Meet the Author
Meredith Gould labels herself a “sociologist by training (Ph.D., NYU), educator by experience, consultant by preference.” A marketing communications professional with decades of secular experience, Gould now focuses on counseling churches and mission-based organizations about how to thrive in the digital age. Gould is the founder and moderator of #ChSocM, which is a weekly Twitter-based chat about why and how to use social media to build church and faith. Additionally, she is the author of nine books, including The Word Made Fresh: Communicating Church and Faith Today (2009) and Getting #Married: Using Social Media to Celebrate the Sacred (2011).
Book Basics
As someone who has participated in #ChSocM Twitter chats, read The Word Made Fresh: Communicating Church and Faith Today (mentioned here), and benefited from Meredith Gould’s work, I considered her The Social Media Gospel a must read. In the four years since her last book on the topic targeting the same audience, social media has matured considerably. More than an update, the new volume is the best guide available today for those interested in understanding, overseeing, and evaluating the overall communications framework within a church or religiously based non-profit organization.
Written for newcomers, long-time social media users, and everyone in between, The Social Media Gospel is divided into three sections: (1) Frameworks for Understanding, (2) Choosing Social Media, and (3) Making Social Media Work. Each section includes the information everyone involved in the ministry of communication within a given organization should known (including committee members, professional staff, and clergy) about the state of communications today, relevant thought provoking action oriented questions for further consideration, and examples of how varying ideas and tools can be effectively leveraged for use by the organization. The book concludes with a chapter on best practices for digital ministry that should be on a meeting agenda sometime soon for every parish in the country that includes gems like “fully integrate social media into all other church communication plans” and “establish a review-and-approval process for blog posts and web content.”
So What?
I have had the privilege opportunity to review far too many church communication efforts lacking focus. In many cases the content lacked enough commonality (much less any sense of branding or reliance on a style guide) to clarify to the end consumer that the pieces were produced by the same church. Since local churches are in the communications business, it seems appropriate that the leaders of these bodies would dedicate the appropriate resources to more effectively spread their messages.
- How would you rate your congregation’s overall communication efforts? What are a few areas of relative strength? What areas are weak (or non-existent)?
- Does your congregation’s communication strategy include generational preferences when creating content, and choosing the means for sharing such? If so, how? If not, how might doing so increase engagement?
Meredith Gould. The Social Media Gospel: Sharing the Good News in New Ways (Liturgical Press, 2013). ISBN: 9780814635834.