Effortlessly Creating Social Media Content
For years I have been using my iPhone to manage my church’s social media profiles. Adding links, quotes, pictures, videos, etc. is made easier by using the convenience of a smart phone.
The Problem
I can’t count the number of times I posted something for my church on my personal profile, or more importantly, something personal on the church profile. In addition, I wasn’t always comfortable giving my phone to a volunteer and letting them use it to take pictures, etc.
The Solution
I purchased an iPod Touch for my department. In years past an iPod touch was not a viable option because of the small megapixel count for the camera. With the latest model released in 2012, the 5mp camera provides adequate photo sizes to use on all the most popular social platforms.
The Results
Here is how we use our iPod touch to effortless create content for our social networks.
- We post 3-5 photos every Sunday of our church in real time. This can range from pictures of the band warming up, to the speaker on the platform, to the volunteers running check-in.
- Staff members will carry around the iPod touch at different times and snap photos to the camera roll for use in the future. Different perspectives = diverse reactions.
- Ministry leaders take the iPod touch to camp or special events and capture pictures during the entire event. These pictures are great at giving realtime updates to church members as long as creating a catalog of images to use for future promotion
An iPod Touch might be a tough sell for some churches. Often the flashiness of an iPod makes it seem impractical. Don’t be dissuaded by the image. The impact is worth it.
A Word of Caution
Allow your organizational values to drive the content you share. Do not post without purpose. Share content that tells the geographic, relational, historical and spiritual story of your organization.
Apps We Use
- Instagram // Direct integration with Twitter, Facebook and Flickr means one picture from the Instagram app and you can immediately publish to all 4 networks.
- Everypost // Integration with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Dropbox and email. Currently doesn’t support pages in Facebook or Google+… support for Facebook has been promised.
- Facebook Pages Manager // Access FB insights for your page as well as post directly to your organizations page as the page. Requires a FB account to be logged in. We created a generic church personal account and made that church account an administrator for our page.
What additional apps should be added to this list?
I get a little lost in the purpose and value of so many apps that seem to do much the same thing, or at least have a lot of overlap. How do you keep on top of all this without investing too much time?
I think you focus on what you can manage. That may be one network or multiple.
I set aside one night a week to look at my upcoming weeks and write out all my content for Facebook and Twitter. If something crosses over to Pinterest I will post it there, but for the most part I use one time to create and schedule my content copy. However I actively participate in the conversation daily on Twitter and Facebook