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Growing Community: An Examination of Mercy Hill Church Strategic Messaging Focusing on Instagram and Facebook

Description
The Southern Baptist Convention’s missional branch, North American Mission Board, and their church planting subsidiary, Send Network, failed to provide online communication guidance to help establish (or plant) new faith communities. Only 13% of Evangelical Protestants are under the age of thirty (Pew Research Center, 2015). If the Southern Baptist…

The Southern Baptist Convention’s missional branch, North American Mission Board, and their church planting subsidiary, Send Network, failed to provide online communication guidance to help establish (or plant) new faith communities. Only 13% of Evangelical Protestants are under the age of thirty (Pew Research Center, 2015). If the Southern Baptist Convention wants their church plants to grow in a media-focused society, they must learn how to communicate with the generations who were born with technology in their hands. The purpose of this study is to identify which content and frequency Southern Baptist Churches in Metropolitan Phoenix should use to reach their target community. The project began by conducting research on twelve Send Network church plants within fifteen miles of the center of downtown Phoenix. The results led to drafting a communications and branding guideline for one of the Send Network’s church plants, Mercy Hill Church, creating a ten-week posting schedule to collect insights on content and frequency of posts, analyzing and identifying best practices for its social media strategy and tactics. The ideal posting schedule and ratio of still image and video content for Mercy Hill Church on Instagram and Facebook was revealed. Additionally, it was identified the best day of the week to publish each type of post out of these seven: community, Scripture, worship, testimony, ministry highlight, sermon recap and church invite. Overall, the project determined that a consistent and cohesive Instagram and Facebook posting schedule increased traditional college-aged student engagement with Mercy Hill Church. It also resulted in an ideal posting schedule for Southern Baptist church plants if their target audience includes traditional college-aged students.
ContributorsDellaripa, Amelia (Author) / Matera, Frances (Thesis director) / Hass, Mark (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Comm (Contributor)
Created2023-12