This is part 8 of a 10-part blog series on HOW TO GET YOUR MINISTRY ONLINE. You can follow the DIGITAL SKATEPARK tag or go back to the intro post for links out to the rest of the series.
< See the previous post in the series
CREATE MEDIA STREAMS
For those who have been reading along closely, it might seem strange to suggest working hard to create a centralised HQ when most of your young people will naturally flock to the latest social network.
Therefore, I think it’s worthwhile setting up youth group accounts in a few of the popular social networks. If all of your youth are hanging at the beach and you want to hang out with them or communicate something to them, go to the beach.
At the moment we have the following social media streams:
Mailchimp
YouTube
Each of them is used in a different way.
Facebook is currently the champion. It’s a key way that I communicate with leaders and the majority of our youth are online each day.
Instagram is a close second. Facebook doesn’t allow children under 13 to have an account. A significant number of our years 7 and 8s have, with parental permission, Instagram accounts as they allow for under 13s. (I’m currently checking whether this is still the case… stay tuned, or let me know in the comments if you know…)
Twitter doesn’t much pull in our youth ministry and we could do without it.
Mailchimp is the system we use for our weekly newsletter, only 25-30% of our youth open the email while close to 100% of parents who are subscribed open it.
YouTube is used every time we have a new video to share.
Through each of these streams we engage different people at different times.
See the next post in the series >
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This series forms the basis of a chapter I wrote in a forthcoming Youth Ministry book to be published by Anglican Youthworks. The rest of the book is written by Scott Petty (Youth Minister from Christ Church St Ives) and is published here with permission.
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