Engage Your Parishioners and Evangelize Your Community
Our time-saving tools let your staff create, organize, and schedule social media posts in a single, easy-to-use platform.
Why should parishes use social media?
In the first century, St. Paul traveled to Athens – the cultural center of the Roman Empire. It was a noisy place, full of distractions – with pagan idols and every kind of temptation. But it was where the people gathered, so that’s where St. Paul went. And he preached boldly.
Ancient Athens is the perfect metaphor for today’s social media environment.
We are called to do the same thing that Saint Paul did 2,000 years ago. We are called to go where the people are, stand up, and boldly speak the name of Jesus Christ.
Your parishioners and neighbors are online, and they’re counting on you to be there with them. Nearly 8 in 10 Catholics are active on social media, and the Baby Boomer generation now spends more time online than they do watching television!
Social media is an incredible opportunity to reach your neighbors outside of Sunday Mass. Parishes who use it effectively report increased offertory giving, more engaged parishioners, increased volunteerism, and a greater sense of community. What’s not to like?
Your parishioners want and need to be inspired and reminded of the beauty of their Catholic faith – and they want to belong to a parish that is alive and vibrant.
Our mission is to help you with that.
Parish Essentials: Social Media Made Easy
Most parish leaders know they need to be on social media. But they either don’t know how, or they struggle to keep up with it when so many other needs are demanding their attention.
Who even owns our parish’s Facebook page? And who has the password?
Almost every parish we work with has a story about how their parish’s social media accounts was originally started by a well-intentioned volunteer, who then handed the page to someone else, who shared it with a friend… on and on and on.
If you haven’t yet, now is the time to grab a hold of your social media accounts and bring everything together under one roof. Our Catholic social media experts will help you identify who “owns” your page and help you get everything set up the right way so that you can control who has access and who can post on your behalf.
How Most Parishes Experience Social Media
Most parish leaders know they need to be on social media. But they either don’t know how, or they struggle to keep up with it when so many other needs are demanding their attention.
How many pages do we need, and how many accounts?
You want to have all your social media posts organized neatly in one place, but you’ve never found a good process to do it. Plus, you may need to post the same content to multiple accounts because:
- You’re part of a cluster or family of parishes
- You have a separate social media account for your school
- You have one pastor overseeing multiple parishes
Logging in and out of accounts has never been more painful. It sucks the time (and life) out of your day.
Who Posted That Content?
You’re not the only person wondering who created that last post on your parish’s account. And you’re certainly not the only parish with random accounts and passwords floating around out there. Plus, you have volunteers that want to help, but they need supervision and limited permissions.
Trying to manage logins, users, and permissions across all the different social platforms is nearly impossible. And reposting from other organizations and showing off their logos isn’t what your parishioners want.
Did Our Posts Do Anything?
Have you ever gotten to the end of the month and asked if your social media was doing anything for you? It’s frustrating if you’re putting time and effort into something, but you can’t tell if it’s working. You need an easy way to measure what you’re doing – even across multiple accounts and social media networks.
The Only Social Media Platform Designed Exclusively for Catholic Parishes
Parish Essentials: Enhance Your Digital Presence
Parish Essentials provides you with tools to manage your parish’s digital presence. Effortlessly plan, create, schedule, and analyze social content across multiple networks. Our platform makes social media engagement easy and fun, not stressful and time-consuming.
Easily manage your social media posts in one spot and visualize your content pipeline with an easy-to-use publishing calendar that lets you organize your posts the way you want.
Measure and analyze the performance of your content. With our analytics dashboard, you get a broad understanding of your performance across multiple accounts, and in-depth insights into specific social networks.
Parish Premium:
Supercharge Your Social Media
Connect up to fifteen social media accounts and use our integrated scheduler to publish a week’s worth of uplifting, inspiring content in about five minutes. Parishes who subscribe to our limited-availability Parish Premium service get ten fresh, original posts and one new video every week, each handcrafted by our team of Catholic digital communications experts.
Each post is specifically designed to engage your parishioners and reach Catholics in your community who may not have registered at your parish. You can also create your own posts right from the platform.
If you’re a parish that doesn’t have a full-time social media director or you’re a pastor looking to reinvigorate your communications plan, our premium service is just what you need to reach your families where they are – online.
We also make it easy to invite co-workers and parish volunteers to the platform, with tailored permissions so you control exactly who posts on behalf of your parish.
Our integrated analytics dashboard allows you to review how your posts are performing and our resource section includes hundreds of fundraising templates, hours of training webinars, and tools to help your parish get the most out of the service.
Want to get to know the team behind this great service? We are practicing Catholics, theologically-trained writers, graphic designers, and analysts who eat, sleep and breathe parish engagement and digital evangelization. We wake up each morning thinking about more ways we can support you so your parish can put its best foot forward online.
Note: Our Parish Premium service is only available to 10 parishes per diocese.
We love the ease of use and incredible time-saver it is, PLUS the amazing content and how engaging it is. We get compliments from our parishioners all the time!
Maggie England
Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church
Pastoral Associate
Social Media Best Practices for Parishes
Our team has worked with and trained more than 4,000 parishes across North America on how to engage their families through social media. In that time, we’ve developed proven strategies you can begin implementing today.
The 8:1 Nourishment Rule
Your parish needs to connect with your parishioners 8 times with uplifting, relevant and inspiring content for every one time you ask your parishioner to volunteer, attend or donate.
Neighborhood Reach
When your parishioners share your original (not reshared) content, their friends within driving distance of your parish will be the first to see your posts.
Generational Reach
While your parish followers may trend older, when they share your content, it is seen by the younger people in their lives – children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews.
Offertory Follows Engagement
Parishes with large social media followings report steady increases in offertory, year after year.
Daily Posting and Household Giving
Parishes that post at least daily on social media report household giving that’s 44% higher than parishes that post less often.
More Graphics, Fewer Links
Photos, videos, and questions all receive higher-than-average engagement and reach, while links, status updates, and events perform less well.
Start using Catholic Social Media today
Try it now for free. No credit card required.
