Church Social Media Strategy: A Weekly Checklist

Most churches run social media with one volunteer, a phone, and whatever time is left after Sunday. This checklist is written for that person: a volunteer or one-person church media team who needs a routine that fits inside a week. Do the first section once, then run the rest weekly. A short list you keep beats a long one you abandon.

Before you start

Do this once.

List every account the church owns, including anything a former volunteer set up years ago. Note whether each is still active and who can log in.
Name one owner, usually the communications lead or an associate pastor. That person holds the passwords, adds and removes access, and has the final say on a disputed post.
Pick two platforms to do well, often Facebook for members over 40 and event details, plus Instagram or YouTube for sermon clips. Add a third only when the first two run without stress.
Fill in every profile: service times, address, website, a contact email someone reads, and a profile photo of the logo or the building. If the bio field is blank, write a short bio that says who you are and when you meet.
Decide where files live. One shared folder on Google Drive or Dropbox, with a subfolder per Sunday, is enough.

What to record on Sunday

Everything you publish during the week comes from Sunday morning, so decide what gets captured before the service.

The sermon, audio and video. A phone on a tripod at the back works; the live stream feed is better when you have one. Whoever runs the sound desk presses record, and "press record" goes on the run sheet next to "start stream".
A 20 to 30 second welcome or announcement. The pastor faces the camera before or after the service: next week's series, the potluck sign-up, a baptism date. One topic, no preamble.
Photos, with consent. Wide shots from behind, the worship team from the side, volunteers who have said yes. No close-ups of children, nothing during prayer.
Where the file goes. Upload the recording to the shared folder before you leave, named by date and passage ("2026-09-13 Luke 15.mp4"). If the service is already on YouTube, the link is enough.

How to turn the sermon into clips and a transcript

A 35 minute sermon usually holds three or four moments that stand on their own: an illustration, a one-line summary of the passage, a direct challenge to the room. Finding them by scrubbing the full recording is the slow part. A sermon clips generator does that first pass; the review is still yours.

Paste the YouTube link or upload the file from the shared folder. Processing usually takes a few minutes, longer for a long recording.
Review the candidate clips in the app. Watch each one through and ask whether the point survives without the ten minutes before it. Adjust the in and out points until it does, or drop the clip.
Check names, Scripture references, and context. Captions come from speech recognition, so "Philippians" can come out as "Philippines" and a member's name may be misspelled. Fix them in the transcript before exporting. Cut any clip that names a person unless they have agreed.
Choose a caption style, and on a paid plan add the church logo through a brand template. Use the same style for every clip so the feed looks like one church.
Copy the transcript. The same upload gives you a sermon transcript you can paste into a sermon notes email, a blog post, or a small-group discussion sheet.

Nothing is published at this stage. A person reviews every clip, and a second person signs off before anything is scheduled.

What to publish during the week

Treat this rhythm as a suggestion. A single volunteer can keep it, with most of the work done on Monday.

Monday: the strongest sermon clip, 30 to 60 seconds, with the passage in the caption ("From Sunday's message on Luke 15").
Wednesday: the announcement video from Sunday, a verse graphic from this week's passage, or a photo from the midweek group.
Friday: a second sermon clip if you have one worth posting. If not, skip it.
Saturday: service reminder with time, address, and what to expect ("Kids' church runs during the 10 a.m. service"). If you stream the service, include the link.

Two posts a week, every week, does more than seven posts one week and silence for a month.

Who reviews posts

One person makes the post, a different person approves it, and in a small church approval can be a text message with a thumbs-up. What the pastor or communications lead checks:

Names: spelled correctly, and the person has agreed to appear.
Minors: no identifiable children unless a parent has signed a consent form this year.
Prayer requests: nothing shared in a service or a small group goes on a public account, even without a name, unless the person asked for it to be shared.
Quotes out of context: a 30 second clip from a sermon on grace can sound like an endorsement of the thing it was describing. If the clip needs the rest of the sermon to make sense, it does not go out.
Dates, times, and links: the reminder carries this week's time, and the link opens.

Consent and sensitive material

Photo and video consent: a printed notice at the entrance ("this service is recorded and photographed") covers wide shots. For close-ups, ask first. Keep signed forms in the shared folder.
Minors: written parental consent, renewed each year, before any child appears on a public account. Youth group photos go in a private group.
Prayer requests: never on public social media. Route them to a private prayer chain or an email list.
Giving and financial information: post the giving link and whatever budget figures the church has already made public, and nothing else. No donor names, no amounts.
Worship music: your streaming license may cover the live stream but not a clip of the worship set posted to Instagram with the song under it. Check what your license covers before posting music; clipping the sermon rather than the worship set avoids the question.

Engagement and moderation

Reply to comments and messages. Agree a response window your team can keep and write it down, so a Tuesday message is not still waiting on Friday.
Route pastoral messages. A direct message asking for prayer or counsel goes to a pastor the same day, and the sender is told it has been passed on.
Write moderation guidelines on one page: what gets hidden (spam, harassment, doctrinal arguments under an event post), what gets a reply, and who decides. Hide first, discuss later.
Do not argue in public. Move disagreements to messages or a conversation after the service.

Security

Use a password manager with a shared church vault. Nobody stores the Facebook password in a text message.
Turn on two-factor authentication on every account, with codes going to the owner's phone or an authenticator app rather than a former volunteer's number.
Remove access the week a volunteer leaves. Put it on the same checklist as returning keys.
Twice a year, look at who has access to each account and remove anyone you cannot name.

What to review each month

Thirty minutes at the start of each month. Open the built-in insights on each platform and write down four things:

Which posts were saved or shared. Likes are cheap; saves and shares tell you what people wanted to keep or send to a friend.
Which sermon clips led anywhere you can see: a website visit, a message asking about service times, a first-time visitor who says "I saw the clip". Where it is trackable, note it. Where it is not, do not guess.
Whether the Saturday reminder went out every week.
One thing to stop doing.

Keep going with what worked. This social media metrics checklist covers which numbers are worth tracking.

Emergencies

Write these before you need them, and store them where the owner and one backup can find them.

Service cancelled or moved online (weather, power, building): the message, the stream link, who posts it, and when the decision will be made ("by 6 a.m. Sunday").
A death or crisis in the congregation: a holding line agreed with the pastor, and a rule that nothing is posted until the family has been told and has agreed.
A hacked account: who to call, the platform's recovery page, and a note telling members to ignore posts until it is resolved.
A contact list with phone numbers: the media owner, a backup, the pastor, and whoever manages the website.

Where quso.ai fits

quso.ai covers the middle of this checklist: getting from Sunday's recording to reviewed, captioned clips on a schedule. Paste the service link or upload the file, and the app returns candidate clips and an editable transcript. You review the clips, fix names and references in the transcript, add captions (and, on a paid plan, the church logo) through a template, and schedule to connected accounts. Nothing goes out until you choose to export or schedule it. The church social media workflow page walks through how churches use it each week.

The free plan gives 75 credits a month, 720p exports with a quso.ai watermark, and publishing to TikTok only. One credit is about one minute of processed video, so 75 credits covers roughly two 35 minute sermons a month. Paid plans start at $19 a month billed yearly and add 1080p with no watermark. Plans that include scheduling connect TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, and Pinterest; check the pricing page for which plan that is.

Church Social Media Strategy: A Weekly Checklist for Small Teams