Episode 048
My Newly Revised Church Social Media Planning and Posting Strategy for the rest of 2023
June 8th, 2023
23 mins 3 secs
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About this Episode
In this Episode Nick revises and takes another look at his 2023 posting strategy, and he explains the shifts and tweaks he is going to be making moving forward for the second half of 2023. Dive in and take a look at what you can learn and adapt into your church's social media strategy for 2023 and beyond to maximize your reach of Millennials, Generation Z and the future of Generation Alpha.
Follow Along on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g
Come Hang with Nick on TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick?lang=en
Shownotes & Transcripts for this Episode:
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/048
SHOWNOTES
The Original 2023 Posting Strategy:
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/025
FREE E-Book on Posting to TikTok in 2023:
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook
To see Nick's Church's Social Media in Action:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crosscreekstudents/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4f4bABQ6RgYF8CHY9G4HKw
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@crosscreekstudents?lang=en
TIMECODES
00:00-04:37 Intro
04:37-06:55 Why I'm shifting from posting less content on social media in 2023
06:55-15:30 Reason #1: Quantity to Quality
15:30-18:59 Reason #2: Margin for more variety of Social Media posts
18:59-23:03 In Conclusion
TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:02):
Hey, what is up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I am with you as always as your host, Nick Clason. Excited and thrilled to be with you on this episode. And in this episode, I want to give you my updated church social media posting strategy for 2023. Uh, I will link in the show notes if you've been around any length of time, my ultimate, uh, church social media posting strategy. Um, and I, I gave that back, I believe, around Christmas time, um, in 2022. And so here we are. It's May or June, depending on when you're catching this, or maybe even later if you're watching back through the archives, um, or listening back to the archives. Um, but now I want to just give an update and, uh, say, Hey, here's what I have been doing. Here's where I have been, and here's what I now know and here's the direction that I am now gonna go.
Nick Clason (01:06):
So tune in for that. But before we do, uh, if you haven't already figured out, we are on YouTube. So join us over there. Give us a, like a subscribe, all that stuff. Super duper helps with the algorithm. Um, and we would super appreciate it if any of those things, uh, were available or a thing that you could do for us. Uh, if you're in a podcast catcher, uh, subscribe so that you get this episode for free. It will automatically, uh, download, automatically show up in your feed every single Thursday morning at 4:00 AM when these things drop. And a rating or a review, either on Apple Podcast, on the YouTube podcast, any of those places, Spotify, we are all those places. So we would welcome a rating or a review. Um, it really helps with the algorithm. And, um, I believe in this message. I hope that if you're listening, that you two also believe in this message.
Nick Clason (01:57):
And if you are finding it helpful, um, getting that word out there in some way, just by helping us give it a rating that helps other people find their show, that helps other people attach to the mission message, um, of what hybrid ministry is all about. If, if you're new, you know, what we're essentially saying is, uh, this is not a all about digital ministry, though. There is a lot of elements of digital ministry in here. Um, and this is not all about in-person ministry. What this really is, is this is a melding of the two, and it's helping kind of fuse where, where the road meets between, um, just in person or just on online or just in digital. And so that's why we're calling it hybrid. It's a both and sort of experience. That being said, most churches are really good with their in-person experiences, um, and they may not be as good with some of their hybrid experiences, and it could be streaming your service.
Nick Clason (02:57):
That could be what a hybrid experience is. That's what most churches, uh, do. That's, that's what most of their online or digital strategy is, is like, well, we streamed the service, COVID forced us to buy a camera, stick it in the back of the room and stream the service. And that's all well and good. And if you're doing that, I'd recommend continue doing it. But there are many more ways, I think, to enter into that space, uh, and to offer more than just your Sunday morning experience to your church members, your church attenders, and your perspective people. So again, thank you for joining us. One of the major players right now in 2023. Um, and this will still bear itself out and you're about to see and hear in my updated church, uh, media posting strategy in 2023 is short form, vertical based video. And I have created for you a 100% free ebook.
Nick Clason (03:49):
I would love for you to click the link in the show notes and head there and download your very own copy of it. Uh, it's just a way for you or a church social media manager or an intern or a college student to grab a phone and start creating tos completely free and from scratch. It is an ebook that we created step by step, walking you through. It's titled, have I Already Ruined My Church TikTok account? And we would just love for you to check that out and use it, and hopefully that will be to your benefit and your advantage as you're trying to lean into more and more of the hybrid space here in 2023 in an effort to reach Gen Z and millennials and beyond. So again, without any further ado, glad you're here. Thanks for joining us. Let's dive in to my updated church social media posting strategy in 2023.
Nick Clason (04:38):
The day was May 7th, 2023. That's the day I finally shifted my strategy from before. So a little bit of historical context so that you understand. Like I said, if you wanna go back and listen, drop the link to that in the show notes, check that out. But I have been posting three short form vertical video based content pieces every single day for five days a week. The reason I choose the five days a week thing is because I'm attempting to have rhythm and rest in a Sabbath and a weekend. And so I don't post on Friday and Saturday as a a member of church staff. Sun Sunday is for sure a working day, right? Um, and so therefore I just, I choose Friday and Saturday as my two days off. It works pretty well. So I post Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. That's why really, that's really the rhyme or reason works well with my schedule.
Nick Clason (05:32):
Um, and I would recommend that, like, I would recommend not overdoing it on your days off, because the, the reality is social media is relentless. It is a never ending beast, and it is always hungry. And so the more that you give to it, the more it's gonna want and the more it's gonna need. And so unless you have boundaries, there is really no, uh, stopping to it. And so it's up to you to create the boundaries to stay healthy, to stay in a spot that is gonna keep you mentally strong and all those types of things. So anyway, I've been posting three times a day, five days a week, and I just now shifted down and this is my new strategy. It's not earth shattering, and it's not a big shift. Okay? I've shifted down from three a day to two a day. So let's talk about what caused and what brought me to that shift.
Nick Clason (06:19):
It's multifaceted. There are two main points, and in the next couple sections, I'm gonna break down point number one, I'm gonna break down point number two. Um, but all of this is, while it's not monumental, it is a slight shift. And so if you have been following my recommended strategy, I will explain why I still think that there is benefit and merit to the three posts a day versus maybe the two posts a day. That is honestly ultimately gonna be up to you and up to your call. But before we do that, let me dive into my two-pronged reason for shifting from three a day to two a day. Let's go. Reason number one, why I am making this shift is I am hoping that shifting from posting three day to two a day, it's gonna take my weekly from 15 down to 10. Um, and there's already a rhythm baked in what I'm doing.
Nick Clason (07:12):
Like, for example, we're pre-filing all of our message content on video. And so out of that, I pull three, uh, shorts, three tos every single week, um, that are short message clips, um, Brady Shearer and the, and the people at Nucleus call it social sermons. Um, but essentially we're clipping a, a message with hopefully what I would consider to be a good hook, whether it is or not, I don't know. I'm still growing in that skill, I would say. And then at the end, we're pushing them to go consume longer sections of our YouTube, um, or podcast content. Uh, and so hopefully they find it and then they go, they go discover and, and become, you know, more engaged, more entrenched in what we're doing on social media. Anyway, all that to be said, right? Like, I am trying to, so, so there's three right there.
Nick Clason (08:02):
Okay, so outta my 10. Now I already have three. I only have to come up with seven more. And so ultimately I'm trying to shift, uh, creating quantity content to quality content. Now, I, I have not been trying to produce crap. Like, that's not been my goal, right? By any means. Like, I'm trying to do good work. I'm trying to be thoughtful, I'm trying to be creative, but there's just something about three a day that just feels relentless. And yesterday, May 7th was actually the very, and that May 7th, as of this recording, this will drop multiple weeks later. But, um, May 7th, when I first posted this, like, that was my very first day of posting only two a day. And it, it felt different. Like, I don't know it, you know, you might think like, what are you talking about? Like, it's only one different, like, I know, but it just, it, there's something about it, it just did.
Nick Clason (08:48):
And, uh, the illustration that I would make is I'm trying to produce really good quality content now, like part of the quantity, um, has been a little bit of an antiquated, I think, algorithm thing. And by antiquated, I mean, like a couple months ago,
Nick Clason (09:30):
I'm on a team. I'm one of three on our team. I have a director. There's me, I'm like the, the social media guru. And then we have, uh, another associate on our team. And, and she's a female. And so like the two of them, like I I, I dished out some social media stuff early on, like, Hey, you take three and you take three and I'll take the remainder. And they each both struggled with it for different reasons. Um, and, and so I pulled us back together and I said, what if we filmed some stuff together? We got all of us on camera at the same time. Instead of it just being like my talking head than your talking head, than your turn for your talking head. And they loved that idea. It was easier for them, but that dumped a lot more of the editing load back on my plate.
Nick Clason (10:12):
And so as a result of that, that's why I'm making this shift. The other thing is, you, you're in grow mode. I think when you're starting from scratch and you're doing a lot a day, we've, we've grown a lot. Go back to the last episode, I'll link it in the show notes. I give you my progress support. We have a fair bit of followers, we have a fair bit of subscribers in all four of the places. And so I think we've established ourselves. So now I wanna start creating really good content because that is the other thing that the recent TikTok algorithm has made very clear, is that like they are now going for good solid quality content. It's not just about hopping on a trend or a sound. And if you're on that sound, you can ride that wave to a lot of views, a lot of subscribers like that just doesn't work anymore.
Nick Clason (10:56):
I mean, and you saw that born out in some of my most recent like deep dives into analytics, is that like, we're not catching those waves the way that we were hoping that we would. And so therefore we have to not just try to rely on good cap cut templates or good trending sounds and funny dances. We have to actually create quality content that people are going to want to see, watch and consume. That's gonna be the path forward. And so to do that, I'm trying to pull back the number of, of posts I do a day so that I can spend more time on quality content. Right now, I am doing a series, you can check it out. It's at Cross Creek Church right now. I'm hoping it'll change to at Cross Creek students, but TikTok and name changes. So, um, but I'm doing a series, um, on all of our, our short form video platforms called Grow.
Nick Clason (11:47):
And i, I want to give bible and Bible study hack ideas. And so I'm opening with a hook with, it's all gonna be like bot ai voice, uh, filtered. And so it says like, this Bible study hack is an absolute game changer. That's how it starts. And then I post screenshots from the Bible app, or I post, uh, screenshots or downloaded images from other things. Uh, like the one today is gonna be about the, uh, printing press and how we now have access to the Bible everywhere. The early church didn't have that, right? We have it now in our pockets on our devices. Um, I also post one about like second Timothy three 16, how God's word is, uh, God breathe and useful for teaching, re repeating, correcting and training and righteousness and how that's gonna benefit to us. And so break down some of those verses give them hacks in the you version Bible app.
Nick Clason (12:42):
So that's gonna require some more effort on the prep side before I just get out there and start farting out, right? Some, like, some some TikTok. So I'm trying to put in some good thoughtful preparation, and then once I do the prep, then I have to turn around and edit it. So I'm, I'm really seeing a lot of these things from start to finish. In a lot of cases, if you're like a church social media manager, you might just be on the editing portion of it. And so you have the time and the bandwidth. Um, if you have content creators, pastors, whatever you're gonna call them on the backend doing the work, great. Like keep, keep letting them pump that stuff out. And the more you can produce, the better. If you have a good strategy and can post more than five times a day and you're handing it off some people on their days off and whatever, like yes, yes to all of that, right?
Nick Clason (13:29):
But at the end of the day, like, I am making this move to just try and build in a little bit more, uh, margin for me. And so, um, like I said, I'm, I'm trying to, um, in addition to creating good content, I'm trying to become a little bit more aggressive on my edits too. Um, spending more time on my edits, edits that are gonna be, um, good and stop the scroll and grab people's attention and all those types of things. So all of that just takes more time. And the more time I have, uh, is gonna be used to create 10 really good pieces of content every single week that I may have to edit every single one of them in like Adobe Premier Pro or my video editing software of choice. Um, as opposed to just pulling some random quick ones out off my phone, which is what I, I have been doing for some of the filler pieces.
Nick Clason (14:18):
There's nothing wrong with it. I mean, quite honestly, on my personal YouTube shorts, I posted, uh, one of those Jonas Brothers filters a couple weeks ago. Like, don't get stressed, we're gonna get figured out. Oh, deep conversations at the Waffle House. You might have seen it if you've been on TikTok, if not, you're welcome for that glorious singing in your ear holes. But I posted that and it's got like 53,800 views on YouTube and it helped drive my subscribers up over like 30 overnight. So you never know when one of those is just gonna like catch. And quite honestly, I posted it a week and a half ago and yesterday was when I saw my subscribers just freaking skyrocket, like outta nowhere. And so those still play a part. Those still work and those still happen, you know, every now and then. And so, um, leave space for some of those good cap cut templates, I would say for some of those good training audios, um, so that you can ride some of those waves cuz that that stuff does still happen.
Nick Clason (15:19):
So that's reason number one. I'm, I'm hoping to, uh, shift from quantity to quality. I'm hoping to buy back some, some time and some margin just in my working flow and schedule. Reason number two is I would like to create additional quality content that's not just video based. Now, hear me right when I say that you're gonna be, like you said, video was king and it is, and it, it a hundred percent still is. Everything we've posted on social media since I've been at my church has essentially been video based and I love it. Um, but I
Nick Clason (16:19):
He needed to sign off on that p i p and if he didn't like see it through to the end, we had, we had to and were going to let him go. Um, but my schedule that day was stacked. I had like two liter lunches, um, or a liter coffee and a liter lunch. I had several other meetings filtered in there. And so my boss at the beginning of the day sent me, um, his like templatized, p i p and maybe one that he'd used for someone else before. And by the time I got to that meeting, I literally swapped out the name that he sent me on his, with my, my residence's name and flew into the meeting five minutes late, slapped it down and had the conversation. And, uh, I told my boss about it later and he's like, that's not the way to have that conversation.
Nick Clason (17:03):
And I knew that, right? I just didn't have the margin in my schedule that was necessary that day. There was no other gaps, there was no other breaks to make that happen. And in a lot of the same way, the three a day is very aggressive. It's an aggressive growth strategy and it's caused me to not have any additional margin because I do want to lean into some carousel posts on Instagram that are more like learning based. Um, and that's gonna just take some time with me sitting down in Photoshop, building some of those out, thinking through them. And so all of this really, I would say at the end of the day is, is to build out a more robust social media strategy. One that is including good, strong and frequent quality content, short form video based things, but also has some supplemental content happening like on our Instagram feeds and stuff like that.
Nick Clason (17:54):
And so this isn't because Instagram, uh, is not working on reels anymore, it very much still is, we're still catching fire on there. Um, you know, I I just have a bigger vision and more things I want to do. So more feed posts more, I would like to do more longer form YouTube videos that aren't just messages. Like I would like to start creating some classes and, and fun things like that. But like, I don't have the margin for it. Some podcasts that are more regular, like I would like to do some of those. I don't have the margin for those. And so the, the more things, more a more fleshed out parent Facebook strategy, like, uh, any of that stuff I don't have the time for right now because of what I'm doing with, with Rios. And so this is hopefully gonna help me take a step back on the video slightly.
Nick Clason (18:39):
I, I'm, I'm, I, it's still king and so I don't want to abandon it at all, but I just wanna take a slight step back, focus on my editing and my content and then focus on my additional pieces of content, additional avenues of social media, um, as we trudge forward. So that is why I am shifting here in 2023. So ultimately, in conclusion, this is a margin move for me. I gave it a fair shake, an eight to nine month runway. We evaluated it, we've done that in recent episodes. Um, we took a couple accounts from zero and, and complete scratch to where they are today. And that the, the aggressive three times a day vertical video posting strategy helped get us there. Um, and frankly, I am in a church that, you know, when I, when I dropped my strategy for you, I was taking it from a multi-site megachurch with people from all over the Chicagoland area that called our church home and was still very much in the midst Andros of C O V I D or at least like living in the wake of that to a church that is in Texas in the conservative Bible belt, where they very much live out an in-person experience.
Nick Clason (19:49):
And so those were not apples to apples by any means. And so I was in a church, has a very in-person, um, environment and strategy. And so leaning into a hybrid ministry in there, still necessary for generation Z, not necessarily because it's like a Bible belt, you know, thing. But Gen Z still appreciates and uses hybrid ministry. We've even seen it here. People have appreciated it and liked it, but it's been a shift and it's, it's not the norm for what you would normally see in Texas. And so, uh, I, I say all of this to say like, I only wanna point out how big and how long and how far that hill was that we have been taking. And now as we step back, as we do deep dive into some analytics, it is causing us to shift ever so slightly. And that is why.
Nick Clason (20:38):
And so I hope that you, um, you know, I hope that you can take my context and compare it to yours and like, is this true for us as well or do we have the margin to continue to keep going with what we've been doing? Like I just want to let y'all know and be honest with you, like, this is where I am, this is where I'm coming from and I, um, always just wanna shoot it straight with you. Like here's where I am, here's where I'm coming from and here's how it's going. And uh, I will always do that and I will never fabricate or lie or say one thing's going better than another. Like this is just what it is and how it is. And, and this is where we are today as it stands. And so when I make another shift, you guys will be the first to hear about it.
Nick Clason (21:24):
Cuz I love to workshop it. And, and part of the reason why is y'all help give me a community, uh, for me to like, filter out some of my thoughts. I'll make shifts. But like sitting down to prep this podcast helped me figure out the, these are my two main reasons why I'm making this shift and that makes me more articulate in my job or with my boss or whatever the case might be. So I appreciate it, it's cathartic for me. I hope it's helpful for you. If it is, please drop us a rating, a review, all those things. Grab the free ebook, that will subscribe you to our email newsletter list. And it'll also give you a freebie on your own that you can use and help. Um, moving forward for a social media posting guide and strategy. Um, as always, we are appreciative of you. If you found this episode helpful, please consider sharing it with a friend, a family member, a coworker, a grandparent, your cat. I don't care. But sharing really helps. So if that's something that you have the margin or are able to do, please consider sharing it. We love you guys. Thanks for sticking around until the end and until always, that's not how I do it. Let's, I butchered it.
Nick Clason (22:35):
How do I say it?