How To Get More Facebook Likes For Your Church

Speaker 0 00:00:00 One of the things we've learned is that every church leader wants to have a bigger reach on social media. But a lot of pastors aren't sure how to make that happen. Well, in today's episode, we talk about seven tips to help your church get more followers on Facebook. We hope this conversation helps you reach more people and grow. This is the reach right podcast. Speaker 1 00:00:31 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 is my cohost Ian Hyatt. We're here to help you your church see more visitors and grow. Speaker 0 00:00:58 Hey guys, welcome to the retried podcast. Episode number 61. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian Hyatt. What's up Thomas. Hey, not too much, man. Excited for our conversation here today. We'll be talking about how to get more Facebook likes for your church. I think that's an important topic. I think every pastor wants that they want to have more people like them on Facebook. And, uh, I want to, I guess, take a minute to camp out here a little bit as to why this is an important thing. Uh, for a lot of people, uh, Facebook likes, I think for us personally, it's kind of a vanity thing, right? For, in some cases like it makes you feel good about yourself. There's been studies that show that you get a little dopamine hit every time someone clicks like on you or your face or your one of your pictures, it makes you feel better about yourself, but that's not the reason why churches need to get more likes. It's not for their own pastors ego or a communications person's ego. It's about something bigger than that, right? Speaker 2 00:01:59 Yeah. Yeah. Of course it is. Not that you don't want to be saying. Yeah. My pastor has 2000 more likes than your pastor. Wouldn't be very humble. Right. So Speaker 0 00:02:10 Really what it is the way we think about it is it's about reach it's about how many people you're able to influence, uh, how many people are being impacted with the messages you have on there, uh, with the gospel, uh, is what it is all about really for us. So, yeah, I think that's what it's about is that we, we want to see churches have more Facebook likes because it allows them to reach more people with the good news of Jesus Christ. And we think, man, if we do it right, more people might be in heaven. I'm not particularly a fan of Facebook. I think this is this message is going to be ambivalent towards the ethics of Facebook and whether, uh, whether it's something that churches, I think churches should be using it, but whether it's long-term healthy for individuals to use or not, I kinda think maybe it isn't. Uh, but at the same time, I think it's something that, uh, it, it's a tool that we have and it's a platform that we probably ought to be on because most of our people in our country and in the world are on this platform. So, um, we think it's important. Speaker 2 00:03:11 Yeah, I totally agree. And it's so funny. I remember when Facebook came out, you and I are old enough to remember when Facebook first came on the scene and uh, and it, and right out of the gate, I thought this was a funny topic for today, but it's a good one still, still relevant, but right out of the gate, when Facebook was born and then when churches started using it, it was really all about how many likes you can get. You would ask everyone and, and you still do, but you'd, you'd say go like my page and I'll go like my page. Uh, you know, I had a brief stint in real estate and I was, I made myself, uh, you know, real estate Facebook page. I was like, oh, please give me likes, give me likes, you know? So, uh, but it, that is still relevant, but I just remember, it's funny when Facebook first was born, that was like the main thing that an organization, not so much a person, even though people say, how many friends do you have? Right. All I have 500, you only have two 50. So, but yeah. So it's still, still very relevant for churches, even though it's, that's been a thing for a while. Yeah. I Speaker 0 00:04:16 Think that the thing, uh, and we'll talk about this more on one of our points here later today, but I think the thing we need to remember is that not all likes are the same and just, uh, and there's a lot of cases where a like is actually a bad thing. Like a, like, it doesn't help you at all. And if it's the wrong kind of person or worse, a bot, that's liking it than it actually hurts you in the long run. Uh, so yeah, there's a lot to this and not all likes are the same, but in general, uh, if people do like to engage with your content, it's good if they like your Facebook page, because it expands your reach, uh, and it helps you to kind of build in that way. So we will be talking mostly about, um, about Facebook today. Speaker 0 00:04:58 Uh, I think that there we'll probably have other episodes where we get into how to get more followers on Twitter and how to get more followers on Instagram. And the strategies are a little bit different for each channel, but we figured the first one to start with would be Facebook because, uh, our audience, um, well, our audience does trend a little bit on the younger side, they still have Facebook accounts and it is far and away still the largest social network. Um, even though it's not as cool as some of the things like, uh, it's the, it's the gen X social network, I would say Instagram is the millennial social network. And I don't know, Tik TOK is probably the, the gen Z social network right now, who knows what that will wind up being in the future there. So, um, I think that it's just important to know that, uh, the, the key is not just getting any, like though it's about getting the right kinds of likes. Speaker 0 00:05:45 So let me start us off though. The first one is, uh, seems actually kind of simple, but build a complete Facebook page. Uh, that's something that every church needs to do. A couple of things just to mention about first of all, once in a while, I still encounter churches that have a personal Facebook page and not an organizational Facebook page. Uh, so they have a Facebook, they have a profile, uh, so it's, they've accidentally set up their church because it used to be that there wasn't a distinction between businesses and people, uh, or organizations and people. So they probably set up their, their churches, a personal account a long time ago, and they stayed with it. And there's a temptation, some churches I've talked to that have that they want to keep that, uh, because you have a, actually a much larger reach as an individual or a profile than you do as a business. Speaker 0 00:06:36 You've probably noticed this. If you're leading a church, you'll notice that when you put something on your personal Facebook page, you get way more response that engagement on it. Then if you put it on your church page, if you're running two different kinds of pages, so there's a temptation towards that, but it's important that you build a Facebook page that is specifically an organization, and then you take the time to actually fill out all the information that's in there. There's, there's so many little things that had asked for, and sometimes churches just kind of flubbed that and skip it. So I don't know. Maybe you could talk a little bit about some of those, some of those, the different information it looks for. What do you have to add to that again? Yeah. Speaker 2 00:07:12 Yeah. And I think it's funny too, because you reminded me of whenever I set up my Facebook profile, uh, I, I didn't want to, I was like, okay, I want to be done with this already. I just want to get it set up. And so you do skip over all of the information. I remember LA still has like some old, like you have your favorite movies or something you put in there and it still has, like, these are like way out of date. Now I'm just in there. What did she put Speaker 3 00:07:35 On? Well, of course it was passionate of the Christ and embrace and then, and I'm kidding, but that was one in there that was one in there. And then Speaker 2 00:07:43 <inaudible> and, uh, all of that. So, um, no, but yeah, it's so anyway, it's very important. So your website address is going to be important to put in there, uh, fill out the about section fully. Um, cause there's, there's a lot of detail in that if I remember correctly and then of course, service times hours, um, you know, it really should be all stuff that a church would be able to easily answer, right. It just takes, they just need to take the time to sit down and do it step-by-step. Speaker 0 00:08:13 So for the times it has every day, it has the hours, you know, so you put your office hours in there, you put your service times in there and put in all of that kind of content. You link up all of your other social media accounts. So it will ask you on there what your Instagram and Twitter and use your LinkedIn and all those, any place you have a profile, make sure to put it in there and put a link to it. So it all kind of helps in building that out. So take the time. It shouldn't take more than 30 minutes probably, but actually build out that whole page, get all that content in there. Uh, and that actually helps their algorithms better categorize who you are. Um, so get this. So the way that it would work is if someone is searching for content, uh, at, on Sunday morning at eight o'clock and they, Facebook is smart enough to know that, oh, your service, it starts at 10:30 AM. Speaker 0 00:09:04 Let's go ahead and show this content or this Facebook page to this person. And so there's a really, a lot, you have to gain by getting all of that content in there. It just kind of helps the algorithm better categorize you. And it shows you to the right kind of people, maybe people that are in your area, uh, people that have an interest in the things that you talk about on your platform. Uh, and so, uh, and it doesn't show your content to people that live on the other side of the world, uh, because it helps you them to kind of figure out who you are as an organization that way. So it really only helps you to get that content in there. Speaker 2 00:09:38 That's good stuff, good stuff. I'll tackle the next one here. And that's, this is a good one. I liked this one use amazing photography. So not just photos, amazing photos. Um, and so we, we consult churches day in and day out to do this on their website. Same thing holds true on any social media platform you're using. And maybe though, even though Instagram's a little bit more photo driven, still Facebook is so definitely, and we're not just talking, we are talking about your profile and header and background image. So do a good job of those things, make those things compelling. But also we're talking about having photos that you post regularly there that are people the way we describe it, right, as living out the values of your church, right? So this could be Sunday morning experiences, um, you know, showing worship baptism happening. Maybe it's the youth event that just happened. Let's get really good images and candid photos in there. So yeah, not just a couple of photos that were just taken on the fly. I mean, these are, it's worth it to try to make these as engaging and as professional as possible. When you say, Speaker 0 00:10:52 I think that this is something that we talk about. I in, I don't know, maybe a third of the podcast episodes is photography. We've done about that. This really is a currency, uh, for churches in 2021, photography is so valuable. I actually think that every church that should be a, a position that you try to fill in your church paid or not. I don't, you know, you decide whether your church has the budget or the personnel for something like that. But just as important I think is having a, uh, someone who's in charge of greeters and someone who's maybe not like I don't want to get into ranking all these things, but having a church photographer, that is something that is really important. Someone that knows that my job, uh, whenever I'm at a church service, maybe not every time, but regularly, uh, at least on a monthly basis is to adding, adding a new crop of photos, uh, to different events and things that are happening there. Speaker 0 00:11:46 So super important. Um, you got it, right? People caught in the act doing the values of your church. I think candids are always really there, but, um, the, these things we say this all the time in our consulting calls that these projects rise and fall on the photography, we cannot build good websites. If someone gives us terrible photography, we certainly can't do it with stock photography. I mean, we can make it look okay, but it's not gonna, it's not gonna reflect who you are as a church there. So you'd need, need, need to have real people from your church who need good photography. This is a currency that churches have doubt. So I want to take a second to talk specifically about the two images that you need to focus on. Number one is that profile image. Um, for most churches, that's not going to be a photo that I, I don't want you to have a picture of your pastor there. Speaker 0 00:12:36 I don't want you to have a picture of your church building there. Um, it should be your logo is what goes there. That's what goes into your profile image, but then the other one is your, um, is your cover image or like the background when you first get on there, uh, we have those on our personal accounts. You can look up the sizing requirements online for that, make sure you actually do an image that is the exact right size, uh, scale it in there. This should usually be some kind of a congregational photo. I don't want a big picture of the building. That's not usually what you should have there again. Yeah. Or Speaker 2 00:13:08 Everyone lined up in front of it, staring into the camera, Speaker 0 00:13:11 Right. Everybody with their thumbs up there, that kind of stuff. So, uh, I think usually it's a picture. I think people, again, engaged in service or work at your church or are worshiping the Lord, some kind of an action shot of a large group of people actually experiencing the benefit of being a part of what your church is all about there. So that's the kind of photography that we're looking for in that. Speaker 2 00:13:37 Yeah. And one last thing I'll add to that is just that, you know, the more of this that you do and have quality photos, the more you're going to actually get people, liking them and commenting on them too. So, and, uh, and of course getting more likes on your page. Yeah, totally is Speaker 0 00:13:51 The key to getting like, so the more that you engage with people, they're going to say, you know what, I've been engaging with these guys a lot. Let's like that, then we'll see more of their content. That'll be a good thing. So that's good. Number three, it's choose the right name. Uh, this seems so basic, but I can't tell you how often we see a couple of mistakes in this category. Uh, so, um, so let's say that you are first Baptist church of, uh, Waxahachie, Texas, or wherever you are there. So is that, how do you say that place? They say walks ahead. I haven't been in Texas for too long. You're in Waxahachie, Texas. When Speaker 2 00:14:30 I came down to see you in Honolulu, I mispronounced Speaker 0 00:14:34 All of them. That is for sure. Yeah. Uh, and there is a first Baptist church of Waxahachie, Texas. So if you guys are, we'll give you guys a coupon code for a discount on our services, because they're mentioning you in our, in our podcast here, if you guys catch it. So if any of our audience knows someone there, let them know. Uh, but first Baptist church walks to Hatchi Texas. That's not a good Facebook name. Um, you should not put, uh, the name of your organization on there. The way it appears is first Baptist church of Waxahachie, Waxahachie, Texas, all spelled out in that way. It probably should be something, uh, the rule of thumb we use is whatever you refer to yourselves as in your announcements, that's what you should put as your Facebook name there. So if you get up there and you say, Hey, it's a great day at, at first walks a Hatchie or if you get up there and say, Hey, it's a great day at FBC. Speaker 0 00:15:28 Probably not a good idea to do that, but just in general, but first Baptist, whatever you would say, that should be what your name is on your Facebook page. So whatever people refer to you as is another way to think of it. If people call you something specifically, um, that's what you should be using there. So getting that name right. But also it's important to make sure you get your handle, right? So, uh, which is your w whatever your, um, you know, your, your URL at the end of your address there. So it's facebook.com/uh, slash whatever your name is. You don't want that to be first dash Baptist dash church, DAS, Waxahachie, dash, Texas. You don't want it to be all that, right? So you want something. The rule of thumb here is you want it to be something that's consistent. You want it to be something that is the same, ideally in all of your social media platforms. So if it's FBC walks the Hatchi, it should be that, uh, there for Facebook, if you can get it for Twitter, if you can get it for LinkedIn, if you can get it for YouTube, you want it to be the same across all of your platforms that just helps with search engine traffic and some of those kinds of things. So that's a couple of, uh, ideas that you have anything to add to that again? Speaker 2 00:16:37 No, not much. It's the same thing. When you think about your church domain name for your website, right? Do you want to just have that short, simple, consistent, not dashes in there and all sorts of crazy stuff, burners avoid dashes, Speaker 0 00:16:50 And you know, this is a hard one when you have long names, but in general, I'd say avoid abbreviations. Uh, you know, it's, it's one thing in your handle, like so F but if you're, I wouldn't put FBC as my name, because Lord knows we have enough abbreviations in the church already, right? Like, I don't know. It's always a constant battle trying to stop us from abbreviating things. So I always had to tell my church staff, we had, we called them journey community groups, and we would get up there and people would do announcements. And they'd say, come to one of our <inaudible>. And it's just like, like someone Speaker 3 00:17:25 Who's new here doesn't know what that is. Like, Speaker 0 00:17:27 What is a JCB? So I know it's longer say journey community, or just say community groups. That's fine too, but just, you know, make sure, uh, yeah. You talk about, talk about things the way people at your church do, Speaker 2 00:17:38 That's it, that's it I'll get the next one here for it that include links to your Facebook page everywhere. Um, so this is often sometimes for God. I mean, this should, you should be sending people there just like you want to send them traffic to your website and so on. You should have it in your email signature. Um, it should be on your website. Of course you should still have, even though, you know, one of the rules, uh, to websites, as you want to keep people there, you still want to reference a link and have a link to where they could go out. Maybe it's in the footer of your website to where they can go to your Facebook page. Um, so yeah, you, you want to put these in numerous different places on other social media channels. Um, but, uh, but again, the whole idea with this is that the more, if it's in my email signature, we have a reach right. Uh, Facebook page and, you know, we, if someone wants to go follow us there, then so be it. We want to make sure that they follow us there. That might be their preferred social media platform. So put it, put it wherever you can, um, and link as many people to it as you. Speaker 0 00:18:43 Yeah. Yeah. I think that's exactly right. You, you want to link to your social platforms, your Facebook page everywhere you have a presence. So, uh, I'll take a second to address what you were talking about with, with our, um, with the website. Uh, w what we're saying is having a link on your website to your Facebook profile or your Facebook page for your church. Um, that is good. I think what we used to see quite a bit is that churches would want to push all kinds of content over to Facebook, which is that. So if like your, you shouldn't have one of the main images on your home page, say, follow us on Facebook when someone first gets on there so that they can click off and go to Facebook, because that takes it off. Your site hurts you on search engines. You don't have control over that audience anymore. Speaker 0 00:19:30 So don't ever do that, but I think it's appropriate that you have it usually in the footer, you'll have a link or maybe a social icon for all your social channels. So absolutely link there, but don't make the mistake of doing it everyone. But yeah, I think you said it right. Every place you have a presence, um, you probably ought to do that. Uh, so do we have it? We have it in our email signatures, right. Is that something I know I do on mine? Yeah. So it's, uh, Facebook because it's the, the chief one, but yeah. You have it on yours too. Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think that's a easy one for churches to do. I think it's easy to have your website to, you know, have a link to your course, your churches website. Uh, but yeah, don't, don't neglect the email signatures. That's one of the ways that you interact with people the most and, uh, just a great place to do it. Speaker 2 00:20:13 Yeah. Good stuff. Cool. Speaker 0 00:20:15 All right. Uh, I'm up, I think next one is post consistently. Uh, this is something that we talked about, uh, quite a bit last week, but I think it bears repeating is that, uh, if you have the plan, when it comes to your social media posting schedule, where you say to yourself, I'm going to post whenever I think of something interesting to post, what you find is that you wind up never posting or you'll post nowhere near enough. And that's kind of how I treat my Facebook posting personally, is that I'll do it when I get around to it. I don't have personal schedule. I'm going to make a point to post on Facebook every single day. Uh, but when it comes to your church and your church page, I think it is important. We've decided, and kind of the research shows us that once a day is about the right number to do there. Uh, but posting daily, uh, and having a plan for that is really important. Uh, we did a whole episode last week about having a scheduling out what, what post to do every day of the week. You can use some of them. You can use all of them, that's free for you guys to use there, but that was a great episode, uh, at a good conversation we have last week there. Uh, but yeah, just being consistent is important. Maybe you can talk a little bit about why consistency matters in. Yeah. So I Speaker 2 00:21:30 Think why that matters is I can, that leads transitions to the next point, which is to engage people, you know, consistently. So that's a big word that, so this word engagement actually, uh, I'm actually really excited to go over this point because I was just reading a Kerry new Hoff article here a little while back that churches in the post pandemic churches that want to continue to grow. They need to focus on engagement more than just getting people to attend. Um, so when the pandemic hit this word, all the church marketing experts like Carrie knew Hoff and others. And, uh, we realized it too with everything that we were doing with serving churches and consulting them on, is that, Hey, it's about keeping people engaged. Yes. We want them to show up. Yes. We want them to show up on Sunday. We want them to come worship with us. We want, it's still good to track attendance, I believe, but this engagement word here is that not only just posting something, like you said, why is it important to post that so that you can engage people? So you can communicate with them that they can stay, you know, uh, involved with what you're doing. So, in other words, if they commented, uh, on, uh, they comment on something that you posted or a photo or whatever you need to comment back. Speaker 3 00:22:46 So don't, don't let Speaker 2 00:22:48 That comment, just sit there. You need to comment back. And there's a lot of reasons for this, and I know you'll, you'll go into some of the algorithms and what Facebook sees there when they're seeing that type of commenting and engagement and all of that. But I think it's just, this is why we're doing this right. So the reason why your church is getting a Facebook page set up is to engage people and to attract people. So I think that's really important is that look at this, this is an opportunity for you to communicate with people. And it doesn't mean you gotta be on there all day. Like we said, if you're only posting once a day or something like that, you know, um, it's just following up with it periodically. And in the comment, doesn't have to be answered right away immediately or anything like that. So, um, but, uh, very important to make sure you're engaging with people consistent. Speaker 0 00:23:34 I think that's right. I think one of the mistakes that people I hear people make are kind of, they're mistaken thinking, I hear this with us is that they take a look at some of the biggest social media people out there, you know, the celebrities and those kinds of people. And they say, well, Hey, you know, Selena Gomez, doesn't get in there and comment on every single comment that she gets on there. And Justin Bieber doesn't do that kind of stuff. So, you know, it kind of gives them that air of coolness if they kind of let people comment, but they don't say anything in return. Speaker 3 00:24:05 Yeah. You aren't Selena Speaker 0 00:24:07 Gomez and you aren't Justin Bieber, you know, you are first Baptist church Waxahachie again, comment, and you'll get a discount on something we do here. If that's you guys, that's you, uh, if that's what you guys are, um, actually doing, you, you need to engage with people. Uh, you don't have, I mean, it, it might be different. And again, we don't get the chance to consult people. Uh, very often that have 5 million followers on social media platforms. And so maybe we think about the science behind that or the algorithms a little bit differently there. Uh, but when it comes to your Facebook account where you have a, I don't know, 800 followers or a hundred, doesn't this, hopefully this is helpful for any church that has under a hundred thousand followers. I think this is good. A good rule of thumb is that if someone is engaging, you remember they are a real person, the thoughts aren't usually getting onto your, unless you're paying them, they're not getting on to these channels to, to comment on your stuff here. Speaker 0 00:25:03 So these are real people with real souls and they have real concerns and you can actually make a difference in their life if they know that someone is actually engaging with them, it puts the social in social media when you do those kinds of things there. So this is really the secret sauce, is that every time someone ever comments, uh, uh, unless it's one of those like really, uh, you know, a negative, like a trolling comment, just delete those. If you can get them off your page that way. Uh, if there, if, if someone has any kind of a comment, even if it's like a, a little bit of a, uh, slight disagreement or something like, so let's say you put up your, your, uh, uh, message clip Monday, where you have one little point and someone says, Hey, you know, but the scripture says this too. What do we do about that? That's okay. Engage with that kind of stuff. Those kinds of things are great to build conversation. And here's one of the tricks we've learned too, is that when you engage, always ask a follow-up question to it, because it even better than engaging once. Like, even if someone just says, great message, you know, engage with them and say, I'm so glad you liked it. Uh, Patricia, uh, you know, what was your favorite part? Or, you know, I Speaker 3 00:26:17 Just Speaker 0 00:26:18 Continue with the questions so that the conversation can keep going. When someone, when someone responds and they get a response, they're much more likely to continue engaging and more people are likely to jump in. And then Ann is going to come in and start commenting on how she liked that part too. And it kind of builds momentum on that. So always respond and always respond with another question. Speaker 2 00:26:39 Yeah. It's good shows that you care too. That's what we're supposed to do, uh, verse and followers too. So Speaker 0 00:26:45 That's it. Well, good. Let me finish up with this last one. And we'll probably camp out here a little bit longer, because this is a, maybe a controversial one for some churches, but, uh, number seven is pay for likes, uh, pay for people to like your church on Facebook. Um, I have done this and so, and I've done this the right way and I've done it the wrong way, and I hope that people can learn from my experience on this. So I want to put this out here as kind of a learning thing, but you have the option to pay for people to like, so, uh, I'll get a little bit into how Facebook advertising works. So, uh, there are lots of different ways you can advertise on Facebook and lots of different goals you can set. One of those is you can pay for people to actually click like on your organization so that you can engage them more in the future. Speaker 0 00:27:35 And a long time ago, um, back in the stone ages of Facebook, I'd say like 2015 or so, or before that when you paid for likes, then there was a totally different algorithm, right then. So when you would publish a post, you everybody would see it like, so it wouldn't be like they didn't have these algorithms that kind of suppressed, uh, like church or organization posts that you would be on an equal footing to someone. And it was more of a time-based algorithm. So the more recent you posted something, the more likely someone was to see it. So marketers were laying into this and they were paying lots of money for ads because they realized that if I paid for someone to like my Facebook page, well, that's really someone that I can reach for free in the future, by just creating more content, that world doesn't exist anymore. Speaker 0 00:28:29 So now we have a much more complicated algorithm that we have to work with, but in some cases it does make sense to pay for someone to like your, like your church, Facebook page. And so let me talk a little bit about what that is and what you shouldn't do. First of all, don't under any circumstances, pay for a out a company outside of Facebook to get you likes on Facebook. Uh, so there are many ways you can go on to Fiverr or lots of sites where people will say, I can get you a thousand Facebook likes in 24 hours for $20, and that might be tempting. Uh, but what you'll actually, and that is kind of a vanity play. Like if your main goal is just to say, Hey, look at how many Facebook likes we have as an organization. Well, then, you know, that might be something that you, um, you know, it might be something that you can consider, but I don't recommend any church does something like that, unless you have a totally different social media strategy of just looking really cool with those likes. Speaker 0 00:29:29 So, yeah, so don't pay the reason for that is because what that gets you is primarily bots, uh, that are going to be signing up. And they're going to be, um, some of these bots set too sophisticated and we'll hit like on your posts and everything, but they're not actual engagement and Facebook, what happens is if you're paying for people to like your Facebook page, that don't in the future, engage, what that does is it brings your ratio down. So what the algorithm doesn't, I don't want to get too technical, but what it does is it, it looks at your posts. Let's say you do it, your, your message Monday again. And it looks at what percentage of the people that it's shown it to so far have interacted, commented, shared, done those things with it. And if you've paid for a bot, they are almost always going to have zero interaction with any posts that you ever do in the future. Speaker 0 00:30:22 So what that's going to say to the Facebook algorithm is it's going to say that of all the people we show this to the bot specifically, none of them are clicking on this and none of them are engaging. So let's stop showing this to everybody right away. Let's, let's, let's reduce the number of people we're showing this to. So that's actually going to hurt all the people that are actually local. There may be people you can really engage with. So it is always a bad idea to do that. It's also a bad idea to be trying to get Facebook likes that you pay for on Facebook to people that won't engage with your content. So maybe you're thinking, you know what I'm going to pay, um, to have, uh, people that are Muslim. See my Facebook page. I want Muslims to like my Facebook page more. Speaker 0 00:31:06 Cause you kind of have a great commission bent and you think that that's something that, um, and I I'm all for that. I want Muslims to come to know Jesus. We are, uh, we're evangelical Christians, you and I. And so that's something we, we believe in, but that's not the right way to do it because what that does is it's that Muslims they're much less likely to engage with your content in the future. Then people that know Jesus or are, uh, maybe they had an experience with, uh, with Jesus in their life. So it's going to reduce the amount of interaction you have with other people that are actually interested in your content. I love the thinking. I love the way that people think about this stuff, but that's not going to help you in the long run. And this may seem so weird as, as, especially for evangelical churches, but you want to, you want to preach to the choir, so to speak, right? Speaker 0 00:31:54 So I know that, um, you know, that might seem strange, uh, because it might feel like you're taking from other churches, uh, or that, um, and I don't assume that everybody that's a Christian has a good church home. That they're a part of, but it is important that when you target, uh, when you're paying for likes, that you're targeting people that are very, very specific. It's, it's not worth your money to pay for likes that can't drive to your church. If you're a normal church meeting, uh, in a physical location right now, it doesn't pay for people out of state, uh, to be liking your page because they're not gonna be able to engage with your content as often. The only people you want to engage with are people that have a high likelihood of engaging with your content in the future there. Uh, so usually that means people that are within about a five mile radius of your church. Speaker 0 00:32:45 And it's people that have similar interests to people that are members of your church. So what I would recommend for most churches is that you would build what's called a lookalike audience. Uh, and what that is, is it, Facebook has a smart enough algorithm where you could take all the people in your church, uh, and all their email addresses. So let's say you have a church of 200 people and on your mailing list, you have 250 email addresses. You take all of those email addresses, you'd load them into Facebook. And then Facebook, they build, basically they take a look at those 250 people and they say, what did these people all have in common? What are they like? What are their interests? What are they clicking like on what are they clicking, uh, that they care for? They have this very complex algorithm that none of us truly can understand the details of it. Speaker 0 00:33:34 It's built by AI. And it's kind of it's, it's, it's, it's, self-aware, it's kind of learning about things and it's building on itself all the time. So we can't tell you exactly what it is, but know that it's smart and it can pretty much pinpoint the people that are in your church, who in your community is most like them. So it's basically build a profile of people in the country about 1% of them that are most like the people are in your church. And then you limit that down to like five or 10 miles around your church. And you have a really specific audience of people that you want to be targeting, and they might be worth spending some money to pay for likes on those kinds of things. So anyway, that was kind of a long detailed exp I hope that was helpful to you guys. Uh, if you have any questions on that part, please add it in the comments. We're happy to answer anything from our knowledge on that kind of stuff there. Do you have anything to add about that? Um, let me ask you this. You do do a lot of our, our clients. I know you interact with them a lot more, do a lot of them pay for likes. Do you hear that a lot? Speaker 2 00:34:35 I don't, I don't hear it. Uh, but it's not something that we, I asked the question about. So maybe there's more than I know. I don't hear about, uh, churches doing that too often. Um, so, but, Speaker 3 00:34:46 Uh, right. They're doing some kind of ads on Facebook, which is more of Speaker 2 00:34:50 That feedback. I hear a lot more of, but not paying for likes specifically. So, um, so that's a good question. Uh, but, uh, you know, I think that was very helpful, Thomas. I mean, what I would just add to that as I, I agree with you that at first glance it sounds counter, you know, productive or intuitive to an evangelical pastor to like, try to reach the same people. Right. Cause then pastors always think of how they don't want transfer growth, like you said, from other churches, but this is beneficial because of the, you're doing it to where it fits within these parameters that will ultimately benefit you and have it actually help you reach new people that need a church home. Um, but it's just, it's the way that you kind of have to go about it because the way that things are set up. Speaker 0 00:35:34 Yeah. And I think that in this season, right, um, there are a lot of people that are in transition due to COVID and there's lots of churches that, uh, and I, again, I have mixed feelings about it, so I can definitely understand the, the check that we have maybe in our hearts about saying this, but there's lots of people that are unable to engage with their church because they're have to stay home or they're quarantined or, uh, their church doesn't, um, you know, they, they, they want to wear a mask or they don't want to wear a mask and their church has the opposite opinion on that. Or there's so much of this happening right now that people will welcome a place that they can connect and grow and have some kind of engagement online. And, and again, if you think about it as a tool to get people to come on Sundays, I think you're probably thinking about Facebook and really all social media, the wrong way. Speaker 0 00:36:30 I'm sure if you were mentioning with that, I, that, uh, idea about engagement engaging is what we're trying to do. So turning everybody that gets onto our Facebook page and likes us into someone, that's a member of our church and comes consistently on Sunday, that might not be the goal that you should have for your Facebook account for your church, but engaging with people and giving them the gospel and helping to disciple them and helping them to make choices that make them look more like Jesus, that really is the end goal with all of these kinds of things. So I hope that's, I hope that's what, uh, what we're thinking with that, anything to add as we close up Speaker 2 00:37:07 Engagement equals people taking next steps of some sort, and that's what we need. We need to keep people engaged. And like you said, it's not all about showing up some of these people that are engaged will, but some of the may just continue to follow you online. And then their friend sees them comment on your Facebook page and then their friend is in a time of need or finding a church. It's it's it just, all it had benefits you in the long run. Speaker 0 00:37:30 Yeah. And as someone who's pastor, we we've heard so many of those kinds of stories over the years of just how, and this is just the way it's always been. Even before social media. There's always amazing testimonies of how it seems like such a one in a million kind of a thing, but God brings calls. People do himself. And so, you know, again, this is just something that, uh, w what we're trying to do is, is align ourselves to be in a place where the holy spirit can even use us to make an impact in people's lives there. So that's what it's all about for us. Um, I hope this has been helpful. Uh, it's something that I think most churches want a lot of churches. We love church leaders don't know how to make it happen. So hopefully this has given you some ammo to, uh, bring to your team and start to build out a more healthy Facebook presence. Speaker 0 00:38:13 Uh, if it has been helpful, it would mean the world to us, if you would rate, review, subscribe, but especially comment. That would mean a lot to us. We'd love to kind of dialogue and interact. We promise, like we said, in this, we will respond to all comments. We won't leave them hanging there. We want to engage with you guys with our audience there. So if you have any questions on this here, we want to be a help to churches. That's really what we're about first and foremost at reach, right. You know, we're a, we're a business, but we exist to help churches thrive and to help churches reach people the right way. So if we can be a help to you just on a, on a, a commenting level, uh, Ian and I were we're on there on our Facebook pages and all of our social channels. So chime in on there. We'd love to have a dialogue with you guys. So, uh, but that's it for this week. Thanks guys for watching and we'll catch you next week. See you. Speaker 1 00:39:03 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 at <inaudible> studios.com. If this episode has been helpful to you, it wouldn't be in the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week.