A Social Media Strategy for a Sports Ministry

Wrestling with how to use social media with your sports ministry?  Perhaps this blog from ChurchCrunch will help.  Here are some principles they list:

1. What is the purpose of your organization, blog, or product?
   Social media is a great tool, but you need to know who you are and what you are going to be putting out there before you press forward with social media. Maybe you are investing too much in social media when you do not even know what the mission of your company is. Defining this is simply a good business practic.
2. What will be the purpose of using social media?
   You need to know why you are using something, otherwise you will not have direction with your tools. Know what the end goal is of using these resources. If it is simply to market, then define that. But realize that social media has the ability to do more than simply getting out the details of your company. You can create a brand, community, and place to get the opinions and other resources from your viewers.
3. Who is your audience?
   If you are a local company in a small town, Facebook may be the perfect place for you. If you are a large church in a big city, you may need to make sure you are present in several networks. Defining this allows you to not waste too much time in the wrong places. This may also take some researching on your part. Survey your current customers as well as new ones.
4. How much resources are you going to put into social networking?
   Will you be paying someone to do this or doing it yourself? How much time to do you want to invest in this a day, wee, or month? Will you be advertising these networks at church, in promotional flyers, on your website? Are you up for putting a little money down to promote your company or product? All of these need to be answered to be efficient.
5. How will you be measuring your success?
   Will you use a web app like Klout or SproutSocial or simply use the built in analytic tools with Google or Facebook’s Insight? If you simply rely on the number of fans or followers, you will miss the mark.

Read the full post here.