Gilbert’s Coaching Tips

Social Media Outreach January 17, 2012

For the most part our teams are back together and we have jumped into the Spring semester. When our Student LINC team met for the first time in January, one of our coaches, Daniel Hensley, shared about his time at the MidSouth Winter Conference. He told about an interesting social media outreach they conducted.

Daniel shared that this outreach was designed to be a way to utilize Facebook as a medium for the gospel. They asked students to record their personal testimonies and upload them to their profiles.

About 150 students participated. They worked on their testimonies, using the typical three minute testimony training as a guide. After they presented them to staff for feedback, they uploaded videos to Facebook. The students were encouraged to share them with five to ten friends they have been praying for. The intent is for students to have follow up conversations with friends using the video as a conversation starter. They could begin with something as simple as “Hey did you check out my video… what did you think of it?”

Another alternative for the outreach was for posting EveryStudent.com articles to their Facebook profile and tagging friends on it. I wrote previously on using EveryStudent.com. In it were a number of ways ES.com can help as you do on-line evangelism.

Daniel thought this could easily be done back on campus. It would make a great way of casting vision for on-line evangelism at a leadership retreat. Seniors could do this as part of a legacy project. The big win with this is having students share their stories and initiate with their friends how Christ has changed their lives.