Outsourcing your entire social media team sure sounds nice, but does it work? Is it effective? 

Will it make more of a headache or iron out the kinks?

Outsourcing certain tasks and roles has the potential to bring the time freedom you need to keep your mission in focus.

However, outsourcing can also cause more work and wasted money if not done properly. 

You have to learn to choose the right companies to work with and outsource the right roles on your social media team to make it worthwhile.

In this post you will learn the most important things to consider when deciding if you should outsource any parts of your social media team to maximize your effectiveness.

Table of Contents

1. Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Your Church's Social Media
2. Pros and Cons of an In-House Church Social Media Team
3. How to Combine Your In-House Social Media Team and Outsourcing Seamlessly
4. The Most Important Social Media Role to Keep In-House
   

Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Your Church's Social Media

There are many aspects to social media that could be outsourced like design, video, social media management and marketing, photography and copywriting.

Outsourcing Pros 

Outsourcing Pro #1: Cheaper Than Hiring a Full Time or Part Time Staff Member

In some cases, hiring a company to feed you graphics, videos and stock photos can be cheaper than hiring a full time or part time staff member or contract employee. 

You don’t have to pay them benefits or overtime.

You can usually pay a monthly fee and get some resources to get you started.

Outsourcing Pro #2: Easier to Hand it All Over to Someone Else to Handle 

Creating content and coming up with ideas can be the hardest part of keeping up with your social media presence and current trends.

Outsourcing your church social media can ease your mind because you know you’ll have something to post and support when you need it.

It can be easier to hand it all over to someone, than to try to find volunteers who are good at it.

Outsourcing Cons

Outsourcing Con #1: Less Authentic and Effective

Using a company can cause your social media to feel less authentic because it is less authentic. People who don't go to your church will never be able to fully capture, your church.

And this is a problem because authenticity is a KEY FACTOR when growing and cultivating your social media following.

This is especially true for businesses because businesses already feel…well, business-y.

To be effective, you need to test different post types and strategies for your church, which requires more than popping up stock video or graphics. 

Outsourcing Con #2: Money wasted if you don’t have systems to implement internally

Although some outsourcing can work, if you don’t have the systems or people to implement internally, what you are paying for will be a waste, might make things more confusing and take more time.

It'll take time to learn to work with the companies you outsource to, and you need to make sure the company cares about their systems as well.

If you are getting videos created for social media, but you don’t have a good system to manage your social media as a whole the videos will not be as effective as they could be. 

Even if someone is editing a message recap video for social media, you still need someone to select great timestamps, write great captions to go with the videos, keep your schedule organized and plan what is coming up.

Pros and Cons of an In-House Church Social Media Team

In-House Team Pros

In-House Team Pro #1: You can be authentic instead of generic  

Even if your volunteers or staff aren’t experienced you can err on the side of being authentic, genuine, and showing who your church is, instead of being generic. 

I would choose authentic, messy and imperfect over generic and polished when it comes to what is most effective on social media.

In-House Team Pro #2: Potential to develop your own people to build a lasting team

Training an in house team is a good way to have a great social media team in the long run. 

Even though it may take more up front work, you will have people who can carry this team and maybe even hire some of them eventually.

In-House Team Pro #3: Potential of great volunteers getting involved  

Social media is an amazing way to serve God with your talents and can be a great ministry.

You can connect with others digitally and help them take their next steps at your church. 

Because social media is widely used, you most likely have people in your church who are passionate about it and willing to learn.

If you give them an opportunity to volunteer and grow in social media, you never know where that will take them in serving at your church.

Creating as many volunteer opportunities as possible helps people to take ownership of your church alongside you.  

In-House Team Cons

In-House Team Con #1: More expensive to hire staff 

You have to pay people more than companies so they can make a living.

Benefits can add up for full time staff. 

In-House Team Con #2: More work to train your own people

It is more work to train your own people because they probably don’t have a ton of experience.

They also may be volunteers, which requires more time for training and you run the risk of the volunteers being flakey or turnover if they aren't properly managed.

There are so many tools, apps, programs and new updating coming out all of the time, so it may feel impossible to stay up on everything when you wear so many hats besides this one.

This is why I created Churchfluence, to train your team on social media so you don't have to! 

Ask your whole team to subscribe below & follow me on Instagram so I can help you train them little by little each week 

How to Combine Your In-House Social Media Team and Outsourcing Seamlessly 

There are many pros and cons to both outsourcing and building an in-house social media team. There are also tons of tools out there for churches to help with social media.

I am a huge fan of building your in-house social media team because of the longevity, giving a platform for people to serve God and it is the ONLY way to be authentic on social media.

I do not believe in FULLY outsourcing your social media because it almost 100% will not be authentic or effective since original content from the unique people at your church is what makes social media effective.

A combination of outsourcing and in-house team can work, you have different options for outsourcing. Here's a list of options you have and my thoughts on each.

Hiring a Contractor

Hiring a designer, videographer, scheduler or copywriter to help you with different aspects of social media can work great! You can pay a monthly project fee for the work they do and get a little boost when it comes to social media and other marketing stuff.

You most likely have someone in your church who you could hire as a contractor, I would recommend this first if you have someone versus finding someone online. It is always better to raise up your own people when possible.

Joining a Monthly Graphic Subscription

There are many social media subscriptions that give you monthly graphics. With the introduction of TikTok & Instagram Reels, putting up stock graphics for social media posts is unfortunately a thing of the past.

They are cookie cutter, your audience knows you didn't make them, and usually these types of posts don't get much engagement so your posts won't get distributed out to more people.

If you really like your quote graphics, my recommendation is to take the money you would have paid for the subscription and pay a contractor to make a few designs for you.

Hiring a Church Marketing Company

Many church marketing companies offer services to run your social media for you and create the content. I believe the value would be if the company can coach or train your team and volunteers to run your social media, versus doing EVERYTHING for you.

You'll find its tough trying to sync up your systems and the companies systems, plus if you fully outsource, the people creating your content aren't part of your church so it will be very challenging to represent your church correctly when they aren't a part of it.

Hiring a Church Marketing Consultant

You can hire someone to come in an help advise you on your social media. I think this is a great option if you can find someone you trust. Make sure the advice is not outdated since social media changes so quickly.

The Most Important Role to Keep In-House 

In all the levels, the most important social media role to keep in-house is the person you have directing it all.

You need someone dedicated to pulling all the pieces together, a great project manager and has a grid for most aspects of social media (design, video, copywriting, different platforms).

This can be a part time person (10 hours a week!). It can be done.

There are so many moving parts, so your director will hold it all together.

Conclusion 

Here's what this post covered in a nutshell:

• Invest in an in-house volunteer team so you can be effective and authentic on social media. 
• Don’t rely too much on paid “done-for-you” solutions at the risk of giving that "cookie-cutter" feeling
• Make sure to have one part time or full time staff member dedicated to direct the volunteer team (only needs to be 5-10 hours a week!

I believe to be authentic and effective you need some form of in-house team, even if it is all volunteers willing to learn.

I know it can be hard to find the time to train your team and to keep up with the trends to stay relevant. 

That’s why I write this blog and give out free resources every week to churches so you can use them to train your team.