Growing Your Religion Through Social Media

I have the privilege of serving as president of the board of the Unitarian Universalist Community of Lake County. For those of you unfamiliar with our movement, Unitarian Universalisim (“UU”) has its roots in the 16th century Reformation and is a caring, open-minded religion that encourages each person to seek his or her own spiritual path. Noted Unitarian Universalists include John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Charles Dickens, Clara Barton, Luther Burbank, and Albert Schweitzer.

I belong to an email list for UU presidents. Recently, the question was asked: “Anyone have any good ideas about how we might be using … social networking sites?”

Rather than answer via email, I’ll post my reply here, as the lessons are applicable for any faith.

Steps To Growing Your Religion Through Social Media

Create a social media plan.

Like most faiths, UU depends greatly on the generous contributions of time and money of its members. Planning helps to use these resources wisely.

Planning also allows for a more accurate assessment as to whether an organization’s vision, mission and goals are being achieved through its participation in social media.

Let’s use the analogy of building a house to explain the main components of a social media plan for a religious organization:

Part 1 – Setting the Foundation

• Have an offline growth plan

Social media is far more effective when it supports offline initiatives. Besides having a great welcoming program for visitors and members alike, a formal public relations program is a useful gadget to have in your growth plan toolbox (PR is a great way to establish credibility by getting other people to say good things about you for free!)

• Develop your brand.

What image do you want your religion to portray? The UU’s biggest well-kept secret is that our movement has always been at the front of any issue concerning civil rights and social justice. “Tooting our own horn” about this among multicultural populations would help increase diversity within our membership ranks and aid in sustainable growth.

• Define your audience

People of every age, sex, and race are involved with social media. How you reach them (and what platforms you choose) depends on whom you want to reach out to.

• Define the plan’s purpose.
  Perhaps you want to:
  • Build traffic (not only to a website, but also through the doors on Sunday)
  • Increase conversion rate on your site (Have people join your online church?)
  • Improve communication with your membership
  • Develop your brand image

You may want to address all of these, or only a portion in your overall plan. And, each tactic you choose (e.g., blog, video posting, online contest) may also have more than one purpose.

• Assess your resources

Time. Money. People. Each of these is a precious and limited resource, and all are necessary for a plan to succeed. Who will be responsible for creating your social media plan? Who will direct the implementation team? What is the time availability of your largely volunteer social media committee members? How much money are you willing to invest? All these are very important questions to have upfront answers to!

• Decide how you are going to participate.

Will you be a creator, critic, collector, joiner, or spectator? Maybe you’ll be all of these!

• Determine how you will measure results.

There are many metrics you can use to assess social media success. Regardless of which you choose, be consistent and track change over time.

Part 2 – Building the Frame

• Evaluate and select social media platforms. (Here’s a good place to start!)
• Evaluate and select evaluation tools (I use Google Analytics – it’s free and pretty comprehensive, though there are many other fee-based tools specifically designed for social media tracking.)

Part 3 – Painting and Decorating

• Brainstorm tactics (e.g., contests, comment postings, white label social networks. There’s more detail on tactics later on in this post.)
• Create campaigns (take one or more of your tactics and turn it into a committed course of action)

Part 4 – Moving In

• Implement your campaign/s
• Track and measure results
• CANI – Constant and Never Ending Improvement
  (Debrief your efforts: What worked, what didn’t, how can we improve? )

A Possible Template.

I believe the establishment of a branded social network specific to a faith could be a valuable approach for any religious organization. Faiths already have a firmly established offline community whose members are probably already active online. Providing the faithful with an online place to meet, collaborate, educate, and inform is a natural fit.

Below is a simple template for a possible social media plan design for Unitarian Universalism

Sample UU Social Media Plan Template

Template components:

• Cornerstone:
  • A social network devoted to UU. This network can either be hosted on a white-label platform (e.g., Ning, Socialgo) or developed in-house. This social network’s purpose would be to internally connect UU members, associates and friends.
  • Outreach blogs designed to reach beyond the UU borders to defined audience segments

• Sample Building Blocks:
  • Set up separate profiles on selected social media platforms (e.g., Youtube, Flickr, etc.) for each defined audience segment.
  • Develop a team of people who will leave relevant, useful, and helpful comments and guest post on other blogs (a search on Technorati will reveal top blogs in religion; civil rights; and youth, gender or age-related issues.)
  • Set up groups for each defined audience segment on selected social media networks (e.g,, Facebook, LinkedIn)

• Campaign ideas designed to cross-link platforms:
  • Host an essay contest (e.g., “Why religion is still relevant in the world today”)
  • Host a live online debate on an issue (e.g., Marriage Equality? Is Jesus God? Can We Know The Truth?)
  • Host a film contest (e.g., environmental documentary)
  • Hold a photography contest (e.g., “What Religion Is To Me”)
  • Have a T-shirt design contest (at Cafepress.com)
  • Hold a singer/songwriter contest
  • Hold a “battle of the bands”
  • Have a “Pay it Forward” campaign where people perform random acts of kindness and write about what they did/what was done on a special blog site.
  • Create a “Positive News” video blog on seesmic.com where people post video reports of positive news happening in their community.
  • Make sure the location of every UU community is listed on Google maps.
  • Have a “Passport” program where participants have an online (and “hard copy”) passport. Participants visit other UU communities and collect “stamps” in their passport for every UU community they visit and for every review they write on Google maps (or other review site  – e.g., Yelp)
  • Air worship services online at Ustream.tv
  • Host a radio show at blogtalkradio.com

The possibilities are endless. All it takes is a committed team of people willing to make it happen. Could this be you and me?

Tagged as: religion, social media, unitarian universalism