5 Hacks to Get More Sermon Views Online

Speaker 0 00:00:00 You do a lot of work to get your sermon together each and every week. You spend hours preparing you, you do a ton of work each and every week to get your sermon ready and filmed and get it online, and then you get only a handful of views breaks your heart. In this conversation today, we're gonna talk about five hacks that you can use to get more sermon views online. We hope this conversation helps you reach more people and grow. 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 co-host, Ian Hyatt. We're here to help your church see more visitors and grow Speaker 2 00:01:00 To get get Speaker 0 00:01:05 Well. Hey guys, welcome to the Reach right podcast. I'm your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my co-host Speaker 3 00:01:10 Ian Hyatt. What's up, Thomas? Speaker 0 00:01:12 Not much man. Excited convert. Exciting conversation today. Yeah, you're talking about five hacks to get more sermon views online. I think this is something that is just really important because we do so much work as churches to go through all of the preparing for sermons and preaching of sermons and filming sermons and editing sermons. And how often do we see that after all that we get two or three, I know, 15 views online. And then there's always that one person that seems like your, your buddy who's getting like 8,000 views online Speaker 3 00:01:47 <laugh>, and you're like, my message was even better than his Speaker 0 00:01:50 <laugh>. What is, what is going on? What, why am I not getting views? And honestly, like there's something to be said, you know, you know, there's some things that we can't help you with in this video being a good preacher. Um, we're not gonna talk much about video editing in this, in this podcast episode. Uh, we're not gonna talk about sermon length or how to do your filming, that kind of stuff. That's stuff that we have other episodes about, and we, we talk about those kinds of things, but that's not the point of this episode. But there are things that are outside of those things that you would think would be the only factor, right, that you can do to get more sermon views online here. So we wanna unpack some of those today. I think it should be a really good conversation. I think it's something that as a pastor I've wrestled with, um, you know, why am I getting so few views on this? I think if we're being honest, 95% of our audience, I'm sure, has had that same question as to, Hey, you know, it feels like we're doing good content, why aren't people watching it? So yeah, we'll try to dive in and answer some of those questions today, huh? Speaker 3 00:02:47 Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's gonna be great too because, uh, how long have you and I both been helping churches with digital marketing? And we've seen, of course, uh, getting sermons online over the years. We're talking about even, you know, eight, 10 years ago was already something effective, but, uh mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But I am excited about this because I think since the pandemic, uh, and I even, I just don't even like saying that anymore, but it's true, it's relevant since the pandemic. A lot of churches have upped their game here. So, and they're, they are doing a good job of recording sermons with video and audio and getting, and so now that that work has been put in, and money has been spent by churches and, and, uh, budgets have been, you know, increased for this type of thing within a church, man, it's about now let's get some great results with it. Right? So I think this would be really good. So, yep. I think this would be a good conversation. Why don't I kick us off with the first question here, Thomas, and, and this one, I'm excited to hear you cuz I think this is a great one to start with. Um, and it, it sounds so broad, but how does a church create a strong online presence? And I think when we say online presence, that's a broad thing, right? Because it's not just one thing. Speaker 0 00:04:04 Yeah. I think really the, the question is more like, like, I guess it's the answer to the question of how do I get reviews? The first one is to make a strong online presence, right? That's the first thing that we have to do. And it seems like it should be so obvious, okay? Yeah. That, that's a no brainer that if we have an online presence, but this is something that is really, really important. The reason why your friend maybe gets 10 times the video views that you have is because he is, has an audience of people that are used to watching his videos. Yeah. And all of the platforms where videos are delivered, they think that he is an a, he or she is an influencer. Yeah. And they are someone that they, they have a track record of people liking to watch their videos and they're gonna show their videos to more people. Speaker 0 00:04:49 And that's just how that all works there. And so there are things that a church can do and a church leader can do to build your online presence. I think this is something that is really vital. So in, in the YouTube world, we have this concept known as your weight class, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So if, uh, what it means is basically, um, you know, weight class is kind of a take from boxing or MMA is that you don't have 105 pound guys fighting 250 pound guys, right? It just wouldn't be a good experience for anybody. Right? So, um, so same thing goes with when it comes to your YouTube videos or any sermon videos that you put online, is that if you are not a well established channel on YouTube or other platforms, they're not gonna show your videos to very many people. Uh, so the key is you need to start to do things to raise that. Speaker 0 00:05:39 And really the way you raise it is by having a track record of successful videos. And that's kind of the way you build your brand, is by continually doing this in a consistent basis. But there are some steps you can take to try and create a strong online presence. So this is obviously things like, uh, having a really solid website. Yeah. Uh, really nailing your branding on all of your social channels is where it's really important. So if you have, you should have a logo. That logo should be on your YouTube channel, for instance. Yeah. It should be, uh, apparent what you do on your YouTube, uh, background image there. And you should have your bio fully filled out on YouTube. And all of those things need to be totally dialed in on YouTube and on Facebook and on any other channel where you're putting your sermon content, you want to make sure that you get that, that really dialed in in those ways there. Speaker 0 00:06:29 So, yeah. Um, and then beyond that, I would say, we'll talk more about this, I'm sure in another point, but like, the way that you start to build your weight class or kind of grow your influence, the reason why that's important is because if you are targeting, like your sermon title is for a very, um, very broad keyword. Like, let's say you did a sermon on building your faith, or let's, let's do something that we've all done on. Maybe it's about the importance of tithing. Right? Okay. Think about it. There are thousands and thousands of people that have made videos on this idea of the importance of tithing and what YouTube and the other channels are gonna do, other platforms are gonna do is they're gonna say, okay, who is the most influential person that's making content that's good about tithing? And that's the video that they're gonna wind up showing. Speaker 0 00:07:15 So we wanna raise our weight class by building our brand there. And so a lot of times when you're just starting out, it's important that you use titles that are more specific. So, let's see, let's, if you're gonna do a sermon on building your faith, what if you titled it something How to build your Faith in 2022? Gotcha. That might be a more useful kind of a, a topic to do because the search engines will see, well, this is something that's unique to this specific year. Yeah. And so they're gonna give you a little bit more presence there. So that's another way to kind of build your brand and build your online presence a little bit by really getting some of those search things right with that. So more to come on that as we go in here. Speaker 3 00:07:53 Yeah. That's good. So, uh, what is kind of like one area that comes to mind? Like, or maybe the first area that comes to mind to make your sermons available at Speaker 0 00:08:06 Like, like where should you make 'em available? You're Speaker 3 00:08:08 Saying? Yeah. Yeah. Like what's, maybe if maybe it's not the most important place, but where do you start? Speaker 0 00:08:13 Yeah. I, I think that the, I think you have to have it on your website, right? Like that's the first place that every church should be putting your sermons there. So there's other channels and usually you're gonna use another channel like a YouTube or a Vimeo, or I know we use, for our video, we use CloudFlare. Yeah. A lot of times on our website for some videos. So there's lots of different ways that you will upload your video, but the place where you want it to live is on your church's website. And there's a few reasons for this. I think that it gives your website as a whole, a lot of juice. Your Google is still the number one search engine, and it's usually showing website results. It does show video results very often. But the idea of if someone's looking for a, a church in their city, they're probably not gonna show a video on building your faith or on tithing from that church. Speaker 0 00:09:01 They're gonna try and show a list of churches that are there. So you wanna build the search presence on your actual website there. Yeah. And so one of the ways that you do that, again, back to building your online presence, is actually putting your sermons there. But it, the other thing too is it gives you full control over that audience, the people that are there on your site. It's not gonna show them ads for other sermons to watch or other non sermon or, you know, counterpoints to what you said in your sermon. Right. I've seen that kind of stuff pop up for up before. Like they give alternative views to people on other platforms. So you have full control over this, and then you get to actually do better with your calls to action. It's better to call people to action on your church website than it is on another platform like a Facebook, Instagram, or a YouTube. Right. You can have a form right below your sermon that says, Hey, have questions, fill this out. We'd love to talk to you more about it. Yeah. Or, hey, wanna visit us for the first time? Let us know you're coming so you can call Speaker 3 00:09:57 People. It's there they can give easily Right after a message. That's another call to action. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:10:03 Yeah. Absolutely. So yeah, so if I was to choose just one place, it would absolutely be Facebook, or not Facebook, it would be our church website. Facebook might be like the fourth option I think on there. But yeah, your church website would be number one. Speaker 3 00:10:16 That's good stuff. That's good stuff. So, cool. Anything else that, you know, you want to do on your website with the, the sermons, you know, um, you know, other than kind you mentioned it's, I think you hit on the biggest thing, which is you have control when you know they're on the website, you know, you have more control and they can't wander off. I, when you were talking about that, I was thinking if, yeah, sometimes I've been on YouTube watching something and you know, there's a movie trailer or something that pops up and I'm like, oh yeah, I wanna check that out real quick or something. And, and so yeah, I think captive a is a good one you mentioned. Speaker 0 00:10:49 Yeah. I think if I say one more thing about the, the church website and what you're gonna do when you upload your sermons, the, the biggest mistake we see churches make all the time is just putting a sermon and a title, like a video and a title on there and not having other text content on that page. So I think that on that landing page, it is so important that you actually have a description that is somewhat sizeable of what the content of this actual video is. Yeah. Google is getting really smart. They own YouTube and, um, you know, so they, they're getting good at, at watching videos and using algorithms to determine, hey, what is in this? Yeah. But you know, really there are, there's so much video that's loaded onto YouTube and other platforms every single day. Yeah. That they're not able to really keep up with that demand and really pinpoint what this video is about. Speaker 0 00:11:39 So they rely on our text that we put into the YouTube description, or in this case the church website description, putting that content in there to determine what this video is all about there. So some general guidelines is if you can find, find a way to get up to 600 words on this content that will help you like, so a good chunk, but at least 300 I think is a goal. The easiest thing is if you're a church that does like a manuscript or something, like a manuscript kind of outline, put that in there, put that actual manuscript onto your page. It might be seven, 8,000 words. There's nothing wrong with that. Like having that volume of content. It really is something that is, uh, that is preferable when it comes to search engine optimization there. So really dialing in your descriptions. And then one other little thing I think is having a, uh, some kind of a thumbnail that goes with it, but we'll talk more about that, some of our other points here. Speaker 3 00:12:30 Okay. Cool. Cool. Yeah. Well the next one here, so what's coming to mind for me is YouTube, uh, videos. Yeah. So, um, what do we say about that Speaker 0 00:12:40 YouTube is, uh, after your website, the most important place to put your sermon videos? Speaker 3 00:12:45 There you go. Speaker 0 00:12:46 Um, there is a little bit of debate right now as to whether it's a good platform for sermon videos if you are trying to build a YouTube channel. Uh, the reason for that is, generally speaking, YouTube prefers shorter form content, uh, than longer form content. And by shorter form, I, I guess they're kind of the prime YouTube video is like six or seven minutes. Right? Okay. So if you're preaching six or seven minute sermons, uh, drop your address in the comments, I'd like to come visit your church sometime and see how you guys do that there. But, so I think that it's, it, it's not the perfect platform for sermon video. And so that's why in a lot of cases it makes sense to cut up your sermon into a few chunks. If you have a point that's five to 10 minutes, maybe that would make a good YouTube video all by itself. Speaker 0 00:13:32 But I still think that there is a case to be made and it's valuable for people to have your sermons on YouTube. Um, I think that there's a lot of kind of tips and tricks we can give you on how to get more views on these YouTube videos for your sermons. Like really nailing your titles, making sure that you have keywords in those. The biggest piece of device, and honestly this is, this is so flooring to me, when we saw the difference this made when we really started to put some emphasis on it, is really nailing your YouTube thumbnails for your sermon. So I see a lot of churches, they'll use just their series graphic or they'll just put the title of their sermon with the same image, uh, on every single sermon that they have on their YouTube channel. Yeah. With a different title on there. Speaker 0 00:14:15 Or maybe they just put like the title of the sermon on there, on the thumbnail, they'll repeat it or they'll just put the date on there. There's lots of bad things that we see. But here's the thing with YouTube, your thumbnail is the primary way that people decide whether or not they're gonna click on it. Yeah. The first thing we noticed about almost every YouTube video, it's not the title of the video, it's definitely not the description of the video, it's the graphical thumbnail that you have there. So in most cases, what we think is best for churches is that you have a descriptive keyword rich sermon title. Uh, so, um, is tithing biblical in 2022 might be a good title for a sermon that you want to, it's very search rich, lots of things like that. And then the thumbnail, it needs to be really descriptive and it should be a, not the title again, but it should be a companion to the title. Speaker 0 00:15:10 Like something like, is tithing necessary? And then maybe an image of of the pastor of the church kind of doing a question face or something like that. Or someone wondering, you know, something like something we've seen, we've done a lot of testing with this and we've seen that closeups of people's faces like right on their faces, my face, your face. We do that a lot here at Reach Rite. Yep. Getting those as foolish as we feel with those Ian. Yeah. And as foolish as we feel having to film those. Yeah. They are proven to actually get better results for these videos Speaker 3 00:15:41 Here. They Speaker 0 00:15:42 Do. You know, and it doesn't have to be silly faces or anything. We have a few of those. I was just yesterday we had one that went live for, uh, Christmas sermon series ideas. Check out that Speaker 3 00:15:52 I was laughing at it actually today. I saw, Speaker 0 00:15:54 Yeah. It was me making a very dumb face and it has me with a Christmas hat on and all that stuff. And it had a ton of views. <laugh>, like it does, it does better than, than a lot of our other videos do. It's partly because it's seasonal and Christmas content does tend to do well this time of year here. But I do think that it's something that can be said forward. So getting pictures of your face, it doesn't have to be just dumb pictures. Yeah. Yeah. I think even better are smiling pictures, pointing pictures, thumbs up pictures. Yeah. But big toothy grins as as happy as you can be. That's the kind of thing that's engaging with people. So a tagline or like a companion to the title and a picture of your face that will almost always get the best results there. And you, you see these kind of things. Speaker 0 00:16:35 I don't know if you notice, I look on my, on my YouTube channel, uh, or I look at the, the videos that YouTube recommends to me. Yeah. The thumbnails are outta control sometimes. Yeah. Like, I don't know why I, I, you know, it's usually is cuz I've watched stuff like this before, but I tend to get a lot of videos recommended to me about past natural disasters on YouTube. Uhhuh, maybe I've watched that before, like tsunami footage or something like that. Yeah. And they always have the most exaggerated picture of a tsunami that's like overtaking an entire, like city skyline. It's taller than that. Yeah. And they want us to believe that it's like a real thing or something that they're gonna show you in the video. It's kind of, it just, I, I don't recommend doing that. Don't overpromise on these thumbnails. Right. But I think it goes to show how important these thumbnails are to what's driving clicks on the actual site there. So that's good. Kinda long winded on that answer, but I hope that kind of gives people some Speaker 3 00:17:27 No, I think it was helpful results Speaker 0 00:17:28 There. Speaker 3 00:17:29 Definitely. No, you wanna leverage YouTube as as much as possible. So. Well good. So I think other social media's coming to mind. So sharing the, the message on obviously, I mean I think churches, most churches have been doing it on Facebook. What else should they be doing? Speaker 0 00:17:46 Yeah, Facebook. Um, you know, to be honest with you, I am seeing such diminishing results for us, for churches, for everybody when it comes to Facebook video. Um, we'll post a video and we'll get, you know, a few hundred views in the first day on one channel on YouTube. Yeah. And then we'll put that exact same video, same thumbnails, same content, good stuff. We tailor the actual description for Facebook, 2, 6, 7 views. You know, a handful of people will watch that there. Facebook has really, um, built itself around the need to be monetized if you want to succeed. Yeah. It is what started as a very lots of organic reach. It has become very heavily dependent on you. You need to pay if you want to reach people on Facebook. Right. And that's not just for small accounts or medium sized accounts. We have a few thousand uh, followers on Facebook. Speaker 0 00:18:39 This is the same for very large accounts that they're only getting a handful of views. Yeah. If they're putting video content on there. Uh, so I am seeing less and less results from there. Um, I think, like we said before, there is a case to be made for some of these short form video platforms. Yeah. So Instagram reels, uh, TikTok now TikTok allows you to do up to 15 minutes. And so maybe you can have a very edited version of your sermon on there on TikTok. Um, I don't recommend that still though. You know, we we're doing some testing around that right now here Attri. Yeah. But I don't think that you're gonna get the best results. I think you're better off taking clips of your sermon and putting them onto more of the short form video type of platforms there. So yeah, those are some of the big ones that I see though. I think that Facebook is the obvious one for long form video. I don't expect much, I don't really think that's gonna be changing. I don't see any, like any real future there right now. But this is social media, it's all subject to change. But, uh, I think that if I were looking for other channels, I think clips, short forms, edited versions of full length sermons, putting those onto Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, and TikTok obviously, I think those are really good opportunities for churches. Speaker 3 00:19:53 Yeah. No, that's good stuff. Yeah. Well, good. Well lastly, I guess you know, this, this last one here is kind of uh, I guess a little unexpected maybe, maybe unthought of, um, so it's kind of about networking, right? It's almost kind of like using your, your sphere, right. To get messages out there. Speaker 0 00:20:14 Yeah, absolutely. I think that, um, this is something that I think it, it rubs a lot of people the wrong way. The thought of it at least. But I think as we explain it, it, it won't feel as bad I think. So the idea is, is is doing uh, collaborations with other people who have larger platforms than you do. Uh, so people that have a bigger brand or they have more followers on certain channels, whether it be YouTube or TikTok or any other place there. Uh, we talked extensively about this in our video from last week about Right. Uh, TikTok and how to leverage other people's audiences. But I think YouTube is a perfect place to be doing some more collaboration type things. So let me tell you what that actually looks like, though. It doesn't, what we don't mean by that is, you know, writing your favorite uh, you know, YouTube celebrities and saying, Hey, can you share my content on your site? Speaker 0 00:21:06 Cause you'll be met with a stiff No, we don't do that. That's how that works there, right? So yeah, if you get a response at all. Yeah. But what it does look like is for most churches, you probably, most pastors you probably preach at other churches from time to time. Maybe there's a, a local church or maybe you're a part of a church plant that had a church that sent you, um, there's nothing wrong with doing a kind of a preaching exchange there where you go preach at someone's church and they come preach at yours or you have a guest speaker come in. But when that happens, be sure you encourage them to share that content on their platforms. Yeah. If you're bringing in guest speakers from outta town, they probably have some kind of a following on social media right. Or some other kind of digital footprint out there. Speaker 0 00:21:50 And that is a large audience in a lot of cases that is totally unfamiliar with you and your church. And here's the thing about video content online is once you get the first of you, once they watch you one time, and maybe it's even someone that they're familiar with watching your channel one time from that point forward, it is easier to reach that audience in the future there. That's why when you watch one video about natural disasters, now my feed on YouTube right, is full of natural disaster videos cuz they think, hey, this guy loves natural disasters, he's a big fan of this stuff. They keep giving me this kind of content. So the same thing goes if you bring it a guest speaker and guest speaker Joe comes in and they notice that hey, a lot of these people that watched Joe's videos before, they're now watching this channel's videos. Speaker 0 00:22:37 I'm gonna show more of Joe's, uh, followers, this channel your your church's videos. That's kind of the idea behind that there. So it is something that's probably the most natural way that it would happen. Yeah. But think about this too, within your church, if you have a church of a few hundred people, you probably have someone in your church that is a, at least a minor influencer, you know? Right. And this can be really anybody. It doesn't have to be just a makeup influencer or a a fragrance influencer. You know, that's what we think of. We think of, uh, Kardashians and Justin Bs and these kinds of people that they're the influencers out there. But it could be about any kind of a topic there. Yeah. Consider talking to them about how you can, you know, ask them for advice. Hey, what can we do to reach more people with our sermon videos? Speaker 0 00:23:22 And maybe it comes up that, you know, they can help you do a video and then they share that with their audience and you know, while most of their audience that maybe is interested in, I don't know, maybe you have a billiards influencer in your church. Yeah. Most of them are gonna be interested in your sermon content, but some will and it'll start to build your audience that way. So collaboration is one of the most natural and organic ways to help you build that, that audience. Remember we were talking about that, that guy down the road who, you know, he preaches, he's not as good a preacher as you are, but he is getting 10 times as many views. Right, right. Do a sermon exchange with him, invite him over and, and preach at your church and you preach at his and have that conversation that way. And it'll start to leverage each other's audience. And in most cases, because we're talking about all for the kingdom, most people are gonna be okay with this when it's something that's on a, a local level when you have some level of relationship with people in that way. So yeah, it's a big opportunity I think for churches. Speaker 3 00:24:15 Yeah. And it's natural. I, I like how you, you know, cuz a lot of times people think that, oh gosh, I'm gonna be, you know, infringing upon someone or whatever. But if you already have these relationships or someone like even a minor influencer like you said at your church, it's kind of natural thing not that hard. Speaker 0 00:24:30 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think it's, it's good stuff there. So good. Yeah. I I think this is something so many churches and church leaders really struggle with and I don't know, it's probably the source of depression I think for a lot of people just kind of getting, we look at the numbers and you work so hard on this stuff. I know. And I'll be the first to tell you, we, we still have misses here at Reach Rite, right? So Oh yeah. Like, like there'll be times where we'll do a video and we'll have one of those, it'll have 12 views after a week or something like that. I'm like, what did we do wrong? What was wrong with this? So I'm not saying we have it all figured out with this here, you know, and by comparison we are a very small channel compared to other things that are out there, other platforms and influencers that are there. Speaker 0 00:25:08 So this is just things that we are learning and we are actively trying to figure these things out for you and with you, with our audience here. So, um, so I say all this, don't be discouraged. This is something that is common to everybody. Even the biggest influencers have misses or things that don't do as well as they think. Uh, so don't be discouraged by that. Keep trying, get back up on there. Keep doing what you're doing. I think that there is a case to be made for investing even more into your sermon production, more time and preparation, all those things. Yeah. But hopefully these few tips will take what you're already doing and help you get, uh, if you just apply one or two of them, I think you'll start to get more views and it'll start to see a difference. Be consistent and I think you'll see results. Speaker 3 00:25:52 That's awesome. Good advice. Speaker 0 00:25:53 Awesome. Cool. If this has been helpful to you guys, it would mean a lot to us if you would rate reviews, subscribe, uh, let us know in the comments if you have any questions about, you know, something that we are seeing. This is really kind of an ask me anything. Uh, we do, uh, promise we'll get back to every response that's on here within reason. I guess, uh, we'll delete it if we don't like it, uh, so in that case. So, but yeah, we will try, answer any comments that come in there and give you some feedback on what we see is working and what's not working. So do let us know when the comments there. Thanks guys for being a part of the Reach Right family and we'll see you next week. Speaker 3 00:26:27 See ya. Speaker 0 00:26:30 Thanks for listening to the Reach Wright podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way. Looking for more resources for your church, check us out [email protected]. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean 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.