Social Media and My Ministry: Five Essential Management Tools

Twitter posts, blog entries, Facebook updates ... managing your social media presence can be overwhelming to think about. Thankfully, there are tools available to help you. Below are a list of five free programs, websites, and applications to help you organize, manage, and develop your ministry's social media.

HowSociable?

Track your ministry's brand visibilty on social media websites
This website tracks your ministry's presence on the Web's many social media sites and produces a brand visibility score based on the amount of content and followers you have on these sites. Because of its many Vimeo videos, Facebook pages and followers, and Twitter tweets, a large church like Harvest Bible Chapel has a brand visibility score of 217.

HowSociable? is a good place to visit before you develop your social media strategy. You can see where your presence is strong and where you need to increase it. It's also a great way to track your efforts. Visiting this site regularly will give you a tangible way to see if your social media strategy is succeeding. Score increasing? Job well done.

HOWSOCIABLE.COM

HootSuite

Schedule tweets, track your followers, and see who's mentioning you
One of the most popular tools for managing social media accounts is this web-based application. This website allows you to manage multiple Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Wordpress, and other social media accounts. If you have more than one person managing your social media, HootSuite allows for multiple users to access and utilize your account.

You can schedule future updates for all or each account individually. HootSuite also provides you with tons of useful data like who's retweeting your posts, how many people click on the links in your tweets, and also integrates your website's Google Analytics. If you have many social media accounts, and many people managing them, HootSuite is a great place to organize and manage it all from one location.

HOOTSUITE.COM

TweetDeck

Manage your social media accounts and follow others'
This program is downloaded to your desktop, and offers much of the same features as HootSuite, like multiple Twitter and Facebook account management, update scheduling, and photo sharing.

TweetDeck makes it easy to see all updates on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites from your followers and those you follow. Seeing all these updates from one dashboard saves you the time and effort of visiting each site multiple times per day, and makes it easier to retweet or link to these posts. You can also download TweetDeck to your iPhone or iPad for following or updating on the go.

TWEETDECK.COM

IceRocket

Find Web content to link to and retweet
A common mistake when it comes to planning for social media is thinking you need to constantly create new content for posting. One of the easiest ways to find material for blogs and tweets is to link to other content on the Web. This website allows you to search and keyword, phrase, topic, or even your own church name to see what people are saying on blogs, Twitter, Facebook posts, news, or even images.

Retweet someone else's post and they may return the favor later, making you visible to their followers. Respond to a blogger's entry and they might link to your blog, driving more traffic to your website. Include a link to a news story on your Facebook site to keep your followers up-to-date on your ministry's happenings.

ICEROCKET.COM

LaterBro

Schedule tweets and Facebook updates for future dates and times
After signing into this web-based tool, you can add several Twitter accounts and one Facebook account to schedule future updates. Just enter in your tweet (limited to 140 characters), pick your future date from the calendar, and select a time and LaterBro does the updating for you. It even has a built in URL shortener.

Scheduling future updates help you plan ahead and allows for updates to go out even if you're not in the office. Already know your pastor's sermon schedule? Enter in a month's worth of updates on one day to work more efficiently.

LATERBRO.COM