Blog | Five Things to Give Volunteers and Fans For Stellar Ministry Promotion

There is no better voice for you and your ministry than your biggest fans! Think about yourself and how you communicate first—if you have a great experience at a restaurant, hotel, or used car dealership (is this an oxymoron?), do you rave to your friends or do you forget about it unless asked? If we have a terrible experience, we usually live tweet it and add it to our Insta-story so that the world will hear about the injustice happening to us! 

On the other hand, if you are blown away by an awesome product or someone that went out of their way to serve you in a restaurant or a cool way, that probably ends up on your social media too. 

Good or bad, you usually want to shout the extreme experiences from the rooftops. That's human nature. 

Fans of your ministry or Christian organization are the same way! Maybe you are trying to recruit for volunteers or for people to join a small group or Bible Study, or perhaps you are trying to promote the church or ministry as a whole. Here are a couple of things that you can do to make it easy for your biggest fans to be able to shout it from the mountain tops!

1. Give them SWAG. You know...Stuff We All Get.

There is nothing better than free stuff—and you know everyone loves it, whether it’s candy or pens or gadgets and trinkets. You have probably watched people fight over a sample of lobster mac and cheese in Costco, so how much more would they want a real give away? Every event probably has a t-shirt. Make sure that it fits your demographic and that they would wear it out in public, not just weed the garden bed in it. Maybe it is something like a coffee cup or a Yeti cup or a cell phone battery charger or an iPhone pop socket with your logo on it. Get your name/church/ministry out there! At Vanderbloemen, we have VanderSocks with our logo on it. They’re always a hit, especially when visitors show up to our office wearing them. Talk about raving fans!

2. Give them great opportunities to post on their social media.

Maybe it is a fun event or smiling faces or a great story or speaker. Remind them to post and share! Maybe even give them a hashtag to use for your event or ministry. But keep it simple and consistent.

3. Give them content to like and share on social media.

Pictures tell a thousand words, but well-done videos make the story come to life! Gather a group of people in your ministry who have a strong social media presence and ask them to commit to liking and sharing from your social media accounts. It is easy for them to like and share as they sit in the car line or get lunch or before they go to bed, but then you have to give them content to like and share. You also have to figure the best time to post for them to be able to like and share. But provide them with fun, quality content to be proud of and to tell their friends about.

4. Give them a voice!

Your biggest fans already love you and what you are doing. Ask them for their opinion on things. Give them freedom. Implement their ideas and give them credit. Give the ministry away! 

Maybe you saw a theme of giving. Maybe you didn't and may need to go back and re-read this blog. But anytime that you are trying to multiply volunteers, ministry, or church, it is going to take some giving of time, money, and energy. Would you give away ministry, responsibility, and praise to help fans become recruiters? The only way to get your best fans to become your best recruiters is to give it away!