Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 If you wanna reach people on social media, you need to look at the data. And in today's episode, we're gonna give you some data driven tips to help you expand your reach on social media. We hope this conversation helps you reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast. You're listening to the reach, right podcast, the show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello, and with me as always as my co-host Ian Hyatt, we're here to help your church. See more visitors and grow,
Speaker 2 00:00:45 Ready to get ready to get.
Speaker 0 00:00:52 Hey guys, welcome to the reach right podcast episode number 117. I am your host Thomas Costello, and with me as always as my co-host
Speaker 3 00:01:01 Ian Hyatt. Hey Thomas.
Speaker 0 00:01:02 Hey man. Excited to talk to, we're gonna be talking about a, a good topic. Are we talking about data driven church, social media tips to help you amplify your message to help you get better results there, emphasis on the data driven? Yeah, I think that's one thing that a lot of churches, a mistake that we make is we are very anecdotal, uh, or we focus more on stories with good reason. We're all about stories. We love testimonies and those things. Yep. But I think looking at what actually is working based on data is a great way to make decisions when it comes to what your church is gonna be doing on social media. So I think it should be a good conversation today. Agreed,
Speaker 3 00:01:39 Absolutely agreed. Yeah. We kinda kind of forget, you know, to look at trends, statistics, those things, we just kind of base what we're doing on social media, on what you know, has kind of worked in the past. Mm-hmm <affirmative> gotta know the fresh trends statistics. So this ought to be helpful today.
Speaker 0 00:01:55 I said, let me kick it off with a few statistics. I think just to start the data rolling right here in the beginning, we have four items we're gonna be talking about that are kind of things you can implement. But before we get there, let me talk about why it's so important. So get some of these 4.7 billion people on the planet are using social media, 4.7 billion people. 59% of the world's population is on social media. So I I've, I've been impressed that like that commission that we have from Jesus, the great commission to go into all the earth and to tell, and to share the gospel with people, to tell about what he's done, about what he did for us on the cross, that the going to all the earth has actually been easier today that it ever has been before. And now there are, yeah.
Speaker 0 00:02:42 You know, you can tell me there's some tribes out there that don't have social media and they're unreached by human groups and that's go to them too in person. Yes. Right. But you can reach a huge swath of the world's population on social media nowadays. So it is more important than ever before. Next 227 million new users have signed up in the last 12 months. So it, we have this idea that maybe social media has peaked or maybe some platforms have peaked. It seems like, but the idea that it's going away or it's slowing down, not the case, uh, we are still growing, uh, at a very rapid rate. The number of people that are on social media, 227 million in the last year. Finally, let me share this with you. This one is scary, uh, and powerful at the same time, but Hmm. Two hours and 29 minutes.
Speaker 0 00:03:33 That is of those of that 59% of people, two hours and 29 minutes. That's how much time people are spending on social media daily. That's nice. Two hours, two and a half hours every day on social media. Now you and I E and we're, we're old school. We started out you my space and we had Facebook accounts and yeah. You know, my, my space, I, you know, you got your thing all dialed in and yeah. Uh, you would have your music and your top friends. Yeah. And you'd maybe spend like 10 minutes a day on something like that.
Speaker 3 00:04:05 Blog once and stuff. Yeah. Check back eventually.
Speaker 0 00:04:08 Yeah. When Facebook came out, you might have spent maybe 20 minutes kind of checking out what's going on there two hours, 29 minutes. This is where people are, but it's kind of the great equalizer in some ways, too, because churches have the same opportunity and the same access to the entire world that enormous companies have and people that have yeah. That they, they, it used to be that you had to pay millions of dollars. It was a pay to play system. And now with the right kind of content, you can actually reach an enormous audience. We could have never reached before. So it presents a huge opportunity, I think. Scary, but it is a pretty big opportunity. Agreed.
Speaker 3 00:04:46 It, it is. It is. So, yeah. Well, good. Well, let's dig in because, uh, when let's go through these four things here, I'm gonna kick off the first one. And this one I think is a big and a good one to start with prioritize the most popular social media platforms. You should do that. Why? Because you can reach more people if you're focused on the most popular ones. So first and foremost, we mention like it or not, it still is Facebook though. You know, there is some, a bit of dwindling there and we're gonna talk about some other contenders and effective ones, but that's still where most people are at. And so that's where, you know, for all sorts of reasons, people are connecting with friends, family, reading the news, joining groups, checking out new brands. And here's actually the top sixth used in 2022, which I think this is great because we have 20, 22 data here. We're not going, you know, a few years back for this data. So Facebook number one, YouTube, number two, mm-hmm <affirmative>. I was surprised at this, but you and I were talking about this a little bit. This is not as much in the us. Uh, but WhatsApp and there are a ton of people that use it here, but that's number three, Instagram for, uh, we chat five, one that I was kind of like, huh. And then of course, number six last but not least is TikTok. Um, so those are the top six as of 2022.
Speaker 0 00:06:09 Yep. That's good stuff. Um, so we chat is a Chinese, uh, primarily, uh, social network. Um, so I don't know that we have a lot of viewers in China, uh, right now. So I, I don't think we, we look at a lot of our metrics in China is very low. I, we might be banned there for all I know. So who knows there probably isn't one you should focus on if you are listening in, in the United States and you don't have a largely Chinese audience, um, you probably want to avoid spending a lot of time on that one. Uh, same thing goes for WhatsApp. I think it is not just China, but it's, uh, it really is worldwide. Just not as prevalent in the United States. So for a, an American Canadian, uh, Western European audience, it might not be as valuable. Uh, but the other ones I think are exactly right now, this is data driven. So this is the number of users daily on each of these platforms. Facebook is still far away the largest. I think a lot of times people miss the YouTube one because here's what I found is a lot of churches use YouTube, but a lot of them don't think of YouTube as a social network. Right. They think of it as a place where they host just
Speaker 3 00:07:16 To get their sermons, videos, they're
Speaker 0 00:07:17 Videos. Yeah. And that's all good. You know, I think that there's something to be said for that. It is a great service for those kinds of things. Right. I don't think that making your sermon videos public facing is always the best solution on there. You might wanna unlist them because you know, the odds of a sermon ranking for certain topics. And those things are somewhat slim, unless you really nail the SEO side of things, but YouTube definitely is a social network and something you should be thinking of as such with the comments and the conversation and things that happen on there. Yeah. So, yeah, that's all good. And then the one that people made question, we're gonna talk more about this in just a second. The one you made question is why is TikTok number six? Yeah. Because everybody uses TikTok. I was talking to my in-laws the other day.
Speaker 0 00:07:59 Uh, and they are, um, I won't tell you their age, cuz they sometimes do listen to this and sometimes this is made into talks and they watch on there. But that's the point is people that are, uh, in boomer generations, they are using TikTok. My, my mother-in-law was telling me about how she loves to watch videos of Frenchies talking with accents, Frenchy bulldogs. Right. And so it's, it's just stuff that I, I've never heard. That's the thing about TikTok is that you get onto these algorithms and we would see totally different things when you first get on there. And if the algorithms not trained to you, you don't know what you're gonna see, but right. You know, so they're using it. They're watching fail videos and, and Frenchy bulldog videos and all kinds of videos. So the idea that that TikTok is, is something that is kind of an obscure, not that well used platform.
Speaker 0 00:08:47 Let me just dispel that it, it is still sixth in the order in this ranking, but it is growing very quickly. Right. So that actually brings us to number two. And I'll go ahead and start. This one is that you need to not miss out on the fastest growing social media platform. TikTok. Yeah. That's the one, I think this is a huge opportunity for churches that the vast majority of churches are missing because it is a little bit more labor intensive than some of the things that we used to be able to get away with on our Facebook and Instagram accounts. So Facebook, you know, it started out most posts weren't even pictures. They would just be a little sentence about, Hey, here's what I'm doing today. Or here's
Speaker 3 00:09:26 That's in my memories, uh, like from, you know, eight years ago or something, it was just, Hey, I'm doing this.
Speaker 0 00:09:32 Yeah, exactly. That's the kind of stuff that you see. So it used to be that, and then Instagram came along and it upped it so that, yeah, you almost, it, it was almost a bad practice to post without a picture. Right. You had to have a photo, whether it was on Facebook or Instagram. Yeah. They upped the game. So you needed photography to engage people. And that's when with the rise of scripture graphics and quote graphics and photography of life happening at your church with some kind of a saying or an encouragement or an invitation to an event, some of those kinds of things. Yeah. So now we've upped it even more in that TikTok takes, uh, a little bit more work to be producing a something between, you know, five second and, and two minute video, you'd actually put some work in this, this kind of stuff here.
Speaker 0 00:10:14 Now it's not to say it is, it's hard. Like TikTok makes it really easy to make these kinds of videos, but your church needs to be using this because it is growing at a monumental rate, the amount of, uh, traction they're getting, I personally am not too happy about it. Uh, I, I preferred Instagram and photography and having less of this and I, I really am not a fan of the way their algorithm works because it really is only focused on what will keep me looking at it the longest. Right. Which I think has a lot of detrimental factors to it. That's all just so you, we're clear about this. All TikTok cares about is how long you'll engage with the content, how long they can keep you on the app. And sadly, they're doing so well that everybody else is pivoting to be more like TikTok.
Speaker 0 00:11:03 That's why Facebook, when you open up your Instagram or your Facebook, now you see video first, in most cases, if you've got the new updates, video is what you're gonna see first because they're trying to get this whole real format. Uh, they're called reels on Instagram. They're called shorts on YouTube, but everybody is trying to get some market share from TikTok who wins, remains to be seen. But it's kind of bad news. I think from a, from a using social media, uh, aspect, it, it's turning more into like our entertainment than it is a way to stay connected with people and family and loved ones. So anyway, you need to be not missing out on this huge opportunity, which is TikTok.
Speaker 3 00:11:38 Yeah. And that's to reach, you know, gen Z and below, you know, obviously churches wanna focus on and those generations and who knows what the rise of it. You'll be reaching millennials as well and gen Z, uh, gen Xers as well. So, but, um, that's good. Good. Yeah. You use
Speaker 0 00:11:53 Feel right personally.
Speaker 3 00:11:56 I, I, I have it. I don't use it much. Yes. Okay. So, but my, now my daughter, that's another story. She's a teenager. She uses it now. Of course we, we careful about all of that, but, but no, not I have it, I'm not, not quite into there as much, but I do use the Facebook reels. So
Speaker 0 00:12:12 Yeah, it's really the same thing. Like, so that's, I mean, that's, again, that's, Facebook's attempt or Meta's attempt to gain market share from TikTok because they're eating their lunch right now is what's happening. So, um, it really is gonna be interesting to see what this next year holds. Um, I think that because Facebook meta has such a huge user base, if people already on the platform, that's a huge moat, if you will, or a, yeah. A giant, uh, protection around their business. So I think that they have, they'll have something to say about it before it's all said and done, but you know, TikTok is, is huge right now.
Speaker 3 00:12:47 Yeah. It's crazy. So, well, that's a good, uh, transition when we're talking about the video and everything from TikTok and reels, uh, you need to post the most popular type of content. Okay. Mm-hmm, <affirmative>, that's the simple answer to that it's video now. Okay. And what's the saying a picture speaks a thousand words video even more. Right. So, yep. Uh, and here's some statistics that back that up again, we're talking about data driven reasons to do all of this stuff. 73% of customers. Uh, and this is according to a video marketing statistics report from wise. I, if I said that, right, uh, but 73% of customers said they prefer to watch a video, then read a text based post or article to learn about a product or service. So that's a big deal. 90 per, uh, 96% of people watched an explana, uh, explainer video, uh, to learn more about a product or service people watched 19 hours of online videos per week on average 19 hours, uh, of online videos. We're not talking movies and that's half
Speaker 0 00:13:51 That's the time job I Eden. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:13:54 It's insane. That's crazy. Where does, how does it happen? How does it get squeezed in? I don't know. And then people are twice as likely to share video content with friends compared to social media posts, blog posts, and other product pages. So yeah. It's, uh, it it's, it's crazy.
Speaker 0 00:14:10 Yeah. Uh, yeah, so video is, is the way right now. Uh, and everybody is on it. Um, yeah, I think like what I was just saying that this is what is easier for people to consume. Yeah. It's better for short attention spans. I think that's, again, there's, I'm, we're not trying to make a comment on whether or not this is good or bad or anything cuz I, a lot of that scares me. I feel like we are killing our attention span. I think that there's gonna be monumental societal challenges. We will have to overcome as a result of these decisions that we're making on social media here in 2022 and the ones we've made up until this point. So yeah, this is not something that we we're trying to offer any kind of a commentary on the morality of it. But yeah, I think this is something that we need to understand as a church is that video content is king.
Speaker 0 00:15:00 That being said, what isn't really working is 40 minute sermon videos. Uh, tho those are fine. You, I'm not saying do not put those online. Right. But do not hear what we're saying with this, that what we're talking about is just making sermon 40 minute sermon videos and saying, oh yeah, we do video is true, but I think you're missing out on what the, the actual popular content type is because there is a difference between a 40 minute sermon video that's unedited and just a, a video of your sanctuary there. And the kind of video that we're talking about, these videos are quick cutting, uh, music backed. Yeah. High action, fast paced sometimes only like eight seconds sometimes a minute long. Yeah. But that kind of content is the kind of things that's, what's really flying right now. So yeah. What this is gonna look like for most churches is taking pieces of content that maybe you create specifically for that. Yeah. Or finding that 32nd clip in your sermon. Yeah. That you really nailed that. It was just absolutely. It was crushed putting some music behind it, putting some captions over it, making some transition sounds, maybe even cutting a few parts together to make a cohesive thought and putting that onto those platforms. Good. Try that. And you'll see a huge difference. You may see 40 or 50 views on a YouTube sermon. You could see thousands of views on Instagram or TikTok if you get these kinds of things. Right. So that's a huge opportunity, huge
Speaker 3 00:16:30 Opportunity. Get more eyes on your content and that it leads more people to what you, what God's doing at your local church level. So good stuff.
Speaker 0 00:16:38 That's it. All right. Last one. Last data driven idea to help you improve your social media engagement there as a church is you need to jump onto the right trends. You gotta keep an eye on what is trending. And I wanna talk about two different kinds of trends. Like we'll call 'em like macro trends and micro trends, right? So first the macro trends. What we're talking about here is over the course of like the last 18 months or so what has been the general direction of social media? You want to get onto that? And I wanna tell you why right now, like for instance, just to use it as an example, this video we were just talking about that has been the trend of the last 18 months, two years, right? The pandemic time TikTok has done this and kind of made this whole thing.
Speaker 0 00:17:23 Then that's made everybody in the social media world adjust so that they can start to compete and not get this market share taken from them by TikTok. Yeah. And so what they do to adjust is all the other platforms, whether it be YouTube or Instagram or Facebook, they all have a competing, um, a TikTok format. So reels for Facebook at Instagram shorts for YouTube, what they do is they actually give you additional reach. If you're making the kind of content that they want you to make. So right now they want to get market share from TikTok. So if you make reels or shorts, they're gonna give you way more reach than they used to give you on images or text or long form video. They did the same thing a few years ago. You remember that there was a time maybe five years ago or so where Facebook live video was huge.
Speaker 0 00:18:17 And they were asking you all the time, do you wanna make a live video? And you saw live videos coming up all the time. That was the trend five years ago. It doesn't make a lot of sense to do live video. Now, maybe for some, but for most right now they're giving a lot of bonus reach where you could get a huge, a huge number of people would be reached by your videos. If you do the content that they're specifically looking for. So yeah, for instance, us as an organization, we post something on, on Instagram. We have a relatively small Instagram following only a little under 400 accounts follow us. So it's not huge, but we post a picture. We might get, uh, it might show up in 40 or 50 accounts. We might get three or four likes. Yeah. We post reels onto Instagram. We on average are getting something like four to 5,000 views on a real, and we're getting dozens of likes and that's not because we're, so it's some kind of mystery that we've unlocked. It's just because they're pushing reels right now. And they want to get more eyes on that to incentivize us to make more of them and to make, make that their primary format. So follow those macro trends. Does that make sense? Or are, am I being clear with this Ian?
Speaker 3 00:19:24 Oh, you're being very clear. No, and I think that's good because when you follow the macro trends, you're gonna get, again, the takeaway from this is that when you're following these trends, you're gonna, you're gonna be more seen. Uh, yeah. So you want to be seen and you wanna stand out, uh, amongst the crowd, so to speak.
Speaker 0 00:19:41 Yeah, that's good. So beyond that, I would say that there's also some room for churches. I think this is a little bit, but maybe not as high, but you can focus a little bit more on what we'd call like micro trends. Right. Uh, so this is something like where you hear a, a specific sound or a specific song on TikTok. Like for instance, if you're on TikTok, we've all heard the, my money don't jiggle, jiggle it folds that whole thing or yeah. Those kinds of things. Or that, that, uh, that one where the they're they're marching along and it's like a, a old pirate song that they do on, on TikTok. There's all, maybe you don't know what I'm talking about, but I don't, there's all you don't know about either of those, the money don't
Speaker 3 00:20:24 Jiggle. I knew about the money didn't jiggle, but not
Speaker 0 00:20:26 The last thing. At least, you know, one of them, yeah, that's a trending song or it was at least on TikTok. And if you use that song, you're more likely to people have people engage with it and you're more likely to show up in people's feeds. So you want to be keeping your eye on trending sounds. Yeah. Trending photos, trending hashtags, those kinds of things. And your church can really leverage this. So again, if you're, I don't know, I could see a scenario where if you're preaching on generosity or giving, or I don't know, something like that, maybe you use the money don't jiggle, jiggle, be cautious with that. I'm not trying to make a theological statement, but find ways to work in some of those trending audio clips, trending formats, those kinds of things on those platforms. It'll get you a lot of results that way.
Speaker 3 00:21:11 That's good stuff.
Speaker 0 00:21:12 Yeah. Awesome. Anything else to add as we kind of close up here, Ian?
Speaker 3 00:21:16 No, it's, I mean, we gave a lot of data, but it's, you can apply it, you know, hopefully, uh, you've retained some of this. And as we always say, if you can't carry out all of this, just make some changes, you know, make tr make an attempt because it, you know, just doing some of this work is gonna get you better results, but it's worth the investment of time. We believe wholeheartedly for you to, you know, find someone on your team, someone on your staff that can champion this kind of work. Um, so we hope that this is inspired pastors to, to carry that out.
Speaker 0 00:21:47 Yeah. I think if I wanted to leave you with a parting thought is that, um, social media is not going away. We, we know that it's growing, it's huge. It's everybody in your church is using it. Grandma's using it. Uh, 12 year olds are using it. Everybody's using it. Um, it's probably worth spending and investing in. Uh, so that would be my encouragement to most of the churches that are hearing this. Yeah. And I, maybe it's not financial. Maybe you have volunteers that can pull this off a lot of us don't, but I want to encourage you, uh, that it probably is something that is worth investing, investing in at this point, again, people are spending two and a half hours a day consuming this content online. Yeah. This is a huge opportunity to be reaching people. So, um, I, I'm not saying you need a pastoral role in this, but yeah.
Speaker 0 00:22:36 You probably want someone to be working on this. It's the same as you know, that you want someone taking care of your grounds at your church, you want someone taking care of your grounds online. Uh, and so it's something that you probably should be investing in. I hope that this conversation has given you one or two ideas that you could implement. I know it's a huge undertaking if you're going from nothing to making multiple TikTok videos every week that are on trend and following this, it's a lot that we're prescribing out there. Yeah. Totally take a little step. I think you were right in that. Take a little step. See what happens, test the waters. And that's the other thing about social media is you have to try it, but sometimes things don't work. Sometimes you just realize that, well, you know what, try as we might that doing these live videos, it's just not working for us anymore. It's time to make a change and make a shift on this. And when you do keep trying, until you find something that actually gets results and in the end, we're talking what results look like is engaging people with the gospel of Jesus. That's what it all comes down to. Absolutely.
Speaker 3 00:23:38 That is definitely what it comes down to
Speaker 0 00:23:39 Huge mission field in front of us. Huge opportunity. Um, I hope this conversation has been helpful in maybe inspiring you to, to reach into that mission field a little bit more. So if it has let us know in the comments rate, review, subscribe, do all those things. It helps us to engage more with people. This obviously is a long form kind of conversation. We get far fewer views on this than we do our Instagram reels, but we still think it's important to have some of these long form conversations. Yeah. So if it's been helpful to you, let us know when the comments rate review, subscribe, thank you guys for being a part of our reach, right family, and we hope to catch you next week.
Speaker 1 00:24:14 See ya.
Speaker 0 00:24:17 Thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out online and reach, write studios.com. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes for wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week.
Speaker 1 00:24:44 Get ready to get you.
