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Tag Archives: Social Media

An 8-Step Guide to Creating a Spiritual Social Media Presence

14 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by Brian in Services

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Analytics, consulting, discovery, Integration, Pinterest, Sacred Heart, Social Media, social media proposal, Spiritual Social Media, Twitter, Users Manual, You Tube

spritual social media

Building and marketing a social media presence can be a challenge for any organization. It requires a disciplined and structured approach leveraging the spiritual uniqueness of the organization. As Pope Francis says, “Let us boldly become citizens of the digital world.”

ShrineTower has put together a 8 step guide for creating spiritual social media program. This guide uses a hands on consulting business model in helping others market their religious ideals to maximize benefits.

Step 1: Discovery: Listening to the Heartbeat

heart beat2

Start by listening to the organizations heartbeat and analyze the current social media platforms and websites. The Discovery phase determines the spiritual landscape, the overall mission and the leaderships vision.

Since there are many types of religious organizations, each with a unique culture, program offerings and worship practices, the social media strategy, to be effective needs to build upon tradition.  It doesn’t reinvent the spiritual practices, it magnifies what is already present. In some cases this tradition spans hundreds of years or even centuries. For example, a contemplative monastery has different goals than a parish or a religious shrine. Discovering the prominent saints, their lives and how they relate back to the organization is a key strategy. Understanding the significance of events in the liturgical calendar year specific to the organization will also determine content.

A prime influence in the discovery phase is the type of religious rite the organization is affiliated. For example, Eastern rites, Latin rites and Orthodox Christian, each have their own culture and goals for using social media. The specific religious order and academic affiliations will give the necessary background for the social media engagement.

Jesus i trust in You
Jesus I Trust in You, from Daylesford Abbey campus, Paoli PA.

If at all possible, meet the representatives of the organization you are planning to help in person. Although Skype, Facetime and phone calls are good follow-up forms of communications, they are not optimal for initiating a project. A professional consulting services approach is a relationship business and requires front time.

Also important is to tour the church, monastery or chapel facilities. Ask for permission to take photos. Participating in the liturgical services is effective way to get indoctrinated in the culture, practices and beliefs.

Next, create a Discovery deliverable, typically a letter or email correspondence where you playback what you heard. This highlights the strategic direction, existing strengths and reasons for using social media. Several reasons to expand into social media are to communicate events, inspire the community and grow a following. In the current age, the entire world is active in social media, both young and seniors alike, so being relevant and communicating where people are congregating is prime reason people want to build a social media presence.

sacred heart of Jesus 2 phildelphia 2012 050Sacred Heart of Jesus, Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, Philadelphia.

Most client organizations ask about costs during the Discovery period.  To benefit all parties, define the scope of effort and deliverables before discussing costs or fees.

By sharing the Discovery document, which is usually a brief synopsis, you will get feedback, gain consensus and show an understanding of the spiritual climate, culture and vision. After the scope is defined during Discovery, a brief one page proposal can be created.

Step 2: Craft a Proposal

St. Theresa of Avila Francisco Goya
St. Teresa of Avila by Francisco Goya 1792

Once the discovery letter is agreed upon, steps to conduct a social media consulting engagement begin; by sharing the deliverables, timetable and addressing any fees or costs. If you classify your effort more as ministry than a business, the fees become inconsequential. Rewards are not always monetary, they can be spiritual.

At this point determine if a social media campaign is in order. A social media campaign is a 90 day takeover of the proposed social media platforms including all content creation, obtaining a following and growing the presence. It’s an effective way to gain traction in this space quickly.

What is in scope and what is out of scope should be highlighted. The proposal builds off the Discovery and provides a deliverable based outline. Once the proposal is issued, the client you are helping needs time to decide on proceeding with the campaign. Stay in touch and be patient, God’s at work here.

With approval to proceed, assuming this is the outcome, share the financial arrangements if agreed, so the transition is smooth and professional.

Step 3: Information Request

st. john of teh cross
St. John of the Cross, Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia PA

Gathering resource materials quickly will jump start the content creation process. Request core prayers, cultural information; religious rite history, poems (especially by religious), background of the religious order. Also gather media; video, commemorative books, digital photos, yearly calendar of key events; programs, artifacts and saint feast days. All will be instrumental in creating spiritual content.

From this information request, you will understand core beliefs, ideals and saintly influences. As mentioned, attend a liturgical service or a spiritual program to get fully indoctrinated into the culture. Use a quality dSLR camera to document stained glass windows, church icons and sacred spaces. In todays social media, photos and graphics play an important role in spreading the message.

Step 4: Platform Build

social media keyboard

The workhorse of spiritual social media is Twitter, an online social networking service that enables users to send and read short 140-character messages called “tweets”. Twitter is trending away from personal conversations to more content sharing and links sharing. More than twenty Roman Catholic cardinals have active Twitter accounts and can be easily accessed.

in building the platforms consider the integration with existing or planned media. The chart below can be used to explain the build components.

social media integration architecture diagramSocial Media Platform Integration Chart by @ShrineTower.

Some of the integrations are built into the platforms, like Facebook to Twitter, and WordPress to Twitter; both requiring a simple checked box to activate. Others require a manual effort. In either case, cross platform integration of a single post is becoming the norm.

The video distribution landscape is changing and now integrates across all platforms; from video snippets on Instagram (10-15 seconds), to embedded code on websites, to uploads on Facebook, to video tweets on Twitter. the landscape is always changing, consider the new periscope video now available.

The handle naming nomenclature of each social media platform is important in branding the organization to the digital world. This requires client buy in, since the handle name is usually short and yet the abbreviation needs to be recognizable.

Step 5: Spiritual Content Creation

dominic face 2 best
St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican Order, St. Basil the Great, Kimberton, PA

Creating content can be a positive spiritual experience. Many churches, monasteries and spiritual centers abound with icons, statues and stained glass windows that tell a story that can be photographed and used in social media as inspirations for content. A good practice is to relate a post content back to the religious organizations ideals.

In addition to interior photos, some of the surrounding grounds can make good backdrop photos, either as standalone photos used with Twitter text or background photos overlaid with text. Pablo is a god tool for this.

To create a social media campaign of multiple themed posts requires discipline and structure. Here are two planning steps in the process:

A concentrated social media effort .

  • create a manual worksheet schedule (pages table document),
  • use an automated scheduling tool (internet subscription tool).See 4 Tools for a Spiritual Social Media Campaign for more details on tools.

The research from the information request and photos captured from a tour are combined to create posts. Naturally, photos from google searches can be obtained but for a true spiritual post, the immediate Church property and surrounding grounds are important.

Typically, a post created with Twitter is released real time. A post created in a scheduling tool, like Buffer, Hootesuite or ManageFlitter,  can be released real time or have a future release day and time.

Several types of posts are:

    • The popular photo with prayer tweet. This is used extensively in spiritual  social media.
      bishop barron example tweet
    • The scripture quote tweet
    • The religious painting tweet
    • Event promotion tweet
    • Slideshare presentation tweet
      slideshare example
    • The YouTube tweet
    • The Pablo (image design tool) tweet with text
      example tweet st. ignatius
    • The author quote tweet
    • Retweet (suggestion is to used sparingly at first)
    • The directed tweet. This uses the @handle to get their attention.And the list goes on as more creative posts using the latest technology are applied.

Several advanced social media techniques are:

Hashtag. A word or phrase preceded by a hash or pound sign (#) and used to identify messages on a specific topic. Searching for that hashtag will then present each message that has been tagged with it. Several popular hashtags are: #Catholic, #Prayer and #PopeFrancis.

List. A list is a curated group of twitter users. As a clients followers grow, lists become the better way to view tweet streams. There are other creative ways to use lists, like “Cardinals on Twitter”.

Themes – Themes provide a guide to creating social media content so that the message is reinforced with regularity and structure. For example, a saint dedication, like John the Baptist, on a specific day of the week, or a group of posts like the Prophets over a period of time. A common theme is Feast days where the posts are matched to the saint on a particular date.

Dormition of Mary HTC
Theme example: Dormition of Mary. August 15 Feast Day, Eastern Catholic Orthodox
Theme: “Mother of God” from Holy Trinity Chapel, Jenkintown, PA

Fortunately, there are safeguards designed to suppress annoying users:

Mute – When you mute a user, their tweets and retweets become invisible to you. The muted user can still interact with your tweets, ie they can favorite, reply, or retweet your content, but those actions won’t appear in your Twitter timeline. A muted user can follow you, it’s just like you’ve turned the volume down on their voice.

Block – Another safety feature is to block an annoying Twitter user. In this case an account will be unable to follow you or add you to their Twitter lists, and you will not receive a notification if they mention you in a Tweet.

Report – This files a report that someone is Tweeting abusive messages.

Posts can include icon photos from the Church/Chapel, prayers, saint photos and quotes, poems, sacred art and scripture. The approach is to grow followers with trust and respect, also called growing a following organically.

One strategy, especially those wishing to share their posts only, is to limit retweets of another users content. Having minimal dialogue with the public respects the religious nature of some organizations. Therefore, the “newsy” type posts are not used, adhering to beliefs in contemplative or monastic religious orders.

Step 6: Mining for Followers

twitter on a head

A method to triple or quadruple a “following” on Twitter uses the “copy followers” technique. You locate a user who has followers you would like to engage with and invite these followers, either manually or with an automated tool like ManageFlitter.  Adjustments are required to keep followers and following relevant, but this does work.

master twitter 2

Gaining approval and staying positively engaged can be done with the Favorite button on Twitter and the Like button on Facebook. Positive sentiments are conducive to meeting people by sharing approval. Many use the favorite button to gain supporters and followers, often called gaining followers organically. This good natured method of mutual admiration resonates well with many people.

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” Colossians 3:12

Connecting with an influencer can be rewarding. Influencers such as @BishopBarron, @JamesMartinSJ, @DianavonGlahn and @MatthewFKelly have followers in the thousands and even millions.

christ walking on water
Jesus helping Apostle Peter out of water with followers looking on.

Step 7 Growth Analytics

ad

Analytics are available from the social media platform or third party tools. The Twitter analytics shows platform growth, engagement rate by tweet, top tweets and trends. Other analytic tools are Facebook Insights, SumAll and most of the scheduling tools like Buffer, Hootesuite and ManageFlitter.

See 4 Tools for a Spiritual Social Media Campaign.

Step 8: The Hand-Off – A Users Guide

the-lord-s-prayer-1896 james tissot
Leaving the Our Father with the disciples. James Tissot, The Lords Prayer, Brooklyn Museum.

A Users Guide to Social Media is intended for a person or group of persons with little or no knowledge of social media. There are opportunities to recruit volunteers to assist in these type of infrastructure endeavors. What better way to get a congregation to act for a common cause than with social media in their own parish or Church. The Users Guide allows anyone, including volunteers, to become proficient at using social media for the greater glory of God.

“The principal mission of the Church is evangelization, bringing the good news to everyone” – Pope Francis.

Summary

Social media continues to enlighten and inspire others to get closer to God, and to increase the publics knowledge of activities to reach that end. High quality social media content raise awareness in the Christian community locally, regionally and worldwide.

unique-moon-birds-fantasy-abstract-website-header

Approach spiritual social media with a vengeance, all the while sharing the joy, kindness and goodness brought by each post.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.” Galatians 5:22

 

4 Tools for a Spiritual Social Media Campaign

10 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by Brian in Services

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Tags

Automated Scheduling Tool, Buffer, canva, Image Design Tool, ManageFlitter, Pablo, PicMonkey, Schedule Table, Social Media, Social Media Campaign, Software tools, SumAll, Twitter Analytics

a spiritual social media campaign1

A spiritual or religious Social Media Campaign is an effective way to create a new digital presence or expand an existing presence to enlighten and inspire others to get closer to God. A Social Media Campaign is a concentrated effort, usually 90 days, to create one or more social media platforms and takeover all content creation, follower management and maintenance. It’s an effective way to gain traction in this space quickly and effectively.

Yet, Social Media Campaigns takes organization and discipline. Tools for planning and releasing posts followed by analytics are necessary for conducting a successful Social Media Campaign for a religious organization.

There are two parts to creating and scheduling a series of social media posts; first, a manual Schedule Table for planning and capturing ideas and second; an Automated Scheduling Tool for releasing posts.

Tool 1- Schedule Table

schedule social media campaign 1
Example of a manual Schedule Table.

Although technically not a software tool, a Schedule Table is a planning tool for managing work-in-progress content creation for social media posts. In religious circles, content release is typically based on the liturgical calendar. Many religious organizations offer programs and events also based on a calendar.

give us this day calendar2
Religious Calendar from Give us this Day, Daily Prayer for Todays Catholic

The Schedule Table worksheet captures post research, photos, and documented sources during and after a Social Media Campaign. The Schedule Table is a simple table within a pages or word document (or excel), created as a placeholder for future tweet releases by day and month, including feast days, saint days and religious themes. It does not require the exact time within the day for release, since the Automated Scheduling Tool takes care of that, but it should have the correct day of the sent and planned posts. The Schedule Table also acts as a backup repository to the Automated Scheduling Tool.

Tool 2 – Automated Scheduling Tool: ManageFlitter

ignatius 2 power post
Creating a post in the Automated Scheduling Tool, ManageFlitter.

From the planning Schedule Table, content is then populated in the ManageFlitter scheduling tool, both photo and text. The tool is a core component to a Social Media Campaign. In this case, the Power Post feature of the tool schedules future posts for auto releases inter-day on Twitter. The PRO version of ManageFlitter, which is a paid subscription, manages multiple posts per day, both weeks or months in advance, whereas the free version allows only one post per day. Since a social media campaign is a concentrated media effort within a given time frame, there should be a minimum of 3- 5 tweets per day.

three postd part 2
ManageFlitter simplified example of pending posts ready for auto- release.

Several ManageFlitter features include:

  • Unfollow, which shows the people who you’ve followed who don’t follow you back or inactive users,
  • Search to find people or groups of people by region or keyword;
  • CopyFollowers, allowing a user to filter and copy another person’s followers; and Find those who follow you but you donʼt follow them back.

Reuse of a post is a key feature of ManageFlitter. This can maximize social media effectiveness, if one ascribes to Guy Kawasaki’s rule of reposting the same content multiple times over several platforms.

Other popular social media scheduling tools are: Buffer and HootSuite.

Tool 3 – Analytics: Twitter Analytics

In 2014, Twitter allowed a basic twitter account to use their premium analytics tool. The Twitter Analytics feature shows engagement rate by tweet, top tweets and trends. For a startup twitter account, knowing which type of post generated higher than average activity is valuable data, since you can then alter the nature, timing and type of future posts.

anayltics twitter generic

This graph shows follower growth from inception of a new platform for a clients social media campaign conducted in the Summer of 2015. From Audience Insights by Twitter.

Other analytics tools are: SumAll, Buffer and HootSuite.

Tool 4 – Image Design Tool: Pablo by Buffer

pablo(11)
Pablo by Buffer example of imported photo with text overlay title and subtitle.

With emphasis on graphics in social media, an image design tool can provide an interesting array of visuals. Pablo by Buffer is an image design tool. Pablo allows text overlays onto an imported photo or a stock photo. A recent Buffer study showed an image post on Twitter increases retweets by 28% and favorites by 36%.  Once mastered, an image can be created in less than 30 seconds.

johna pablo
Pablo allows more than 140 characters on photo overlay, so the actual tweet can be a shortened reference to the photo.

Other image design tools are: Canva a simplified PhotoShop tool and PicMonkey, a free on-line photo editor.

Summary

A Spiritual Social Media Campaign is a concentrated effort at creating and releasing high quality themed posts for a religious organization. Tools used with a disciplined methodology are essential in planning and executing a Spiritual Social Media Campaign. The four tools: Schedule Table, Automated Scheduling, Analytics and Image Design, and the methodology described, can be used to assure a successful Spiritual Social Media Campaign, “All for the greater glory of God.”

The New Evangelization Enabler: Social Media – Sharing the Joy and Beauty of God

05 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by Brian in Services

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Tags

Archbishop Eamon Martin, Evangelization, Information Technology, Internet, ministry, New Evangelization, Pope Francis, Professional Services, Social Media

journey-of-the-magi.jpg!HalfHD
“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” – Matthew 10:16
Journey of the Magi by James Tissot.

The revolution taking place in communications media and in information technologies represents a great and thrilling challenge; may we respond to that challenge with fresh energy and imagination as we seek to share with others the beauty of God. – Pope Francis

I. The New Evangelization Movement: Get the Message Out

Keeping the doors of our churches open also means keeping them open in the digital environment so that people, whatever their situation in life, can enter, and so that the Gospel can go out to reach everyone. – Pope Francis

Pope with Dove
Pope Francis with dove in Assisi, Italy

May the light we bring to others not be the result of cosmetics or special effects, but rather of our being loving and merciful “neighbors” to those wounded and left on the side of the road.  Let us boldly become citizens of the digital world. – Pope Francis

send the message out
Christ sending out the Seventy Disciples by James Tissot.

Social media is like sending out seventy disciples multiplied by seventy thousand. With technology enabled tools that create and integrate multiple platforms, a sincere unified message can be sent out.

The Internet in particular, offers immense possibilities for encounter and solidarity. This is something truly good, a gift from God. – Pope Francis

POPE FRANCIS MEETS PIACENZA PILGRIMSPope Francis with youth posing for a selfie in St. Peter’s Square.

The digital world can be an environment rich in humanity; a network not of wires but of people.  . . . Christian witness, thanks to the internet, can thereby reach the peripheries of human existence. – Pope Francis

The New Evangelization is the most important movement in the Church today. First, because it concerns evangelization, the Church’s most basic task. – Brandon Vogt

… the Church has barely tapped its potential. Imagine telling St. Paul, St. Augustine or St. Thomas that in less than a second you could beam a message to millions of people around the world — and do it for free. Those guys would have given their right arms for such a tool. – Brandon Vogt

II. Social Media: Where People Congregate, Connect and are Active

ARCHBISHOP EAMON MARTINArchbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, Ireland. An unlikely technology leader.

“Our challenge as evangelisers has always been to reach out and encounter people where they are at, and nowadays, more and more that means online!” If only to be able to reach our young people and an increasing percentage of people of all ages, we need to be present in this new age.  – Archbishop Eamon Martin

instagram example all saints day martin
Fr. James Martin SJ, connecting Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to get the message out.

The Internet has become like the nervous system of our culture, in which more and more people are expressing and exploring their identity, picking up and discarding their values and attitudes, expressing their feelings and prejudices, befriending and unfriending each other, measuring each other’s status and importance, relevance and appearance. If our young people are living in this gigantic network, then we, as people of faith need to be in there, dialogging with the inhabitants of this world, with the men and women who dwell in the web! – Archbishop Eamon Martin

pope francis twitter acct pageThe official Twitter page of Pope Francis. Over 4.5 million followers.

I quote from the Pope’s Message: ‘The digital highway is … a street teeming with people who are often hurting, men and women looking for salvation or hope. By means of the Internet, the Christian message can reach “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8)’.

III. Social Media Services – The Gift Giveaway

Everything we have received is a gift from God. We respond to his love by giving it away, by showing it in a way of serving. – David Fleming S.J.

Social Media services provided upon request.
ShrineTower@gmail.com
@shrinetower (Twitter)

Credits:
Credits – Message of Pope Francis for the 48th World Communications Day [(6/1/14)
Credits – Brandon Vogt interview.
Credits – Archbishop Eamon Martin (Ireland) ‘The New media and the work of Evangelisation

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The Cover Art

Jan Van Eyck, “The Adoration of the Lamb” 1432 from the Ghent Alterpiece. Detail: The red altar where the lamb stands reads, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world” and “Jesus the way, the truth, and the life”, both quotes from Gospel of John. In this image and in the book of Revelation the Lamb is Jesus. Directly around the Lamb on the altar are angels who are carrying the instruments in the Passion scenes, like the cross and crown of thorns.

gichontree

There's beauty in sacred spaces; from the stories they tell in architecture, stained glass windows and icons; to the rituals and liturgy that arises our soul. Inside a shrine, the angels and saints praise God with us. I hope to relay the message for the kingdom, power and glory of God, now and forever.

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