You may love social media, social networking, and all of the very neat and exciting services that are out there (and have accounts on all of them) but you ultimately will not be able to drive the program, initiative, and strategy by yourself.

You’re going to need to find, hire, and empower the right people to help you accomplish your goals and to fulfill your vision for social media ministry.

But who are these people? Where do you find them? How do you know if they know what they are talking about?

More thoughts after the jump:

Doing it Already

Typically and generally speaking, the people that you should most-definitely engage with and empower or hire to help lead a social media campaign or ministry are the ones that are doing it without your explicit permission or instruction; they have naturally found an affinity and interest for it and have decided to do it already.

Now, anyone can be trained to use the tools, but the ones who have a deep rooted passion and interest in web technology are pretty safe bets. Why? Because people who are already engaged have a sustainable interest that will far exceed any tool, initiative, campaign, or project. These are the ones that are just interested because, and do not necessarily need an official title or role.

Get those people involved and they will help you build and grow. They will easily help train, inspire, encourage, and challenge the rest of the team and/or congregation, to get off their laurels and kick some social media butt.

The rest of your “typical” job placement and requirements can apply after this base assumption is understood and considered. The rest is up to you.

[Image from Papazimouris]