Guests speakers can be one of the best ways to draw in more visitors and even grow your church. However, you just have to know how to maximize their impact. Asking someone to speak during normal services without any prior marketing isn’t going to be as beneficial as you might think. By utilizing a few tools and tricks, you might just find your church packed and your guest speakers reaching a much wider audience than you thought possible.
Build Anticipation Long Before They Speak
When a company launches a new product or service, they don’t typically just wait until it’s available. Instead, they build anticipation or buzz. While this might sound more like something a major corporation does, take the same approach with your guest speakers. This is something to be proud of and to make the most impact, you need a big audience. This is where building buzz comes into play. While not all of these will apply, 23 Ways To Build Colossal Pre-Launch Product Buzz should give you some much needed inspiration to get your members and local community excited about your upcoming guest speaker. Start building buzz as soon as you know who, when and where.
Share Their Words Online
What if your guest speaker has already come and gone? That doesn’t mean they aren’t still able to make a major impact. Always record your guest speakers and share their words online. This could be a video or audio only upload to your website or a great addition to your church’s YouTube channel (if you have one). The idea is to allow people who couldn’t attend for whatever reason the chance to hear the wisdom of your guest speaker. Don’t forget to share the link to social media as part of your church’s social media strategy.
Do A Quick Interview
Whether it’s part of building buzz or just something for your church’s podcast or blog, take a few minutes to do a quick interview with your guest speakers. You’d be amazed at how inspirational their own stories are. This gives your members and anyone else who may attend the benefit of extra words of advice or guidance. Interviews don’t have to take longer than 5-10 minutes. This makes them easy to do on even the busiest schedules.
Have A Social Q&A Session
If your church has a larger social media following, host a Q&A session. This works well on Twitter and Facebook (especially with live streaming). Set up a time and allow anyone who wants to participate to ask your guest speaker questions. Talk with your guest speaker in advance to see if they’d prefer to do this before they speak at your church or after. Sometimes after works well so people can ask questions about what was said. Make sure you set a limit on the session time so your guest speaker doesn’t get overwhelmed.
Make It A Community Event
Guests speakers make the biggest impact when they reach a larger audience. Drive more people to you church by making the evening a major community event. Partner with a local charity to raise money, host a community dinner, having family fun day for people to socialize or anything else that works well in your community. Let the guest speaker be a part of the event and you’ll have far more people within your local community attending.
Live Stream Their Session
Your church’s website is a powerful tool for reaching people worldwide. Don’t limit your guest speakers to just your church. Instead, live stream their speech so people can attend together all over the globe. You can also live stream to Facebook too. When it comes to live streaming, it’s even more important to build buzz so everyone knows what time it is. For even better results, allow viewers to post questions for the speaker to answer at the end of their speech. If you post the live stream for later viewing, post some of the best questions along with it. Before you host a guest speaker, make sure you have a church website to promote the upcoming event. No website? Contact us today to find out how we can help.
Don’t forget to plan for honorarium payments when inviting a guest speaker. Showing appreciation through fair compensation goes a long way in building lasting relationships with speakers who can bless your congregation.