I was reading a great article over at SocialMediaToday.com and I came across an article titled "Who is Creating Social Media Content in Your Organization?" This article was written with a business focus but it had a great point that can apply to the social media strategies of ministries. There is often an awkward silence when it comes to the question of "who creates the content for the ministry".
I am currently working with a ministry that is learning how to really embrace social media but the last hurdle to overcome was content creation. There seemed to be a disconnect in understanding who should create the content. There was a case that the marketing department should make it, there was a case that the web/social media person should make it, there was a case that the pastor should create it and there was a case that each department should generate their own content and somehow feed it to the social media sites.
Each of these approaches has a valid basis as a resource for social media content. If we look at a graphic from the article Who is Creating Social Media Content in Your Organization?", we can get a better idea of how businesses should approach social media content
"While the upper right is ideal – since the content will be the richest and most integrated because people knowledgeable about the brand are creating social media content – organizations can wind up in any other quadrant as well. Agencies can work in producing content; interns aren't great choices. Lawyers - who don't so much directly create content as create it by default through saying "yes" or "no" to what can be shared - are an even worse option."
Now if we take the approach of the infographic then we can make a case that the brand experts for the ministry are all of the above options that we mentioned earlier. The marketing department has the information to market the ministry, the pastor and pastoral staff can minister and provide social content, each department within the ministry may have content that can be distributed using social media and finally the web person that setup the social media page, especially in Facebook, can program and customize the page.
Overall, the content for the social media website should come from a variety of sources and be filtered to an individual social media manager who can facilitate what goes out and when. This scheduling process is highlighted in the book, The iChurch Method.