Friends, here’s the first part of my recent webcast on Social Media and Membership Growth presented to Canadian Unitarian congregations, sponsored by the CUC.
- You can watch the full session here.
Total running time: 1 hr 40 min
Tag Archives: Social Media
UU Social Media: Why collaboration is critical for success
In this Facebook Live session, I discuss UU congregational social media management and why a collaborative spirit and team approach are critical to success! This 23-minute session is for all congregational leaders including religious professionals, staff, and volunteers. Parish ministers and ministry leaders: A special message (cheer leading!) for you is included starting at 14 minutes into video. Unitarian Universalist leaders are invited to join my UU PLANET Facebook group. In this group I hold weekly live sessions on themes related to leading and growing UU congregations.
Friends: I just added closed captioning for this video. Make sure to hit the CC button if you want it displayed. ~ Peter
Prefer to watch and share on Facebook? Here’s a public Facebook Post from my UU PLANET page.
Engaging people in congregational life using social media – climate justice example
How can you use social media to engage people in congregational life? It isn’t by bombarding them with boring cut and pasted invitations to attend!
In this excerpt from my weekly live Q&A / office hours in our UU PLANET Community group, I share an example of using social media to engage people with a specific worship service and upcoming area of focus for the congregation. Because it is dangerously HOT, HOT, HOT in Boston I use a climate justice focused service and launch of a new climate justice ministry as an example.
Organizations I used in this example:
Note that YES, we do need to work on addressing the root causes of climate change, but I think a special focus for our congregations should be helping to re-connect humanity, cultivating and articulating a vision for how we do “climate disruption” together, and working to address associated injustices.
New UUA Congregations Reaching Out Toolkit
Friends, I’m excited to share the new UUA Congregations Reaching Out Toolkit with you!
I’m always sharing great UUA resources, but this one is special as worked with the UUA Outreach Team on its development. It represents a fantastic collaboration and synthesis of many best practices and recommended outreach strategies. More on my contributions and link to the toolkit below.
I highly recommend sharing this resource with your leadership. Use it to help you realize your congregations growth and outreach potential.
About the Congregations Reaching Out Toolkit
The Congregations Reaching Out Toolkit is designed to help Unitarian Universalists congregations and groups accomplish the following:
- Discern who you are and compellingly communicate a cohesive identity online and in person.
- Use social media to identify, reach, and engage with specific target audiences.
- Create and promote outreach events and opportunities based on the needs of these audiences.
The toolkit is presented in three guides:
- Finding Your Target Audience
- Social Media Strategy for Outreach
- Planning and Promoting Great Outreach Events
“Together these present an outreach process of continually refining your public identity, sharing this through your online presence, identifying new audiences you want to reach, engaging with them via social media, and intentionally designing and promoting outreach-focused events. As the need for UU values has never been greater, we must turn up our efforts to turn our ministries outward to our communities, helping those values reach new groups of people inside and outside our congregations.”
My Role and Contributions
As for my contributions to the toolkit, first, I offered content feedback and strategy recommendations on an early version of the toolkit. Later, after the two principal authors on the resource changed staff positions — Carey McDonald moved from UUA Outreach Director to UUA Acting Chief Operating Officer and the Rev. Sarah Gibb Millspaugh joined the congregational life staff of the Pacific Western Region of the UUA — I accepted the task of doing a major edit and re-write of the toolkit.
Because of these various roles:
- I am directly quotedin the toolkit
- Offered additional tips and strategies for inclusion
- And re-wrote / edited large portions of the toolkit
If you recognize language from my training in parts of the resource that are not directly attributed to me, that’s because I wrote or edited that section. As I said, this resource represents a great collaboration.
I’m grateful to Carey McDonald, now Executive Vice President of the UUA, for the opportunity to work with the UUA Outreach Team on the development of this resource, and to the Rev. Sarah Gibb Millspaugh for giving it a home with the Pacific Western Region of the UUA. Thank you.
Get the Toolkit
That’s it! I hope you find this resource valuable. You can download the strategy guides that make up the toolkit here:
Make the most of this great resources: Share it. Print it. Discuss it.
Going to the UUA’s General Assembly conference? Bring it with you. It will make for great reading and conversation. Once you check it out, I’d love to hear what you think. Comment on this post, where I share this via Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook Changes: A Briefing for Congregations
Facebook’s recently announced changes are going to have a huge impact on congregational pages. Here’s a briefing on the changes and why you may want to consider incorporating a congregation-wide Facebook group into your strategy. This is food for thought. You should talk how to respond with your team.
Need help integrating community building, ministry, and media? That’s what I do. Contact me to discuss coaching, keynotes, and training events for religious leaders, staff, and volunteers.
Former Facebook executives warn social media is ‘Ripping Apart’ human society
Recenly former Facebook exectutives been featured in the media discussing the impact of social media on society. What are the impacts of social media? Here’s what the people who helped make Facebook are saying.
I should note that I love social media. We just need to use it with purpose and integrity. I think part of that requires we recognize that getting a small sense of connection and a hit of dopmine from a social media interaction is not a substitute for our deeper need for connection, meanining, and belonging that comes from being part of a strong local face-to-face community. Part of our strengthening the social fabric of our society requires we first acknowledge that we need community, that we need eachother, and that the void when we are missing it can’t be satisfied in the long term by digital connections.
Peter Bowden 