The Second Step of the Church Social Media Framework for 2023: TikTok

In this episode Nick talks about the social media platform that you should most be focusing on in 2023. If you don't have time to do any other social, you should be leaning into this social platform, TikTok. He lays out the current state of TikTok, why you should go in on it, how you should go in on it, and gives links and resources to other episodes or resources to help you flesh out your social media calendar for your church in 2023.

Entire Episode with Complete Transcript:
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/036
Watch this Podcast Episode:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g
Follow Nick on TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick

SHOWNOTES
Is Digital a Valid Method of Preaching?
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/029

9 TikTok and Reels Videos to use at your church this week!
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/023

The Ultimate 2023 Social Media Calendar, Strategy and Posting Guidelines
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/025

TIMECODES
00:00-02:12 - Intro
02:12-08:40 The Current State of TikTok
08:40-13:35 What does all of this mean?
13:35-18:52 What content should my church post?
18:52-23:40 The Nitty Gritty of Posting to TikTok with Hooks, Captions and where to place your text on screen
23:40-24:59 Conclusion and Outro

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:02):
All right. 3, 2, 1. Well, hello there, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I, as always, am your host, Nick Clason. So thrilled to be here with you, uh, on this episode. And we are going to be continuing on in our journey of the sixth Step Church social media framework. But today, in this episode, I am gonna talk about a social media that if you don't have time to go in on any of the other things that we talk about, this is the one that I highly, highly recommend as a youth pastor myself. Um, I recommend this primarily for student ministries. Um, however, I wanna be very clear that, um, this is a, the number one, uh, social media for Generation Z. And you might think, oh, I'm exempt from that. I don't have to worry about Generation Z. And that's just simply not true.

Nick Clason (00:58):
You do. Um, and it will become more and more of a prevalent, uh, problem, so to speak. Not that Generation Z is a problem, but, uh, more and more of a prevalent, um, uh, demographic in your church congregation. More and more, they're graduating every single year, and then they're soon becoming a part of the church or not a part of a church. If we're not willing to speak their native language, and if we're not willing to, uh, reach them where they are soon as youth pastors, we are no longer going to have Generation Z even as a part of our ministry because Generation Alpha is right now sitting in our sixth grade, our fifth grade, our fourth grade, they are the soon to be new generation. And so Gen Z, this digital strategy matters for them. And yes, you guessed it. We are talking about TikTok.

Nick Clason (01:44):
So all that, and more on this episode, as always, show notes, hybridministry.xyz, subscribe on YouTube. Follow me personally on my TikTok, uh, give us a light, give us a subscribe. A subscribe. And please, we would love it if you would give us a rating, especially if you find this information helpful, share it with a friend. But without any further ado, let's dive into why TikTok matters. All right, well, let's talk about the current state of TikTok as it stands in 2023. So, uh, TikTok in just 11 years, so starting back in 2011, all the way now to, um, 2023, so I guess 12 years, uh, TikTok has grown from zero users all the way up to 1 billion estimated users ranking it fourth in social media usage and platforms. So it's only behind Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and then TikTok is fourth. Facebook is at 2.9 billion.

Nick Clason (02:48):
YouTube is at 2.2 billion. Instagram is at 1.4 billion, and TikTok is at 1 billion. Now, keep in mind that I think that, uh, Facebook and Instagram both play a role, but if you're going to go all in on one, I think you should go all in on TikTok. Facebook often is, uh, really popular with the generation of generation X. Instagram is much more popular with my generation, generation of millennials, and TikTok was made famous by our favorite, um, generation, generation Z and TikTok is driving what these other legacy platforms of Facebook, of Instagram, and even YouTube are doing. So all of the players ahead of TikTok in the, um, estimated users, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, all three of those, if you notice, have a TikTok feature, uh, element woven into 'em reels, Instagram reels, Facebook reels, and YouTube shorts, and they're all three trying to compete and catch up with the wild craze that is TikTok.

Nick Clason (03:49):
So what even was TikTok, you might remember that TikTok originally started as a brand called a musical dot l wire or Musical Lee, and it was branded and started much as a lip syncing app. I remember as a youth pastor, there were students that would just lip sync and do the musical Lee, uh, type of deals. And so, uh, it was rebranded as TikTok, and it has come around and it has shot up in a meteoric eyes of popularity to become the almost number one. Um, and not like number one downloads, like I just read through the stats, but like number one in, uh, just desirability, right? Of like entertainment apps and social media switched right from being like this social, legitimately social like connection of like human people. I'm friends with my grandma and I'm friends with my aunt to a, uh, platform of entertainment.

Nick Clason (04:43):
You get on there to watch, to be entertained, to be informed, to be inspired, to be encouraged, to learn something, to laugh, all right? That's what TikTok has kind of become. And so, TikTok, um, was historically thought to be adopted and used by teenagers primarily. And that's why, again, when we think of Generation Z, we think, oh, those are teenagers, right? But I wanna read for you something. Um, some of the most recent data says this, 10 year olds to 19 year olds make up 32.5% of the users on TikTok, where 20 to 29 year olds make up 29.5% of the users on TikTok. 30 to 39 year olds make up 16.4, 40 to 49 year olds make up 13.9 and 50 plus make up 7.1. So if you do some quick dirty math, you're looking at greater than 60% of your users are anywhere from the age of 10 to 30.

Nick Clason (05:36):
And if you do a little bit more math, 75% of the users on the TikTok app are under the age of 40. Now, let me ask you, is this something that youth pastors only need to be worried about? And I would contend that the answer is no. Yes, the greatest use is of the younger generations, but 10 to 19, that 19 year old's gonna be 20 pretty soon. And my guess is you wanna reach a 20 year old. Like, my guess is you wanna reach a 25, a 27, a 32 year old, and so start going where they are. So according to an article from, uh, September, 2022 in the New York Times, uh, this is what it has said. It said, TikTok is now becoming the new search engine for Generation Z. Here's what the quote says. This is a powerful tool for teenagers, for students, and for the people in your congregation.

Nick Clason (06:30):
So according to this Afor engine, New York Times article, more and more young people are using talk's powerful algorithm, which personalizes the videos that are shown to you and your for you page, which is based on your interactions with the content. And so to find, uh, information that UNC candidly caters to their tastes, the tailoring, that tailoring is then coupled with a sense that there are real people on the app and are synthesizing and delivering information rather than just simply faceless websites. So there, right there is where you find the social component, but greater than 80 to 90% of the content that most people interact with on TikTok comes from people that they have never met. So pair in mind that the, the usage is meteoric and it is rising faster and faster. And also that now Generation Z is going to TikTok as one of their pry Mary places for search.

Nick Clason (07:31):
And what did we talk about was the reason in the last episode that YouTube was such a crucial, uh, ground for you to be diving into as a church, as a church creator, is you could create very custom howto content. So that's also now the case with TikTok. One last thing that is, uh, important for you to know about TikTok, while the, while TikTok does, uh, have is only fourth, right? In the overall ranking of, um, social media apps, there was a term, um, coined as power users and 29% of TikTok users are considered power users, and they're the ones who will use the app every single day and further study on that TikTok users spend wait for it on average 95 minutes per day. That's over, that's an hour and a half of their day spent on the app, which does rank number one amongst all of the social media apps for most time used on the TikTok app.

Nick Clason (08:34):
So that is where we are. What does all of this mean? All right, so what does all of this mean? Like we said, TikTok is beginning to trend older, and even the users themselves are just simply getting older. And it is right now the leader, right? The leader for Generation Z, um, and I think probably soon to be millennials, and those, uh, people are soon to be square in the main demographic of people that your church is likely going to be focused on reaching. The other reason, like I said earlier, consider the fact that Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube have all recently adopted a TikTok algorithm, reels, shorts, right, to make as a cornerstone of their social media, um, strategy moving forward. And so they're, they are responding to this social media app over here, which is why I don't think it's it's necessarily worth, uh, your, I don't know that you need to be ignoring it or that you should be ignoring it, right?

Nick Clason (09:34):
These other social media platforms, I feel like, oh, we're gonna be all in over here on YouTube, on Instagram to perform well on YouTube and Instagram right now. You need to go all in on the TikTok feature that they have implemented. It's not called TikTok, it's called reels, it's called shorts. But you need to still be all in over on that. And so the legacy platform that made that famous, you should start there. Those are reasons why I think TikTok is currently the most important of all the things you might be wondering. Well then why we talk about YouTube last week, and we're gonna talk about this in the very final episode, but just as a sneak peek of this little, uh, series that we're doing, um, you always want to be able to take your short form content and point it back to something more longer form, and that's where that can live over there on YouTube.

Nick Clason (10:16):
That's the short answer to that. Okay? So I also want to consider some of the theological implications for this, okay? Acts chapter one, verse eight, very famously, the Great Commission, Jesus says, but you will receive the power of the Holy Spirit. He'll come upon you, and then you'll be my witnesses telling people about me in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and then ultimately to the utter most parts of the Earth. You might be thinking, well, yeah. So why does me posting a dancing video of my senior pastor on TikTok accomplish the mission of reaching people? Talk's? Algorithm is largely a mystery. People have been trying to crack that code. Obviously, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube are all studying it to try and create their own versions of it. However, there is one thing that we do know is that what, the way that TikTok spreads the message is very much in the same concentric circles that we see described by Jesus in Acts chapter one.

Nick Clason (11:08):
Verse eight starts by sharing it to your followers. And if they respond well to it, it'll share it to more of their followers. And it starts even geographical. It starts around where you are. You can geotag yourself in your TikTok when you post them. And so it, it does accomplish the mission of helping spread that message until you, more and more people, hundreds, thousands of people can get to hear the message of Jesus every day. Consider this. Let me just give you an anecdotal example. I have a, uh, I'm a youth pastor in an ministry where on average, on a given set, like Wednesday night, we probably average anywhere between a hundred and 150 students, okay? If I post a TikTok about, uh, just a clip from a message or a, a message on there that has something to do with God or theology, or I'm helping share and spread the good news, I'm helping teach people, encourage people, equip people an average video, that that does not perform very well to my standards on TikTok, we'll get somewhere between two and 300 views.

Nick Clason (12:14):
That is literally double the number of people that see that content then come to my, uh, regular in-person gathering. So why does this matter? I think it matters because we have an opportunity to reach far beyond just the people that have their butts in their seats in the ministry that I lead. And the same is true for you. You have the ability to help get the message out there. Now, you might be thinking, well, why don't, our church doesn't wanna do that? Every church has been tasked by Jesus Christ himself. Acts chapter one verse eight, Matthew 28 18 through 18 through 20, to help fulfill the great commission. And there's an element of discipleship in there where, yes, you have to teach them to obey everything that he has commanded us to do, but also there is a reach component. Get the message of Jesus out there.

Nick Clason (13:04):
Can that be done via digital means? I would contend that yes, it, it can, and we talked about that early on. Um, we talked about that, uh, actually a couple episodes ago in, uh, the can, can the, can the message of Jesus be done and shared digitally? And, uh, you can go back and listen to it. I'll link to it here in the show notes. But yes, I would contend that yes, it can be done that way. Uh, and you'll see why, and you'll be, you'll have an explanation of why that matters. All right? So this is the age old question, right? What do I post? You might be wondering that you might be asking that. Well, uh, I'll link to an episode that I did at the end of 2022 on this podcast, but it, it's titled, I think, nine TikTok and Short Form Video Ideas that you Can Post on your Church social Media this week.

Nick Clason (13:58):
I also, uh, laid out for you my complete weekly strategy in another episode. Um, I think it's episode 25, the Ultimate 2023, uh, social media calendar strategy and posting schedule. I'll post both of those if those are something that you find interesting, but they're just chock full of ideas, and honestly, they're very like boots on the ground for me, uh, and stuff that I post every single week. But real quick, uh, a high overview on some of those is, uh, there are really, they're like 3, 4, 5 different categories of things that you can post. The first one is trends. If you spend any time on TikTok, on TikTok app, just yourself personally, I use that save feature incredibly liberally. It's the little like bookmark looking thing on your app. And then I can go back to my personal profile and see things that I've saved. And, but you gotta jump on those trends fast.

Nick Clason (14:51):
So I always, on my, my posting calendar, um, I don't schedule myself out so much. I leave just some space to do some trends. And so two or three times a week I say post a trend and I go into my saved things, and I'm like, what is going on right now on TikTok? And if there's a certain song or a certain cap cut template or something like that, I just use it and I try to find a, think of a creative, fun, relatable way to use it, and I just use it. Another thing is, um, you can just, you can film like custom content, you know yourself. So like, uh, let me give you an example of, of just that thing I'm trying, um, and you can go check it out on our church, uh, TikTok right now. I I don't wanna, um, give you the link verbally here, so go to the show notes because I'm working on changing the name to it.

Nick Clason (15:39):
I don't know if, if by the time this post, uh, if the name will be changed or not. But anyway, um, I, I made this game. Um, I'm an author on download youth ministry.com. Um, so I made this game called gif flashback, where you watch a gif for like, uh, seven seconds, and then, um, immediately you're asked a question to just recall what you saw. And so I tried something where me and another, uh, member of my team are named Bailey. We went around all different places in the church, and that's intentional. Uh, as far as TikTok is concerned, we'd, we'd swap out like, uh, outfits and we'd go to different places in the church. And so we shot them all at the same time, but they're in all different pockets and corners at the church. Some are outside, some are inside, some are, you know, whatever.

Nick Clason (16:20):
At my desk, her desk in the, in the Gaga pit, whatever. And, uh, one of us would run in and be like, quick, Bailey, give flashback, and we'd watch the, the game, all right? And while we're watching it on one of our phones, I would then edit where I'd put the game in on top of the phone. And so I, or she would be playing it by answering the questions and giving the, the answers, but the user, while they're watching it can also, um, watch it and interact with it and play the game as well, right? And so that's a way to use a game that's made for social, um, but also like post it on your TikTok and just have some fun, right? Um, you can do like emoji bible guessing games, which by the way, go to my D ym, uh, link. Uh, I'll drop that in the show notes here as well.

Nick Clason (17:04):
And you can buy, I have all kinds of like, uh, a game called Emoji phraseology, and every single one of them has a vertically formatted video or, uh, wide screen, or, I'm sorry, uh, video or static, uh, slide that you can post as well as you, uh, interact with or as you, um, edit your video so you can play like emoji guessing games, get flashback, all those things. Um, but yeah, po uh, post some of those just different like fun game type things to do. I also like to do like a lot of minute to win it style games, right? And I just film those, and then I clip 'em up, I edit 'em, um, have fun with them. Other things I like to do post educational videos, like, not, not like, here's some math, right? But like theologically educational videos. So the entire month of January, I posted a, I talked a lot about habits.

Nick Clason (17:51):
We were in a series of habits, and so I talked about the psychology of building a good habit. And then the entire month of February, I answered some deep theological like questions or just some core tenets, like of the faith. And I walked through, you know, salvation and the Holy Spirit and sin and the problem of evil. And I just like, I, I posted those, you know, occasionally. Um, also, you can always post message clips. And this is why, if you go back to the last podcast that I posted, um, about YouTube as the first step of the strategy, if you're pre-filing or if you're live streaming, you can find two to three short message clips, and you can edit them with a good hook in where you resolve a good hook and you have some good music behind it. And you can post, uh, some of those message, uh, clips on your, on your TikTok, and then you can point those back to the longer form video or audio content for people to find and consume.

Nick Clason (18:45):
So speaking of hooks, speaking of archetypes, speaking of how to build it, let's dive into that. Next, let's do it. Let's get nitty gritty here. Posting best practices. Number one, you want to have a good hook. You can use the text on screen option, or you can use the text to speech option as the narrated, uh, the narrated, uh, AI sounding voice. But essentially, you need to tell your audience within the first three seconds what this video is going to be about. Because, you know, swiping habits, people are not hovering on videos for very long. If it's not interesting, boom, they're onto the next thing. Boom, they're onto the next thing. This often requires a mindset shift for pastors who hold their hook or who hold their, like, ace up their sleeve usually until the very end of a sermon. Get it out at the very beginning.

Nick Clason (19:35):
What are you talking about in this video? The other thing is use onscreen captions. They're not for just people who are hard of hearing at this point. Captions are useful because a lot of times people can't watch videos in public places with headphones in. So if your video has captions, they can still watch it, even if their phone is v is, uh, volume is turned all the way down. In fact, check this up. 69% of people say that they view video with their sound off in public places. 69% is almost 70% of users and 25% watch with sound off when they're even in private places. So if you have captions on your videos, people can still watch wherever they are. TikTok will has an auto trans transcribed feature. It works really well. Just pop that onto every single video that you use. All right? You need to make sure you have a call to action.

Nick Clason (20:23):
So as you're building your audience on TikTok, make sure that you give them a call to action. Tell them to follow for more, save or view this video for later, or head to the Lincoln bio to watch the full message. Again, this is why if you are using our six step framework and you have your YouTube channel linked in your bio, you can send people who are watching message clips to go on and watch the full message to link in bio. And just remember that more than just going viral and building an audience, um, is not just for vanity metrics, right? Is that if you have something significant and meaningful to say, people will want to dial in and listen to longer versions of what you have as they're in their discovery algorithms, finding things on their phone and online. Also, watch where you're placing your text in a TikTok video.

Nick Clason (21:07):
The top, the bottom and the right side are all off limits. So you really need to hit right in the middle and more, uh, left of center. Uh, I hate when I see people who post things and they, they post it behind the natural places that TikTok covers things. TikTok screen is incredibly busy. So, uh, just look and know where you can and cannot post your text on screen and make sure it doesn't get covered up. Uh, captions and hashtags, I recommend no more than a one sentence caption and no more than three to five hashtags. And if your caption, um, has a word in it, you do not need to hashtag that same word later, right? Like we said, gen Z is using, uh, TikTok, and TikTok is also building on the back end of more searchability. So, um, if, if one of your words is already in your caption, you do not need the hashtag to find it, it will, it will search all of the text on your screen, which again, use text on screen, use their text editor.

Nick Clason (22:09):
Um, I actually use TikTok. Um, if I'm, if I'm editing on my phone, I'd probably do 50% edit on my computer, 50% edit on my phone directly. Um, if I'm editing on my phone, I edit in the TikTok app, then I download that without the watermark and I post out to all my other content. But TikTok is the, the starting spot for me. And so, um, all the texts on screen, all the things I use natively, they will search my video and find those things and, and help index that in their search back out to other people. Um, and then finally, audio. If you are a business account, your audio options on TikTok are going to be far more limited, which is why if you can do an edit in a computer, it's gonna be better for you. Um, if you're not a business account, and I talk about this in my ebook, which will link to that in the show notes as well.

Nick Clason (22:57):
Um, there are pros and cons to whether or not you want to be a business account or not. I still, to this day, have not converted ourselves to a business account, but that, that day is probably coming to an end here soon. The biggest disadvantage is I can't just lazily use trending audio. Um, that almost always is, you know, you know, not royalty free and I, you have to pay royalties on it or whatever. There are workarounds to it where you just, you edit the video with that audio in a, like, Adobe Premiere Pro or something like that, and then it's like an original sound for you. It's, but it's not being indexed in search based on that audio. Um, less and less. I think that the quality of the content is gonna be more important than the actual, like, hacking of the system by finding the certain audio things.

Nick Clason (23:42):
All right. Well, thank you so much for hanging out this entire episode. Like I just said, if, uh, you have not yet grabbed our free e-book, this episode in particular on how to post a TikTok from scratch, the question that the, the title of the e-book is, have I already Ruined My Church TikTok account? And will help you answer that. So go grab your free e-book. Also a rating or review will be incredibly helpful to subscribe over, over on YouTube if you wanna watch this video. We got blower thirds, we got custom graphics flying in. Some of the things I talked about, uh, are gonna be visible on screen that you just have to listen to in your earbuds. And if you heard anything that you're like, that was interesting, I need to go, uh, unpack that a little bit more. We have three transcripts for you over at hybridministry.xyz head there, check it out. But we're so glad that you're on this journey with us. I hope that you are finding this six step social media framework helpful. This was just step number two. Next episode we're step three, which is Facebook. So excited for that. Join us. We'd love to have you there. And until next time, and as always, stay hybrid.