10 Church Content Creation Secrets for Viral Social Media Posts

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Well, if you've been doing social media for your church for any length of time, at some point you've probably come into creator's block, where you run into challenges of coming up with new ideas for how to post on social media. Well, in this conversation, we're going to unpack ten secrets to help take your content creation to the next level. Let's do this. You're listening to the reach, right? Podcast, the show dedicated to helping your church reach more people and grow. Well, hey, guys, I'm Thomas. [00:00:32] Speaker B: And I'm Ian. [00:00:34] Speaker A: And today we are talking about viral social media posts and how your church can do some things new this year to go viral more regularly. So it should be a good conversation. Everybody wants to go viral. Probably a good thing to start off to talk a little bit about what we mean by viral, because in this era of social media, chances are, I mean, viral means different things to different people, right? So for, um, for some people, I think very few churches are going to go, like, truly those viral moments. And usually if we do, it's for bad reasons. Uh, like we said something we shouldn't have or something slipped up out there. That's what really goes viral. Uh, but when we talk about viral, we mean just a post that does a lot better than your normal posts. Uh, so this is what tends to happen. In fact, just this week, we had a post that was totally random. It was a meme that we put out there. Typically with an Instagram post, we get a few thousand views and a few, maybe a few dozen likes on our Instagram posts here at Reachwrite. And then we had this one meme that was just kind of a joke about introverts and their discomfort with greeters at churches, and it had, like, 3.4 million views on it. And so that's the kind of stuff that we're talking about. Once in a while, you'll just get these ones that just, for whatever reason, they blow up. The crazy thing about social media, though, is that you could keep plugging along and doing the same thing all the time, and then you stumble upon just one post that does, like, the same thing that your last 200 posts did. And, you know, our follower count, like, quadrupled from just this one kind of viral meme that we put out there. So these kinds of things happen. I'm watching it happen for churches all the time. Are you seeing it too, Ian, that these churches have this chance to go viral? [00:02:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And like you said, it could just be. I think the main thing to consider is you know, when you're consistent, you're creative. We're gonna be talking about, of course, different things to do to be viral, but that's what puts you in a position to have that one that just blows up or goes, truly goes viral or whatever. And I think that that's kind of what we've seen our reward be here by our consistency at putting posts out and everything on social media that, that all of a sudden you get rewarded. But, yeah, so I think that's exactly right. [00:03:03] Speaker A: I think that if you get anything from this, it's not going to be the ten ideas that we give you. It's consistency. Like that is the key to a viral post, because no matter what you do, you can. We don't even know, like, we had no idea when we put out that post about that meme, about introverts, like, we had no idea that that was going to be that well. And in fact, it did well on Instagram. It did terribly on Facebook reels, on TikTok, on YouTube shorts. It's just one of those things. So consistency truly is the secret sauce to getting results when it comes to social media for churches. I could say that beyond a shadow of doubt, but why don't you kick us off, Ian? We have a total of ten, I believe, right. Ten different ideas. So why don't you get the first one? You do the odds, I'll do the evens, and we'll go through. [00:03:46] Speaker B: Sounds good. Ten content creation secrets. The first one is know your audience. I mean, I think it starts with that. You know, we, we know that everyone's welcome at a church. Everyone should be welcome, no matter age, background, all of that socioeconomic status. But who is your church best position to target? Maybe in your community, you know, just based on your current church's demographics. Is it young families? Is it. Is it seniors? We worked with a church a little while back. And the villages of Florida, the largest retirement community in the world, I think statistically, definitely, definitely in the country, in the US, obviously, they weren't able to target as many younger families there. So anyway, one funny example out there, but I think that's. But when you start a social media strategy and one of consistency, you really want to know who you're targeting because that's going to help you know what kind of content to put out there, for sure. [00:04:48] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Good stuff. Yeah. I think just knowing your audience is the foundation for any good social media platform at any, like. So for us, you know, that, that content we make, content that church leaders would find interesting or amusing. And so that one that went viral for us, I mentioned about introverts, you know, I think everybody kind of relates with that tension there of, you know, going to church and, you know, having to run in with the greeters. I think sometimes as pastors, we forget it, but a lot of people live in that. But, yeah, knowing your audience, so important to do that. So next one is to inspire your followers. So we got to remember that that is the central thing that we're able to do. Like, it's. It's not just competing for attention on social media. If all we do is just grab attention, grab attention and do those things, then we really miss the big opportunity that social media is. We don't just put out memes here at retry. We create content like this. We'll convert this podcast into several reels and shorts. Later on, we'll turn them into little bite sized snippets. So that's the content we use to hopefully inspire church leaders and encourage them in the same way. Your job is to take your audience. Some of your stuff might not be, it might not all be inspirational content and certainly don't feel like all of it has to be, but something you have to remember is the core thing you're doing is encouraging people in their walks with Jesus. And so inspirational content is super important. And some of the things that we're seeing work well for that right now is doing carousels. Those are something that we're experimenting a lot with right now of doing carousels, where you can scroll through or slide through different images on Instagram, Facebook, and then we're also. This is a newer feature to TikTok. They actually have a carousel function that happens in TikTok where you can scroll through still images. That's a great place for inspirational content. So maybe you have, like, you know, some content, like, hey, three verses to remember when you're in a time of mourning and you have someone be able to scroll through three different verses, it'll encourage them or turn that kind of content into a reel that works really well, too. So a reel where it's just maybe even an interesting background, and then it says three verses to remember when you're struggling in times of mourning. And it kind of has the three verses that would come up there. You can do the content in a few different ways, but don't be afraid of inspirational content. The main thing to know, though, is that the era of just posting scripture graphics by themselves, that's done. Like, we can't do that anymore. That doesn't work. But if you format it in the right way, there is still a place for this kind of content. [00:07:29] Speaker B: It's funny you mentioned the scripture graphics because that leads me the next one. That has been something that is time tested, tried and true. It's still relevant to this day, which is highlighting church events. And the reason I'm chuckling about what you said with scripture references is it used to be when Facebook was new on the scene. Thomas, you and I saw there were two things the churches did. A scripture graphic, then their event. Scripture graphic, then event. So we've obviously, churches have gotten much more creative these days. Most churches have, which is great, but this is one that's still going to be relevant. It's one that's been around. A church is always going to have events ongoing, so it most certainly is something that you're still going to want to carry out and make those regular posts on upcoming events that you want people to know about. These could be community outreaches, whatever. Have good graphics for them, maybe even videos. Obviously, a lot of churches do video promos for events or previews for events, make them as engaging as possible, but this is still a good one. [00:08:36] Speaker A: Yeah, and I would say the shift here has been like before. We used to do scripture graphics and then promotion for church events. I think it's probably more effective now to do highlights from church events. Again, social media, you think about the way that you and I use it. It's to highlight the cool things that are happening in our lives. When we're traveling, we post more on big birthdays. When we're having parties and celebrations, that's when we take pictures. We put that on social media. You should do the same thing for your church, actually, I would say you shouldn't use it to promote upcoming events. I mean, there's nothing, it probably won't hurt you. Very few people will see that kind of content. But making reels and again, making carousels around church events and highlights from them, they are super powerful. We had a baccalaureate service at our church just this weekend where we highlighted graduates and got to pray for them and those things. And it was just so great. And everybody was dressed up and it was really a great opportunity for photos. We put out reels for it and that's the kind of content that we see is really working right now. [00:09:43] Speaker B: That's great. [00:09:44] Speaker A: Awesome. Next one is showcasing sermons and teachings. This one is a. This is the, I think, the foundation of a good social media strategy right now. So we are unique in the church in that we're part, pumping out sermons each and every week. Most of us are videoing those sermons, so turning those into bite sized chunks that are useful for reels and shorts and tiktoks, turning your sermons into short form video, I think that's something that every church should be doing. I know it's a pretty big undertaking if you haven't done a lot of social media, but I would just set a goal. Maybe just even if one time a week, you would just have a Monday post on these platforms where you're having sermon content turned into a less than 62nd clip of your services. That is a great foundation for every church's social media platform. So I'd really encourage you to do that. [00:10:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And like you said, this is content that churches are creating at least once a week because there's a sermon once a week, so it's there already to be used. So next one is utilizing visual content. Obviously, you still want to be very visual, attention getting people are mostly visual. They're bombarded on social media. No longer are we just limited to a couple of different platforms. Some people are on three different social media or more platforms a day. You want to be engaging, have high quality photos, videos, the stuff when we were talking about videos of past events, make sure it's of quality, that it's engaging and it's just. It's more memorable and just evokes emotion. So how much more powerful is it having a video testimonial compared to just something written? [00:11:29] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:29] Speaker B: So picture speaks a thousand words. That still is a valid saying to this day. So good visual content is definitely something you want to be doing. [00:11:39] Speaker A: Yeah, there's really only a couple of platforms where you can even, like, consider doing non visual content. So just to get it out there, I'm ruling out, obviously, YouTube, you can't do non visual content there. You can't do it on TikTok, Instagram, you can't do it there either. Facebook, you can do non visual content, like you could write text, but I don't really see any point in doing that. I can't remember the last time I. Even if you're gonna do a long form post on Facebook, which can be powerful, usually having an image or something with it to kind of reinforce the story, it will help you. So beyond that, I mean, there is some place on Twitter or X now. Yeah, if you're using Instagram threads, that's a place you can do it. And then if your church happens to use LinkedIn, you could do non visual content. But, yeah, really you should be thinking every post where possible, video photography with an emphasis on video is really good. So good point, Ian. [00:12:40] Speaker B: Yep. [00:12:40] Speaker A: Next one is featuring community stories. So this is just, again, using the stories function that we have on Instagram. There's similar things in Facebook, like my day and that kind of stuff, but pulling in from when things are happening at your church, maybe people are tagging themselves at church on Sunday, at an event at your church, pulling that into your church's stories. We're seeing a lot of traction happening with that. So it's a good way and kind of a secret that we see to get a lot more reach on a post that may not have been going anywhere to help both that account that you're promoting as well as your church's stories account. So good stuff there. [00:13:18] Speaker B: That is good. Nothing much to add there. And this next one we talk about with a lot of different things, but specifically with social media, this is a good idea to create a posting schedule. This is something that's going to keep you on track, keep content out there consistently. Like we said, if there was one takeaway to this is be consistent. Obviously, creating a posting schedule is going to help you do that. So, and of course, a mixture of different posts, you know, on a consistent basis. We've, we've named several apps for this. I know you're a fan of several different apps. I know we use. Well, Thomas, I know you probably got it fresh on your mind what we use for some of those things, but any apps we would recommend for that. [00:13:58] Speaker A: Yeah. So we've used buffer, we've used Hootsuite, we've. We currently use Vista Social. We just find it's the most friendly. With TikTok specifically. I have mixed feelings about these. Like, I have seen that we have a hard time performing as well when we don't post natively with the apps themselves. Like, so if we don't actually get on to TikTok, one of the things with, especially with the algorithms now, especially on short form video, one of the challenges is that they have a local bent towards them. Right. So if you are in Austin, Texas, like you are Ian, in your area, you are more likely to see Austin specific content. And I see lots of hawaiian content here because I'm in Hawaii. But with some of the posting tools, they're not really great at the geolocation side of things. So it has a hard time getting that localized content for you. So if you want to reach a really broad audience, I don't even know. I think some of them might be placed in overseas areas. And so we've done some testing with these where we see a lot of our content. Like when we post with apps, it'll do really well in Malaysia and, you know, this kind of stuff, which is not, I mean, we love the people of Malaysia. That's great. We want to bless them as well. And I'm sure the gospel is just as important that it's there as it is in your community. But you are probably uniquely assigned not to reach Malaysians primarily, but to reach people in your area. So I don't know that the posting tools are the best choice for every church, but definitely those are a few you can dabble with. I just think having a schedule in general and having. Having a schedule, it kind of just keeps you on task, and it helps you to commit to one thing, to you're going to do something at your church for social. It helps you commit to it and actually stick with it when you have a schedule that's good. So that's the value for me, I think. [00:16:02] Speaker B: Yeah, well put. [00:16:03] Speaker A: Next one up is live streaming. I say this one with caution. Our general recommendation is that most churches should not be live streaming. I don't think it adds a lot of value. And by that, I mean they shouldn't be live streaming, live streaming their church services. The fact is that it's just, they're really hard to execute well. And I think that for most small to medium sized churches, especially, it's just you probably don't have the equipment, and you almost certainly don't have the expertise and skill set and manpower. And even if you did, it's usually better used in other places if you have this kind of expertise and. Yeah, and volunteers to do this kind of stuff. So I want to encourage you away from live streaming your services, but there is still a place, I think, for live streaming, and I think that that's just creating intentionally live content. Maybe it's a live prayer time that you do weekly. Yeah. I think one of the challenges that churches run into with live streaming services is that I rarely see. I've seen, like, once where the pastor, the person that's giving the sermon, or the worship team is aware of what's happening, like, on the chat that's happening. [00:17:15] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:17:16] Speaker A: Good reason. Right. It's just that that's a different function. But I think the way that these live stream tools are built on social platforms is they're made to be interactive, where it's not just someone manning the chat and saying, amen to your praise, you know, your hallelujahs but on top of that, like that, it actually affects the content that's being made. They type in a question and the live streamer can answer the question. Or in this example, if you're live streaming your prayer service, someone can type in a prayer request and you can live pray for them right on there. So I think that there is some room for experimenting with these things, and I think there's a chance to maybe not go viral with it, but I think really up your followers and get a lot of engagement by doing some live content. So something to look into. [00:18:02] Speaker B: I like that you said that. And that's a good segue to this next one here, that it's because when we think of live streaming in the church world, the first thing that comes to mind is the service, right? It is. But this next one, behind the scenes content, this could be a prayer gathering where you live stream that. And this is not always live streaming. As far as behind the scenes content, this could be something that's pre recorded as well. It could be taking someone behind the scenes of an event, an outreach could be Baptist. Like if you do a big baptism Sunday behind the scenes with some of the families leading up to that, or before the baptism happens, all sorts of different things. I know my church has done this, that we're very proud of our worship and everything. Sometimes they'll go behind the scenes on how the worship team is preparing and practicing and getting ready for each Sunday's worship service. And so. Yeah, so. But this, it's really cool. I think it lends itself to authenticity as well. [00:19:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:03] Speaker B: Meaning that you're giving people a glimpse into who you are. It's not just, here's the service. Right. It's not just come to the service, watch the service. It's, hey, we're doing all this stuff here. We want you to be a part of it. Behind the scenes. [00:19:15] Speaker A: Yeah. I think most people have no idea what happens during the week in a church office and the things that happen at churches. And I think that there's some interest in what that looks like. And so maybe even, like, day of the life content or helping people understand what life is like there. And then I've seen some success kind of in the behind the scenes vein with, like, blooper stuff. So if you're recording, you know, videos like these, like you were doing a podcast, and, boy, if someone wanted to dig into our 200 and some odd episodes and find bloopers, if we had the manpower to do that, there'd be gold in the bloopers. Side of things, of the ridiculous things we've said. I'm sure we probably wouldn't even have jobs. We'd be banned from YouTube if it all made it, I guess, at this point. But there you go. Yes, there's some room there. I've seen blooper posts do really well also. So. Yeah, that's funny. All right, last one, I want to. I'm going to say it, and I'm going to, like, have a huge caveat, but it's use hashtags strategically. And the caveat is, by strategically, I mean, almost never use them is the strategy you should use there. X. When Elon Musk took over at Twitter, they released their, their algorithm so you could kind of see how things work. And people were very surprised to see that there was a, basically a killing of any post that used hashtags, like, that was in the algorithm. It said, hey, it didn't completely kill it, like it show it to zero people. But there was a very negative modifier when people used any hashtags. And if they used more than one hashtag, it was almost invisible. Any post that you do, and you'll remember that Twitter invented hashtags like that. That all started on Twitter. There were no hashtags on any major social platform I knew about before, before Twitter, back in the day, it was a tool that we would use to find content around certain topics. And so it used to be that. But then the moment you give marketers this and they realize that I can get more eyeballs on my stuff, if I just do this little trick, then they would take advantage of it, and it just became a total wasteland of hashtags. So they kind of were the first one to publicly release that. Hashtags hurt you more than they help you. I suspect, even though we don't have access to their algorithms, that most of the other platforms are that way, I still think it makes sense. And we do it sparingly, very sparingly. On YouTube. We've just seen that it's something that doesn't seem to hurt. I don't really even have a lot of evidence that it helps, but it's just something that maybe I'm in the routine of that we do two or three hashtags on each one of our YouTube videos, but, yeah. So, for me, the strategy is basically, don't use them. If you want to use them, use them on YouTube. I think it might make sense, though. We still do it, but it may just be kind of habit, and I wouldn't be surprised if when we do this podcast next year that I say don't use them on anything. And that's a yeah, we're not doing it. You shouldn't do it either. So. [00:22:22] Speaker B: So this was nine do's, one don't today. [00:22:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:25] Speaker B: Out of the ten. [00:22:25] Speaker A: That's it. So. Well, good. I hope it's been helpful for you guys. These are things that we are practicing here. Our social media media team does it. I think it's if you just take a couple of these and incorporate it at your church, I think you will start to see things again. We started by saying this. I want to finish with it. Consistency is the key. You, you will do a hundred posts and one or two will get you more followers and more attention and make a bigger impact than the other 99 or 98 of them. That's just the way social media works. So the way that we have to handle that is make sure that all of our posts are done with excellence because they're hard to change after the fact. I can't tell you how many YouTube videos we've done where I kick myself after the fact that, oh, we didn't put in that invitation for someone to follow us or we didn't invite them to request more information on our website. And now it's going viral and I can't do anything to add that content later. So make sure you're consistent. Do it right and you'll get results. So to that end, I would hate to not tell you that this is a great chance for you to subscribe to the Reach Rite podcast. If you're looking for some information on how your church can reach more people and grow, we offer a 100%, totally free church marketing review. You can hop onto our site, we'll put a link down in the description where you can find that sign up for it. No obligation whatsoever. We'll do a deep dive into how your church is performing online, your entire digital marketing landscape, and give you an actual score out of 100 so you can see how your site and how your church is performing and how visible you are. So please do take advantage of that. Thanks for being a part of the Reach right family and we'll see you next time. [00:24:11] Speaker B: See ya.