How to Plan Your Church Social Media Calendar

Jul 7, 2020

8

min read

Have you ever felt the stress of creating a social media post at the last second? Once you finish a ton of posts, the next week starts!

It's easy to feel behind, overwhelmed, and stuck creating redundant posts that you aren't excited about. No one enjoys social media when you are rushing, stressed and posting day to day.

You may think if we had more staff, a larger church or a bigger budget, it will make social media easier. It won't. It might even make it more complicated.

You can have a small team of only volunteers with a great process that doesn't stress you all out and leads to reaching more people.

The smaller the team, the more volunteers, and the more busy you are... the more you need to focus on your process so you can make it work for you.

Planning ahead will give you space to be creative and renew your energy to create content that makes a difference in people's lives and that you feel excited about.

In this post you’ll learn how to create your church's social media plan so you can finally be consistent and reverse the cycle of posting last minute.

Benefits Of Creating A Social Media Plan For Your Church

You Can Post Strategically Instead of Randomly

You can now strategize based on your bigger marketing plan. You can think about what posts work, which ones don’t and have a plan to improve.

It’s hard to improve when you are posting day to day running with the wind. It’s time to be the boss of your social media versus it being the boss of you.

You can know what you are doing and why you are doing it. You aren’t just throwing things out there, trying to hit an imaginary target and then wondering if your time spent on social media is worth it.

You can think about the people you want to reach and intentionally create posts that will attract and serve them.

Decrease Overwhelm and Help Volunteers Stick Around

You can put out more valuable content because you aren’t being reactive anymore. The feeling of starting the day knowing everything is planned and set to go feels SO good.

Being reactive produces thrown together posts that don’t mean much to you and don’t accomplish your purpose.

Being reactive also hurts your chances of having volunteers who want to stick with you and help with social media. I don’t want your volunteers to feel on call with social media.

Create A Versatile Social Media Feed

You are able to see from a birds eye view what you are routinely posting to make sure you are creating a versatile feed.

You can also space out announcement type posts so your feed doesn’t feel like an impersonal advertisement.

Build a Team

You are able to hand off tasks to a volunteer or assistant who can help you. When you plan ahead you have the ability to grow a big team. Even a volunteer only team.

Social media volunteer teams get shaky because of last minute planning. Not only that, getting people to serve will help them get more connected in your community. Win-win.

Let’s dive into what steps to take to plan your content smoothly.

This will help you to overcome that “social media block”, where you stare at the screen, flip through other church social media accounts and think about how you wish yours was like theirs.

How To Plan Your Church Social Media Calendar

1. Choose Your Church's Post Frequency

Pick an amount of posts per week that you know you can stay consistent with while producing content that is valuable. As a general guideline I suggest choosing between 3-7 posts per week.

2. Choose Your Church's Social Platforms

Decide which platforms you’ll be communicating through. Don't try to "do it all". I suggest picking 2 main platforms and repurposing your content on each. If you aren't sure, Instagram and Facebook are a great place to start.

3. Choose Your Church's Weekly Post Types

Determine how many of each post type will you create every week.

For example:

3 Videos per week
2 Carousels per week
2 Photos/Graphics per week

4. Choose Your Church's Content Categories

Rotate through 7 post categories when you create your social media plan so you always know what to post and you post a variety of topics. I call this your Solid7.

5. Choose A Content Calendar Manage Your Social Media

Make sure you have a way to keep track of everything you just decided and to layout to your team who is doing what so that you don't have to do all the work yourself. You need everything all in once place to be the source of truth.

To download my free church calendar template click here: The Ultimate Social Media Calendar Every Church Needs.