So, what do you do when everyone on the Media Team declines your request on Planning Center? You get these apps, and you rock it as the One-Man-Media-Team.
Before we get started, I know that there are many apps that allow you to operate specific sound equipment and lighting systems. However, if you truly are doing this thing alone, it’s nearly impossible for you to switch between a lighting app, a sound board adjustment app, and a presentation app all at the same time. I’ve narrowed it down to five apps that can help you get the job done effectively without driving you nuts in the process.
Now, let’s dive into these five awesome apps!
SYNC
Purpose: Cloud Storage
Price: Free / 5 GB
Sync is an app that I use regularly and love! It gives you more storage in the free plan than DropBox and with their top priority. This is an awesome place to store the order of service, sermon script, announcement list, various slides, and important documents. I love having documents that I might need to print or email to others on my Sync drive because no matter where I am, I have access!
PROCLAIM REMOTE
Purpose: Presentation Software
Price: App / Free | Software / Plans start at $19.95 a month
The Proclaim Remote is an incredible feature that accompanies the Proclaim software.
TICKTICK
Purpose: Multi-Functional To-Do List
Price: App / Free
TickTick is a part of my daily life. When I first downloaded the app a few months ago I took some time to set up my alerts and it basically tells me when I need to do everything. It’s really nice because I can focus on what I’m doing instead of what’s next or what I may be forgetting. This is a great place to layout to-do lists for setup before everyone gets there and an order of operation for closing down the sound booth and media equipment. You can also share these lists with others on your team so everyone is on the same page.
WORD SWAG
Purpose: Add Text to Photos
Price: App / $3.99
Word Swag is such a time saver! It makes it incredibly easy to add text to photos and the final result looks professional and eye catching. This app has been recommended to me by multiple people in the church social media world so if you’re looking for a way to step up your twitter and instagram game, give this a try!
HOOTSUITE
Purpose: Scheduling Social Media Content
Price: Free / up to 3 Social Media Accounts
You can harness the power of Hootsuite from just about any computer or mobile device. With Hootsuite, you can schedule posts for multiple social media accounts and days, weeks, or months in advance. It’s a great idea to sit down with your pastor once a week and go over the key points of his upcoming message so you can schedule content together.
So let me leave you with a little game plan. Let’s say it’s Saturday afternoon and you’re at your nephew’s little league baseball game enjoying the weather and eating some nachos. Suddenly, you get a series or alarming text messages. It turns out, everyone on your Media Team for the next day has come down with some sort of crazy flu virus. No Sound Tech. No Computer Operator. No Photographer. No Social Media Coordinator.
Don’t panic! Here’s how to use these five apps to handle it.
- Open TickTick and make sure all the to-do lists for setup, band rehearsal, service(s), and closing down the media area and are up to date and ready to go for tomorrow.
- Make sure you have a pdf copy of the sermon, announcements and service order in Sync along with hard copies.
- Look over the sermon and see if there are any key points, scriptures, or “tweetables”. Go ahead and add those to HootSuite and schedule them to throughout the afternoon and evening on Sunday and during the coming week.
- Open the Proclaim app, reference the sermon, announcements, and service order to make sure the service is ready to go.
- You’ll be too busy tomorrow to take photos during the service so hop on an awesome free stock photos website (my favorites are pexels.com and unsplash.com) and download some photos that would make nice backgrounds for text. Think pictures of people, their hands, their feet, etc. Use WordSwag to add some text to the pictures and prep them for Instagram.
- Take a deep breath, get some sleep, you got this!
Was this article helpful to you? Have you had a one-man-media-team experience you’d like to share? I’d love to hear from you!
