Blogging is a commitment of time that may take a few months to begin seeing rewards. If your congregation does not prepare for the long haul, members can become discouraged and quit after the first few posts. That’s why it is important to hold off on your first post until you have 30 other posts planned and ten actually written. Most experts recommend even more!

Your Social Media Ministry Committee should create an editorial calendar. Editorial calendars are simply lists of content you want to use with dates attached — a schedule! Adjustments can then be made. Over time, the editorial calendar can become a comprehensive tool for planning the use of other elements of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, but for now concentrate on content for your blog.

A good editorial calendar will:

• Help you plan topics
• Help you see that various topics are distributed over time
• Help you make writing assignments
• Give your entire Social Media Ministry a sense of direction

Your Social Media Ministry Committee needs to plan posts for the next three months. Begin by brainstorming ideas for 12-16 posts a month. As a starting point, we recommend planning to post on Mondays and Thursdays — fresh after Sunday’s gathering and before the coming weekend. Don’t quit until you have 48 topic ideas — three months of material. Things will probably happen to change your plans. That’s OK! Having the plan guarantees that you know where you are going if other things don’t interfere.

2×2, launched in February 2011, can testify that the more we post, the better our traffic grows and the more people we reach. Peaks and valleys become predictable. Peaks tend to grow higher and valleys less deep. Frequent posting tends to spur more ideas rather than dry the well. It creates its own energy.

Start with a simple calendar. Here’s a sample you can download, print and use. It is the first quarter of the coming church year — liturgical year B. It begins with the first Sunday in Advent and takes you well into Lent. We’ll post the next quarter soon! •  Editorial Calendar  • This is also available on the Links section of the Navigation Bar on the right.

We’ve set this up to be helpful to church planners, including the Scriptures for Sundays and noting major holidays. In the Sunday square, we’ve allowed space to identify a theme and make any special notes for the coming week. The remaining days allow room for you to fill in the title of a post and assign a writer. The multicolor hexagons are to remind you to use the various Social Media tools — Posts (P), Twitter (T), Facebook (FB) and Video (V). Noting when and how often you’ve used these will help you see at a glance that the activity on your blog is balanced. This is a goal. For now, just concentrate on posting articles. Facebook and Twitter can come later.

Identify a few general topics such as SOCAL MINISTRY, CHILDREN, YOUTH, COMMUNITY, etc.

Review the Sunday scriptures for ideas.

Look at the calendar dates for subtopics: church year, calendar year, things unique to your neighborhood (spring or fall festival, for example). Remember graduations, Mother’s/Father’s Day and historic occasions (Reformation, 9/11, Veterans Day, elections). Think about topics that coincide with church lectionaries. Review current news in your area (elections, environmental challenge, grand opening of a public park or building). Think of the school year (prom, testing schedules, sports, plays, musicals). Find a hook that you can address from your congregation’s point of view. Don’t ignore community efforts that may seem to be in competition (walks for special causes, Habitat for Humanity, disaster relief). You’ll be showing the community that your congregation cares and is involved.

Assign people to prepare the posts. Divide the tasks. If a topic cries for outside expertise, look for someone to help as a guest blogger.

Create a review system. It helps to have someone responsible to look over submissions for basic proofreading. No need for more meetings. Just circulate them by email for sign-off. Decide how much time you need. Don’t be too rigid in your expectations. Blogs should have a spontaneous quality.

Be generous in your editorial review. You want people to contribute and if their material is heavily edited, they will lose interest. Monitor content gently. Your site should have room for different views. It’s part of what makes blogging interesting. Your readers are more likely to participate in dialogue if they sense that their efforts will not be criticized.

A critical tone is easy to detect. One denominational blog we visited reminded participants “Remember to Be Kind.” The warning was repeated so often on the blog site that it might have inhibited contributors, who might have wondered what the monitors thought was “unkind” if it was so important to repeat a warning over and over.

Blogging platforms allow monitors to review comments before posting. You don’t have to worry about inappropriate language, etc. You can create community rules. We’ll cover that in a later post.