’Tis the season to bring a little Advent/Christmas spirit to social media!
Imagine a month where you didn’t need to think about what you were going to post on social media. Pretty great, huh? Better yet, imagine a month where members of your church are creatively generating images that you collect and share throughout the Advent season. Sound too good to be true?
Enter the Advent Photo-a-Day Challenge.
The “Advent Photo-a-Day Challenge” is a 27-day photo challenge that asks individuals to reflect upon one word or idea each day and take a picture that encapsulates that word, feeling, or emotion. It gives them an opportunity online to reflect upon the journey we take to the manger at Christmas.
Simply put, you choose 27 words, one for each day of Advent. Invite your church to participate by taking pictures and posting them to social media with a unique hashtag.
There is no financial investment on your side, but if you’re willing to put in the time, you’ll be on your way to connecting with your congregational members and community at large in a whole new way. Who knows the impact it could make! It would be great if even a single person’s view of Advent and the Christmas season changes by providing a daily focus on the true meaning of Christmas.
With this guide, you’ll have a blueprint to launch your first “Advent Photo-a-Day Challenge,” which is a great way for your church family to connect between Sunday and Wednesday services.
The First Sunday in Advent for 2015 is November 29. Set your calendars to that date. Thankfully, this isn’t a new idea, so there is a lot of inspiration out there from which you can draw insights.
Chances are your photo challenge won’t be the only “Advent Photo Challenge” going on out there. Having a unique hashtag will give your members a social media rallying point. Advent photos aside, having a unique hashtag for your church can serve you throughout the year. Faith Lutheran Church in Troy, Michigan, uses #faithtroy. St. John Lutheran Church in Cypress, Texas, uses #stjcypress.
Utilize your church hashtag and consider adding a second for just this stream of images. Let’s get creative and say #yourchurchnameAdvent or #AdventHopeLutheran. Whatever you decide, use a program like Hashatit.com to search across several platforms to see if it’s in use already (you’d be surprised to see the different ways hashtags get utilized around the world).
It’s not enough to put a paragraph in the bulletin and consider the communication done. In order to gain traction for your challenge, you’ll need to tell people, tell them again, and then tell them about it once more. Then . . . remind them again. Here’s a quick list of communication avenues that can be utilized to share your church's challenge.
You can plan ahead and create images to send out through your Facebook page. Use Facebook internal scheduler to maximize your organic reach. Tools like Buffer can assist you in scheduling to Twitter.
With hundreds of photos being posted (a guy can dream!), you’ll want some way to track the flurry of images. Tagboard goes out to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Vine, Google+, and Flickr to fetch posts and images based on a hashtag search. You can do a fair share with the free version, but the paid version will allow you to embed the tagboard on your own website rather than point traffic over to their site.
I like to include photo release verbiage on the challenge page. It basically states that the photo takers, by using your unique hashtag, are giving you permission to use the photo. Gerber has a basic Terms & Conditions written up for anyone who uses “Gerber-specific hashtags.” Expanding the release to include other networks may assist you in the long run.
Help your people understand why they are doing this. For one, it brings the community together on social media and focuses them on the journey to Christmas. If you invest some time and weave the campaign words and themes into your messages, you’ll be on your way to sharing a coordinated and concise message with your church and the community this Advent season.
Are you up for running a campaign? If so, it’s going to take some effort—you may even suffer through a few days that are “dry” in terms of posting content.
Worst-case scenario? Only you and your staff participate in the photo contest and you’ll come away with a staff who has become accustomed to taking pictures that get better and better as the month goes on.
Best-case scenario? Your church will have a month where members and their friends will join in this journey to the manger. The challenge will provide daily reflections for individuals and families to focus on the real reason for the season. It’ll give your church a connecting point between Wednesday and Sunday messages. What a great way to keep your church engaged throughout a season where it is too easy to be overwhelmed and distracted by the things of this world.
Have you participated in a photo challenge like this at your church? How’d it go? Are there additional ways to help get the word out prior to and during the campaign?
Start your own Advent Photo-a-Day Challenge with this free marketing kit!
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