10 Twitter Tips for Church Tweets

Wondering if Twitter has a place in your church communication arsenal? We have adapted a great post from here (http://bit.ly/bjvSft) to focus on the specific needs of a church wanting to use Twitter.  If you are new to Twitter, watch the video after the break!Read on for 10 great tips to get your church off the ground… or out of the nest, as it were…

In April, 2010, Twitter recently disclosed these facts (they are actually MUCH, MUCH higher today – but seldom published):

• Twitter now has 105,779,710 registered users.
• 180 million unique visitors come to the site every month.
• Twitter gets a total of 3 billion requests a day via its API.
• Twitter users are, in total, tweeting an average of 55 million tweets a day.

Although the phrase sounds strange to even me, if your church is looking to grow their social media strategy – Twitter should be your #2 focus after Facebook.  Here are 10 tips to gain followers and build relationships.

1. Focus your Twitter use for communicating general church information.  Stay on target.  This should ensure the widest audience of followers interested in your church and reduce stress around what should be your next post.

2. Use Twitter as one part of your overall social media presence. Besides Twitter, you should have a web site, blog and Facebook fan page. Your tweets – 140-character status updates – are teasers into your web site, blog, or fan page.

3. Brand your Twitter page to match your church website.The standard Twitter background screams “newbie.” Pay close attention to your profile photo, bio, and background. Twitter, FaceBook and your webpage should all look like they belong together.

4. Connect with your followers through # tags (called “hashtags“). A hashtag is a keyword that your followers can track – like: “#metrocalvary”. As other users and other posts include this keyword/hashtag, it makes searching for related info easy.

5. Be social! Retweet or reply to tweets. The more you participate, the more your follower base will grow. A follower who retweets your tweet can exponentially grow your follower base. Especially if that follower has more fans than you have.

6. Mix up your tweets. Just posting announcements will get boring.  Try throwing in a picture.  Retweet a positive comment from a member.  Post a question for everyone to answer. Post a short message from the Senior Pastor.  Keeping things focused, but lively will keep your presence fresh and show some personality.

7. Keep a metered, steady flow.  You can use third-party applications such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, or just a calendar reminder to schedule your updates.  The ideal situation is daily, but 2 or 3 times a week is OK too.

8. Reach out to bloggers in your church that are on Twitter. Engaging members that are already active online will help you build new relationships and quickly gain momentum.  Remember #4!

9. Give and it shall be given unto you. In your “thanks for following me” message, include links to your sermon podcast, your resources page on your website (bulletin PDF downloads, sermon note PDFs, etc), or your blog. This will help build and inform your follower base.

10. Keep your tweets positive and to the point (you only have 140 characters, after all). The twitterverse has a limited attention span. You should use a different solution for prayer requests and keep it light – focus on practical info and encouragement.  If you are linking to longer blog posts with lots of detail, be sure you boil down the info to give your twitter posts enough value to stand on it’s own. If every tweet is just a link to a longer piece, you will lose your followers fast.

God bless and happy Tweeting!

Brook Drumm