Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Everybody wants to see more followers on social media. It helps you grow your audience and get the word out there to more people, but there's lots of bad advice on how churches can actually grow their follower count. In this video, we're gonna separate the fact from fiction on what actually works to grow your number of followers. Let's do this.
Speaker 0 00:00:23 You are listening to The Reach right podcast, the show dedicated to helping your church reach more people and grow. And today we are talking about how to get more followers on your church social media accounts. I think it's always a question that a lot of pastors and church leaders wonder. Uh, we see, um, that those few people on social media that have tens of thousands, if not millions of followers. Yeah. And, uh, we all kind of want to have a bigger reach. And it's not just about numbers, right? I think we all get that, that, you know, when we have more followers on social media, uh, it helps us to get the message that we have out to more people. Uh, and that really is the goal of everything that we do as churches, is reaching people with the message and the love of Jesus Christ. And so, in theory, having more followers makes that job a little bit easier. So, uh, that's what we're gonna be talking about.
Speaker 2 00:01:13 Yeah. It's funny, uh, too, I like this one because, uh, you and I saw, you know, the origins of Facebook and when social media, uh, we, uh, you were on MySpace as well, right before Facebook.
Speaker 0 00:01:25 Absolutely. I was
Speaker 2 00:01:26 <laugh>. So, and I remember when Facebook came out, it was all about for churches and just individuals, like, how many followers do you have? You know? And, and, uh, and, and that's still is a thing. It's still a thing. So, and it's still important for churches, uh, for sure.
Speaker 0 00:01:40 Yeah. The companies are getting away from that more. Like, I, so I know a lot of 'em, it used to be that people would measure things in likes you remember, right? Uh, and so you would, um, by default now on Instagram, like it'll just say someone you know, and others like this post. So you're not like seeing the number of likes because that's such a, that's such a drug for people, really just, they get right. Totally high on how many people like this. And it's, I know, especially for young people, it's so all consuming for them, we've found. But, uh, in the end, do not let this be your God. Do not make followers an idle. Uh, it doesn't matter. I have found in our experience that these things tend to snowball too. So getting your first hundred followers, uh, is exponentially harder than getting your second a hundred followers.
Speaker 0 00:02:27 And getting to a thousand is really hard compared to getting to 5,000 from a thousand. Yeah. So it just kind of snowballs. And we're kind of in the mi we're seeing this right now at Reach Wright, um, yeah. On YouTube. That's one of our primary ways. Maybe you're watching this on YouTube. Let us know in the comments if you are, um, those that are watching us on YouTube, uh, we've seen that, you know, getting to a hundred or 200 followers or subscribers on YouTube, that was really hard. And now we're at a place where we're seeing a hundred people a month or signing up and becoming subscribers on YouTube. And so thank you to our audience. If you're, uh, one of those absolutely subscribed. If not, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and click that button down there, uh, subscribe and you'll catch all of our content. So anyway, so we do have some ideas though to help people with this, right?
Speaker 2 00:03:11 Yeah. What's the first one?
Speaker 0 00:03:13 Well, I'll tackle it. It's, uh, be consistent with your posting schedule. This is one of the biggest things I think that, uh, that we do in churches is that we have a good idea for a post. We post it, and then we go dark. It's all crickets after that. And that just doesn't work, right? So social media, it, it rewards consistency. All social channels want you to be regularly posting. Now, what does regularly mean? It really depends on the channel, but I think for something like, uh, TikTok, Instagram reels, YouTube, um, the YouTube shorts at least I think probably three times a week is a good consistent pace to be doing that. You know, it, there's really not a, a top level. I probably wouldn't do it more than once a day. Uh, but kind of doing it at that kind of interval, I think it builds some consistency and people know to expect it there on other channels where you're doing more graphical or just text-based updates, you know, something like Twitter, if you're using that as a church, you'll want to be doing that multiple times daily, uh, with photography, maybe once a day is a more reasonable amount to do.
Speaker 0 00:04:19 So. Um, but I think it's not so much about the number, don't get so caught up on that, but just have a schedule and stick with it. Always post the same, uh, at the same intervals and, and commit to doing it for six months before you make any judgments on whether it works or not. Don't try it for a week and say, we didn't get anything right, so we're done. Yeah. Actually commit to doing it and do it consistently for six months, I think then you can kind of weigh the effect of it.
Speaker 2 00:04:44 That's good. That's good. And I know we've been talking a lot about short form video, um, lately, and, uh, so that I assume would also help you get more followers.
Speaker 0 00:04:53 Yeah, absolutely. Um, we've been saying this, that short form video, these are these vertical videos that you see on TikTok reels, YouTube shorts. These have consumed all other forms of social media in my opinion. Uh, you know, the, we have tested a lot of this and the reach of, whether it be Instagram stories or certainly Facebook posts or really anything else on social platforms, it pales into com in comparison to what you can get on these short form video posts. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So they take more work, no doubt about it. Taking a picture is easier than, uh, than crafting a 45 second engaging well done vertical video that takes a lot of work there. So, um, I think though, but one of the best strategies you can do, strategies you can employ right now is pivot over to doing short form video as your primary content form. Um, the great thing is as churches, you're already creating videos every week probably. Yeah. You're recording your sermons, so you just need to find ways to convert that. Uh, if you're looking for help there, we have a service that does help churches with that. But, um, whatever you do, I think it's a good strategy.
Speaker 2 00:05:59 Yeah, that's good. That's good. And we always talk about content, right? We, there's a saying in the web, digital mark marketing world that content's king. That's still the case even more so now, I think these days with everything. So, um, there's some tools, there's different trends, different content types to, to definitely follow, right? Or use and implement.
Speaker 0 00:06:20 Yeah. I think if you want to get more followers, it's about broadening the, the, the kinds of people that are seeing your content. And so with most of these social platforms, especially the video ones, there are trends that you can jump on and actually create content around, or topics that are trending that you can create content on. And in most cases, that will introduce your social channel to new audience members that have never seen your content before. So for instance, um, well here's one right now. Right now, uh, we are just finished filming a bunch of content around the He Gets Us campaign, right? We filmed it, we create blog posts around it because we know that the He Gets Us campaign, uh, we're filming this right before the Super Bowl, but when you're watching this, it'll be a couple weeks after the Super Bowl.
Speaker 0 00:07:09 Um, that content, uh, is actually gonna be very much trending in a few days here as the Super Bowl rolls out. So we kind of jump on that. So think about that for your church, what is one of those trending topics that's happening right now? Maybe something happened in the Super Bowl and you wanna comment about it from a, uh, from a Christian or a pastor's perspective. Great. That's a trending kind of a topic. Yeah. One of the things you'll see on TikTok and on reels is they have what's called trending sounds. So maybe there's like a, a, I see this sometimes for a certain dialogue that someone says, and you make a video using their dialogue or a certain set of music with a beat that people release different pictures at. If you wanna do highlights of your, your service and kind of have pictures at every half second interval, there's actually trending sounds. And when you use those, it's gonna show your video to other people that have watched that same trending sound at other places. So it's a good way to broaden your horizons and in sense, get more followers in that way.
Speaker 2 00:08:08 That's cool. That's good stuff. So, and obviously, uh, we should interact with our audience, right? So that's, that has not changed. So
Speaker 0 00:08:17 <laugh> Yeah. I mean, social media, right? So it's, it's right, it's social media, it's social platform. It's not just interaction delivering content. It's not monologue media, it's social media where we kind of go back and forth on these things. So there's nothing different about this. This is something that is tried and true. And really, th this is the, the thing that I think a lot of people that want to really grow a larger channel, this is what they're really good at, is they're making, yeah, they're good at making people feel like they have a real connection with them. So if you have a, um, it depends on what channel you're on, but if you have under a few thousand followers, make a commitment that you're gonna respond to every single comment that anybody ever puts on any of your comment out there. And one of the best strategies is finding other people that you might call like influencers and try to interact with them.
Speaker 0 00:09:05 Now, I use influencers very liberally. So sometimes when we think of influencers, I don't mean Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian, right? Don't, you don't need to do that as a church and write to them as your church and try to comment on their posts. That's not a winning strategy. They're not gonna have any time for you. Yeah. It does mean that people that are in your space and it's relevant to your audience, try to have some conversations on them. So with them, let's say you quoted, uh, a famous pastor, for instance, in your sermon this week. Uh, what if you made a video and then you tagged that famous pastor that you quoted in your short form video and tried to have some interaction with them? That's the kind of person, when I say an influencer, an influencer might only have a few hundred or a few thousand followers on their account. Yeah. Uh, it's just kind of finding the right kinds of influencers that's much more important.
Speaker 2 00:09:55 That's good. Yeah. That's smart. So, and then, uh, we talk, well, we use at Reach Wright SEO to get more followers. So obviously churches, we talk a lot about seo, uh, that should be implemented into getting more followers for sure. Right?
Speaker 0 00:10:10 It definitely should. There's no, no way around it that, um, as smart as all of these algorithms and things are, there really is no substitute for content that is written, um, speci in, in like textual form that's written for your social media. Uh, so, uh, these algorithms are going to make judgments based on certainly the, the video, the audio that's in the video that you've created on these channels. Uh, but really no matter what kind of social media you're putting out there, you need to think from an SEO perspective on things. So for some of the short form video platforms, again, TikTok reels, YouTube, shorts, seo, really, it's more about the titles that you choose. So finding a really engaging title that will grab someone's attention, that's gonna make them more likely to click on it if they see it on, uh, on a, on a desktop form, or it'll be more likely to, that they'll stay if they just kind of catch the, the glimpse of it at the bottom of their TikTok feed there. So, you know, getting those titles right and thinking about it from an SEO and like an engagement perspective, that really is important.
Speaker 2 00:11:16 That's good. That's good. So we talked about, um, being consistent with, you know, posting. Now they should also, we should also be strategic with it. Correct. So when and how and all of that. That's, uh, I mean, I think that's a no-brainer.
Speaker 0 00:11:32 Yeah. It, it is. I think it matters less than it used to. Um, it, there's okay, a lot of science behind this in the past where we just saw a totally different, uh, result, especially in algorithms that were more time-based. So you think about how Facebook used to work, right? So we'd post on Facebook and immediately would try to show your post to all of your friends, uh, and then it would slowly start to trickle down the feed, and then it would be seen by fewer and fewer people. Ah, the way that a lot of the, and that still is the case for Instagram and for Facebook general posts, right? That figuring out the timing there is important. It's less important when it comes to some of the video platforms. So when it comes to TikTok, it really doesn't matter. I mean, yeah, there's some, there's some immediacy that's there, so it wants to get fresh content out there, but really it all comes down to are people keeping their eyes on the platform when they're watching your video? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, if they are, then they're gonna show it to more people. And so, um, that really is what it's all down to. So I, I would say that yes, it matters. You can use a tool like Buffer, uh, to check and see when your audience is most active. And basically any social posting tool can show you when your audience is most active. But I wouldn't put as much stock into it as I used to, especially when it comes to video platforms. It's not as important as it used to be.
Speaker 2 00:12:52 Okay. Okay. Cool. Well, I think it's a good one, uh, thing to end as far as, uh, you know, let's keep this lighthearted, right? Let's make it fun. Yeah. Uh, social media is supposed to be fun. Uh, we've seen kinda how that's been not the case for Facebook for a while in many people's opinions. So Yeah, it's true. Be fun, lighthearted, right?
Speaker 0 00:13:13 Yeah, it's true. Um, controversy and humor are the two things that do best on these platforms, right? Ah, mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, and that's what my, my feed is full of. It's people disagreeing with someone or doing a reaction where they rebuke somebody else or something like that. <laugh>, or it's fun and funny and, you know, it's reputation for some of these platforms is, you know, dancing on TikTok is what people are. It's, it's more than that. If you haven't been on there in a while, it's a lot more than dancing nowadays, but it got its start with kind of fun, smiley people dancing in an engaging way. So that, uh, is absolute good advice. I would encourage most churches to steer clear of the controversial stuff, right? You don't want to get into who you should vote for or those kinds of things, because while you'll probably get a lot of traffic, and if your only goal is to get more followers, then that's fine.
Speaker 0 00:14:02 But I think that our goal is bigger than that, you know, followers at any cost is not what we're after. So the best way for churches to do that is to have fun. Um, so, you know, take those highlights of your sermon. You probably don't want to, and, and this may sound strange to people, but you probably don't want the alter call portion of your sermon to be the part that you post every single week on your social platforms if you're doing vertical video. Right? Well, that's powerful, and no one's gonna argue that that's something that, uh, everybody needs to hear. What I would say is that that's not gonna be the most engaging content for people right out of the gates to introduce them to your church there. So I would err on the side of fun, uh, and don't be afraid of doing things that are not necessarily spiritual.
Speaker 0 00:14:45 One of your goals is just to grab people's attention, and then at a later point you can engage them with spiritual content. Just like you wouldn't start off every sermon you ever preach with getting right down to like the hard truth of matters of the heart and sin. Like you usually start out with a fun story or something that's, some do. It's true <laugh>, but I think the most effective pastors out there are good at really helping people tear down their barriers by making themselves relatable, telling stories, giving quotes, doing dad jokes, whatever it would be. Yeah. That's usually what your best approach is. So think of that when you're doing social media. It's like your intro to your sermon. You're trying to just grab someone's attention. It doesn't attention be spiritual. It can be funny, it can be something as simple as, Hey, what's the best flavor of ice cream? And why is it chocolate peanut butter? Right? Something like that. Yeah. Would be something that would get a lot of engagement. It would grab someone's attention and then seven posts down the line, maybe they'll hear a little bit of the gospel and that'll change someone's heart. So the moralists have fun with all this. That's
Speaker 2 00:15:49 Good. Should be,
Speaker 0 00:15:49 That's it. Hey, we wanna know too what are, what's working for you guys on social media, so you can let us know down in the comments if you have any ideas or things that are working for your church Yeah. That maybe we didn't talk about here. We'd love to hear that. And make this a resource to lots of churches. Thanks for watching, and we'll catch you guys next time.
