3 of 7 Crucial Elements of Social Media ROI for Churches

This is the third part of the series, so if you’ve missed Part 1 (“Know How Social Media Integrates the Vision of Your Church”) or Part 2 (“Decide What’s Measurable and What’s Not”), you can get up to speed quickly. Part 3 is about defining your Return On Ministry (ROM).

What Is ROM (Return On Ministry)?

In business, any money spent toward making a profit is calculated as Return On Investment (ROI). It’s s a simple formula:

In churches, we’re not looking to make a profit, but we are interested in knowing if we’re being good stewards of our resources.

Good financial stewardship has less to do with how much money you save and more to do with how much money isn’t wasted.

That’s the beginning of a good Return On Ministry (ROM), but it’s only the financial part of the equation. ROM is unique for every local congregation because it is measured against the progress towards meeting the vision of each church. No two churches should have exactly the same vision since each are called by God to be distinct in their communities.

ROM Is A Reflection Of Your Vision

When your ministry objectives are filtered against the unique vision for your church, you can more readily measure your effort and efficiencies (Return On Ministry).

In the previous post (Part 2) I defined this process:

Your objective shouldn’t change, as this is your main purpose. Your goals may shift slightly over time. Your strategies will require tweaking as you learn the most effective methods. Your actions are always in flux, based on the time, manpower and technology (systems) you commit.

When defining the Return On Ministry, you’re saying you want to put “X” amount of effort (time, people, resources) into an objective and desire to see a certain, defined outcome.

For example, your church vision might be about connecting with young families and single parents through community projects and kid-oriented activities.

The objective may be to see 50 kids come to faith in Jesus.

Your goals could be to coordinate three fun mini-camps for kids throughout the summer, with 20 new families included in each of the three events (remember, it’s not a goal unless it’s measurable and time-based).

Your strategies might include using Facebook and Twitter to post promotional videos, Facebook slideshows; direct parents to online registrations with discount codes; and even include your congregation in sharing a specific link on their Facebook wall or with their Twitter or Google+ circles.

The actions would be tasks for creating the promotional videos, having multiple event information and registration web pages built, creating special (trackable) links through bit.ly (a URL shortening service) and a coordinated phone and email campaign to engage congregants in the outreach effort.

Objective. Goals. Strategies. Actions. In that order, they provide you with the planning and accountability to measure your progress towards tasks and goals of your vision. (Note: I realize that some people teach “Goals, Objectives, Strategies & Actions”, placing Goals before Objectives. However, I don’t subscribe to the SMART mnemonic. I prefer the MT methodology because Goals are always measurable and time based, which fit within the context of an objective. But I digress…)

Measuring ROM

What you value determines what you measure. You’ll find that measuring the ROM of social media is inexorably linked to that which is important to your ministries.

Really, this makes sense. On one hand, social media is a communication channel, just like email, snail mail and phone calls. But social media is more than a way to communicate. On the other hand, social media is also relational.

Social media extends conversations & relationships.

You cannot measure what you do not inspect, so you’ll have to determine your metrics for social media ROM as it lines up with accomplishing the vision for your church. When you do, you’ll find measuring is both practical and helpful, as it gives weight to your actions, activities and efforts.