This article originally appeared on OurChurch.Com
Despite the pandemic, Christmas is still the time when those who are not connected with God are most open to God and to doing things with a church. Whether your church is putting on a multi-night Christmas production, a simple Christmas Eve service, an outdoor service, or your gatherings are purely online, it’s a great opportunity for your church and its members to invite people to visit.
While personal invitations will probably always be the best way to invite someone to a Christmas service, social media is also a very effective way for churches and their members to spread the word about Christmas services and facilitate invitations. Here are 25 ways your church can use social media to promote its Christmas services.
1) Using Facebook & Twitter, recruit a virtual street team, people in your church who are engaged in social media and will help lead efforts to promote the Christmas production.
2) Create a social media promotional schedule in Google Docs. Share it with your street team, get their input, add to it & improve it based on their input.
3) Create a Facebook event for your Christmas service(s).
4) Post the event to your church’s Facebook page. (Your church does have a Facebook page, right?)
5) You & your virtual street team share the event on your personal Facebook profiles & encourage others to do the same.
6) Tweet the event using your church’s Twitter account. (Your church does have a Twitter account, right?)
7) You & your virtual street team retweet your church’s tweet promoting the event.
8 ) Run a Facebook ad to promote your Christmas production. Read How Facebook Ads Filled My Church.
Create a promotional video for your Christmas service, and…
9) Put the promotional video on YouTube
10) Share the Youtube video on your church’s Facebook page
11) You & your virtual street team share the YouTube on your personal Facebook profiles & encourage others to do the same.
12) Tweet the video using your church’s Twitter account.
13) You & your virtual street team retweet your church’s video promoting the event.
Reach out to other local organizations:
14) Find local online guides that have event calendar. Submit your event, embed or link to the YouTube video.
15) Find the Facebook pages for your city, chamber of commerce, & other local community organizations. “Like” their page. Then post the Facebook event to their wall if you can do that in a non-spammy way.
16) Find the Twitter profiles for your city, chamber of commerce, & other local community organizations. Send them a DM & ask if they would tweet about your Christmas production.
If your Christmas services span more than one night…
17) Post pics from the first night to your church’s Facebook page. Be sure to tag as many people as you can. Tagging will cause those pics to show up on those people’s profiles for them and their friends to see.
18) You and your street team share those pics on your Facebook profiles.
19) Tweet some of the pics from your church’s Twitter account.
20) You and the street team, retweet those pics.
21) Create a video that includes footage from the opening performance & short comments from people afterwards saying good things about it. Post the video to YouTube.
22) Share the opening night video on your church’s Facebook page
23) You & your virtual street team share the opening night video on your personal Facebook profiles & encourage others to do the same.
24) Tweet the opening night video using your church’s Twitter account.
25) You & your virtual street team retweet your church’s tweet of the opening night video.