Summer · start about 8 weeks out

The Summer Media Plan

Use the quiet season to batch what summer needs, get a head start on fall, and take an actual week off.

Summer gets quiet. Attendance dips, small groups pause, the staff calendar thins out, and the pressure that's been on since Christmas finally lets up. The natural instinct is to let your media go quiet right along with it.

That instinct is what makes September brutal. Fall arrives with a launch, a new series, a ministry kickoff, volunteer recruitment, and school starting, all landing in the same two weeks. A team that coasted through July meets all of it cold, with nothing built and no margin to build it in.

Try looking at it the other way. Summer is the only stretch of the year where your calendar's light enough to work ahead instead of working Saturday night. You can batch a whole season in one sitting, build the pieces fall is going to need while there's still time to make them well, and put a real break on the calendar on purpose, which is the one thing a busy season will never let you do.

The plan

4 blocks of work, starting about 8 weeks out

Week 1

Decide what you are not posting this summer

Before you plan anything, cut. A summer calendar built from your school-year calendar fails quietly, because it assumes a volume of content nobody has the capacity to make and nobody's around to see. Pick the handful of things that genuinely matter in the summer, then write down what you're dropping on purpose, so that in July it reads as a decision instead of a lapse.

A written summer content list: what you are posting, on which channels, at what frequency
A matching list of what you are not posting this summer, with the reason next to each line
A single summer look: one color direction and one type treatment that every summer asset can inherit
A one-paragraph note to your pastor and staff explaining the summer posting rhythm, so nobody is surprised in June

Week 2

Batch the whole season in one sitting

This is the week your light calendar pays for itself. Making twelve graphics in one afternoon takes far less out of you than making one a week for twelve weeks, because most of the cost is context switching rather than design. Build the set in a single sitting, schedule it, and get summer off your weekly plate entirely.

A template set for the recurring summer posts: service reminder, sermon quote, event, and announcement
Every summer graphic you can make in advance, exported and named
The summer schedule loaded and queued through the end of August
Sermon series art for anything preaching between now and Labor Day
A short list of the things that genuinely cannot be batched, so you know exactly what will still need you each week

Week 3

Use the slow weeks to build what fall needs

Fall planning has to be underway by the middle of summer. Most churches start thinking about it a week or two before school starts, and by then it's too late for graphics, volunteer recruitment, and anything that needs approval first. You don't have to plan all of fall this week, but you do have to start while there's still room, and to make the raw material fall will be built out of.

Fall dates locked in writing: launch Sunday, series start, ministry kickoffs, and anything school-calendar dependent
A photo and video capture day while summer light is good and people are relaxed, shot with fall promotion in mind rather than this week's post
The fall series direction decided, or at minimum the decision meeting on someone's calendar before mid-summer
Volunteer recruitment assets drafted now, because recruiting starts before the launch, not after it
A written handoff list of everything fall will need from you, with the date each piece has to be finished by

Week 4

Put your team's time off in writing

A media team that never rests during the one quiet season of the year is running on fumes by Christmas. Intending to take a break isn't the same as having one. Put real dates on the calendar, name who covers what, and treat the coverage plan as a deliverable like anything else. This is the week that makes the rest of your year survivable, and it's the easiest one to skip.

Dated time off on a shared calendar for every person on the team, volunteers included
A coverage plan naming who handles Sunday for each week someone is out
A short handoff doc: file locations, logins, posting schedule, and who to call
Enough batched content queued to cover the weeks you are away, so coverage means pressing publish rather than making something
A note to staff on response times over the summer, so an unanswered request is expected rather than alarming

If you are reading this in July

Half of summer's gone and none of this is built. That's a common place to be, and it changes the order more than it changes the work.

Skip the batching. There is not enough summer left for it to pay off, and the weeks you would be batching for are nearly here anyway. Keep posting whatever you are already posting and leave it alone.

Go straight to week three. Lock your fall dates this week, get the capture day on the calendar in the next two weeks, and start volunteer recruitment assets now. Fall is the thing still in front of you, and it is the thing that gets expensive if it slips.

Then take week four seriously anyway, even if the break is shorter than it should be. Two days off in writing beats two weeks off in theory. The fall launch will take everything you have, and going into it already empty is the failure mode this whole plan exists to prevent.

What you missed is next summer's plan, not a loss. The fall work is the part that still matters this year.

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