THE VIBRANT PARISH NEWSLETTER

A Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Your Church

Your church is awesome! It provides resources and services to your local community. You have wonderful worship services and faith formation programs that connect people of all ages to God. You’re working hard to make a difference but, how are you effectively sharing everything you have to offer with your greater community? How are you attracting new members? How do people know about all of the ministries that you have? You are pros at spreading the message of Jesus at Mass, but how does your neighborhood know that your members are out there putting in the work? Sounds like it’s time to build a church marketing plan!

Branding

First things first — If your church doesn’t have an up-to-date brand design that you can use across all of your marketing materials, it’s time to make this happen. Remember, branding is not just your parish’s logo. Branding encompasses the colors you will use, the fonts, and the overall style of your marketing materials. You will use this brand on letterhead and envelopes, websites, social media, certificates, posters, livestreams, invitations, everywhere! Get started with a brand refresh or a totally new look with our in-house design team.

Website

Make sure your website is easy to navigate, up to date, and optimized for mobile devices! Your homepage is often the very first place potential visitors investigate before deciding to walk through your front doors, so having a professional looking website that reflects your welcoming community is one of the most important tricks of the trade when it comes to successfully marketing your church. What photos you decide to include, how well it’s designed, and these further tips and tricks can get you ahead of the game. If you don’t feel confident when it comes to updating your parish’s website, our team can help!

Social Media

Having your social media profiles dialed-in can make a big difference when marketing your parish! Don’t forget to share your calendar of events on Facebook via the Facebook event feature and publish them publicly. Doing this will allow Facebook to suggest your events to people browsing the app for things to do during the week and also provides a landing page for events that parishioners can easily share on their own social media profiles! In fact, creating sharable content across any of the social media platforms encourages parishioners to share your content which, in turn, provides free marketing for your church. Double down your efforts and use our beautifully designed Catholic graphics in our WeCreate library to enhance your posts!

Printed Bulletins

Your bulletin is the perfect place to advertise your events and ministries to those already in attendance at Mass, but did you know that the bulletin can also be a great way to partner with local businesses and organizations? These partnerships can help your marketing efforts. As businesses advertise in your bulletin, parishioners will use their services. The more parishioners tell local businesses that they saw them in their church bulletin, the more likely the business is to be open to partnering with you to accomplish local community goals, execute great events, and whatever else you can dream up. Having good relationships with local businesses and organizations can go a long way to helping you market your parish!

Press/Media Releases

Creating a press release for major events, changes, or celebrating milestones in your parish is another important way to make sure you are properly marketing your church. Press releases allow for news from your church to reach the greater community — often people who wouldn’t normally hear about your parish.

Special Event Marketing

Every major event at your church should be marketed through the following avenues:

• Your church website
• Bulletin
• Social media platforms
• Neighborhood mailers
• In print via posters or flyers that are easy to pass out after Mass
• Via your spoken Mass announcements

When creating advertisements for each of the different avenues, be sure to always use your church’s logo and branding, any identifying information needed for people to easily locate your parish, where and when the event is being held, and how they can acquire more information.

Lastly, Be Present!

Hands down one of the best ways to market your parish community is to attend, sponsor, and participate in community events. Is there a farmer’s market that happens every Saturday in your city? Consider renting a booth with information about your parish’s ministries or selling parishioner’s homemade crafts to raise money for a youth retreat. If there is a local theater group looking for sponsorship, consider sponsoring a play. Do local club sports need benefactors every season? Sponsor the team and then organize parishioners to attend games and root for them to win! Does your neighborhood throw a community festival every summer? Set up a relief station offering free refreshments for attendees! Being present and supportive in your local community may be the absolute best way to market your parish. This concept is so true, in fact, that we recently compiled 67 ways to connect with your neighborhood.

The time to get started is now! Happy marketing!

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SOCIAL MEDIA INFOGRAPHIC

May is jam-packed with social media opportunities. Celebrate Mary, first Sacraments, graduations, Mother’s Day, and more!

CHECK IT OUT

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Simple 5 Ways to Celebrate Graduations at Your Parish

Graduation season is upon us and churches everywhere will soon be celebrating their members’ graduations from all sorts of programs for children and adults, alike. We’ve collected some of the most common graduation traditions you might find in a Catholic setting and paired them with ideas on how you can support those events with assets from WeCreate, our Catholic library of ready-to-use content! Dive right in to see how your parish can congratulate your graduates in a special way this year.

Baccalaureate Mass – Often held specifically for graduating high school and college students, these celebrations are popular everywhere! Advertise your Baccalaureate Mass in your church bulletin, social media, website, and though printed invitations with our graduation celebration graphics in WeCreate. Don’t forget to add these graphics to a slide or two if your church uses screens with imagery inside of your sanctuary during Mass.

Graduation Retreats – Churches with high school youth ministry programs as well as those with college outreaches attached like Newman Centers, will often have a graduation retreat for their soon to be graduated seniors. As you are building your content for the retreat, be sure to check out the “Quotes” section in WeCreate for some inspiration and images to distribute. In the “Reflections” section there is also material available for graduates.

Ministry Moving-Up Ceremonies – Many youth programs hold a “Moving Up Ceremony” or a “Graduation Ceremony” to celebrate every grade level moving up into the next grade for the following year’s program. Some don’t celebrate each individual grade moving up but do throw a party for 8th graders who will be moving up into the high school youth group the next year. Use one of our generic colorful or festival-themed templates to make a flyer or graphic for this yearly event to share with families who are invited!

Individual Gifts – If you want to do something special for your graduates, consider getting each person in your parish who is graduating from high school, or from college, a graduation gift. Some parishes create a gift bag for graduating high school students that includes items like a prayer candle, an informational handout about Catholic college events and groups near where the student is attending college, a cross or crucifix, a book of reflections, and other spiritual items. Don’t forget to include a card from the church youth ministry team or parish staff with these gifts! Use our graduation vectors and illustrations in WeCreate to create a customized card from your parish to make the gift even more special.

Student Profiles - Some parishes celebrate high school graduates by creating and printing out a profile of the student. This little poster usually includes the graduate’s senior photo alongside their answers to a few interview questions and is posted in the church’s narthex or parish hall during graduation season to celebrate these youth.

Interview questions often include queries like:

• What are your plans after high school?
• If you are going to college, which one are you going to and what are you hoping to study?
• What are some of the extra-curricular sports, hobbies, and clubs you participated in during high school?
• Have you achieved anything special in the last four years that you’d like to share?
• What advice do you have for the incoming high school freshmen at our church?

To enhance a student profile, be sure to check out the many graphic templates we have in WeCreate. If you like the look of one but it doesn’t say exactly what you need it to say, you’re in luck. You can simply click on it and when prompted, change the text in the template to fit whatever needs you have — saving yourself time and making your graduate profiles look lovely.

Do you have another special way that you celebrate graduation season in your parish? We’d love to hear about it! Tag us in a post on Facebook and let us know what your parish does for graduating seniors.

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Priests Won’t Ask for Bitcoin — Avoid These Common Scams Directed at Catholics

With the prevalence of easy-to-access technology and the vast variety of ways people communicate these days, the pervasiveness of people who make it their mission to scam people out of money using digital trickery is only increasing. We collected some of the most common scams that are directed specifically toward Catholics as well as how to identify and avoid them in order to protect yourself from online criminals.

Scammers Using Email

One of the most frequent scams Catholics encounter is scammers posing as their parish priests over email and asking for money or gift cards. This type of email communication is not something your parish priest will do. Scammers work ahead of time to find out the name and email address of a community’s pastor and then create their own, similar email address hoping that their victims won’t notice that the email isn’t coming directly from the pastor’s actual email. The email might even include the receiver’s name or other identifying information, deepening the confusion. The initial emails often look like a harmless note, similar to the following:

Or

Messages may even be more complex like:

“Hello Nancy,

Once the first email is sent, if the recipient responds to the email the scammer will then go on to ask for money. This ask may come in the form of gift cards, crypto-currency like bitcoin, wire money transfers, or donations. The money ask may seem to be for the pastor, themselves, the church, or another ministry. It is important to always check with the parish office to verify that any out-of-the-ordinary email or communication from your pastor is, indeed, from your pastor.

Scammers Using Instagram and Other Social Media Profiles

Another way criminals target Catholics online is through fraudulent social media profiles. A common tactic is for a spammer to create a profile using the name and images of an existing religious person. This could be a sister or a priest or even a bishop. Once the fake account is created they will send messages with requests for prayers and engagement. If you engage they will ask for money or to connect on a different app like WhatsApp. Beware of anyone asking to connect on WhatsApp, this is an app scammers love to use. Sometimes scammers will just simply try to trick you into clicking a link. For example, you may receive a message from them that merely says, “Hey is this you in this video?” They will include a link with the hopes that you will be curious and click it. Don’t click it!

Other messages we’ve seen:

Or

Scammers calling/texting parishioner’s phones

If someone calls your phone claiming to be from your parish and asks for credit card information, gift cards, or for your other personal information, be suspicious! Your church office will NOT call you asking for your credit card over the phone. If you give digitally to your church every month you should only be updating your payment and personal information via the secure online portal your church uses for such payments.

If you receive such a call, we suggest you decline and then go into your church office to ask about the request in person . If they were not the ones making the request you can report the suspicious behavior so church staff can spread the word.

Ways to Protect Yourself and Your Community

• Be suspicious of any communication that is out of the ordinary.
• Ask other church officials or trusted sources about the communication. If possible, contact the person in question via a different form of communication.
• Make it a personal rule to never give out any personal information like your credit cards, passwords, etc., to anyone over any form of person-to-person messaging like email, Facebook Messenger, or even over the phone. Verify everything!
• Carefully check any email addresses that claim to be from your pastor or someone in leadership at your church to verify that the email is, indeed, coming from that person’s EXACT email address.
• Do not click any links without being sure they are from a trusted source and you know exactly where they are leading!
• Do not engage with messages that are suspicious. Do not text or email back! Report suspicious social media profiles to the platform you where you found them. For example, if someone is posing as your priest on Facebook and asking for gift cards, report the profile to Facebook using the company’s reporting process. In fact, knowing how to report spam and criminal activity on the different social media platforms is essential!
• Report all suspicious communications to your parish’s staff. It is likely that if scammers are targeting one person at your parish, they are also targeting others who might not be as well informed. Your parish staff can spread the word!
• File a report through the Federal Trade Commission. You can use their easy-to-use reporting webpage to help the FTC detect patterns of abuse and fraud.
• Run an article in your church bulletin, on your website, and on your parish’s social media about any scams that are going around! WeCreate offers SCAM alert graphics that you can use to draw attention to any announcements you need to make of this nature!

Ultimately, if you receive a message in any way from someone claiming to be somebody you know or someone in leadership at your parish, and they ask for an immediate transfer of money, gift cards, or your personal information, assume it is a scammer and do not engage with them!

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Using the Facebook and Instagram STORIES Tool for Engagement

An awesome tool that both Facebook and Instagram have developed over the last few years is their STORY feature. This tool is so robust and a great (free!) way to engage with your community when used correctly. In this blog you will find some tips and tricks on how to utilize the social media story feature to share your own vibrant parish community with the world!

Stories? Why should I have to learn ONE MORE THING?

Social media is an extension of the wonderful community that your church has already built and, simply put, the way that the majority of your parishioners are communicating with each other in their daily lives. Did you know that 82% of people in the United States use Facebook to communicate with each other on a daily basis? Since this is the case, churches should consider using all of the tools that Facebook and other social media platforms offer in order to connect daily with their community and keep their community connected!

The story feature on Facebook and Instagram is designed specifically to encourage your following to message you and engage with each story post you make. Story posts expire after 24 hours and are usually quick and sweet while also incorporating easy to use tools for engagement. For this reason, using the stories feature makes it easier for you to engage with your followers on a daily basis! Stories are also a quick and easy way for you to collaborate with followers and repost their content — another tool you can use to engage with your community and lift up your parishioners!

So, What Exactly ARE Social Media Stories?

On Facebook and Instagram, a story is a post you can make that consists of either a photo or a short video. These posts work like a slide show and offer a new photo or video after a few seconds. Story posts show up in your STORIES FEED instead of on your regular ol’ newsfeed. Stories expire in 24 hours, so this feed is constantly refreshing. This is appealing to your users because they know that they should look at your stories if they want to find quick, current content from you. This attraction is evident in the fact that most posts using the stories feature get many times more views and interactions than newsfeed posts do. This is due to the allure of quick, current content, as well as the fact that Facebook provides more access points for users to view your stories than it does to your permanent newsfeed.

Why does Facebook prefer to promote story posts over regular newsfeed posts? In part it’s because story posts have a bunch of options for INTERACTIVE features that you can add to your photo or video which keep people using the app for longer amounts of time. These features are how you can direct more engagement with stories, and Facebook is ALL ABOUT getting as much engagement as possible.

Engagement tools you can add to story posts:

• Captions for accessibility for all users!
• viewer polls
• donation buttons
• question and answer prompts
• quizzes
• products to buy
• links
• music
• Countdowns
• Food orders
• Small business support shout outs
• mentions & tags

All responses to a story post will go to the app’s messaging feature as a direct message to you instead of being posted as a comment or a “like” as is standard on newsfeed posts. You can then message the user who interacted with your story, “like” whatever they sent via messenger, or use the engagement data collected from that story post. For example, if you are doing a poll and you get poll results, you could put those results in a new story post for even more engagement! Engagement, engagement, engagement!

What Kind of Content Should I Be Posting in Stories?

It’s this author’s opinion that all regular newsfeed posts should also be mirrored in your stories as story posts. Remember, more eyes are usually on stories than on newsfeed posts so one way to draw attention to a new newsfeed post is to also post it as a story!

Need help getting started? You’re in luck! In WeCreate, LPi’s digital library of ready-to-use content made specifically for you, there’s an entire selectin of images created specifically to be used in social media stories.

In WeCreate, these images can all be found under the section titled "Social Media Stories.” If you click that section and then use the search bar, the words you search will only turn up results that are sized and designed specifically to be used as Facebook and/or Instagram stories. Often these images are grouped in WeCreate with other images that are visually similar to them so that you can use them, one after the other, for multiple story slides! Basically, we made it really easy for you to just take our ready-made images and create in-depth stories for your church in the blink of an eye! You can simply save them from WeCreate and then drop them into whatever platform you are using — or if you are feeling fancy, you can overlay one of the special engagement tools (mentioned earlier in this blog) onto them.

Remember that for maximum viewership, it’s important to make sure that the privacy settings on your stories are set to public. This way, anyone who visits your church’s Facebook or Instagram can view them and interact with you!

The All-Important Story Highlight Menu

For Instagram users, your stories don’t actually have to have a 24-hour expiration date. To avoid this, make sure to build a library of your most important story posts by using Instagram’s Story Highlights tool. When you highlight a story, you are effectively building a catalogue of story content that you want to save permanently on your Instagram feed. You can separate these permanent story posts into categories of your choosing like news, milestones, staff introductions, polls, parishioner highlights, or whatever else you can come up with. This library of story content will show up as part of your Instagram profile and viewers will see these category options for story highlights before they even see your main newsfeed!

Conclusion — Tag us!

Want to connect with us? Tag LPi in your stories! Tagging another user in your story post makes it possible for that user to easily re-post your story into their own story feed! This is a great way to promote each other online by sharing content so, if you use our WeCreate story resources, feel free to tag us and maybe you will find your story reposted on our own social media accounts! On Facebook we are @LitPub and on Instagram we are @LPi_Community. See you in the social sphere!

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