Fall and winter are usually busy outreach seasons for churches: Fall festivals, trunk-or-treats, Thanksgiving dinners, musicals, Christmas Eve and Christmas services and more.
In the not-so-distant past, advertising for such events was limited to your local newspaper. Such ads were not always cheap, and reach was limited to subscribers who read the paper on the day your ad ran. Not so with social media. Today, your event info can be shared, shared, and shared some more, providing multiple opportunities for viewing.
Social media is the easiest, most effective way to promote your outreach efforts that exists today. Please don't overlook it.
What are some benefits? Here are three.
1. Social media provides advertising at no cost.
It costs nothing to share an event (or ad graphic) on your church's Facebook page, Twitter feed or Instagram. It is completely free for as many times as you want to post or tweet about it.
You'll have non-church members sharing your event to their friends.
2. Social media provides advertising at low cost.
It costs very little to "boost" a post on Facebook, the only channel I recommend for pay ads. You can boost for as little as $1 a day. Boosting also allows to you target people close to home, which means you get more for your money.
You don't have to boost posts for every single event, but Facebook does suppress organic reach (the number of people who like your page who see a given post in their feed). Boosted posts are a very inexpensive way to expand your reach to all the people who like your page and beyond.
3. Social media allows for answering questions.
Social media allows for the quick answer for questions asked right on the post: "Can I bring my dog?" "Is there an age limit?" "Can my kid dress like Sauron at your fall festival? Can my grandfather?" (Twitter and Instagram also allow for interaction.)
Surely there will be people who look up the church's phone number and call the office, but most will simply use the possibility embedded in the medium itself.
We live in a day when social media is part and parcel of "word-of-mouth." If you want people to talk up your event, then make social media integral to your outreach promotion. 
This article originally appeared at lifeway.com.
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