Parish Dispatch — How St. Augustine Parish Has Achieved Incredible Social Media Success

So many Catholic churches have been venturing into the social media space over the last decade, we thought it was high time to interview some parish staff members who are doing a masterful job using these tools. We sat down with Michelle and Daniela of St. Augustine parish in the city of Coral Gables, Florida to discuss their parish’s social media story, strategy, and ultimately, their success.

Q.   Hello, Michelle and Daniela, what are your roles at St. Augustine?
Michelle: I am the Director of Evangelization and Campus Ministry. This role lands me in the communications department as well because communications is such a large part of evangelization.

Daniela: I am the social media coordinator. I work together with Michelle to plan out the social media calendar, create content, and respond to parishioners through our social media networks.

Q.   What social media platforms do you use for St. Augustine?
Daniela: We use Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. We also use Linktree to keep all of the links that we are sharing organized in one place, especially the many event sign-ups that take place monthly.

Q.   Tell us a bit about your parish and what your social media goals are for the community.
Daniela: Our parish community is a mix of all ages being very active but also uniquely, we have a large community of 20s & 30s, some students, young professionals, and young families, that are a vibrant part of our church.

We are also blessed to be a university parish. Instead of an elementary school or a middle school being connected to our parish, our school is the University of Miami. That being said, our parish social media profiles and our student ministry social media profiles are completely separate. We do cross-post and highlight events occasionally, but our church profiles operate specifically for the parish.

Michelle: Our main goals for our social media profiles are evangelization ­— making sure that everything we post is beautifully designed, and celebrating the life of our parish — advertising events and highlighting event turnouts, highlighting parishioners and their stories, and sharing our church with the greater community. God is always doing amazing works in our church and the life of our parishioners ­— social media is a way to share it with others and hopefully inspire.

We’ve been working extra hard since COVID to bring the community together in different ways. Our parish’s COVID experience really sparked us to invest more in social media. It was a catalyst for us to step back and ask ourselves “What are we doing well and what can we do better?” It is the hard work that has been put into community building at the parish over the past few years that has laid the foundation for our ability to engage people on social media. Parishioners now look forward to seeing what’s happening in our parish, the many ways to get involved, and even send our link to their friends to invite them to join them at church. Many are also open to being featured in our social media, giving them a space to share a little of their faith story through our Parishioner Spotlights.

Q. What are these Parishioner Spotlights you mentioned?
Daniela: We want to know who our parishioners are so we can create a stronger community. We have a lot of parishioners who attend Mass every Sunday, and we know who they are, where they sit, who their kids are, but we might not know their names. The Parishioner Spotlight posts on our social media profiles brings a little more information about our lovely community members to the church as a whole. We sometimes like to highlight parishioners who are especially active in a certain ministry so that we can shine a light on that ministry as well. You can find examples of our parishioner spotlights scattered through our social media profiles on Facebook and Instagram.

Michelle: We are pretty intentional about making sure our social media content matches our website and bulletin. For example, our Parishioner Spotlight is also included in the bulletin. It’s important to coordinate among the many venues of communication so that nobody misses out. Our motivation is to continue to find communication avenues to share the good news of what God is doing — be that through social media, print, or something else.

Editor's Note: We were so inspired by the "parishioner spotlight" posts St. Augustine makes that we wrote a how-to guide for parishes to follow to create their own. Find it here!

Q. Why do you think that it is important for your parish to maintain a social media presence?

Michelle: One of the biggest things we continually investigate is where people might be spending most of their time. Social media is one of those places people spend a significant amount of time interacting, so we should be present there too!

We want our community members to encounter Christ, be active in our community, and not be afraid to share the Gospel with others. We do this through the many activities in our parish as well as through the way we plan social media. We hope to inform, inspire, and get our people excited to be a part of what’s going on in their parish. We also want our parishioners to know that they are the Church! That we are so happy they are part of our parish family, that we are here to accompany them on their journey, and that they have faith stories worth sharing. Social media has been an incredible tool to help drive that enthusiasm and motivate people to get involved.

We livestream our Masses on YouTube specifically to give access to those who can’t make it to Mass. People love this too and our comments and engagement on our livestreams are high. I see our social media presence as another way to promote the bigger picture of “we’re called to be in community.”

Q.   How do you build engagement? Do you intentionally spend time interacting with your followers?

Daniela: I spend many hours a week on St. Augustine’s social media presence. It’s important for people to understand that folks often see a church social media account as a persona that they can reply to, message, and ask questions.

A lot of people use the messaging feature on Facebook and Instagram to ask questions so the social media coordinator job can feel like a receptionist at times but, I make sure that I’m available for them. It is important to show them that we are human beings in community, not just someone trying to turn content for views.

I also always make sure to like and respond to the comments that people leave on our posts. I follow the church account on my personal social media accounts as well and that helps me see what our viewers are experiencing. I play a lot with what might work and what doesn’t. Lately, we have been sharing more videos with music and movement as well as posts that include something more aspirational and people have been responding well and sharing these. You can build engagement by showing people what they want and the best way to do that is to just test out different kinds of content and posts. Another post type that we’ve found has been successful is posts where we show pictures of an event the day after it happens. People love this and will frequently tag themselves and share these types of posts.

Q.   Do you have a social media calendar? How do you determine what goes on it?
Daniela: We do have a calendar. I meet weekly with Michelle to talk about what we want to share on social media that week. Once we have a plan, I run posts by Michelle to make sure they are in line with what the parish has going on. It’s very helpful that Michelle and the pastor are on the same page with the direction the church is going and what’s happening in the community. Their ability to communicate these things makes it much easier for me to manage social media.

Michelle: As for content, every parish has tons of things to celebrate so it’s important to highlight those. A Baptism, a wedding, a special Mass, a line from that weekend’s homily, the opportunities to celebrate your parish life are countless. We meet weekly and look at what’s going on — focusing on events, inspiration, and building community.

Q.   Have you faced any challenges?
Daniela: Although we have a lot of young adults and young families at our parish, we also have a significant number of parishioners from older generations who aren’t necessarily fluent in social media. We’ve learned that it’s important to take everyone’s level of social media fluency into account when planning, so we’ve done a few things to help accommodate those who aren’t as comfortable with these platforms. We’ve made the font bigger and the contrast higher in our designs, always make sure that any links are very visible and obvious, and intentionally follow our parish’s brand guidelines so that posts are easily recognizable as coming from our church. Another thing we’ve learned is that it’s important to make the design of individual posts more general and not overly culturally masculine or feminine but, instead, to just stick to our parish’s brand. This makes the post more accessible and attractive to a wider, more general audience.

Q.   What is some advice you might give another church who wants to up their social media game?

Daniela: Don’t compare yourself to another church! Be true to your community. Cater to your community and don’t worry about what other people are doing. Also, remember that social media is just one of the many aspects of your parish — it isn’t the only one. Don’t try to make it something it’s not. It’s just one part of marketing, it’s not your entire marketing strategy. Another piece of advice I’ll give is that it’s very important to hire a social media manager. This person can dedicate the time needed to engage your community and create the best space possible online for your church.

Michelle: Social media is a worthy investment and it shouldn’t be hard to find great content. If the staff member managing your parish’s social media is involved in the life of the parish, it should be easy to find great content to share. For a healthy community, you must be excited and want to celebrate what God is doing. Social media is fun because it’s a way to celebrate the life of the parish and what God is doing through you.

We want to extend a big thank you to Daniela and Michelle for sharing there expertise with us!

If you found inspiration through this interview and want to invest more time in social media for your parish, we suggest checking out the articles we’ve gathered under the Web & Social Media section of our blog.

Updated on 03-18-2024