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.
2 of 7 Crucial Elements of Social Media ROI for Churches
In the last post, I described the 1st of 7 crucial elements of social media ROI: “Know How Social Media Integrates the Vision of Your Church”. Today, I’m tackling the 2nd of 7 crucial elements: “Decide What’s Measurable and What’s Not”.
Last week I hinted at this with the quote from the famous philosopher, Galileo:
“Measure what can be measured, and make measurable what cannot be measured.”
One last recap from last week before diving into the 2nd Crucial Element: You can measure anything, to a point. Some measurements can be measured precisely. Other measures, such as spiritual growth, are measured along the lines of “more like this” or “less like that” and have indicators (such as ‘spiritual fruit’).
The Exponential Reach of Social Media
Social media is a blurry interchange of personal, professional, private and public lines. Once something is on the internet, it’s permanent in one fashion or another, so social media is a new type of engagement that has a kind of permanency unlike previous communications. History that was recorded prior to the internet was managed and owned by few people, relative to humanity.
Social media is history being recorded and shared in real-time, all the time.
The volume of content has increased at a near incalculable, exponential rate. Whereas the few were publishers of content in the past, today everyone can be a publisher and, simultaneously, a distributor of content.
This paradigm shift is consequential in our context of the local church, because the ability to find, connect, engage and disciple people has, literally, no limits. Here in our Western culture, the local church movement has changed over the years from a few vocational pastors discipling some portion of their community, to many non-vocational pastors (those of us not working at a local church) having the reach and visibility to disciple groups of people (Facebook friends, Twitter followers, etc.).
Decide What’s Measurable
The exponential reach of social media (it’s not just who I know, but they people they know and the people they know, on and on…) has given voice to everyone. The problem is that if everyone’s talking, it’s hard to cut through the clutter. That’s why we must be listening more than we talk on social media.
Active listening is the first step of deciding what to measure for your social media ROI.
Define Your Demographics & Channels
Generally speaking, local churches have two basic groups of people to measure and two distinct kinds of social media avenues to explore:
- TWO BASIC GROUPS:
- Those who are active “members” or “attendees” in the life of your church
- Those who are not yet plugged into the life of your church (your communities)
- TWO SOCIAL MEDIA AVENUES:
- Personal staff/lay leadership social media accounts
- Ministry/Group social media accounts
Measuring the reach and effectiveness of your social media efforts starts with identifying the target audience and the quantifiable goals for engaging them. Therefore, it’s easy to start with your church/ministry accounts and get the low-hanging fruit of your existing members and attendees. After all, they’re the most likely to ‘like’ your Fan Pages and follow church and ministry-specific Twitter accounts.
For example, build a fan page for your church on Facebook and use your existing communications channels (from the stage, announcements, videos, website, church bulletin, etc.) to promote and request people to ‘like’ it on Facebook. This provides a baseline of both an audience and, over time, a way to calculate the adoption rate (growth) of your ‘fans’. You can then begin setting goals for the obvious numerical increase in fans per week/month and the less obvious things like trend data, such as:
- Which kinds of posts get the most comments, re-tweets, wall-posts and mentions?
- During which day of the week are people most active? What time of day?
- What is the click-through rate from your other electronic communications to your social media properties?
- How any people signed up for an activity or event via electronic registration through a social media page?
- Based on the activity or event, are you reaching certain age groups/demographics more effectively?
In this example, Facebook provides every fan page with an “insights” page that gives you good, trackable data. Your website should also have measurable data (for free with Google Analytics), which you can compare and overlay against the data from Facebook. Over time, if you capture this externally and review it for trend analysis, you’ll begin to see what works and what doesn’t.
Decide What’s Not Measurable
Numbers alone are not enough data to declare success. With Twitter, many people and organizations subscribe to the model of “follow and be followed”, wherein they follow everyone they can in the hopes of getting a lot of reciprocal follows. It’s not terribly hard to have thousands (or tens of thousands) of followers on Twitter, but it’s not necessarily an indicator of real growth or, especially, effectiveness.
Organic growth (earned) is best, because it represents people choosing to seek out your social media channels (both ministry accounts and personal staff and lay leader accounts). These are higher quality and are weighted as being more valuable than thousands of people that follow but never bother to engage.
Deciding on what’s not measurable (or easily measured), such as the sentiment of your followers, means you’re looking for other indicators (what can be easily measured) like re-tweets, lots of comments or plenty of back-and-forth conversation. These indicators, especially as they increase in both the number of fans/follower and the frequency of their engagement, are the kinds of intuitive signs of growth and effectiveness.
Determine a Strategy and Tweak Frequently
Once you understand your baseline and basic measurements, you can develop a strategy for increasing your effectiveness (and efficiency, too). It’s important to make sure you do this in the right order:
- What is your Objective for Social Media?
- What Goals have you put in place? (A goal isn’t a goal if it’s not measurable and time-based. “X” happening by “Y” date).
- What Strategies will help you accomplish each goal?
- What are the Actions (tasks) that make up each of your strategies?
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.
In case you haven’t noticed, this is a lot of work over an extended period of time (with no end date, I might add).
It’s easy to have a Facebook page or Twitter account that you use as a bully pulpit. It’s far more difficult to increase your true reach and increase engagement through these very relational channels without a good deal of planning, effort and consistency.
Are you ready to decide what you will and will not measure? Will you commit the time and be consistent in your efforts to leverage this unprecedented set of tools to reach more people than ever before? Are you prepared to sow and reap a digital harvest with actual souls attached to those names?
This task is not insignificant, but it’s the most far-reaching medium we’ve ever had to fulfill the Great Commission.
1 of 7 Crucial Elements of Social Media ROI for Churches
When your pastor prepares for each week’s message, 20-40 hours of his time are spent for about 30 minutes worth of content. That’s a ratio of anywhere between 40:1 to 80:1, meaning that the results should be pretty great to justify the effort expended. Of course, we don’t look at it this way because the Word of God never returns void (Isaiah 55:11) and we know that the message must be applied by the listener (James 1:23). Nevertheless, understanding how to better prepare and deliver a message, along with the methods and techniques to improve are all part of a teaching pastor’s arsenal. Over time, the pastor understands how to become a better communicator and how to share the Bible in practical and revelatory ways.
They key is to always be learning, ready to apply the insights for more effective life-application. In the same way, we should evaluate all of our significant communication methods and be diligent about improving in whatever message or activity we share with our communities.
With social media, churches must learn to transition from simply using it as a shiny electronic bullhorn to measuring the results of planning, feedback and effectiveness. To be successful, we must:
“Measure what can be measured, and make measurable what cannot be measured.”
You can measure anything, to a point. Some measurements, such as click-through rates & re-tweets, can be measured precisely. Other measures, such as spiritual growth, are measured along the lines of “more like this” or “less like that” and have evidence in spiritual fruitfulness. Regardless of the kind of measurement, we can, over time, learn how effective we are in reaching, engaging & discipling our communities.
A Quick Recap
I’ll be diving into each of the following 7 Crucial Elements one at a time. To recap, here’s the entire list:
1) Know How Social Media Integrates the Vision of Your Church
2) Decide What’s Measureable – and What’s Not
3) Define ROM (Return On Ministry)
4) Which Metrics Matter?
5) Empower Every Ministry with Tools & Training
6) Drive People to Decisions
7) Share Success Stories
My goal of quantifying and categorizing these 7 Crucial Elements is to help give a framework for church leaders to truly leverage the exponential reach and influence of social media.
1) Know How Social Media Integrates the Vision of Your Church
“What’s the unique God-sized vision for your church?” is a question I frequently ask pastors. They’re quick to give me a line, a statement or a story that usually gives a strong indication of what and how their local church is up to. “Why are you on Twitter?” is my follow-up question. Ironically, these same pastors who were so quick to give a detailed answer about vision fail to provide a vision-focused answer for their social media efforts (if they’re even using social media).
The reason, I believe, is because they’ve not thought about social media from the perspective of “Why?”, but only as another communication channel. Yes, it is a way to communicate, but unless you know why you’re doing something, you’ll likely not be getting the right kind of results from it. When filtered through the vision of the church, the purpose and methodology for using social media becomes clear.
First, know why you want to use social media. Only then will you be able to correctly identify when, how, what, where and who will be using it.
Your social media efforts should include all of the following:
- Real people behind the account name. These people share with those in their social media sphere of influence and do more than provide another marketing channel of information about your church and ministries.
- Helpful dialogue. Limiting any communication to talking “at” someone instead of talking “with” someone is ultimately meaningless (and fruitless).
- Your value proposition. This isn’t a feature or a benefit of your organization, but the life-blood that answers exactly why you exists and what makes your church unique.
Any and all social media, from Facebook to Twitter to Google+, all rely on the same thing: relationships. Real relationships, not marketing speak, are an interactive set of communications across many mediums.
Here’s your exercise: apply the filter of “does how we use social media line up with the vision of our church?” What you’ll find is either a filter that reveals good intentions but limited results or a vision statement that needs to be refined. Look, a vision for your church is greater than “reach the greater metropolitan area where we live with the truth of Jesus Christ.” That’s the Great Commission, not a unique vision. When you can say “our church is different and set apart from every other church in our area because of ‘X’”, you’re looking squarely at the vision of your church.
Social media’s effectiveness for your church is directly proportional to how well it integrates with the vision of your church and the consistency with which you use it.
So, how is your church doing in meeting the first crucial element of social media ROI? What are you doing to filter your social media efforts against the question “Why?” and the measurement of life change?
I'm Anthony Coppedge, a follower of Jesus, a husband to my uber-bride and father to four great kids. I help ministries leverage technology and communicate with a digitally-infused culture. I'm passionate about this, so that makes me a Technology & Communications Evangelist. I attend and volunteer at Gateway Church in Southlake, TX and love it!
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