In most social media channels, the primary focus is geared towards getting the user to look at your content. But what if we created a tangible way for them to use our social media channels throughout daily life? What if we call back our 80?s – 90?s selves, and say ?Yo! Let?s start creating mixtapes again!?
In my current church context, we created curated playlists designed around different elements of our church culture. These playlists allow our congregation members to “take Sunday with them,” as they are able to listen to our playlists, such as the Prayer Playlist during their quiet time, or our Hangout Playlist during Bible study hang-out time.
When we launched this plan, we were gearing up for our Easter series where each weekly message talked about an attribute of God. We decided to create playlists with specific songs that related to the attribute discussed each week. As we launched this platform, we started to see a greater benefit to allowing our members to have that resource accessible to them throughout the week.
We developed several ideas on how to use our account. We based these ideas around key events, spiritual impact, and fun.
Here are a couple examples of playlists that we are currently working on:
- Worship Playlist– Take all the songs that you play on Sunday mornings and put them into a worship playlist. This provides the congregation with all of the songs that you played during a series in one place. Instead of having the individuals search the depths of YouTube in order to find a specific song, you’ve already done the hard work and provided them with all of that music.
- Prayer Playlist– My friend, [HT- JEREMY-POLAND], has a fantastic prayer playlist with 4640 Student Center. It is one of my go-to playlists during my prayer time. Be sure to follow them on Spotify as well. We put together a playlist focusing on prayer, for our audience, as a resource of thought-provoking music. I know that in my personal prayer life, music has made a huge impact. Our goal was to create this as a tool to encourage a stronger prayer life among individuals.
- Staff Favorites– If your church is anything like mine, your staff has very diverse musical tastes. Ranging from Third Day to MxPx, you hear all kinds of music coming from their various church offices. We are currently working on creating different playlists for each member on staff so that our audience can connect to leaders of the church in a deeper way. It’s almost like we are living back in the 90s, creating mixtapes of our favorite songs to hand out to our audience. Doing this builds an excitement within your staff culture, and allows a more personal experience for users. I know that I would love hearing about the favorite tunes of some pastors I admire.
Even though we are just beginning to explore this new avenue, I believe the key to Spotify engagement is to consistently update your content. If you never change the songs in your playlists, your audience will quickly become bored. It’s important to keep the music new and exciting, and most importantly, fun! Don’t treat Spotify like a social network, but treat it as you are publishing a resource to give away to others. As you start your Spotify structure, remember the three tips to help make it successful.
- Call to Action: Whether you use post cards, business cards, or a gigantic poster, make sure you get your message across. Emphasize the fact that if you enjoyed the Sunday morning worship songs, you can then go and listen to those same songs on the Spotify playlist.
- Variety of Playlists: Do not just put a prayer and worship playlist together. Go beyond the status quo and think of other options. For example, you may create a playlist for communion, or a playlist for the children’s ministry to let kids listen to. Whatever the case, the possibilities are endless.
- Make it Fun: Don’t confine yourself to only late 90s worship music. Throw in different genres to allow your audience to experience worship music in new ways. There are great secular songs available that we have also included in some of our playlists. Why? Because we want to make it fun!
Feel free to follow us on Spotify at @AliveWesleyan. If you have any question, message me on Facebook – Will Henderson.
