Church Social Media during VBS & Summer Camp

In this episode Nick discusses what to do before, during and after your gigantic summer events of Vacation Bible School (VBS) and Youth Summer Camp. How do you handle social and digital media? How do you promote? And what are the best practices to recap and successfully bring your entire church along for the ride on some of your biggest events of the summer!

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SHOWNOTES
RUNNING A DIGITAL AD:
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/009
MY CHURCH YOUTH MINISTRY ON SOCIAL MEDIA:
https://www.instagram.com/crosscreekstudents/
MY CHURCH ON SOCIAL MEDIA:
https://www.instagram.com/crosscreekcolleyville/

TIMECODES
00:00-01:56 Intro - VBS & Camp
01:56-05:31 Classify the Proirity of Your Events
05:31-08:36 Before your Event
08:36-13:17 During Your Event
13:17-15:05 After Your Event
15:05-16:41 Outro

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00):
Well, hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. You can head to http://hybridministry.xyz for all of your needs, including transcripts, show notes, and old archived episodes. But today, and in this episode, what I want to talk about is I want to talk about church communications and church social media for VBS and summer camp. How do you handle these two major monumental tent pole style events in your church that you no doubt are having to already probably try and reconcile and figure out? And so we want, I want to talk about what to do before your event, what to do during your event and what to do after your event. Now, here's what you need to know. In most cases, when this episode is dropping here in the middle of June, you were probably already full bore into your pre VBS or pre-camp planning, and I get that.

Nick Clason (00:56):
And so this episode may be helpful for future, uh, years, future seasons, as well as give you some good ideas or thoughts during your, um, during your event or after your event of ways to handle church communications or church social media. Before we dive in, I wanna remind you that we are on YouTube, head to our YouTube channel to subscribe. We're on TikTok and I wanted to let you know that you can head in either of those places, the website or on YouTube or on TikTok to our show notes where you can get our completely free ebook on how to post to TikTok. It'll also put you on our email newsletter, which we are going to start getting going on a more regular basis. So far it's mostly just been, Hey, sign up for this ebook. Thanks. You're on our email newsletter and we've done nothing with that.

Nick Clason (01:40):
Um, but we're gonna start sending out some thoughts and ideas here in the future. Uh, noth nothing in the works just yet, but it will be coming. So without any further ado, let's dive in. How do you handle VBS and how do you handle camp in your church? Let's go. All right, so at our church, we have events classified as tier one, tier two, and tier three. Tier one are like the lowest rung events. They may get like an a scrolling announcement and that's it. Tier two is a little higher and then tier three, all right, honestly, I might have that reverse tier one might be the best. Tier three might be like the worst quote unquote. Uh, but both VBS and camp are like the top tier events. And so in your church, I would recommend that VBS and camp also be top level events.

Nick Clason (02:26):
If you are a senior pastor, uh, that recommendation is for you. If you're a church communications person, that recommendation is for you. If you're a youth pastor or kids pastor listening and you're screaming at your car or your phone or your headphones right now, like, yes, it is the most popular event. Like, you already know that, right? And you're trying to get other people on board with that idea. So I would recommend making it your top tier event and pulling out as many of the stops as it takes in order for you to be able to do that. Now, before we dive into the pre, during and post suggestions for your event, I do just say, if you don't have an event or a communications classification, uh, spelled out in like a handbook of some sorts, let me, let me recommend that that might be your first step because one of the challenges in churches, you, every ministry wants to announce their thing.

Nick Clason (03:15):
The women's minister wants to announce her thing. The senior adults ministry wants to announce their thing. The college ministry wants to make sure that their thing is announced. The kids' ministry of course, wants VBS announced Student Ministry of courts wants camp announce. How do you announce those? How do you celebrate those when they're over? Like how do you categorize and classify what gets air time? What gets screen time, what gets stage time? And that is where I would say if you have a classification, tier one, tier two, tier three, and then explain what falls under each of those categories, it's helpful, um, so that like people can request those things. And then when, like ladies bunko on a Friday night at, you know, Pauline's house is vying for the top tier event, you as a church communications person, you're gonna have to say, well, that's not a top tier event because it doesn't affect more than 50% of our population.

Nick Clason (04:05):
Or, you know, whatever the reasons might be. But sit down, work through what those things might be. A good rule of thumb is typically that you want the event or you want the thing that you're announcing that you're, you know, making known. You want it to affect a wide and vast majority of your people. And the reason that VBS does that is because it not only is for all of the kids in your church, but also you're gonna need just about as many volunteers or more than kids in your church to, to step up and serve. And so it is a big wide scale production. The entire church, the entire staff is usually involved in it. It's usually like a non-negotiable. You are not on vacation if you're on church staff during that week, like you are there. And so that's one of the reasons why it is such a top tier event camp is a little trickier, honestly, cuz it probably doesn't hit 50% of your people.

Nick Clason (04:53):
Uh, but it is a massive financial investment. And it is also probably your student ministry's most, uh, coveted or or biggest like event moment throughout the year. Um, it does also require a good portion, definitely a good portion of your student ministry, student ministry staff, student ministry volunteers. Does it include everybody? Maybe not. Um, but you may. And and that's where, right, like you can have your, you can have your, uh, categorizations, your classifications, but then sometimes like in that case you may fudge that and be like, this is still gonna be tier one. So let's dive into some ideas that you can do promoting and before your event, let's go.

Nick Clason (05:33):
All right, so if this is a top tier event and before your event starts, I wanna just give you some ideas. Do whatever you can pull all the stops to give it all the publicity that you can. What does that mean? Well, I would say give it all of your in church announcement moments. Give it all of your, um, give it all of your promotion that you can do inside the church. Video announcements, stage announcements, bathroom signs, uh, ev everything that you pull out, church bulletin, everything that you do on a week to week basis for your church. Give it everything that you got. All right. Like put all your gas behind all your effort, energy behind this event. Make sure that everyone in your church at least is very well aware of it. And then from the digital perspective and digital standpoint, how do you do and what do you do beyond that?

Nick Clason (06:22):
Well, I would recommend that you create for yourself a individual dedicated landing page on your church website. Maybe it's, maybe you buy a domain, maybe it's whatever the theme is, you know, dot com. Like, uh, if your theme is like wet and wild rapids.com. Now if you're doing like VBS in a can or VBS from like a curriculum content place, that that website is probably gonna be taken by another church or just by the, the VBS curriculum provider in general, right? But create some sort of like website and maybe you can get like VBS in yourtown.com or VBS in yourtown.church or something like that, that you can just own and use every single year. And then recycle it and refresh it to match and go along with whatever the theme is. But then when people, um, are searching for VBS in your town, that is hopefully gonna index well in SEO and in Google search for the town that your church is in.

Nick Clason (07:18):
Uh, but, but create a website. And in my mind, that website can be your centralized hub. Now, you should already have some sort of centralized hub to your church. And so if people do go to your church and then they do wind up going to vbs, you can just simply link it over to that one. It can also be a subset of your page. You already are paying for a church page. You can just do, you know, whatever church.com/vbs, uh, or whatever church.com/camp. But give it its own dedicated page. And in vbs laying a camp, you want to do packing list, you wanna do themes, you want to be, let that be the place where parents can go for daily recaps posts, uh, links out to social links, out to videos, um, packing lists, forms if you're going away. Um, let's see. Uh, like I like to include Spotify playlists, uh, that the kids, uh, have been worshiping to so that people can access that. They can continue to listen to that on their own time. And then also, last but not least, an idea might be put some energy and effort behind some Facebook advertising. All right, I'll link in our episode here on how to run a Facebook ad, uh, with me and Matt from a couple of, uh, almost a year ago at this point. But I'll link the how-to step-by-step process of running, creating, targeting on a Facebook ad. But get some ad power behind your, uh, your two events, VBS and camp.

Nick Clason (08:38):
All right, what are you gonna do during vbs and what are you gonna do during camp? Right? Like I said, odds are when this video and, uh, podcast drop, you're already there. You don't really have a lot of the, the pre-work probably to do anymore. Or if not, you're, you're, you're minimal. And most of those decisions have already been, it may be too late to create a website. It may be too late, you know, to uh, run an ad. And so during, I would do whatever you can to create daily content for your screens in your room. And so what I mean by that is you're gonna have large projector screens, probably wherever you are, camp vbs, either of those. And if you can have 1, 2, 3, uh, photographers, videographers around the better VBS is probably easier for that cuz you can get volunteer ones, um, camp, you probably need to pay to have that person go and pay them to be there, right?

Nick Clason (09:26):
You gotta pay for their, their room and board and lodging. And then you also have to pay them to be there. If you're on a bigger church staff, you may have a full marketing department, communications department and they may be able to spare a, a member of their team to go to camp with you for the week. Um, and so you don't have to necessarily pay them cuz they're getting paid by the church, but you do have to pay for them to be there, if that makes sense. But those investments are worth it because capturing those memories, capturing those photos and being able to capture those videos are amazing. And one of the best things I think to do is every single day have a daily recap that you post on your screen. So as soon as the kids come in, the top of the service is a daily recap video.

Nick Clason (10:07):
They can screen for their team, they can scream for 'em, they see themselves, they can laugh, they can giggle, they can sing along with the songs. I think all those are great, amazing ideas. Um, also I think you should post daily recap stuff for social media. So think about the multiple avenues in which you may wanna post. You may wanna post on, uh, the feed, Facebook feed, Instagram feed in on Instagram. It's gonna be 10 photos. You may also wanna post videos or things in your stories. Um, and you may also wanna post some reels. So one of the things we just got done with VBS this last week at our church, our church was doing a daily recap video with like a voiceover. So one of the people on staff did it, I did it from one of the days cuz we were hosting, um, a sixth grade event called Cross the Creek Week.

Nick Clason (10:50):
Um, and it's for our incoming, uh, sixth graders that was running in tandem in conjunction with their VBS across the, across the way. Um, but I would do like a recap, Hey, here's the, here's the theme, here's the word of the day, here's the verse. Um, and all the while there was just b-roll back behind of things going on events, uh, footage that they had for, for the event. I also posted on our own individual student ministry channels. The first two days I just did basic recaps. I just like got my phone out and just kind of captured the day, put a video on it, honestly edited it in TikTok or cap cut and just like let it be. And it was super simple text on screen, you know, cross Creek week day one. Uh, super easy way to do that. The, the third day I pulled students aside individually and I asked them, what's your favorite part of this event?

Nick Clason (11:38):
And I, I just clipped all those together real fast. And then on the fourth and final day we had our missions offering and we offered a contest to our sixth graders that if they were able to meet some sort of goal, um, they could pie a leader of their choice in the face. And so there were six groups, six teams, and five of the six teams met that goal. And so five of the six teams got a pie leaders. And so we captured five pies in the face. If you're on YouTube, check this out, here's my photo of me getting pied in the face. Cuz they did in fact choose me for one of them. Um, but I posted a video all five, like boom, boom, boom, just real fast. And then at the end, the group photo of the five of us being pied.

Nick Clason (12:16):
And so, um, I captured that. So on social, I would just, uh, look for different ways to capture what's going on. Um, I thought what, what my church was doing with the voiceover for the theme. I thought that was really good, um, and really well done. Um, and so I would, again, so you're looking at the, the challenge with it right? Is that you're looking for, uh, stuff for your screen. So you're looking for 10 80 by 1920, you're also looking for, um, you're also looking, what is that? No, that's 1920 by 10 80, then you're also looking for verticals. So then you're looking for 10 80 by 1920. Uh, so the way you capture it is gonna be different. So if you can have some people like you do social and you do, um, for the screens, vice versa, or you're just gonna have them like, come in, film this way and then come in and film this way, right?

Nick Clason (13:02):
Whatever the case might be, I would, uh, try and find a way. And the more people you hand have, the more hands you have on deck to help with that, the better for during your event that you can produce on a daily sort of basis. Let's check out what we can do after, all right, after, I would do a big total recap of the whole event. So you've done daily recaps and now you're doing like the big total recap that can just be B roll and uh, maybe voiceover or something like that. One of my favorite things to do is bringing that like camp person, uh, with me. The video person to camp is have them capture eight to 12, uh, testimonies of people, um, student and a couple leaders, and then splice that up together with some good B-roll over it and, um, show it in the service or show it in the, um, like whatever sort of recap event you have, uh, for, for your people.

Nick Clason (13:58):
Uh, and also post it, you know, to YouTube clip it up verticals so you can post it to social. Um, we did an event, uh, we will do an event after camp this year called camp. So it's the camp recap, um, and we're gonna invite parents to it. And that's what we're gonna show our, our video for, for camp, for returning students, um, and for returning parents to be able to check out what's going on with, uh, what went on at camp, what went on with student ministry, um, and get that also, um, if it's good enough, it'll be able to get played in your big church lobby. Um, and it, what it'll do is it will help your parents. It'll help your donors, it will help anyone who gave fundraisers invested in student ministry. It will give them a picture of what their financial and what their monetary and what their time investment went to.

Nick Clason (14:45):
And so, uh, this is why I think that capturing these moments digitally, um, and on video is so, so widely important because it just gives such a good picture and it helps bring your church along to what's going on in these monumental events for these, uh, for kid ministry and for student ministry. Well, hey everyone, so glad you hung out. I, uh, am thankful that you stuck around to the end of this video. Hey, I also just want to say like, I hope that you found this helpful and I also hope that you, um, have a great vbs and a great camp this season. Whether you're just finishing it or whether you're jumping into it this week. Um, prayers, blessings on you. I hope that it's amazing for any, uh, if you want to, to preview any of the content we did, I'll link both our, our overall church and, uh, my church's, uh, student ministry, which I run in the show notes.

Nick Clason (15:40):
You can check both of those out. You can again, head to YouTube to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Um, see the photo of me having Pie in the face. Uh, you can also follow me on TikTok for short video clips. And don't forget show notes and transcripts are available every single week http://hybridministry.xyz. This is gonna be episode number 049. Hey, listen, I'm gonna give you quick heads up. I may say that in some future episodes I lost a bunch of episodes on a hard drive, um, that is currently getting recovered now. Um, and so unfortunately, uh, there may be some, some shuffling. That's mostly a problem I have to deal with. Um, but I'm just letting you know that there be, there may be some clerical errors here in the next couple of weeks of me staying episode, whatever, and then it posting later cuz I currently don't have access to it. So anyway, all that to be said. Without any further ado, glad you're here. Thanks for hanging out. Head into the show notes to get everything you need. And as always, don't forget, stay hybrid.