This is part of the Social Media Guide for Rabbis and Synagogues
If you, as a rabbi and a leader, want to continue impacting your community, you must engage with social media. At this point, social media is a required tool for rabbis and synagogues.
There are five really important points as to why this matters.
1. Social Media is effectively the modern state of the internet.
The internet has begun to mature and social media is what it currently looks like and as a result, we need to approach it that way. In order to gain attention, which is the next reason why this matters, you need to be using modern tools. Simply, the vast majority of individuals are using social media, in all of its forms, to find, engage with, and share content. In order to compete, we need to be doing that too.
To bolster that point, in some developing countries, which by no means is our measuring stick, their internet is solely social media. In a recent NPR reporting about the New Yorker article, Ghost in the Machine, it was revealed that the entire internet of Myanmar is effectively just facebook. Regardless of your opinion on that, it is a part of reality. Grapple with it one way or another, but you can’t ignore it.
2. This is where our audience’s attention is.
We, in our work, are trying to reach and connect with people. In order to do that, we actually need their attention. Their attention is on social media and if we want some of that, that is where we need to be. This goes back to bigger questions about what your goals around social media are. You can see my post about that here. You should absolutely get the checklist!
If you don’t want to get your audience’s attention, then, don’t worry about it. But if you want to grow and engage new people or your current people better, know that social media is a part of that puzzle.
Before you start to argue and say, “its only millennials”, let me just stop you right now and tell you that it isn’t true. People of all ages are on social media. They are not all using it the same way or the same platforms, but every demographic is engaging with it. For example, seniors are very active on Facebook while teens are mostly on Snapchat.
Don’t know what that means? Don’t worry about it. We’ll get there.
3. Social media provides value and access to your audience.
Social media is just a tool, just like any other. This tool can provide tons of value to your audience by offering them something different than they can get elsewhere.
People want to be inspired. People want to have community. People want to learn.
All of this can be amplified through social media.
Parents who don’t have time to come to synagogue to hear the sermon or the class you’re teaching. They can benefit from reading your sermon on another day, at their leisure. They can benefit from the videos you release (with subtitles).
I have individuals come to me directly to share their appreciation and their frustration. They can’t necessarily come to services on Saturday morning, for one reason or another. They can find five minutes to engage with what you’ve written or recorded.
People want what you are offering, but they may not be able to come when you are available. Work with them and provide them value.
4. Learning new communication Modalities is the key to the future.
There will always be new forms of communication. Only recently, in terms of human history, have we had access to bound and printed books! Radio is century or so old. We take these things for granted but required adjustment and innovation to use.
This is true today as at any point in history. We need to be learning the ways communication changes.
Social media is only one example, but using gifs, emojis, memes, and the myriad of other ways people communicate are important for us to learn. Because, they will change, its inevitable, so we have to be prepared and practiced and learning new things.
You don’t need to be an expert, but you do need to be a practitioner.
5. We’ve been doing this for centuries.
The Talmud, as one example of many, was a new way of communicating. It was teachings with commentary layered on top, with more commentary, and with more. In some sense, it was its own internet of sorts. Notations on the side serve as hyperlinks, connecting Talmud, Tanakh, and halakhic codes to Talmud. It layers different opinions on top of one another.
If you really see that type of interaction as valuable, you can choose to see social media as an extension of that.
In the end, social media, as I’ve said, is a tool. It is an important and useful tool, but merely a tool. Let’s take advantage of what we have, lets understand that communication has changed, and lets get out there and serve our people.
Want to read more? Check out other blog posts.
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