OBJECTIVE: Create and manage all St. Mary-St. Paul Parish, St. Mary Catholic School, and St. Paul Newman Center communications to ensure brand consistency across all mediums such as websites, social media, and the parish bulletin. Capture the parish culture through photography in order to evangelize and make the parish known beyond Big Rapids.
TOOLS: Canva (no templates!), Adobe Creative Suite, Wordpress, Meta Business Suite, LinkTree, Google Suite
Developing a System
St. Mary-St. Paul Parish lacked a social media presence, design system, and captivating photography. A successful digital platform is necessary in order to evangelize, grow the parish community, and further the mission of the Church. As the Director of Marketing, it was my responsibility to launch this presence.
By working through the Canva cloud (not using templates), I coordinated with other employees, Father Jegar Fickel, and volunteers when creating promotional material. Additionally, I organized the existing St. Mary-St. Paul brand into a system for others to use in the future.
Parish Website
Maintaining the website included updating the homily each week, adjusting Mass/sacrament times based on the school vs. summer schedules, event sign-up (such as 152 consecutive Adoration hours for the week following Corpus Christi), giving thanks for generous donations, and more.
Social Media
Facebook and Instagram provided a means of communication in addition to the website and bulletin.
Creating eye-catching graphics by combining beautiful artwork, typography, and the St. Mary-St. Paul brand helped communicate feast days and important dates. Additionally, recapping these events with photography includes those who weren't able to make it.
Announcing important dates ahead of time, with consistent branding, ensures people have enough flexibility to clear their schedules and attend events.
Utilizing Facebook makes saving events easier by marking your calendar in the platform. Because captions allow for link usage, sign-up forms are easily embedded into the captions, compared to Instagram which only allows for accessible links in bio.
Sharing recap photography from events in the Diocese of Grand Rapids shows the life and culture of St. Mary-St. Paul parish, especially when it comes to sharing from the St. Paul Newman Center and St. Mary Catholic School pages.
