Right now, social media managers need help.

It’s because staff members need help. Suddenly, everyone on church staff needs to know how to go live on Facebook, create graphics for social media, or upload to YouTube. 

Communications professionals suddenly have to not only create but coach at their church. So how can you quickly train staff to do things they may have never attempted before? 

Think like a coach.

Coaches provide encouragement, training, and resources to players so that the players can walk onto a field or court and do their very best to win the game. We can do that too. Here’s how to coach your staff to become digital communication pros quickly.

Encourage staff regularly

You may have some sour grapes about how you felt you were treated before, but this isn’t the time for that. Staying positive and helpful during this time is going to not only help you in the long run, but help your church win during a time where pastors have had everything they would call normal in their job taken from them. Help them. 

Celebrate publicly whenever one of them does something great on social media. Cheer for them and make sure they know you’re in their corner.

And most importantly, don’t ask for credit. You may or may not be recognized, but that’s ok. There’s a bigger picture to see here.

Now, pastors. Recognize your communications people. They work on stuff behind the scenes and often feel uncared for, unseen, and ignored. Let’s change that. Thanking them in front of your church or at least your staff means a lot. 

Train staff properly

You might provide a slide show and a 30-minute talk at your staff meeting, but don’t think that saying it once means they’ve got it. This part is going to take up most of your day and it should. It should. 

There is a tool called Loom and it can help you. Loom allows you to create videos where your screen is recorded and your face is in a little circle in the bottom corner. These are great for making how-to videos for staff to refer back to when they’re confused or lost about something. 

The good thing about Loom is that it stores videos in the cloud, so there’s already a link to share the videos with others and it doesn’t take up hard drive space. Just install the program and get started.

You also might want to make yourself available for Zoom calls with staff right now to help walk them through anything digital they may be struggling with. For this, I use a tool called Calendly, an appointment scheduling program, that integrates with Zoom (the video conferencing software everyone is using) and your calendar (Google, iCal, etc). 

Let staff know how to schedule appointments with you and be ready to spend time with them, helping them with social media ideas or tech support.

I used Loom to make two quick tutorial videos for Zoom and Calendly below. 

Resource your staff

Last, you’ll have to guide them to the tools they need to win during this uncertain time. There are many tools like Loom, Zoom, Calendly, Buffer, Hootsuite, and Gsuite that can help ministry staff do their jobs when they can’t go out.

Create a Google Doc with a list of great social media ideas on it for everyone to access when they’re stuck. In fact, you could send them my PDF at the bottom of this article. It’s got 88 Ideas for Church Social Media Posts and it could be a big help right now.

If you’re going to give them access to other tools like social media schedulers, calendar tools, video software, etc, always make a training video with Loom for it. Try to keep these as short as possible and if you need to make a few videos based on certain functions, do that.

For instance, if you were making a Zoom tutorial, you might make a video about setting up a meeting, sending the link, logging in, and turning on audio/video. Then you might make a second video about how to share your screen. Then a third about the chat feature and so on. That way they can find the right training without having to sift through a super long video to find the 1 minute of training they need.

What else?

Again, keep encouraging them throughout this whole process and don’t get discouraged when they do it wrong or if they don’t want your help. You are where you are for a reason! 

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