How Smaller Churches Can DOMINATE Social Media

today you're gonna learn a three-step social media strategy that is specifically tailored for smaller churches and proven to get results for example a church reached out to me just yesterday and told me that after implementing this strategy they saw a two hundred and twenty percent increase in likes and clicks on their most recent post and by the end of this video you'll know exactly what you need to do to accomplish the same thing well hey there and welcome to pro church tools the show where in ten minutes or less you're gonna get a dose of tips and tactics to help your church share the message of Jesus well we navigate the biggest communication shift in 500 years I'm your host Alex Mills join as always by the bossman Brady Shearer Alex so many of us that are thrust into social media roles within our church really have no idea what we're doing right that's not an indictment upon churches I know what it's like to be the worship pastor or the student pastor or an administrative assistant and a church and then be handed the keys the logins to the social media accounts and say run with it and this can be especially difficult for smaller churches where you already have so many different tasks you need to be taken care of and now you also have the added burden of social and so we want to walk through a simple three-part 3-step social media strategy in this episode that smaller churches can take advantage of and riddle and know that no matter what if they stick to this strategy they'll be going in the right direction well you said abrade you've been there and for me and for listeners who've been listening for a while you know that I'm still there you know the associate pastor of a church of about a hundred people and it's my responsibility to come up with our social strategy and be posting every week every day and so I know what it's like I know how easy it is for this specific thing to get pushed to the side in the midst of all the other responsibilities we have as pastors and teachers and worship leaders and custodians and administrative people I know what it's like and this three-step strategy has helped me and I know it's gonna help you especially as you look forward and start to come up with a plan of how you're gonna post when you're gonna post and what you're gonna post this is a great place to start well let's start with step one step one is stop the scroll every smart social media strategy begin with these three simple words stop the scroll now why is this part so important why is this these starting points the beginning of a smart social media strategy for a church simply put attention is the most valuable commodity your church can possess and its most important on social media just like it is everywhere else and so if we reverse engineer and understand how users behave on social we open up our phones we flick flick flick we scroll Scroll scroll and so if you want to share your message with people on social media you first need them to stop scrolling and so it's imperative for you to focus on the types of things that are proven to stop people from scrolling because Alex it doesn't matter how amazing your message is if you're you know shopping a discounted oil change or a slap job or eternity with Jesus if you can't get people's attention again the message doesn't matter because no one can hear it yeah it doesn't matter how amazing your messages and it doesn't matter how amazing your post quality is whether it's photo quality or use of you know your brand creatively on your post if it's not something that's going to interrupt the pattern on your Social Feeds that's going to get your user to stop scrolling it doesn't matter and we've learned this as a company and our personal brands and so we've been talking a lot about this lately that that when we're posting and what we're deciding what to post we have to be posting something that's going to interrupt that pattern like I said and stop the scroll something out of the ordinary something that doesn't look like everything else something that is is kind of off the wall that that's going to stop the scroll get somebody's attention and that's when you can share your message which we know it's a greatest story ever told it is the greatest message that we have but if we don't have anybody's attention it's not going to matter stopping the scroll has everything to do with being unpredictable being unusual with your visuals the content that you share can always be the same you're always gonna be sharing the word of Jesus you're always gonna be sharing the existential matters of our faith hope community and purpose it's all about finding different ways of visually delivering and this is why consistent visual branding is usually unhelpful on social because it becomes too predictable and when things are too predictable the lesson here is repeat equals defeats right if you do the same thing over and over again visually if it's always looking the same what's gonna happen is you'll condition your audience to ignore not stop the scroll they're gonna keep scrolling because subconsciously it won't look different it won't look unusual it won't be unpredictable and so they'll just feel like I'm accustomed to this I'm familiar I know what's gonna happen I don't need to stop scrolling exactly you need to provoke something within them to go what is that and I need to stop scrolling because once you've done that you've got their attention and now you can move to step two again the second step in this three-part social media strategy is to start meaningful conversation at the beginning of this year Mark Zuckerberg the creator of Facebook came out big public post and said we're changing the algorithm of Facebook brands and organizations the organic reach they're gonna get we have to diminish and friends and family are going to be getting more focus in the feed and what he said was the goal of social should be to stimulate meaningful interactions the type of things that truly matter now that doesn't mean they need to be serious but we want to have meaningful conversation meaningful interaction and so knowing that that's what the social Giants have said publicly this is what we want to happen on social it would be wise of us to try to do what they are saying we should be doing because they're the ones that are the geniuses behind the algorithms that are determining whether your post to get organic reach or not and so you should be aiming to start meaningful conversations you stopped the scroll and then you start a meaningful conversation a meaningful interaction so this can be something as simple as asking hey how can we be praying for you it can be something as fun as hey what's the best movie that you've seen recently the point is to get interaction dialogue back and forth if the algorithms are seeing that when you post nobody responds and nobody shares nobody engages those algorithms will learn that the content you're sharing is not stimulating meaningful interactions and you will be penalized for it as churches this is how we should be using social and this is why we should be using social not just to broadcast our message for the sake of just putting it out there and and posting again tomorrow but sharing something meaningful and inviting people into a conversation to have a two-way conversation it's like you said asking for prayer so that we can you can answer our question we can then engage and start praying for you or whatever kind of interaction is that's why we should be posting is to stimulate this kind of interaction but furthermore like you said as we do that that should be our our end goal but as we do that the algorithms are going to notice that say oh this is good and end up showing it to more people and so it's kind of a win-win situation you you post something that's worthy of engagement you get that engagement and that's good for your community but at the same time the algorithms are going to see that put that in front of more people and now your message is going to have a broader scope a broader impact on the greater community step number one stop the scroll step number two start meaningful conversation and step number three provoke spiritual practice the question you your church and staff need to ask yourselves is what would we post online if our Sunday service did not exist yeah because the problem with so many of our churches is that we use social media as a promotional tool for our in-person events and services someone will have a question how do I read the Bible how can I get prayer how can I learn more about Jesus and what we're saying with our social posts is come to see us on Sunday and we'll answer right it's Tuesday but you can wait till Sunday for that and the problem is that that's not how Millennials and Gen Z and those that are native to the social media experience an ecosystem use those platforms and we need to make the shift of provoking spiritual practice within the social platforms natively not pushing people to visit us in person so that then they can experience and engage with spiritual practice so we're talking about prayer we're talking about worship we're talking about reading the Bible we're talking about engaging with community all of these things can be provoked and natively on social media and this is what we need to be doing if we're gonna use social the way it's meant to be used yeah we're doing this right now if you're listening to this on a podcast if you're watching it on YouTube you are searching for answers about social media you have found them and we are giving them to you right we didn't say come to our office and we'll tell you yeah because that would be ridiculous right we know where you are you're listening to podcasts you're watching YouTube videos and so we want to be there answering your questions that's exactly it what would your church post online if your son servus did not exist to summarize the three-step social media strategy that works especially well for smaller churches than one-stop the scroll step to start meaningful conversation and step 3 provoke spiritual practice these are the building blocks of a successful social social strategy that will also stand the test of time yeah this is not going to change attention is not going to change provoking spiritual practice and community these things are the lifelong things that we do within our churches so they are future proof as well finally the featured resource we wanted to highlight on this episode of pro church tools is the new social media checklist for churches a brand new free resource that we but just put together you can find it linked in the show notes below or you can also go directly to checklist that church and download it for free there thanks for watching and engaging with this episode of Pro Tools we'll see you next time hey thanks for watching this video make sure that you subscribe to this channel so you never miss another video hey you made it all the way to the end congratulations why don't you go ahead and obliterate that like but take the leg button it's

Channel: Brady Shearer

Views: 45,525

Rating: 4.9753542 out of 5

Keywords: Church Media, Pro Church Tools, Nucleus, Brady Shearer, Storytape, DOMINATE Social Media, How to dominate social media, small church social media, How Smaller Churches Can DOMINATE Social Media

Id: RzMo90GZO04

Length: 9min 59sec (599 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 22 2018