tik Tok, but that's not exactly true. Tik Tok is definitely popular amongst the younger generations, but Facebook and Instagram remain the top two social media platforms with the exception of YouTube, but people often use YouTube a little bit differently these days. U Facebook and Instagram are where we at the UCCC national focus. We do do have a presence on some other platforms as well, but we see our highest engagement rate on those two platforms by far. These statistics and graphics come from Pew Research with a sample population of 5,000 people. And and they show us that YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram in 2024 were still the highest uh highest used platforms out of all of them. And it also shows us that it's true amongst all age ranges as well. So the young folks to the older folks, we're all using Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at the highest rate. Certainly younger people are using some other platforms more often than Facebook and Instagram. YouTube really, I think, is the only other one. Um, but Tik Tok and Snapchat get close as well. If you want to look more deeply into any of these statistics or others with larger samples and other statistics, I have included some of those in the resources as well. So, you've decided on your platform. What's next? Content. What are you going to put on that those platforms? I'm going to touch on content creation with some basic information and then also how to create content that's inviting and welcoming. So in this slide we show content creation versus content curation and there's a suggested ratio in the field of digit digital marketing for content sharing. Experts suggest approximately 70% original content versus 30% of user generation user generated content or curated content. But don't stress about that. Keep it simple if you need to. The reason for this ratio is to develop and show off your persona and create your voice. And we'll talk about that in in another slide. And have that be the focus of your page rather than a collection of other people's things. In other words, don't be a museum. So you want seven out of your out of every 10 posts to be your own original content and your own original voice and 30% to be user generated content or content that you share from other people. But you want to make sure that th that content still aligns with your mission, vision, and values. And so when you're creating content and posting content, think about it from your audience's perspective, not your congregation's perspective. This is your outward- facing space, like your website. So you want to create content that's meant for sharing. Video is considered the gold standard. Anytime you can create a video or short little clip, do it. If you're someone who can create clips quickly and easily, go for it. They don't have to be perfectly edited. You want to keep them short and simple. A vertical cell phone video that's edited in Canva on your phone is quick and easy. So, for example, some video content that you could use is taking people on a tour of your church. Share your member profiles with your favorite space or memory within that church. Meet the staff. tour the children's spaces, create clips of your ministry work, etc. Invite people into your church through these short video clips. This will make them feel more comfortable when they actually decide to come in person because they'll have a sense of who you are and what your space looks like. Have fun. Use GIFs. They're available when posting content directly from Facebook or create your own with a GIF generator. People love to laugh and they love engaging with funny content. Quote graphics. A dynamic quote from your pastor's Sunday sermon, if relatable, is very sharable. People love it. It's probably one of our best performing posts or quote posts. Link to a page on your website and highlight what your ministries are doing. Faith formation, any little free pantries, meal services, unhoused support, community partners, etc. Not only will website links boost traffic to your website, but it also again gives outsiders a sense of who you are. Share content from community partners you support. This shows you're invested in your community and strengthens your partnerships and your relationships. And now they're more likely to speak positively about your church and missions. And they're also more likely to share your content as well. Use the events tool on Facebook for all of your events. Anyone who engages with it as interested or going is going to receive a reminder notification. Additionally, your event will pop up for your community in a local event section under the events tab on Facebook. Your followers will get an alert when you post an event depending on their preferences. And you can also invite all of your followers to the event up to 500 invite invitees. Um, people may not be coming to church necessarily on Sunday mornings, but they are looking at their phones daily and they may catch that invitation in their notifications or catch your events. And I would argue that the Facebook event tool is underutilized. And here's Brook's best practice. Photo carousels and reels perform better on Instagram than static photos. And we can dive more deeply into optimal content customized for each channel, but that would be a workshop in and of itself. Let me know if you're interested in something like that and we may be able to make it happen. But that's just a little quick tip for now. As you're creating your content, think about your voice and your identity. They are important when building a digital community. When we're communicating in person, we have body language, tones of voice, facial expressions, etc. All of those things contribute to how we communicate in community spaces. We're limited in digital spaces, so we have to be more thoughtful about how we're putting our messages out into those spaces. Are they welcoming and inviting? So, here are some tips. Use a community voice versus a singular voice. Your you are the church speaking, not a person speaking. Your church community is a living, breathing community, and your social media voice should reflect that. use we even if there's only one person running the social media. If you're posting from the church page, you're representing the entire church and therefore the content should reflect the wider we and us of the church community. In addition, it paints the picture that this we and us is a community that's alive and thriving. Voice matters. For example, let's say you're a pastor who is also managing church social media. Realistic, right? I know a lot of you do that. So, here's an example about a baptism. Johnny was baptized. Today, I baptized Johnny. I feel blessed to be a part of this sacred ceremony and welcome him into the church community. Versus using the we voice, today we baptized Johnny. We feel blessed to be part of this sacred ceremony and welcome him into our church community. It gives a sense of an entire community welcoming this little baby in. And what a warm, wonderful feeling. You want to speak to people as if they're walking into your church for the very first time. What would you say to them? Translate that same message into your digital spaces and social posts. Avoid using insider language, acronyms, and abbreviations. It can be confusing and it's very intimidating for new people. Tell your stories as the church. Use storytelling methods. Frame your posts as stories and give background if needed or quotes or visuals to support your story so that it's clear to the public what's happening and it draws the reader into that moment. And this goes for your website too. Design your website for potential members, not current members. And if you need help with your website, here's a shameless plug. Check out our UCCC everywhere program. We have people who can help you boost your website and its um optimization. And then of course another Brook Brooks best practice to brand or not to brand. Ask yourself, is this really us? Does this post look like us? And does it define who we are? You can do some of this very simply by creating recognizable and consistent look. It'll help people identify you in their feed and may help you stand out to them. It doesn't have to be a super complicated or detailed project. It can be as simple as choosing one or two colors that you use all of the time and a font that you use all the time. Using the same colors and fonts makes your content look consistent and it makes you recognizable to the people in your community. There is a church in Westfield, Connecticut. Actually, I think they're in Killingly. I think the church is Westfield UC in Killingly, Connecticut. They do this really, really well. Um, and we've added a link to their Facebook page on our our resource page, so you can check them out. And we've also added the UCCC brand guidelines that can help offer some more detailed suggestions for creating a quote unquote brand or at least a consistent look for your content. Accessibility is important. Accessibility is welcoming and it's the key to being inviting. If someone can't navigate your website or get the information they want or need from your social media, they may search for a church that's living into that welcome. Admittedly, we've not always been the best at doing these things consistently. Um, but we are now adding reminders to our tasks task lists so we don't forget because it is really important. And this can be tricky on some platforms. Looking at you, Instagram, it was harder to get all text on to graphics for a long time, but it's much better now. Um, but most platforms offer tools to support accessibility. So, use them, find them, um, use alt text on all of your images, include captions on videos, and make sure that they're readable when they're posted. Social media platforms oftent times format their video so that engagement tools block some of the screen and so therefore will block the captions. So, make sure that you locate the captions on that screen in a way that they can be read. Ask me how I know. Um, the use words instead of symbols for screen readers. Instead of the amperand symbol for and, type out the word and. This will make it a lot more smooth for screen readers and and much easier for people who use them to understand what you're trying to say rather than having to process symbols that are are breaking that up. And also that same goes for acronyms. Spell out acronyms rather than put them in there. Create one click to your destination. If you're linking to something, try to link directly to that destination rather than having people try to search for it from a homepage or click through a bunch of links to get to the destination you're sharing. Listen to feedback from people who rely on these tools to get their information. And this is probably the most important tip because the people who use them are the people who are able to give you the most most usable feedback. Um, UCCC Disabilities Ministries has shared a resource for digital best practices. I couldn't find it in time for this webinar, but I'm going to try and search again um and reach out to them directly to see if I can add that to the resource list before we send it out to you. Um, they also have their own social media pages and they're great follow for tips and support around accessibility. So, follow them for sure. We would be remiss if we didn't touch on copyrights. I don't want to get into too many details around copyrightiting, but the main point is when in doubt, don't share it. Copyrightiting can be tricky on social media where the content is shared freely and widely, oftentimes losing its origin along the way. But it's still something we need to be thinking about, especially as churches and organizations. Um, in the case of this church in the article, they downloaded a photo they saw online and added it to their church website in two places with no credit to the artist. So, that resulted in two violations because this particular photographer sells their photos for that exact use. So, make sure to give credit where credit is due. Link to the artist's social media. Do your due diligence. Find the artist's website. Read their copyright disclosures and terms of use. pay for the the photos that you want to use so that it's legal and you have lensure. Uh most of the time if it's up on their social media as a public post, it can be shared but with proper credit and with the artist tag or shared directly from their post which is really best practice. Um don't download someone's graphic and then add your own language to that and upload it and and use it as your own content without first asking. Um, we notice this a lot around our own social media posts and at the UCCC it doesn't really bother us that much when in fact we want you to use our content. But I'll tell you why that's important too when we get into the algorithms next because you know some of that prevents visibility as well. But just be sure to ask first. Um, even when it's UCCC content so be sure to ask first. There's plenty of other content out there. It isn't worth the hefty fines a copyright infringement can cost. And this also applies to art on bulletin covers and printed materials and websites. If you're not sure of the origin, you can do a reverse image search to see if you can find it. And that will kind of give you give you some insight, but if not, don't post it. Just don't. And Brook's best practice. Uh UCCC's general counsel, Heather Kimmel, has created a great resource called Copyright Compliance Basics for Churches. You can either access that by scanning the QR code or you can check it out later on it'll be on our resource page also. But it's an excellent resource for copyright tips and um you know staying legal. All about the algorithms. This is the big question that most people have. How do we navigate algorithms? I'm not an expert in social media algorithms. Some folks seem to have cracked the code, but ultimately the platform owners are the people creating the formulas and changing and adjusting them, and they keep us creators on our toes all the time. We've heard about some of these changes with shadow bands, which is when a platform hides some of your content based on what's in it, and you become less visible to your community. They also can prioritize certain keywords and content. Um, now we're seeing paid authentication that boosts visibility and so the algorithm boost is within certain things like the blue check mark on Instagram. Um, the best thing to remember about the algorithm is that it's there to customize your online experience to suit your preferences based on what you have told it to do or not told it to do. So your inactions are just as important as your actions. For example, every June we share Pride content. Every June we do. And every June without fail, we get contents. We get, excuse me, we get comments such as, "Why do I keep seeing this Pride stuff on my feed? Remove this from my feed." We're not putting it on anybody's feed. They're seeing this content because they have interacted with it in some way. So by commenting on our post, by interacting with our content, they have told the algorithms that they want to see more Pride content. That's kind of how it works. And that's a very very basic. And this goes for us churches and pages as well. We can curate our own feed by interacting or not interacting with content. You don't need to go viral to create a strong digital community. There's an increasing trend in people looking for more meaningful ways to engage online. And this Sprout social quote that I put at the top of this um slide, social media is shifting from high volume algorithm-driven content production to intentional engagement. And I think that's a really nice trend that churches are kind of set up to um follow through with naturally. It's kind of something we do already. And so that link will be in the resource page. And I also want to share a couple other things. UCCC Media Justice has relaunched their no peace online campaign which is centered around more intentional excuse me intentional, honest and inclusive digital use and engagement. So that link is in the resources. And we've also partnered with Kindland in Cleveland who has recently launched the US of Kindness campaign. and that encourages folks to participate in 250 acts of kindness to celebrate the US's 250th year. The goal is to spread more kindness in digital spaces and in-person spaces. And again, that information is first of all all over our socials, but also on our resource page. So this an algorithm is kind of where the evangel evangelism part of the webinar comes into play. If evangelism brings to mind religious groups knocking on doors in your neighborhood or handing out pamphlets, then transfer some of that same mindset to your digital spaces. Quote unquote knock on their doors. Offer comments in groups where people are asking about local churches. Be active in your town groups and encourage your congregation to do the same. To spread the word and the work. We can't create community by all standing in the same space and just looking at each other, right? We need to interact. So, here are some tips. Post consistently. Three to five times per week is a great goal to start with. You can dive more deeply into the nitty-gritty details about optimal platform specifics, but overall three to five times per week should keep your page visible to your community. Less than that and your profile may be deemed inactive and therefore will be less visible. And we already said algorithms on most platforms are largely based on your actions and you have some control over that by choosing to engage with certain content. So choose your engagement wisely. Engage with the people you would like to to engage with you. Follow people you would like to have follow you. For example, UCCC follows local churches. We like we like their posts. Sometimes we share them. When we do that, we become more visible on your feed and you become more visible on our feed. Additionally, if you interact with our posts, we become more visible on your feed and you become more visible on our feed. So, it's a really nice way to share visibility and share our messages. At the UCCC, we're always looking for ways to bridge the gap between national and local churches, and this is one great way to do it through social media. And it strengthens all of us to connect with each other and share our messages, strengthen numbers. And I just want to share a quick example. Um, we shared a post about a pride flag that had been torn down by vandals for at a local church and this was a couple years ago. The church chose to visibly mend the flag rather than replace it. It was a metaphor for being resilient. It was beautiful. We shared that post and it gained traction on both our page and their page. And within 24 hours, that church had gained 130 new followers. Many were other UCCC churches who left messages of love and support. It was beautiful. Another tip is to post during busier scroll times. 6:00 a.m., 12:00 noon, and 6:00 p.m. to 10 p.m. seem to be kind of the heavier times during the day when people are on their phones and they're not working, they're on a lunch break. But you can find your own sweet spot using the tools in the Meta Business suite. Um, there are in the planner tool, which we'll get to a little bit later, there are recommended times where Meta has has determined that you have the most traffic on your page. So, use that tool. It's pretty cool. Share posts from people and pages directly. Don't remake an original post, especially if that post is already doing well and is visible. For one, copyrights, we just talked about it. And also it just loses its momentum and visibility and you break the connection between you and the person that you're sharing from. So share directly and social proof. People see the number of likes and subconsciously choose whether or not to engage with the post. I.e. If the exact same post is posted and one has two likes and one has 200 likes, the one with 200 likes will continue to pull engagement where the one with two will fizzle out faster. And if you want to dive more deeply into algorithms and their effects, The Hype Machine is a great book. Uh maybe a little out ofd now, but it discusses the impact of the algorithms and and they're still very similar today. Um, I also included an article on the resource list that dives more deeply into the algorithm breakdown of each platform so that you can kind of go platform by platform and use the algorithms in a customized way if you're interested. Scheduling and management. This is the hard part, right? Use a portion of your social media time to brain dump ideas for content. Literally grab a piece of paper, open a word doc, and just jot down all of your ideas. Doing this in a in a one sitting is super helpful, especially if you have a group of people with you, volunteers, or any other idea folks where you can just all do this together and create a ton of ideas. And then take those same ideas and schedule those into a calendar. I'm a pen and paper gal, so I like to use the UCCC desk calendar to schedule out my ideas. And again, shameless plug, this year's desk calendar from Uccc is more interactive and robust than other years. It has great social media tips built in this year and some content ideas. So, you can pre-order that now. I think it's going to go out in the next two to three weeks. Um, and it's on our UCCC resources website. And also I will link that I will link it directly on our resource list. Use Canva or another content creating program to create graphics and edit videos for your post and do it in a batch. Like do a bunch at a time using pre-made content. Schedule them into your Meta Planner or another social media management calendar. So, you're going to batch create your content, save it, and then start to plan it out in a digital uh planner or calendar. And meta the meta planner is a great tool for that. It's free. And we'll I'll show you I'll show you a little bit about that in one of our upcoming slides. And then just spend some time each week interacting with your community. So, make some time for engagement and just engagement. And this is another great way to have volunteers help with your social media because they can log in. They can be part of your admin team on socials and they can their job could just be engaging with the community. So respond to any of your comments. Um share posts, like all of your partner and affiliate content, um leave comments on community posts, answer questions about your church in public spaces, etc., etc., etc. The more you interact, the more you become visible to everybody in your community. And encourage your church members to do the same. Encourage your membership to then interact with all of your church posts because that will also help boost visibility. If you want next level, you can include data and metrics in your social media management strategy, but it's not worth stressing about if you don't have the capacity. Um, Meta does provide pretty robust insights and data and they have the ability to tell a story about your content and your engagement. Um, if it's something you're interested in, let me know in the comments and we can look into providing an additional webinar about it. And then Brook's best practice. One of the things we do here is connect with other uh content creators through our partnerships and affiliates. We meet once a month and discuss platform changes, new strategies, our own content calendars, etc. It's a great way for us to support each other and being in our limited capacities because most of us are a staff of one and I think that's pretty similar to the churches as well or it's part of, you know, an extensive duty list. So share the load if you can. This is an example of a content calendar that I put together that has some quick ideas for content that that are easy to put together and will keep you posting consistently. So, in addition to having these this type of calendar, um you can identify national recognition days, holidays, lurggical observances, other significant dates. Make sure you put all of those into your calendar. um designate a date one day of the week just for a scripture post and keep it consistent and scheduling in advance. Uh that you might have historical dates of significance within your church or important events that happened in your church. Um you you can share our content or your conference's content. Your conference might also have some history related that you can use. um annual community events, highlight your participation in those community events and post those out. So um you know if there's a music event in your town or something else that you're participating in, then make sure your community knows you were there by posting. Meta has a great planner tool for scheduling and management. This is what it looks like. It makes it easy to schedule your content ahead of time. You can even create drafts if you're not ready to flesh out your content and just at least plan it on, excuse me, on your calendar so that you can see what's coming up and how to organize other content around it. And it's free. Um, we use a different social management tool at UCCC because we share it with other teams and so we can streamline our shared work in that way a little bit better. But but this is a free option and it's great. So I'm not going to hang out on here, but just know that you have access to it and check it out and explore it. It's a lot of fun. Another way to create community is through partners and affiliates. Instagram and and Facebook have a tool for collaborating. You can invite collaborators if they have an account on those same platforms to your post. And when they accept that invitation, the post shows up on your feed and their feed and it reaches the audience of all of the collaborators or both of you. And so it expands your audience significantly for your content and it's helpful to them as well. It's really like boosting each other. And here are a few of the collaborators that the UCCC regularly works with shown on this slide. Um, but we've been invited to collab with local churches as well when they're boosting something and we love to do that. It's amazing and it's a lot of fun. So, if your church has something go, excuse me, something going on that's super special, invite us to collab. We'll boost it too and support you and help build and expand your community and vice versa. Or just tag us in your content or tag your partners in content. and then it becomes much more visible to the person you've tagged and then that person can respond or share as they see fit. If you're lifting up partners or affiliates, do the same thing. Tag them in it. There is a tool the at followers at everyone at highlight tag on Facebook, but we suggest to use that sparingly. First of all, there's a limitation to it. So, it will only reach a certain number of people and also it will send a notification to everyone on your follower list. So, you just don't want to do it too much. It can become an annoyance, but it is great to use as a tool once in a while. And in the same vein, we're hoping to connect more in the future and create some working groups with local churches to co-create content that we can all share and use. um our team, our marketing team has been a bit sparse over the last year and we now have filled some of those vacant positions. So there's a lot of looking forward to opportunities for more local church to and UCCC national engagement with each other. So summary and tips for creating community. Throughout this workshop, we've touched on many different ways to build community by creating an authentic voice to build trust in your community. Immersing yourself into the digital spaces where your people are. Whether that's choosing the right social media platforms, joining town groups and discussion boards, lifting up your affiliates and partners, etc. By creating engaging content that others want to comment on or engage with. Using social media platform tools to optimize your visibility and work capacity. No burnout here, we hope. Spending time each week engaging with your content and others by liking, sharing, responding to messages, etc. And collaborating with partners and affiliates through the collaboration tool or tags on Instagram and Facebook and really across all platforms. They all have tagging in one way or another. Connecting with other social media content creators in your area to share resources and support each other. And lastly, if you were hoping I would talk about something and you didn't hear it or you'd like more details, please feel free to let me know in the chat, in the Q&A, or by email. This is a workshop that can be expanded and evolved just like our social media platforms. And we're exploring more ways to offer workshops and webinars to support you. And I can talk about socials all day, but what we really want to do is get to the fun part, right? So, it's this concludes the presentation portion of the webinar. And now we open up questions and answers. So, please feel free to put your questions in the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. I'll read them aloud and answer them as we have time. I realize we're running low. Um, but I want to try and get to most of them and if I can't, my email will be on the next slide and you will be able to send me emails as well and reach out afterwards. Also, we'd love to know one social media tip you gained from this webinar and we'll implement this week, two resources you'd like us to create for you to support your social media needs, and three types of content you'd like to see more of on our socials. So, feel free to add those to the chat. And we're going to save the chat information to help us create more webinars and workshops and add to our resource list that we'll send out after this event. Thank you for joining this workshop with us today and please feel free to reach out any time. My email is Canadae at ucc.org and if you have any questions or if you think of one later or if you have other ideas send me an email. I'd love to hear from you. And now for the questions and thank you all for joining today. I don't see any questions in the chat at this point. Um, so if you have some questions, please feel free to let me know. We can also, if you want to raise your hand, I think I can take you off mute too and we can have a conversation. But, um, the one question that did pop up from Sarah is about, um, using the the blue Instagram check mark. Uh, no, I'm sorry. I was reading the up above is removing the uh like count on Instagram and whether or not that would be um beneficial. And my personal feeling is and I wrote it in the chat. I feel like that's counterintuitive to the um to this sort of hive mind of social media where when people say see a larger like count they are more inclined to participate and engage with it themselves. But, you know, I don't know. I think maybe it has some benefits to start it off start off the post that way, but um you know, and then change it later so that you are once you've reached a certain point that you know, maybe they maybe turning it off and being able to see those higher counts. All right, so let's see. I'm going through the comments now. I don't know if the question answer feature is off, but um so please share info on Canva when why to use phone versus desktop. Oh, okay. So, um I I I'm interpreting your question as such. So, when do I when would I use Canva on my desktop versus my phone? I oftentimes will use Canva, if I'm being really honest, I use Tik Tok to edit to edit some short video just because it's really easy. But Canva has similar um editing tools and they're fair they're fairly easy. But you can edit um videos on Canva through your phone and then you don't have to download a video, upload it to your desktop and and video takes up a lot of space. this way. It lives in the Canva cloud and you're able to um edit in that way. So, I I hope that explains that or you know clears that up. But I do use Canva on my desktop every day. Um will I be sending resources via email? Yes, whichever email you use to register will be where we send the resources in the recording. And so, um, if that's if it's a different email that you want us to send it to, just shoot us a message in the chat and you can switch it to hosts and panelists if you want to keep it private. Um, it's always good to have some social content banked any resource ideas for this. Truly, the one of the biggest things that I I do is brainstorm and sit down with a piece of blank paper and write down my thoughts because I find that that's kind of the easiest way to gather ideas. Um, we also have marketing meetings. So, if you have a church, church meetings and you all get together and talk about what you have coming up. Um, I like to try and plan out at least a month ahead. That's not always realistic. Um, but yeah, I I you know, that's probably my best suggestion for you. And I'll I'll try and think of some other thoughts around having things banked. But, you know, if it's your own original content, you can start that anytime and keep that saved at any time. Um, save it in your file folder on your computer or save it in your phone or um save it as a draft on the social platform itself. Any thoughts on pastors creating a personal account versus creating a church account? Is it better to have one personality people connect with or many? So, I think that's a personal preference really. I um I have worked in churches where we the pastor does have their own um page as well as the church page. And I think that does it's really nice to keep things personal um for them. But I know that even in that case they've wanted to keep that profile separate from their personal profile. So I don't know. And then I've worked in other churches where the pastor will hop on and send out some content, but then sign their name and say from Pastor John or whoever. Um, so that the church knows that it's a message from the pastor specifically. So I guess, you know, it's up to you. Uh, I I don't know. I I almost feel like sharing um sharing posts and splitting engagement is more harmful in some cases than beneficial. But again, we're here for creating community and not necessarily for likes and follows. I mean certainly that overlaps and that boosts engagement as well when you have more likes and follows but uh building community is a little bit different than growing numbers. And I think we see that a lot in person in churches too where many churches want butts and seats but they really have a strong existing community with the people they already have and so really choosing to use that. Um, all right. I'm just scrolling back so I don't miss anything. So folks, other folks are sharing their opinions on that. I I agree. Yeah, it's Yeah, social media management is tough for a pastor. Um, so this is somebody sharing I I'm of the opinion that social media management shouldn't always be the pastor's job. I.e. lay people need to be pushed and encouraged to learn this stuff, too. But that's a different convo for a different day. And I agree. It's pastors already carry a really heavy load and they're gaining more and more duties as churches become smaller and have less of a budget. And so they're we're putting more and more and more on our pastors. and burnout is is real in the clergy communities that I that I know and um I can only assume that that happens widely as well. So I agree. I think social media would be a great thing for a volunteer although it's a heavy load there too. So you know trying to find a way to manage that in your church is a budget discussion and a capacity discussion for sure. Yeah. And Sarah makes a good point saying, "I chose to have my own page." Uh Sarah is a pastor in New Mexico. Am I right? Um and she says, "We don't have a church page. It allows me to say things that don't necessarily represent the church and allows me to post more quickly without getting board approval." And so I think that's another thing to think about if you're a pastor or clergy. you do have a little more freedom to say to to represent yourself in a different way where you're not necessarily representing the church and need to go through certain um permission levels. How long to make videos to keep attention? This is a great question. Um, we struggle with that a lot, but I would say in my experience, the sweet spots are between 30 seconds and maybe a minute 30. And I wouldn't go over that minute 30. Um, but you know, platforms will say under 3 minutes is optimal, but I find even as we get up to 3 minutes, it's it we start to lose traction and it's not quite as um effective. And certain platforms will give you warnings that they're not going to share your videos that are over 3 minutes out to a wider audience. Instagram is one of them. They won't share, you know, videos that are over three. I mean, they will. You can share your videos and you can post them, but they're just not going to get the same kind of attention. So, 30 seconds to a minute 30 or to 90 seconds. All right. Right. And TA shares to Taylor and everyone as lay leader who's likely to stick with the church longer than a pastor will. I'd rather see a we and us on our Facebook page. And so that that's another good point. Yeah. Our church hired a communications manager and it's been wonderful. And that's true. And that's what I was in in a local church for a while was a communications manager. And it was really nice to have that kind of separation of duties too where I knew what my focus was. It was part-time. It wasn't full-time. The church didn't have the capacity to hire a full-time communications person, but I could then focus on on that alone and didn't have all kinds of other duties. But not all churches are are positioned that way. And so they have to make choices. Yeah. Uh, Taylor, you bring up a great point about security on um social media as well. They had to remake their Facebook page when their pastor left because it was attached to her personal account and she couldn't figure out how to transfer it. So, one of those one of our best practices here at UCCC is to have multiple administrators with full access, full permissions on all of our social media pages. And the reason we do that is that so that if somebody leaves or if somebody's let go then we still have other people who can access those places and spaces and it nothing happens. It's a seamless transition and those p people can be removed very easily. Um, we are considering using church office to go for social media posts. Any opinion on third-party or virtual assistants helping out? You know, I don't know. I um I suppose that's kind of what I am. I I work remotely and virtually. So, I think if you found the right person, you certainly could have success in hiring a third party or or an online assistant. Um, my personal thought is that you may want to find somebody that does have some UCuz experience just so that you have somebody with a a voice that aligns with with who you are. But, um, yeah, I think it could work. How visible should the actual content creator be in the church's social media presence? Is it better for the church to feel like a single unified voice or is there value in people knowing there are real individuals shaping the content? So, the way I'm interpreting this question is um is it better to have a singular person managing your social media versus a committee or group? And I think you you could go either way and it would work out just fine. Um I always like having extra people around to bounce ideas off of. I think there's a lot of benefit to that. Um but there are also some limitations in that, you know, there's sometimes it's it's hard to know who's who's controlling Facebook at the at any given time. And so, um, you know, I think if you made that clear, who's going to who's going to do what and it maybe you divvy up, uh, duties within the content creation or the monitoring of the social accounts or, you know, whatever. Um, yeah, and so feel free to share your, um, social media handles so people can follow you. Uh, I think that's great and we can create community in the in the chat. All right, I'm just scrolling through and I know we've got some questions in the question box. So, I'm going to switch over to that for a minute. Um, any recommendations on websites to keep up on special days like World Refugee Day from this last weekend? Yes. Oh, websites. Let me see. Um, there are there are some national websites. I don't know them off the top of my head. I will find them though and add them to the resources so that you have them. But if you look up uh global days or national days or worldwide days, then you should be able to get something. But also something like World Refugee Day will be in our desk calendar. And we're working on, and I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I gonna say it anyway, we're working on the potential for a an online digital calendar that reflects the UCCC desk calendar, too, so that there's a digital way to to do it. Um, but yeah, so we'll see. We'll see if that comes to fruition. How can you use music without copyright issues? any benefits of monetizing accounts? And I've noticed one I'm gonna start with. How can you use music without copyright issues? That's really tricky. Um, I would point you back to Heather Kimmel's copyright um, information sheet online and I there are there are there is music that's in the public domain that doesn't require lensure but most of the time it does require some kind of lensure like um, one license or um, I forget the other one CCLI I think and you can use music that is within your own license agreements. Um otherwise you really should not use music without any kind of licensing. There are platforms that platforms offer you know licensed free music as well. So you can add some of those pieces. Canva has music. Um but overall I I would say be very careful with music. Any benefits of monetizing accounts? That's something for your financial and legal departments to discuss because I don't know how it how monetizing an account would affect your nonprofit status. So, um, definitely check with somebody who knows more about that. I don't know enough about that. I've noticed when purchasing ads, an increase in spam and attempted scams with fake emails increases. Any info on this? Yeah, I I don't know of a way to stop that, unfortunately. It's purchasing ads is great for the traction, but it's it's really tough when it comes to scams and fake emails. So, it heavier monitoring. Um, I'm trying to remember. I haven't I haven't done one. We haven't done any ads recently, so I can't remember off the top of my head if there is an option in your like little three dots when you post those um ads to kind of limit spam and u and that sort of thing. If anyone knows, feel free to put it in the chat, but I'm I'm not quite sure. That was always a really tough thing to to fix and fight. Um, how visible should the actual content creator be in a church's social media presence? Oh, I think I answered that one. We answered that one. Okay, I'm going to keep going. Does the UCCC um offer any grant money to support social media ministries? Oh, Andrea, thank you for answering, but I I um I don't know of any. So, I'm hoping Andrea might know if and might answer you. And then uh no question, just a big thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming. I'm glad it's been helpful. And really, if you have any ideas, please send them our way because we'll try and continue to create webinars and resources like this to support you. I mean, supporting you supports us and vice versa. I feel like this is these some great opportunities for supporting each other. Oh, okay. So, Estabbon, you're rephrasing. Let me rephrase on church Instagram account. Should posts feel like they're coming from one unified church voice or is it okay if it feels like a specific person behind the camera or editing the content? I always lean towards church voice because I think when it's your if it's a church account, it should be church voice. It's that's the way I feel. I don't Yeah. I Is it okay if it feels like a specific person behind the camera? I mean, I think if you're a regular person behind the camera and your voice comes out in a natural way, I think that's fine. But I do think when you're presenting that content online and creating your captions, then you want the church voice. So, I hope that clears that up. Uh, we didn't talk about going live on Instagram. Um, only your followers can see see live streams. On Tik Tok, the live streams get pushed to everyone. Do you have experience with live streams and do you recommend using them to push content? If so, do you have a designated moderator for comments when you go live? Um, my only experience with live streams was for Sunday worship when I worked in local churches. We don't do a lot of live stream at UC. I'm trying to think if we have ever done a live stream. I'm not sure if we have since I've been here anyway. Um, but and do you have a designated? When I worked for the church, we definitely had a designated moderator for comments when we went live. That was me. So, I would take us live and then I would also monitor any of the comments that came through because that can be tricky. Um, yeah, but that's that's a great information to know. We are still fairly new on TikTok and I did not know that the live streams get pushed to everyone. So, that's kind of a neat tool, too. So, we'll have to dive more deeply into that. All right, I'm just going to go back to the chat and make sure I didn't miss anything. See if anything else came through. So, my apologies. I'm a little slow going through all of these. Our church has an outreach and communications committee and volunteers run the social media. So I think that is that happens in some other churches. I've been a part of some of those committees as well and that works pretty well. It's still I find that you have to define roles for each person otherwise there's like a oh I thought you did I thought you did that I thought and so sometimes it can get a little blurry but I think that depends on the committee too. So we us also sounds more professional and more ownership of the congregation. Oh, you also have to be super careful about direct messages. Having more than one person on the account assures sketchy things aren't happening in DMs. And that's absolutely true. Yep. Um yeah, we we manage at UCCC our own UCCC page and then in addition to that um I also support some of our affiliates. So that's Reverend Karen Georgia's page and Reverend Cherry Preston's page. And so oftent times, you know, if they're not using it very often, then you in this spam comes into those um DMs pretty quickly. And so that's one of my supports for them is to go in there, make sure things aren't getting weird in there. How far in advance to post events? What's the best timing? Oh gosh, I wish I knew. I I really do. I We tend to post 3 weeks out and then kind of every 5 days leading up to the event and then the day before or morning of. And that tends to work pretty well for us. But I will tell you I a lot of the time I I don't I don't know because sometimes I think it's going great and other times I it doesn't gain as much engagement as I thought it would. So um one of my jobs is this is Taylor. One of my jobs is comms for collectivo UCCC. So it's common to freelance that out and I agree that ideally to get somebody with UCCC experience or even somebody familiar with your ministry and work. So thank you for sharing that. Thanks for sharing all of your pages. Um all right and another question. Do UCC do different UCCC national accounts, for example, National and Justice communicate and collaborate regularly? Do you recommend we coordinate or collaborate with other churches in our area? Yes, collaboration is is great. Um, we do collaborate with we collaborate with our global ministries team, our Washington DC office, which is the justice that I think you're referencing in that question. Um, we collaborate with the open and affirming coalition. Um, and and those are the folks that I tend to try and connect with at least on a monthly basis so that we can support each other and talk about what's coming up. Um, we also connect with UCCC media justice ministries. Um, I know I'm missing some. So yes, but I I do find that collaborating with other churches and well I think it could be really helpful. Have I haven't done it personally. I did a little bit when I was at one local church um before the pandemic hit and but then after that it sort of fizzled out. But I do think it would be helpful to coordinate with other churches and connect with other admin um admin staff folks. If social media is a part of their job duties, connecting with another person where that's they have the same job duties in a very similar environment could be really beneficial. And I don't think that there's any um I don't think that that will hurt anybody in any way. I I I know that there could be some perception of competition on social media in social media spaces who's going to post it first, but when it comes to churches in UCCC, I just feel like we're all trying to lift up each other and we're all trying to lift up a lot of the same messages. And so, if we can do that and strengthen each other and support each other, let's do it. Let's collaborate. So, collaborate. All right. I think I think that was everything. I think I got to all of the questions. and be sure to look through your emails. Um, and we'll send out all of that, the recording and the um, the resource information. And uh, again, just thanks for coming. I'm so glad you came and I'm so glad you connected with each other in the chat and I look forward to our next webinar. Bye y'all., Digital Evangelism: Creating Community With Social Media, United Church of Christ, 01kw1z2zcae2zxk4v9q90kc1gf.