Two social media experts provide fascinating insights that will help your social media engagement.

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We invited to Blessing Mpofu and Chris Wilson from Church Mag to come and speak about Social Media. They offered 4 C’s in their talk, but I thought we could use this moment to reflect on just three of those four before we release their talk in the coming weeks.

Whether we like it or not, Social Media is a key part of our lives. Not only does it create connection, but it also provides entertainment, and conveys information. 

There are of course challenges with it, and the digital landscape continues to develop rapidly with Web-3 becoming more immersive (we hosted sessions on AI; AR/VR as well as the Metaverse at Stronger 2022 to look at some of these current developments).

However, I remain convinced that there is an enormous missional opportunity and imperative for the Church (note: that does not mean all Christians, anymore than all Christians are called to be missionaries in Madagascar for example!) to be present as salt and light in response to the Great Commission.

What I love about Blessing and Chris and Church Mag is that they are passionate about digital and empowering the Church to be present and active in the digital space. I couldn’t think of two better people to speak to this topic.

So here are 3 of their 4 C’s of Social Media

1.Challenges
2.Community
3.Collaboration

1.CHALLENGES

We all know there are challenges with social media, we even hosted a panel discussion at Stronger 2022 entitled ‘The Social Dilemma’ after the Netflix hit documentary giving a ‘behind the scenes’ view of how social media companies have set up their platforms to keep people engaged. 

The documentary raises a host of concerns and it’s worth watching the documentary yourself (of course, it doesn’t paint the whole picture, but it’s a part of the picture worth being aware of).

So for Blessing and Chris to pick ‘Challenge’ as one of their ‘C’s’ was great because we need to name the challenges and be aware of the opportunities and navigate a way through.

Some of the challenges they named, include:

• The fact that social media is so crowded and noisy. How can we get our message out there?

• The expectation for content to be of higher production value

• Data privacy and people being less willing to engage openly

• Mental health concerns and the impact of social media on mental health (just this week in fact I was reading some research about physical health being linked to mental health which is impacted by social media. It was a study amongst a sample of students, some of whom were using social media excessively and others not. They drew a link between poor physical health and social media use.

• Polarisation of views that creates division at a local and national level, also the propagation of extreme views

So these are just some of the challenges of social media. You can probably think of a raft of others. We need to be aware of these and guard ourselves against some of these challenges and be aware of these challenges for others.

2.COMMUNITY

We would expect to see this. ‘Community’ is at the heart of Social Media – certainly for the end user. It’s about building connection and it creates a huge opportunity for us as Christians, but also for the Church as we respond to the Great Commission.

Blessing and Chris continue the conversation and bring their own thoughts under this heading.  They say:

‘….community really is at the heart of the church. And social media … presents us with the opportunity to build our communities … and to reach out into the communities that we are in…’

One of the biggest learnings I took away from using social media in a local church context but also personally was that I can default to broadcasting news about what I’m doing, or inviting people to our next men’s curry night for example.

Social media can be used as a noticeboard in that way, but that would be like using only a fraction of its capability. Social media is about building connection. So rather than telling people what they need to come to, why not ask them what they’re up to? Ask them what they like or dislike. Offer polls and discussion pointers and start some conversations.

Blessing says that we need to focus on quality not quantity first and foremost. As we build rich connection with those people in our communities, it actually means we’re creating much more valuable content which in turn means we’ll reach a wider audience. 

3.COLLABORATION

Chris points out that to ‘reach a diverse world, we need diverse voices’. I thought that was a profound point to make. It’s also biblical. The picture of the Body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12 and passages in the New Testament about each person playing their part in the body. We need each other.

I’ve often heard James Lawrence, Leadership Principal at CPAS speak about Evangelism as a body ministry. It’s the same thing. We need all of us to play our part.

And Chris draws on this illustration to show that we need collaboration and different voices involved in terms of content creation. There maybe people in our churches or communities who are skilled at different aspects of the process, e.g. graphic design, storyboarding, organisation, creativity etc. There may also be people within your wider church network who have skills to offer that can also enrich your local social media offering. Chris touches on that aspect too.

It was a fabulous session from Blessing and Chris. I’m excited to share it with you in time. But hopefully this gives you a sense of the types of things they helped us look at during their session at Stronger 2022.

Key Takehomes:

• Are you versed in the challenges of social media? It’s important that you know of the challenges to help you navigate personal social media use, but also social media use for your own organisation if you lead one.

• Community and engagement > Broadcasting and information sharing (although there is a place for all of it)

• If you’re in a place where budgets are tight, think about how you can pull in expertise from elsewhere either from within or with-out your immediate operating team

• Head over to the Church of England Digital Charter. I always found this to be a great starting point and an easy way of putting in a framework for good social media use.