As a church looking to connect with your audience, social media is not only a simple way to communicate information with your congregation, but a great way to paint a picture of who you are.

From the moment I wake up, I am interacting with people. I interact with my husband over breakfast, my parents on a phone call on the way to work, clients via email, my sisters through text message and my friends and family online. I don’t know what I would do without the technology of today. It makes connecting with those around me a breeze! (And since two of my strengths are Woo and Communicator, I like to connect!)

While some may say that it's nearly impossible to build an actual relationship online - or through text message - my generation is proof that it IS possible. The definition of building a relationship is being expanded through technology. Now, not only can we build a relationship face to face, but it’s becoming possible to build one screen to screen! It’s an exciting phenomenon to think about. Once we expand the term relationship, we can see that the technology we have at our disposal can be used to form more and deeper relationships, easily, with those around us.

The invention of social media started this relationship building shift by creating a new way to connect. As a church looking to connect with your audience, social media is not only an effective way to communicate information with your congregation, but a great way to paint a picture of who you are.

At Fishhook we love to use social media to give our friends and clients a glimpse into our world. Whether its by posting a picture of us with marker on our faces, or tweeting out a question we hope you will ponder with your staff, we truly want to open up to you with this tool. Before social media, this was a difficult process—now it happens at the touch of a button.

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(click on the photo to find out why we have marker on our faces!)

The best part about technology is that it is constantly expanding into something more functional. Today, most of our time using social media is spent inside our favorite social apps - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Vine and many more!

Our friends and partners at BlueBridge Digital found that people are spending 100 minutes inside apps every day. This is compared to only 55 minutes spent on the desktop computer, laptop computer, and mobile web combined. That means we are spending almost twice as much time inside apps!

This statistic led the Fishhook team to begin thinking about what this meant for our church clients. If many people in your congregation are spending a majority of their online hours inside apps, what would it look like to make the church part of that?

Out of this question came our partnership with BlueBridge Digital—a local app company that developed a dynamic church app. Not only does the BlueBridge church app create a customized space for you to house information about your church's events, its purpose is to build better engagement. By using the app’s social media share feature, your audience can easily share things like your church’s Facebook posts, Tweets, event promotions, calendar updates and more, all inside the app itself. If you think about it, this takes the term “word of mouth” to a whole new level! The app technology gives your audience the freedom to share whatever is important and applicable to them - easily!

We know that with new technology comes questions and concerns - so ask us anything! We want to hear what you’re thinking, not only about social media in general, but about using an app to engage with your audience. Click below and let's chat about your questions.

If you have questions for BlueBridge, or would like to see a demo of the church app, you can visit our partnership page.