Know your social media genres! It can be a challenge to manage multiple social media accounts. If your Catholic parish is active on other social media platforms, such as Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat, consider using a third-party service such as Hootsuite, to post the same content on multiple platforms at once. That will help manage the workload, but it’s still not a perfect solution. Here’s why:
- Every social media platform is its own genre: Often the feel of a Facebook post will flop on Instagram and vice versa. This is because each platform is unique and has its own conventions and rules of engagement.
- Your audience can spot the off-genre content: Anyone who spends time on Facebook knows the “feel” of it. Likewise for an avid Twitter follower. Something that’s been cross-posted to a different platform stands out, and people instinctively shy away from it.
- It looks lazy: Those who follow your parish on multiple platforms don’t want to see the same content recycled. Instead, they’d like to see uplifting content and events on Facebook, witty banter on Twitter, and beautiful images on Instagram.
With all this in mind, if you don’t have the time to operate well on multiple platforms, it’s best to put the others on hold and just concentrate on Facebook. That’s because Facebook has the most users, the most helpful features like events, and is the service that most parishioners will look to for your parish content. If something better comes along, our team will investigate and get back to you. Until then…know your social media genres!
