There is an age-old question that has existed since the advent of social media. Should we have separate social media accounts for every ministry? Or should we only have one set of social media accounts for the entire church?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. It depends on your church and the individual ministries. Some larger churches sustain multiple presences on social media. Others are better off with consolidated social efforts.

Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to determine which one applies to your church.

Can You Justify Having Multiple Accounts?

By default, your church should begin with just one set of accounts for the church. Most churches don’t need separate accounts for ministries. Always start with general accounts and move toward multiple accounts only if it can be justified. Think quality over quantity.

What justifies operating multiple pages? The next few questions will seek to answer that. But always ask if the benefits of the new social media pages outweigh the added work.

Are there enough missed opportunities by not having a youth group Facebook page to make up for adding it to your already full plate? Remember to weigh the consequences of more social media accounts before rushing into the weeds.

Do You Have Enough Bandwidth?

Creating new social media accounts for each ministry is easy. Effectively maintaining them all is difficult. Providing valuable content for the main church accounts is a challenge already. Now imagine multiplying that work by the number of church ministries.

Who is going to handle all of these responsibilities? If you don’t have a person (or two) in charge of each account, they likely won’t be maintained properly. And having a nonresponsive social media account is worse than not having one at all.

Rather than splitting time across many pages, consider consolidating efforts on the main church pages. These accounts are likely in need of content and should already have a built in audience.

Is There a Unique Audience You’re Trying to Reach?

More difficult than maintaining consistent content on multiple accounts is engaging with multiple audiences. Social media is so much more than simply posting content. You need to take the time to listen to people and engage in conversations with them.

Only create new accounts if you know that there’s an audience waiting to engage with you. Have you spoken to your youth ministry about whether or not they might actually interact with you on Twitter? Otherwise, you’ll be spending your time creating an account that no one will notice.

The goal would be to set up shop in a place that your members are already gathering. That way, you’re joining an ongoing conversation rather than trying to herd cats onto a new platform.

Is There a Goal Behind Each Account?

What are you trying to accomplish by creating separate social media accounts for each ministry? Do you understand the purpose of each of these accounts? Take the time to set goals behind each one before investing effort into launching a new platform.

Realize that you may not need every available account for every ministry. For instance, younger audiences prefer Instagram, so that may be the only account you create for your youth ministry. And Twitter is largely used by men, so that may be the best choice for your men’s ministry.

Don’t just collect more soapboxes to preach from. Focus on doing more with less and grow your social media strategy in a healthy way.

Does your church have separate social media accounts for each ministry? How do you manage multiple accounts?