It is difficult to invest the amount of time that you want to in social media for your church.

You wear many hats. 

You are spread thin.

So social media can end up on the back burner.

Getting help is a good solution, except there’s a problem.

There’s this tension between getting volunteers involved to help you and being ok with more people getting involved. 

You want to make sure you trust those volunteers to have access to public platforms that represent your church, you want to make sure your social media stays on brand and doesn’t have too many “cooks in the kitchen”.  

I totally relate. Pictured above is some of my sweet social media team at my church. We have a total of 8+ team members helping with social media.

Some of them had experience and some starting learning from scratch.

Our church is primarily run by volunteers, so I don't know what I would do without them!

Keep reading to find out why you should give volunteers a chance and 3 fail proof ways to add volunteers to your social media team.

Why You Should Give Volunteers A Chance

Allowing volunteers to invest in your social media will take you where you want to go on social media faster. 

If you got more help for your social media you could more easily generate real conversations through DMs, reach new people, free up your time so you can focus, stay up to date on current trends, keep things fresh, new and creative, grow in your engagement and train a team to take over or eventually hire from.

That sounds awesome doesn’t it?

The harsh reality is, you might be holding your church’s social media back by not allowing other people to invest in it and develop it. 

There’s a few reasons why this might be true for you.

Reason #1: If you are busy with other things, you become the lid for how much your Instagram can grow and be invested in. 

It does take time, learning and thoughtful effort to continually develop your Instagram.

If you can’t be the person to do it yourself, you need to train up a team.

Reason #2: It takes a variety of skills to run a great Instagram. 

It can be difficult to find an “all in one” person who is good at every social media skill. 

You have to have an eye for design, photos, video, copywriting, reels, stories, content ideas, and project management.

If you’re reading this, you may be that ‘all in one’ person and need some help! 

Another case to be open to add volunteers to your team is that there may be people in your church that do these things for their job and they would love to use their talents to serve God at your church. 

These people may be better than your hired staff at some of these skills! 

This is why you should give volunteers a chance. 

They may have skills you don't know about or have potential to be developed, they can use their gifts to serve God through volunteering and by adding volunteers you can remove the lid stopping you from going where you want to go with Instagram and social media. 

Keep reading to learn 3 fail-proof ways you can add these new volunteers to your social media team.

Fail-Proof Way #1: Create a System for Review and Approval of All Content

If you are hesitant to add volunteers to your team this step will give you some peace of mind.

Nothing needs to be published without it being approved by someone.

How we do this, is every Tuesday morning posts are due to review. 

I have my team set them up in Later and I go in and review. 

I review them, suggest or make changes to the copy or content, then give them the go ahead for the week. 

I like to explain every time why I made the changes so that the team can learn for the future about our churches voice and style. 

By creating a system to review posts every Tuesday morning, I am also not reviewing posts all week long at random times, which makes this really efficient. 

Another tool I like to use is Asana. 

I schedule what should be posted in there each month, with the team's feedback and ideas included as well. 

This way we know what we are posting, who is posting it and when it will go out.

Structure is essential if you want to grow your volunteer team.

If you want a little more insight into how we plan our content calendar head on over to this post where I go over it in detail. 

Fail-Proof Way #2: Dedicate One Person You Trust to Write Copy

If you are concerned about what is communicated on your church’s behalf. Train one person to write all the copy for social media. 

If it’s a volunteer role, this can be their focus. They don’t need to be good at creating the photos, reels, videos, scheduling posts, or making stories. 

They can learn to be a great copywriter and then give the copy to the social media team in a google doc or in your project management system.

This way, you can be confident in what is being communicated and get more help with social.

WIN, WIN.

Fail-Proof Way #3: Start New Volunteers on Stories

Since they disappear in 24 hours, posting stories is lower risk and there is a lot more grace for stories.

You don’t need them to look aesthetically on point or even on brand. 

They can be more raw and in the moment. 

Also, having a lot of stories is helpful to stay top of mind with your community on Instagram.

You can ask a lot of people to help you with stories. 

One way to do this, is to ask one person from each ministry to make sure stories are being captured at everything you do. 

You can also ask someone who is involved in a lot of things at your church to take videos and make a few quick stories while they are at church activities. 

If they need some inspiration, send them to this post outlining a ton of effective ways to use story stickers.

Conclusion

I hope this adds a lot of value to you and your team and gives you some ideas of how to add volunteers without feeling like you are going to lose quality of content on your social media.

By letting go a bit, you may bump up your quality and quantity of content you are able to produce.

I want to encourage you to give volunteers a chance and try these 3 ways to fail-proof the process of adding new volunteers to the mix.

One more thing, send your volunteers follow me on Facebook or Instagram for more church Instagram tips. I’d love to help you develop your team.