Social media is most effective if you zoom out periodically to evaluate its impact. The following is a list of talking points to discuss with your team as you evaluate your efforts:
1. Re-evaluate your mission. When you started this, you probably had big plans and goals. Maybe you even had a certain number in your head for desired followers on Twitter or likes on Facebook. Look at the activity as a whole. Is there a correlation between the effort and the return? Are responses personal enough and in real time? Are your followers creating content and doing things you didn't expect? Are you creating community? Your team is the only one who can set the mission for this. It's a good idea narrow the gap between the romance and the reality.
2. Create a 'portfolio' with the platforms you are using. Take some time to document all of the platforms you are using--including staff blogs and your current website. Are there things that could be consolidated using aggregators like Hootsuite or TweetDeck? Do you have a place where you have all of the links, passwords, profile information and other basics saved to make it easy to get onto new platforms or to manage the ones you have? Look at the mediums you are using and how they connect to each other and make sure it makes sense.
3. How steady is your content stream? How well are you doing at creating content? Are there enough people helping with the effort that your creative well isn't running dry. What content have you learned connects in your context? Brainstorm ideas to improve your stream and create further engagement and find ways to maximize content across platforms. For example, could the visuals you create for a Sunday morning service have a life beyond that in your social media? What about the sermon? Are parts of it tweetable? Anytime you can create content once and get more mileage out of it is a good day.
4. Is your "brand" consistent across all of your efforts? Chances are there are tweaks you could make to get better continuity. See if there is harmony between the different platforms.
5. Check your response time. How long does it take you to ping someone back who leaves a comment? Do you need additional people to be part of this? Are you fully leveraging the social media aggregator tools to make your life easier in this area?
The goal of the audit is to find ways to make your efforts more effective...to figure out how to do more with less. And, hey....it isn't easy. Many churches and organizations aren't even in the game because it is hard. So, social media jedi's...keep on keeping on. (Did I just mix a Star Wars reference with a bad line from a 70's sit com? Yes. I think I did.)
