Welcome to Catholic Social Media! This information will guide you as you begin your parish's journey
Articles
How to Connect Your Social Media Accounts
Getting your social media accounts set up with Catholic Social Media is easy! If this is your first time with Catholic Social Media, you'll be visited with a splash screen and invited to connect your social account. Just click this button to get st...
How to Start a 30-Day Free Trial for Your Parish
Visit us at csm.prengersolutions.com Click on the "try it for free..." link near the bottom of the screen: Enter your email address on the next screen to receive your initial verification email. Once you've received your verification email, ...
Scheduling Posts in Advance
Sharing fresh, relevant content every day of the week doesn’t mean you have to actually log in to Catholic Social Media and post every day. Instead, our system lets you schedule your posts days, weeks, or even months in advance. On th...
How to Post Content
Begin by clicking on the "Planner" in Catholic Social Media. Here you will see all kinds of content. There are items for this week, next week, the month, the season, and Evergreen/Forever content. Pick one that suits your communi...
How a Catholic Social Media Trial Works
Introduction Since its inception in 2018, Catholic Social Media has always started with a 30-day free trial that comes with no financial obligation. Over the years, thousands of North American parishes have taken advantage of this, resulting...
Whitelisting Catholic Social Media to Receive Our Emails
Because emails from Catholic Social Medai often contain pictures and links, they can get misidentified as spam by your email provider. Here’s what you can do to make sure that doesn’t happen: Gmail: Move any message from the @...
What Type of Social Media Posts Work Best?
In addition to posting at the right times and following the 8:1 rule, another way to think about driving engagement and reach is the different post choices you can make on social media. At the end of the day, there are six ways to engage yo...
The 8:1 Nourishment Rule
USE THE 8:1 NOURISHMENT RULE If you remember the bad old days of parish social media, you remember this cycle: Post about Lenten fish fry Post about Triduum and Easter Mass times Post about Christmas Mass times Repeat! And what happened ...
How Often Should You Post?
Of all the things you could do to reach your parishioners and neighbors on social media, the most important thing is to post daily. The “big three” social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) all incentivize this – accounts that post daily...
Inspire in the Morning, Engage in the Afternoon
Men and women who follow their parish on social media follow the same habits and patterns as the population at large. Many of them log on and off social media throughout the day, which can make it difficult to predict the exact perfect time to publi...
Put Social Media to Work on Holidays and Weekends
Even in the world of social media schedulers, it can be easy to fall into old ways of thinking about when to post. If you work a typical 9-5 in the parish office, you may think that posting on weekdays during the same time will work best. However, o...
When Should You Re-Share Content?
You may have heard the old saying: if you’re not paying FOR the product, you ARE the product. This is 100% true on social media. There are hundreds of incredible Catholic publishers, personalities, and ministries giving away free graphics, videos, a...
Talking About Social Media Offline
How many times have you entered a coffee shop or hardware store and seen signs that beg you to follow the organization on social media or like and share their content? It happens all the time. And it is right for small businesses to do this! While ...
Growing the Following - the Only Reason to Spend Any Money on Advertising
If you’ve spent any time on the major social media platforms, you know there is a lot of pressure to spend money on advertising. There are a hundred ways to do this, but if you’re going to spend any marketing dollars on social media, don’t boost pos...
Parish User Roles
There are three types of parish users in Catholic Social Media, each with different permissions within the parish subscription. Below is a full list of each type of user and the permissions that user has. Parish Owner(s) Full rights to create...
How to Use Post Personalization Parameters
How to edit your post text personalization parameters and publish posts with them
How to Edit or Delete a Post
How to edit or delete a post you scheduling in Catholic Social Media.
Resource Release Schedule
The Catholic Social Media team regularly updates the Resources section of the platform for Parish Premium subscribers. Though there are exceptions, you can expect this seasonal schedule to apply broadly. We've kept to this schedule since 2019: ...
How is Catholic Social Media content better than what we are using right now?
How is your content better than what we are using right now? While some parishes do use our service as their sole source of social media content, most use our material alongside important local posts that focus on parish announcements, photos, an...
How to Manage Your Subscription and Billing
You can manage your subscription and billing details by logging in, clicking on your profile image, then clicking "Subscription." Once there, you can change your plan, cancel it, manage billing contacts, and update your payment methods. ...
How do I access Catholic Social Media?
Our service is located at csm.prengersolutions.com . If you are trying out our service, click on the link to begin a four-week free trial with no financial commitment. If you are already a subscriber, enter your email address and log in. If you do ...
How to Use the Analytics Section
You can see how your social media profiles and content is performing in the Analytics section. Toggle by month, year, social media grouping, and platform to easily get a pulse on your community. To see how each individual piece of content i...
What is the difference between Weekly, Monthly, Seasonal, and Evergreen posts?
These are categories to help you determine your usage: Weekly: These are connected to the liturgical year and thus should often be scheduled for the day we suggest. We reference saints’ feast days, Sunday Gospels readings, and so on. Monthly: Thes...
How to Avoid Unwanted Characters in Post Copy: HTML vs Plain Text
To ensure your copy shows up exactly how you expect, we recommend putting it into a plain text editor like Notepad, then copy/pasting it into Catholic Social Media. Sometimes when text is copied from other sources like websites, it picks up HTML fo...
How to create your own posts
How to create your own content within Catholic Social Media
How to Invite Other Staff Members into the Platform
If you are an administrator on your parish’s account, you can click your profile image in the upper righthand corner and choose “Users”. From there you can add, edit, or delete users. Giving “Admin” permission gives that person full access to the pa...
How to Accept a Pending Partnership Request in Meta
Login to your parish Facebook page Click “Meta Business Suite” in the left-hand sidebar Click into the top left to select your business account that owns your Facebook page (be sure to click the gear icon next to it) 4. Click “Requests” 5. ...
Scheduling in CSM vs. Facebook
When I go to Calendar, I don’t see every post I’ve published on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram. Why is that? Our service does not take historical data from Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram and display it. When I go to Facebook/Instagram/Twitter’s s...
Setting Up Your Instagram Business Account and Connecting it to Facebook
In order to connect both your Facebook and Instagram to Catholic Social Media, your Instagram must be set as a business account and it must be linked to your Facebook page in the Meta Business Suite. First, to set your Instagram account to a busine...
How to Pay with eCheck
We support ACH transfers (eCheck) to pay for your subscription renewal. To pay with eCheck, follow these steps: Login to Catholic Social Media Click your profile image Click "Subscription" Click "Manage Payment Info" Click "Add Payment Me...
I'm Not Getting My Two-Factor Authentication Code Emails
I’m not getting my two-factor authentication code emails. What’s the deal? Catholic Social Media utilizes a lightning-fast two-factor authentication code delivery service called Twilo SendGrid for when you forget your password. If you’re not re...
How to Upload Multiple Images in One Post (for parishes) New
Multiple image uploads (or carousels) are posts with more than one image or graphic. You can upload up to ten images within a single post on Catholic Social Media. Posts with four or less images can be published to Facebook, Instagram, and X. P...
How to Post to Different Social Media Accounts at Different Times
I’d like to post to different social media accounts at slightly different times. How do I do that? Begin by clicking on the first post you want to use and then schedule it to your first platform. Then, return to the Planner page, click the post a...
How to Create a Story (for parishes) New
Stories are a type of post supported by Facebook and Instagram. They last 24 hours and go away. They are a great way to engage your current followers! To publish a Story through Catholic Social Media: 1. Click "Create Post" from the Planner or...
Release Notes (last updated 7/16/2024)
July 2024 New Features Recommended post dates : Posts in Monthly, Seasonal, and Evergreen sections no longer show a recommended post date in the tile preview. Impressions tile: Impressions are now listed as a separate tile in the main an...
How to Convert a Personal Facebook Account to a Page
While you can't directly convert a personal Facebook account to a Page, there are best practices and steps to follow to get your parish Facebook Page set up correctly. Create a new Facebook page for your parish following these steps . Alert y...
How to Merge Multiple Facebook Pages
You may have multiple Facebook pages that you wish to merge into one. Facebook makes this possible, but a few things you'll want to keep in mind before getting started... Check that the Facebook username is available if you are thinking of changin...
How to Claim Ownership of a Facebook Page
If you are not listed as an owner or admin of your parish Facebook page, you won't be able to do much with it. The first thing you need to do is figure out who the owner is. This might be Father, a past employee, or volunteer. You'll want to reach ...