2024 Church Social Media Trends: What’s Next in Digital Outreach?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Well, the social media landscape changes all the time, and that is true this year in 2024. In this conversation, we're going to unpack some of the tips and trends that we see working best on social media right now. 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. [00:00:27] Speaker B: And I'm Ian. [00:00:28] Speaker A: And today we are talking about church social media trends that you need to know right now. We're gonna unpack five of the things that we're seeing. Get churches the best results on social media right now. Yeah, so, yeah, the thing about this is we have to do this episode just about every year. We did it last year. We did it the year before, because these things are radically different. The things that we talked about in 2022 are totally different from the things that we're talking about now in 2022. We were just at the beginning of the vertical video revolution, the upswing of TikTok and some of those things. And so now things have really changed quite a bit. So I think it's something good for us to revisit. [00:01:10] Speaker B: Yeah, agreed. And trends can change quickly for things doing things online. And particularly with social media. There are some tried and truths that remain that we may cover, but you're right, these are the ones right now that it's. I think it'll be good for churches to just take a quick temperature check on what they're doing with social media and if they can implement any of these. [00:01:33] Speaker A: Yeah, well, at my church, I'm the executive pastor at my church, and we just are really taking a deep dive right now. And our social media director, I think this is stuff that, all the stuff that we're talking about, like right now, of the things we're doing and what we're doing to see gains and a lot of these things we've actually immediately seen gains with. So it's been really cool to see some of that. So. All right, I'll kick us off with the first one. This is a no brainer. If you get anything out of this episode, the main thing is short form video content. That's what's working right now. When we talk about this, we mean specifically four primary channels of putting content on YouTube, shorts, TikTok, Instagram reels, Facebook reels, those, those four channels while you're at it. I mean, we've, we've been testing things on LinkedIn and on Twitter and using some of that same content there. It probably won't hurt you. But those four channels, short form content is still going gangbusters. It is still the primary thing where it really is producing about ten x the results of any other kind of post that we're doing right now. So for that, churches have a few options. The easiest thing, and I guess where churches really have a leg up, is that we are usually producing long form video content every week. And so it's not that hard to turn that, I mean, relatively speaking, it's not that hard to turn that into short form video content, especially with some of the AI tools that are available now. I know that there's a non church specific one called opus clip, there's another one called Sermon tech and a few other I've heard of like sermon shots and some of these other companies out there that will turn your weekly sermons into multiple short form pieces of video that are basically ready. Now, is that as good as what a professional video editor can do? No, we don't use it here at retry it. We just can't quite get the quality that our, we have people on staff here that do video editing. So it makes sense for us to go the route that we've always done with that. But it's getting closer and closer. I will say the AI, the thing about it is it gets smarter all the time. But big picture is that there's really no excuse. You need to be producing video content. Short form video content is the way to go, um, beyond your sermon content, making other short form videos. Um, I think this is really, uh, so important right now. [00:04:14] Speaker B: Yeah. It hasn't shown any signs of, uh, going away as a trend. And, uh, like you said at the beginning, if there was only one thing you can do, this is really where it's at right now. That's why we're talking about it, uh, first. And, uh, and there's a reason why, I mean, I find myself watching I don't know how many shorts, uh, you. [00:04:31] Speaker A: Know, in a given day into it, don't you? You did. [00:04:35] Speaker B: It just happens. Goodness, it does. [00:04:38] Speaker A: So I, I'm what? You're mostly on Facebook or Instagram or. Where do you watch? [00:04:43] Speaker B: Well, no, I'm mostly on, well, I watch more shorts on YouTube, but, but I. On Facebook, I watch the reels and then I pop over to Instagram. But I'd say I'm what? I'm the old, the old social media channel guy. Facebook mostly. So. [00:04:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So some stats that we're seeing more and more of is that the YouTube is the audience, it's the platform. Of choice for the youngest viewers. So. And I think that's mostly tied to the fact that parents let kids watch YouTube and got pulled into shorts and they're not allowed to use TikTok or Instagram. So that's kind of, they've cornered that market with. [00:05:22] Speaker B: They started on YouTube early. That's true. My kids did. Yeah. [00:05:25] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So that's the one that a lot of the, the ones after Gen Z, and we haven't named them yet, I guess maybe Alpha or something like that. But, yeah, that's what they use. Gen Z is more on TikTok and millennials are on Instagram. And you old fogies in, in Gen X, you guys are mostly on Facebook. [00:05:44] Speaker B: That's you, too. But, yes, so anyway. But yeah, anyway, we're. We're young Gen Xers. Okay. For the record. So anyway, next one. Live streaming and virtual services. So we kind of, you know, take a step back on this one. We often don't recommend live streaming for most churches unless, you know, it is pulled off extremely well and high quality. This can often hurt you more than help you if you're not in a good place to do this. So, however, it's worth mentioning because it's been a tried and true thing and it's been something that obviously has increased exponentially since the pandemic. Not even like mentioning the pandemic anymore. It was so long ago, I guess it feels like. But the pandemic did kind of really make this an ongoing trend, and it, churches have continued to do this more than ever before now. So I guess what we would say is encourage here is to use high quality cameras, make sure your sound equipment's good, you have good visuals, and you have a good lighting and setup, because again, if it's not done well, then it can often hurt you. And there's a lot of churches, too, that I've seen and that I talk to on a daily basis, that, you know, most churches that I talk to and I talk to many, as you know, on a daily basis, they are doing live streaming, at least on Facebook, live or YouTube, for their church services. [00:07:12] Speaker A: You find that most of the churches you're talking to are doing live streaming. [00:07:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Now, not doing it well, but doing it, doing it, that's for sure. [00:07:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's the thing. And so where we try to consult churches to do it well, but at the same time, again, it's something that if you can do it well, it makes sense. You know, people are watching messages online on social media. So I find myself, speaking of being the old fogey on Facebook, if I didn't make it to church, I find myself watching. Even though I can do this on my church's website or another area or YouTube, I find myself watching on Facebook Live. So. [00:07:53] Speaker A: And you find yourself often watching it live, you're saying? [00:07:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:57] Speaker A: Like, you find yourself doing that, or you find yourself watching the recorded live video, typically live. [00:08:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So, again, that's from the ballpark or. [00:08:05] Speaker A: Wherever you are for some reason. [00:08:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, if my son has a baseball tournament and I know I'm not gonna be there, I can go on. I know, in the services that we normally go to, so that's just me. [00:08:14] Speaker A: But, yeah, super interesting. So I. A couple things I'll say about this. First of all, we did a whole video that explains, like, a deep dive as to. And the title of, is it why most churches should not be live streaming? So I stand by that. I still feel that's the case. That's not to say that live streaming isn't a trend. That is a trend that we're seeing. And I think for the right kind of church, it does make a lot of sense. [00:08:44] Speaker B: Yep. [00:08:45] Speaker A: I think that the challenge with live streaming is that you need a large enough audience that you hit critical mass, because I think the issue is that so many churches, they try this only to find out that you'll have sporadically, like, a person hop on and then they'll hop off. And this is what the vast majority of live streams look like, is people watching for a few seconds, not fully engaged, because they didn't really. If you stumble upon it in social media, you're probably not looking for it. Right. You're just kind of scrolling through your feed and up pops your church's live stream, and then, you know, you weren't, like, ready to dig into a time of worship or a sermon. So I would say that the place of potential for churches is with non service livestreams. So doing a live stream of maybe like a q and a time with. With your pastor or a live stream of a prayer time, like a daily prayer where a pastor will pray for 15 minutes, maybe once a week or something, and just people can type in prayer requests and they can experience that. So there is maybe some room for that. But I get the big rub, is that you need a certain critical mass to make it make sense, like, even for us here at retry. So we're considering doing some live content right now. I've been talking with our video team about some of that, maybe doing live webinars or live site reviews or some of those kinds of things. And, you know, our concern and why we haven't jumped to that yet is that, you know, we feel like if it's. If we, if we don't have enough of a following, it's hard to kind of make it worthwhile. [00:10:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:26] Speaker A: Once you get to a few dozen people watching a stream at any given time, well, then it starts to make sense and you've built critical mass. And so that's kind of the rub, I think, on those things there. So I'd say possibly for non sermon content or non like church service content, but for the vast majority of churches, I still encourage you to think twice and really count the cost before you do it. If you haven't seen that video of ours, I'll leave a link down in the description. Or if you're watching on YouTube, I'll have a link for you up here where you can click on that and see that our breakdown as to why you probably shouldn't be doing that in most cases, that's good. Cool. All right, next one is authentic and relatable content. So I think this is something that, what we're saying by this is the trend I'm seeing, is that you don't need to have this ultra produced content for it to be seen as valuable anymore. I think that a lot of the platforms, especially platforms like TikTok. TikTok, they reward content that feels like it was shot on a front facing iPhone with no microphone. And really, I don't see any penalty that we're seeing by not having really nicely produced content on that platform. So even some of the viral dance videos that you see out there, they'll have music put into them that's really crisp. But there's not other microphones or things that's just shot on an iPhone. It's shot on something that you have in the pocket of your. In your pocket there. So I think authentic, relatable content, this should be welcome. And good news for us as churches is that the main thing is that you're making content, and it's more important to think about what you say and what the story behind the content and what the hook is of that content, as opposed to, like, the production value of the content and the amount of time and energy you spend on high end lighting and cameras and microphones and all those things. So good news for smaller churches. You don't need a big budget to do this. [00:12:25] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's good. That's well said. And I think just again, people appreciate authenticity when you get too productiony and everything's gotta be big and, you know, under the lights or just, you know, standardized, whatever other terms we wanna use, it can come off as unauthentic. So. I like it. So. And nothing more to add there, Thomas. So. But, yeah, so next one, community engagement and interaction we can't forget because I think, we think a lot of churches think a lot of times, as they should with social media, about outreach and just putting things out there, not just for their members, but we got to remember that social media is still social media. It's about community engagement. And those that are following you, those that are your friends, those that are already tied you there, that's who you want to be concerned about. So you can't forget that. It still is a really good tool for church communication, if we want to put it that way. So whether or not that's doing Q and A's polls and just prompting discussion and all of that, that's something that churches need to, I think, sometimes be reminded of, is that that's where your people are following you. And remember, that's a place to stay engaged with them. [00:13:47] Speaker A: Yeah. So we've been doing a lot of experimenting right now with, with polls. I see that we, our social media team here at Reachwrite, we are putting out, I'd say probably four polls a week on our social platforms. A lot of, like, Facebook, Instagram, some of these channels have put in new polling tools so you can ask people. And it's just a really good way to get engagement. Like, I think that if, you know, don't just use it as engagement bait, but you want to use it about things, that it doesn't have to be something you're actually wanting to survey your church about. Don't think of polls that way. Like, should we move service time from 930 to ten? That's not what we're talking about with this here. It's just good for you to kind of build engagement and get the pulse of what people are like. And there's nothing wrong at the same time with making polls about simple things like, you know, I just. What's your favorite flavor of ice cream? You know, those kinds of, those kinds of questions. Yeah, they are really. They're good. And even if you find ways to get people to disagree in polls, not about things that really matter, but, you know, farming for some of that kind of disagreement, I think there's a really a good opportunity there. So what we're doing is when we're doing a real or a, or, or a YouTube short or something like that will usually do polls that go along with it. And we've been testing this over the last three months. At first we were seeing, you know, ten responses to a typical poll. Now we might see 75 or 100 responses on a poll that we put out there. And so it really is engagement and trying to build some connection with people. I think churches need to get into this some more. I think it's a really big opportunity that we have. And then I'll say this, and we say this quite a bit on the podcast, is that it is social. And so you need to be social. And I would make it a rule within your organization that anybody who leaves a comment, they will get a response from us, no matter what the comment is, unless it's profane or trying to take you off track, like, so if someone comes on and, you know, drops f bombs and stuff, just delete it. That's the solution to that. But if someone is asking a genuine question or they even express some disagreement with your sermon, let's say you put your sermon onto YouTube and someone says, hey, I don't agree with what you're teaching here about, about the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues, for instance, let's say someone says that, have a conversation. Don't just delete it and say, well, they disagree, so get out of here. Have conversations on that. But the worst thing you can do is leave things unresponded to. So even if it's just a great message that someone comments, you know, leave an emoji back or say, hey, thanks so much, or have some kind of comment, this builds traction and it helps you to gain momentum on these things. [00:16:33] Speaker B: That's good. That's good. [00:16:34] Speaker A: Last but not least, all right, last one is collaboration and partnerships. I think this is a trend that I am seeing more and more opportunities for churches in. I know that influencers use this idea of collabs and sometimes we get caught up and, well, you know, I don't have, we don't have thousands of followers at our church. We're a small church. I would make a point of every time you're doing anything, partnering with any kind of an organization in your community, whether it's a local homeless mission or a school that you're partnering with or whatever the organization is, if you guys have a similar or some kind of a part of your mission overlaps, use it as a chance to collaborate on social. Chances are your, if it's a local school and maybe you are doing a, you're working with the PTA association, for instance, chances are the PTA has a Facebook or an Instagram account where they highlight pictures of things, do a collaboration there, do a shared thing, tag them in post that you do when they've, when you acknowledge good work that they've done, hopefully you'll get some reciprocal kind of interaction with those kinds of things. So I think this is something that we, we think that sometimes this is something that the really big influencers will use. So if I can't get a major name to kind of collaborate with, there's no point in doing it. But in the end, the major names in your community are things like your PTA organizations and other local churches and your homeless mission that's there and the laundry love ministry that serves your community there. Find ways to do partnerships with those things and I think you'll, you'll see more interaction and more connection on your accounts. [00:18:17] Speaker B: Well, after all, most churches, not all, but are looking to reach people locally. So you're right, it doesn't have to be some big external, faraway source. And so, yeah, that's good stuff, Thomas. [00:18:30] Speaker A: Cool. Anything to add as we wrap up? Ian? [00:18:32] Speaker B: No, we hope this gave at least one extra idea. Like we said at the very beginning, if there was only one to start carrying out at your church, we recommend the shorts big time. Get on that. We can help with that. If anyone has questions, let us know for sure. But yeah, no, this is good stuff. [00:18:52] Speaker A: Awesome. Yeah, it's good. Hopefully it's helpful to you guys. If it has been, leave us a comment down below. If you have a question about maybe something you're doing on social media or something that you can't seem to get results with, we'd be happy to answer anything you have down there. We still follow that policy here at reach, right, where every comment that is left, we will get you a response. Unless you start using obscenities, in which case we'll delete it. [00:19:13] Speaker B: That's right. [00:19:13] Speaker A: But thanks, guys, for being a part of the Reach ride family, and we'll see you next time. [00:19:17] Speaker B: See ya.