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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been analyzing the effectiveness of our church’s social media posts. Our main networks of focus have been Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (in that order). However, we also post regularly on Google+ to aid our search engine rankings. I’ve discovered that our greatest seasons of social interactions have been when we have posted every day around 10:30am. Our interactions also significantly increased when we posted images or video. With all of this in mind, I created this custom posting schedule for all of our church’s social networks.

A posting schedule is the easiest way to laser-focus your church’s social media efforts. When combined with a social manager, such as Buffer or Hootsuite, you can build an online community that regularly interacts with your posts and spreads your message to their followers.

How can you create this for your church? Simple. Start with what I have here. I give you permission to take Piedmont Chapel’s posting schedule and run with it! Give it a try for a few weeks and see how it goes. I will give the disclaimer that this is not the kind of posting schedule that you’d find a large church using. Since we do not have someone who can work full-time on this, my desire was to create a simple schedule that would fit into a volunteer’s spare time. My biggest goal was to make sure that we were posting something everyday. If you can post more, go for it! This is simply a foundation.

I’d also encourage you to build in posts that promote your current events. Keep in mind that Piedmont Chapel does not begin having weekly services until September 7th. This is simply our pre-launch posting schedule. A church that is meeting on a weekly basis should be posting what’s coming up on Sundays and recaps from your latest events.

Social media is an ever-changing field. There are no concretes here. Your posts and schedule should reflect what’s unique about your ministry. Regularly evaluate what posts your audience responds to and adapt from there.

Download a PDF of our posting schedule here.

To keep up with Piedmont Chapel, follow us here:
Facebook  •  Twitter  •  Instagram  •  Website

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Do you have a posting schedule for your church’s social media?

Kendall Conner

What do you get when you combine production, design, and communications together with a passion for the Church? It turns out, this is the precise formula to make up Kendall Conner. For over 20 years, this Christ-led creative has been bridging the gap between media and ministry. In addition to serving as the creative pastor in his local church, he is the Chief of Operations for Church Motion Graphics, a ministry-focused design studio that serves thousands of houses of worship around the globe. Kendall specializes in equipping church media leaders and volunteers to utilize creativity in their services to share the hope of Jesus.

37 Comments

  • Lorrie V says:

    My basic work for the church is a weekly bulletin, announcements on the overhead with Powerpoint, and Easy Worship (puts our songs and scripture on the overhead), but I also design flyers as needed and post/share things on Facebook. Right now, the only software I have is Microsoft Publisher and Powerpoint. Usually I use a template for the flyers I make with my own spin on it or I start from scratch and find inspiration online. My only graphic resource is a subscription to ChurchArt Online. I would like to do more with graphics. What software/program do you use to design the custom image posts that you put on Facebook? Where are you buying/getting rights to the images you use? If you have an article about this already, please point me to a link. Thanks!

    • Kendall Conner says:

      Hi Lorrie,

      Great questions. I use Photoshop CC for all of these images. You can get that as low as $15/month. Most of my photos are from unsplash.com (and are free to use for anything). I also purchase some photos from Lightstock.com, but that’s not the norm.

      I hope that helps! :)

      Kendall

      • Mickey Seward says:

        Lorrie,

        Another free alternative to Photoshop is pixlr.com. It’s not nearly as robust as Photoshop, obviously, but it does allow you to do much of the same editing and creating that you can do in Photoshop. It just does not have all the bells and whistles of Photoshop. I used pixlr.com for two years in my previous position, and it served its purpose well. I’ll have to check out unsplash.com and Lighstock.com. We try not to use stock photos, but sometimes you don’t have too much of a choice.

        Mickey

      • Chris says:

        Hey Kendall, Adobe recently lowered their price on photoshop, and can now be purchased for $10/month.

      • Matt Norman says:

        I use canva.com for much of my graphics. It’s great and free.

  • Tony says:

    Love this idea! I will be transitioning to be a lead pastor soon and I will be putting this into practice.
    Thanks for sharing.

  • Darrell says:

    Thank you for this, I had a small schedule, but nothing like this and I really like what you are doing.

    Thanks for sharing!!

  • Lorrie V says:

    If i could find a class in my area, to brush up my graphic skills (in order to make the kinds of custom graphics you use for your Facebook posts, what kind of class should I look for?

  • Lorrie V says:

    Or do you know of an online course or tutorial?

    • Kendall Conner says:

      A basic Photoshop class would go a long way. I took one in high school and it gave me a foundation that brought me to where I am today.

      I would look at this website for some tutorials –
      http://design.tutsplus.com/categories/photoshop

      I would also suggest ProChurchTools.com for some graphic tutorials.

      I hope that helps! :)

  • Jonathan says:

    Where are you getting your “custom images”? Are you designing them?

    • Kendall Conner says:

      Hi Jonathan,

      I have been designing them myself for Piedmont Chapel. If you’d be interested in getting a batch of them for your church, I do custom design work. Give me a shout on the contact page.

      Blessings,
      Kendall Conner

  • Curtis Bland says:

    I post to Facebook, Twitter and Google+ every Monday (or Tuesday) and Thursday (or Friday) each week via Buffer for a satellite church of about 200-250

  • Seth says:

    Hey Kendall, love the post and am really trying to use your tips to get our church more involved with social media. I have one question: do you use a social media manager like Hootsuite or Buffer to post to Instagram? Maybe I’m looking for a white whale, but I’d love to be able to save time by posting to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all at once and not have to do IG separately.

    • Kendall Conner says:

      Hey, Seth – I use Buffer for all of my social posts, but Instagram is not yet available on any manager. I do use Latergramme, though, and it helps a bit.

      I hope that helps!

  • Stephanie says:

    Hi! Great post. I love the calendar – I’ve done a lot of research and this one is the best so far! Did you create the document in Word? What font did you use? Would love to know! Thanks.

    • Kendall Conner says:

      Hi, Stephanie –

      I created it in Pages and we use Gotham for everything at Piedmont Chapel.

      Hope that helps!

      Kendall

  • I am a big fan of Canva.com for easy graphic creation. They just rolled out a professional version which allows you to save “your” colors and fonts are coming. It is easy to use, has an iPad app, and is free.

  • Rodney says:

    I’m just now reading this and this is AWESOME! Thanks so much for sharing!

  • Dustan W. says:

    Hey Kendall, Great Article! Do you have an updated Posting Schedule? How has it changed over the past few years? Also love the new site!

    • Kendall Conner says:

      Hey, Dustan! I’ll be doing a new post on this soon. We still post daily at 10:30am for the most part, but have added 8:00pm as well.

      • Dustan W. says:

        Awesome! Do most of your inspirational quotes come from your Pastor or what keeps your posting “Fresh”? Hope thats understandable. Just building our plan now so we can incorporate Volunteers into what we are doing.

        • Kendall Conner says:

          I don’t know that our pastor has ever written a post for our social pages. Haha. It’s all the creative team for us!

          • Dustan W. says:

            Gotcha. I was thinking more along the lines of Key Points from His Messages. Ha.
            Thanks for the info! Great Site.

  • Evie says:

    We post numerous posts on facebook. Is there a way to schedule several posts at one time rather than having to post/schedule each one individually?

  • Dawn says:

    Thanks for your amazing website, Kendall! What a blessing it is!

    I thought I saw an article here some time ago that gives handles for volunteers on what you’re looking for in taking pictures and for posting on social media. I can’t seem to find it anymore! Do you have a 1-page guide I can give a volunteer wanting to help with social media?

  • israel Laveaga says:

    Kendall,
    Thank you so much for all of the great posts you have continued to post. THey have been extremely helpful to get our stuff organized. look forward to reading much, much more!! God bless!
    @NikaoYM

  • Kendall,

    Your resources are SO helpful! Thank you for being so transparent, and wanting to help other churches grow. We’re all in this together!

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