Your first step into digital ministry

In the marketing world, the term “branding” is used to refer to our values, vision, and perception. You have a personal brand. In fact, you’ve been flexing your brand your entire life; you just may not be aware of it. In the digital age, personal branding should become a deliberate focus of pastors and ministers. A minister’s personal brand will be an individual’s first impression of our ministries. Therefore, cultivating a personal brand online is a valuable first step into digital ministry.

They used to say you could tell what’s important to a person by what they had hanging on their walls. Do you think that is true for you? If someone walked through your home today could they tell what you value or what your interests are?

Some people value family–so they have pictures of family all over their walls. Others value beauty, so they put wonderfully colored paintings on their walls. My wife and I decorated our eating area with posters from concerts we attended. I’m not sure what kind of value that reflects–I’ll let you read into that.

You may not feel like your walls really represent who you are, but that doesn’t change the fact that other people are going to make assumptions about you based on what’s hanging up there.

Remember when our Facebook profiles were called “walls”? That was wayyyy back in the 00’s. We posted the stuff that was important or interesting to us on our virtual “walls” just like we posted things representing our values on our home walls. Cool pictures, interesting articles, funny jokes–they all became useful for creating our walls. They were also being used by people who viewed our walls to create an impression of us–who we are, what we’re like, what we value.

Today we call our Facebook representations “profiles” instead of “walls”. But people still view our profiles much like they view the walls in our homes or the old “walls” in Facebook–they’re checking them out to see what’s important to us. 

Personal branding is a means for digital ministry

If you did a quick audit of your social media profiles, what would you see revealed about your ministry? Many of us prefer to keep a well-defined line between our professional lives and our personal lives. Therefore, we feel reluctant to share much about our professional ministries in our personal spaces. It’s definitely beneficial to keep some healthy boundaries between our personal and professional lives. But in a public space like social media, we miss opportunities to bring exposure to our ministries by keeping them separate from our personal profiles.

Christ made a distinction between the public and the personal and retreated for prayer and rest when he needed moments of privacy. But when Christ was in the public space, he was “on”, wasn’t he? This comparison is a bit hyperbolic. But it truly serves as a reminder that social media is a public space–like it or not. And when we engage in public space without sharing about our ministries in personal ways, we’re missing valuable opportunities. Your ministry should have a place on your “wall”. It should be a part of your personal brand.

When engaging with digital content, people act selfishly. Essentially, they engage with digital content to satisfy one of two urges: 1) to feel like a hero in their story, 2) to connect with real people. It’s tempting for professional ministers to keep their ministerial lives separate from their personal lives in digital space. But when we do that, we set up an unintentional block to allowing potential constituents to engage with a real person. It pays to remember this: people aren’t looking to connect with your institution, they’re hoping to connect with you.

That knowledge carries with it two implications. Firstly, it implies that pastors and ministers should be deliberate about the image they cultivate in their personal spaces. That may be an unpopular opinion–as many of us want the freedom to be authentic in our personal digital spaces. We don’t want to cultivate an image–we want to freely express who we are. At the risk of doubling down on an unpopular opinion: if the personal opinions you express detract from the message of your professional ministry, then your job probably isn’t aligning with your values and it’s time for a change. 

The second implication relates to our outward behavior. Ministers have a calling to be accessible. In fact, in the Christian tradition, our calling isn’t simply to be accessible. Our calling is to go. We’ve been sent on a mission. Digitally speaking, we have a mission to offer grace to others. We may do that by intentionally looking for opportunities online to represent grace.

Often when we think about sharing our ministries, we entertain an idea that we should be inviting someone to an event. When we’re digitally sent, we allow our grace-filled digital presence to do the inviting. 

Here’s what that looks like in practice: I joined 25 Facebook groups. Most of them focus on interesting topics to me, personally: parenting, men’s fitness, my neighborhood, and podcasting. I intentionally check into these groups every day looking for opportunities to represent grace. I’m looking for posts where I can respond with a word of encouragement or advice. Sometimes I have a legitimate question to pose to the group: “Where can I find a basketball court open to the public near our neighborhood?” With enough engagement, other group members begin to remember me–and they do so recognizing that I’m an encouraging, safe person.

I never post in these groups with invitations to ministerial or to “listen to my podcast” (unless asked or invited to do so). Instead, I post to invite curiosity. When group members start seeing me as a friend, they will drift over to my personal profile. There, they will see all the things I’ve posted on my “wall”.

Your first step into personal branding

It’s time to get branded. It’s time to publicly embrace your ministry. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to begin re-posting every post from your church’s Facebook page. Instead, this is an invitation to audit your ministry’s presence on your personal “wall”. If someone new were to view your profile, could they quickly and easily tell that you are involved in a particular ministry that they might become a part of?

One quick way to do that is to include your ministry’s logo or image in your Facebook profile’s banner image. Hang that ministry right there at the top of your “wall”. If possible, include your ministry’s web address in the banner, too. You might consider building a similarly branded image for your Twitter and LinkedIn profiles.

Here’s a classy example from Carey Nieuwhof:

Once you’ve made your ministry visual presence in your personal space, start sharing content from your ministry. Ministry content does not have to be the only content you share. Just be mindful about how much of your ministry is hanging on your wall. 

This practice carries with it a warning: you are now publicly linked to your ministry. What you say online can now be linked to your ministry. Really this was already true for anyone who knows you in real life–the people who are involved in your ministry linked your statements with the ministry from the beginning of your relationship. Now those who meet you online are going to apply what you say to your ministry as well. If you fear that some of the material you post might reflect adversely on your ministry, then it is wise to assess whether it’s important to post that material and whether or not your values are aligned with your ministry’s values.

Ready to give this a try? Let’s see your banner image! Join the Pastoring in the Digital Parish Facebook group and share the image there. We’ll give helpful feedback–and more than a few people will probably check out your ministry, too.

You have a personal brand, like it or not. Think of your presence on social media as a brand. How you use that presence speaks to others about your ministry.