Back in the April 2019 issue of the Huron Church News, I wrote about Facebook’s built-in tool for polls as a means of driving engagement.

Far too often churches use Facebook as a broadcast medium instead of building those peer-to-peer relationships that make social media so powerful.

The idea is simple. Run polls asking simple questions like, for Lent, do you give something up? Or take something on? Advent, blue or purple?

The natural extension of running these polls is translating the data that you collecting on your congregation from social media to everyday life. For instance, you might have a parish dinner in your calendar. This is a good opportunity to run a poll, or to ask the simple question, what is your favourite pie? The responses will provide you with data about the type of pie people who will attend your dinner prefer. During the parish announcements on Sunday morning when advertising the upcoming parish dinner mention the poll and that you will have said kind of pie for dessert. If you employ a screen for announcements, include a screenshot. Nothing builds relationships better, faster and deeper than people feeling heard, even if it is just about pie.

This same technique can be expanded beyond silly questions about food. Asking your congregation about their favourite bible verse will give you great data to build up future bible studies. Asking people to name their favourite hymn or song makes music planning throughout the seasons that much easier. Asking people about their hidden talent can lead to discovering all kinds of skills in the parish to further the kingdom of God.

Moving from social to real life is a great way to continue to build engagement on your social media platforms. And nothing makes people valued and will drive traffic back to your social media platforms than people feeling as their engagement is making a difference in the life of the church.

“Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.” (Matt 13:16)