'I'm no social media expert', says Holly (24) one of the team at St John's Crawley, 'but as part of launching our new church service, we wanted the church to be on social media to help us reach youth'. 

Holly, like many church workers, wears multiple hats and as part of her role within the church, she is managing the social media accounts. Despite her lack of experience, Holly was willing to get the church started on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Having been active on St John's social media for two weeks, she helpfully had a chat with the Church Pages team and shared how she got started and what's happened to date. The St John's website is currently a holding page, so social media was all the more important. 

How did you get the church started on Instagram, Facebook & Twitter? 

Instagram:

"We chose to use our church branding as the initial posts on our Instagram feed to help fill it. I wrote our bio (the area on your profile to give a quick insight about you) to include our church vision statement, and then went on to use photos from our church launch and planning evenings to help give a feel for the church. I began by following people within the church team, their friends, and then churches who are also within our network. Currently, we are following far more people than are following us. However, in time knowledge of the church will grow.

"We are going to integrate our Instagram feed into the new church website and use this to graphically give people an overview of the church.

 

A post shared by St John's Crawley (@stjohnscrawley) on Sep 24, 2017 at 11:02am PDT

"We now update the Instagram feed every 3-4 days with updates from Sunday and then posts relating to the next week."

Facebook:

"I started by setting up a Facebook page using our logo as the profile picture and then a textured photo for the banner image. I then invited my friends and family (along with the church staff!) to 'Like' the page. I posted content related to our upcoming launch, and other evening meetings we had - I tried to use lots of photos and wrote longer captions than on Instagram."

Twitter:

"I set up our Twitter account to post information about our launch. I then followed members of our church network and other nearby churches. However, we still have a relatively low amount of followers. I now use Twitter to post about the upcoming weeks and use videos filmed on my iPhone of our vicar to introduce each week (these also go on Facebook too)."

You can follow St Johns on Instagram @stjohnscrawley, on Facebook, and on Twitter @stjohnscrawley

How can we help? 

If you're looking to get started on social media for your church, we hope Holly's story has been helpful. However, if you have any other questions do not hesitate to get in touch with the Church Pages' team who would be more than happy to chat.