My buddy Joe and I come up with 90 social media posts a month for SundaySocial.tv. Non-repeating. And we’ve done this for around 3 years. One of the questions we get a lot is: How do you come up with so much content?
And, not to brag, but it’s good content. We’ve built our following to around 24k followers posting this stuff.
So how do we do it? We have a mix of types of content that we rotate through. These are content formats that help us create quality content. We do a mix of the following: Funny, Beautiful, Belonging, Invitation, Identity, Solutions, Interactive, Special Days.
Here are a few quick notes about each of these post types:
Funny
Make sure it’s really funny to the people who follow you, not just church funny. Be aware that people follow you who don’t go to your church or don’t know your intentions. Don’t make it political, something that needs context, or something that could be unnecessarily offensive.
Beautiful
Other companies have accused us of not making our graphics attention-getting enough because we focus on beauty. The truth is, though, that beautiful graphics still do the best on Instagram, because it’s a visual platform. If you only focus on attention-getting, you’ll turn your church account into a meme account.
Belonging
Reinforce that you love people and that they’re welcomed at your church. Even your regulars need a reminder that they belong. They belong to the church, but they also belong to God. Let this be a ministry moment.
Invitation
Invite people to experiences and remind them what’s coming up. Your social media account shouldn’t be a complete hype session, but a little hype is good. Tie it back to your services since that’s the main thing you do as a church. Again, this is a mix of content, not the whole amount.
Identity
Who are your church members? Who does God say they are? Remind them of that. Scripture, quotes, and sayings are a great way to encourage and minister to your people during the week.
Solutions
You don’t just have to offer solutions during your messages on Sunday morning. Why not provide some quick tips on how to start a prayer life or how to memorize Scripture on your social media feed? If you’re adding value to people’s life, they’ll be grateful. And if they know they’re getting value online, they can be sure they’re going to get value offline.
Interactive
Again, you don’t want to turn your account into a meme account or be desperate for attention. But asking questions that make your followers the star is a good thing. Ask them what they think, what they prefer, or to take action. Just don’t pander. Asking Apple vs. Android questions might be good every now and then, but eventually it comes across as just fishing for response.
Special Days
Post things that are relevant to holidays. Trivia, pictures, quotes, Scripture… Also look for those National Day of… and International Day of… holidays to address. Don’t do it all the time, but people love talking about their siblings on National Sibling Day. Either post something celebrating it, having fun with it, or asking for interaction based on it.
We’ve built this mix of content through years of trial and error. And we’ll probably tweak this in another month or so based on current trends, because that’s the thing: Social changes fast. The point is to add value to people’s lives, and they’ll love following you.
If you want, we have resources that can help you in this area. In our store, we’ve made a deck of cards that have social prompts that you can keep on your desk. It’s like this article only more specific: https://store.sundaysocial.tv/product/social-post-idea-cards/
Or of course you can sign up for an account with Sunday Social for $9/month and get this mix of content already created for you. (For $19 you can get Photoshop files that you can customize for yourself.)
Whether you create the images yourself or use an outside source, mixing up the content is always the best way to go. Use these categories in rotation and I promise you will see your engagement go up and your stress levels go down.
