Episode 080
๐ Stop Posting Church Announcements on Social Media
January 18th, 2024
19 mins 27 secs
Tags
About this Episode
โก [FREE] Crush Social Media This New Year โก
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book
2024 [FREE] Youth Ministry Masterclass on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg
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DESCRIPTION
๐ซ Are you tired of seeing church announcements flood your social media feeds? It's time to rethink this strategy and take a closer look at the potential hazards it poses.
๐นIn this video, we delve deep into the reasons why posting church announcements on social media might not be the wisest choice.
๐But, donโt worry! Weโll show you exactly what to do! And how to not lose your life to it! Especially if you follow our time management tips, which is a part of the 2024 Youth Ministry [on-demand] Masterclass
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg
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๐SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/080
//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://youtu.be/slB0Rmf_X0c
PURPOSE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
//OPUS.PRO [1 CLICK VIRAL SHORTS SOLUTION]
https://youtu.be/TiW4ooQpAvo?si=W_4pCZZbZmUnzsB9
//METRICOOL
https://metricool.com/
POST YOUR MESSAGES ON YOUTUBE
//[FREE] E-BOOK
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book
//$100 STARTER KIT
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit
//YOUVERSION LIVE EVENTS
https://my.bible.com/events
TAKE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA TO THE NEXT LEVEL
//OPUS.PRO [1 CLICK VIRAL SHORTS SOLUTION]
https://youtu.be/TiW4ooQpAvo?si=W_4pCZZbZmUnzsB9
//SONLIFE
https://www.sonlife.com/
//[FREE] E-BOOK
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book
IDEA #2: TELEPATHY
//ADOBE PREMIERE PRESETS
https://share.hsforms.com/1VL1oWwWwQ82PLwsPFkPITgnumis
IDEA #3: RANK 'EM
//DYM RANK 'EM RESOURCES
Christmas: https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/rank-%27em%3A-christmas-edition/christmas-games-9126.html
Fall: https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/rank-%27em---fall-edition/holiday-or-seasonal/fall-8962.html
IDEA #6: EMOJI PHRASEOLOGY
//MY FAVORITE 9 DYM PRODUCTS
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym
IDEA #8: SPIRITUAL PRACTICE VIDEOS
//SPIRITUAL PRACTICE VIDEOS
https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/spiritual-practice-videos/social-media/instagram-8804.html
WHAT TO DO ABOUT FACEBOOK?
//CANVA PRO FOR [FREE!]
https://youtu.be/g0FQWvKjP_E?si=D6jJLxEdkEy9z0FV
WHAT TO DO ABOUT INSTAGRAM?
//BUDGET GRAPHIC DESIGN EDITORS
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaIdZ-RLm5uVVlHj46FKrMYw
๐ STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HybridMinistry
Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz
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๐ FREEBIES ๐
๐
"1 Month Done for You Social Media Posting Tool"
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book
๐
"The Ultimate (and FREE!) Christmas Party Gude"
GUIDE: https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/christmas-party-run-sheet
PRACTICAL YM TIPS: https://www.youtube.com/@practicalyouthministrytips
๐ฉ "FREE World's Greatest Donut Event Guide"
GUIDE: https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/worlds-greatest-donut
๐จ "Have I already Ruined my TikTok Account?"
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook
๐น "Adobe Premiere Pro Presets for Animating Layers"
https://share.hsforms.com/1VL1oWwWwQ82PLwsPFkPITgnumis
======================================
๐ ๏ธTOOLS
Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products
//BEST DYM RESOURCES
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym
OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS
https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361
//YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit
AUTO POD
https://autopod.lemonsqueezy.com?aff=MX7Vv
TRY REV.COM FOR TRANSCRIBING
https://rev.pxf.io/R5nDOa
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๐ฐ๏ธTIMECODES
00:00-01:06 Stop Doing this on Social Media
01:06-04:14 What is the purpose of social media?
04:14-07:04 Post Your Messages to YouTube
07:04-11:42 Taking your social media to the next level
11:42-12:12 Idea #1: Drafts
12:12-13:45 Idea #2: Telepathy
13:45-14:04 Idea #3: Blind Rankings
14:04-14:20 Idea #4: Know it or Nah
14:20-14:33 Idea #5: Staff Videos
14:33-15:39 Idea #6: Emoji Phraseology
15:39-15:44 Idea #7: Sermon Clips
15:44-16:35 Idea #8: Spiritual Practice
16:35-16:46 Where to Post all these videos?
16:46-17:34 What to do about Facebook?
17:34-19:27 What to do about Instagram?
โ๏ธTRANSCRIPT
Try Transcribing for Yourself at Rev.Com
http://www.rev.pxf.io/R5nDOa
Nick Clason (00:00):
Summer camp, fall retreat D. Now your next outreach experience, the reality is there are always things to do. You're always trying to get students to come to you. You're always trying to get people to fill and populate your next church events. So naturally, what do we do? Well, we need to put it on the church website. We need to make sure that it gets listed in the church bulletin. We need to add it to the pre-roll before the service and post it to social media. Stop it. No, seriously, stop it. Stop posting your announcements to social media. Don't do it. Don't do it. We're tempted always to post our announcements to social media because we think it's another outlet, another strategy, another place to inform people. But the reality is nobody wants that on their social media feeds. I hear you. You're like, yeah, but what else should I do? Nobody listens, dude. I get it. Okay, but let's look at it. What should we be doing on social media?
Nick Clason (01:07):
So stop posting your announcements on social media. I saw this reel the other day about this guy talking about the Red Bull social media experience, and he said, red Bull is crushing it. He said, what are the local pizzerias and restaurants in your town doing? People are not getting on social media and thinking like, man, I wonder what's on the menu today. Because if you look at a pizzeria on social media, you know that they're going to be posting or you know that they're going to be serving pizza. That's just a part of the experience. And so he said, what Red Bull's doing on social media, we know that Red Bull serves Red Bull energy drinks, but what their primary goal on social media is entertainment. So that's why people get on social media. They get on social media to be entertained. Can we as a church adopt some of those strategies not forever and forsaking some of the spiritual components that can come about on social media, but can we do that on social media?
Nick Clason (02:08):
And the fact is, yeah, actually social media has ushered in a new era with the discovery platforms, with short form video based and videos are still king. And you know what you can do? You can actually take clips and snippets of your message and use this strategy right here. It's linked at the top of the video and this completely free tool Opus Pro. Check out in that video link in this description, link in that video description. But the fact of the matter is you can use tools out there. You can use AI to help you and aid you if you're not a great video editor, if you don't know how to clip things up on social. But the fact is, you might even be thinking, well, what am I supposed to do? How can I post things there? There's a lot of services out there to post things on the feed.
Nick Clason (02:52):
So you may be scheduling your lock-in post. You may be scheduling your church announcement post. You may be scheduling your summer camp. Stop doing those things. You can create videos, you can create moments of entertainment, and you can use a posting service if you want. Linked Below is my experience with a posting service called Metrical. That's probably who I would recommend. I do still like to just post everything I do live. I find that the algorithms prefer that and that things just perform better from a views and metrics standpoint. But if you don't have time for that and you're like, there's no way I could do that, then check out Metrical. It's completely free for most up to a certain number of posts and it's worth it. But you never want to get on a feed. Think about your own habits. You never just want to get on a feed that's just littered with, come to this event, come to this event, come to this event, come to this.
Nick Clason (03:47):
That's boring. And you know what? Your social media probably reflects that. If all you're doing is posting announcements, you're probably only getting a single digit number of likes because the reality is that's not what people are looking for when they get on social media. And so I know you got a lot to announce, you got a lot to get out there, but social media is not the place. So what should we be doing? Well, let's check that out. So churches, youth pastors, regardless of where you are in this on the org chart at your church, what should you be doing? Well, number one, start posting long form to YouTube. And now when I say that if you have live streaming capabilities in your room and you don't have time to sit down direct to camera, then go ahead and post your live streams to YouTube.
Nick Clason (04:38):
But if you don't, I don't. I'm a youth pastor and we are in our very own room, our very own space, and our room is not outfitted for live streaming capabilities. So we actually sit down very similar to what I'm doing here direct to camera. I have a teleprompter and I do deliver a message there. Now, that entire strategy is laid out completely for you, for free right here in my 100% completely free ebook. But that is the baseline. That's the basis for all my social media, everything else sort of branches off of there. So all of our messages that we produce and that we perform, everything that we produce in the room, we also then go ahead and do it directly on YouTube. So pre film your messages, it gives you two strategic advantages. Number one, if you don't have live streaming capability, it gives you a way to film it that is good, helpful, beneficial, looks good, direct to camera.
Nick Clason (05:32):
You can do most of that for under a hundred dollars. That's also linked below in the show notes with just a cell phone camera and a few little pieces of gear. But then from there, what you can do is you can take those messages, post them to YouTube. You also get an opportunity to practice your message. So then when you are standing up live in the room in front of a bunch of students, it's not the first time that you're looking at that material. You have done it before. You have delivered it before, once you've pre-filed, done direct to camera. The one thing that I love about that is in YouTube, they have a description thing, just like me, a lot of things down to the description in this video. Also over at hybridministry.xyz/080 But you can do the same kind of concept.
Nick Clason (06:16):
You can paste a next steps form. And so for every single one of your messages, you can push students towards a next steps form. We like to use the you version events, live events for in the room. Students can follow along, take notes, read scripture, but we also post the link to that in every single video. So if they're watching on a laptop, then they can sit down, they can scroll through that on their phone, they can take notes, they can engage with the Bible on their phone right in front of them. So you can link certain things. And then by the way, hey, if you are announcing summer camp, you can be like, Hey, summer camp registration link in the description. You don't have to make it some static boring graphic post. You can actually weave it into the rest of your strategy. But then dovetailing off of your long form YouTube videos is this next piece that you definitely don't want to miss.
Nick Clason (07:05):
So after YouTube video, the next thing I recommend that you do is that you post shorts, reels, tiktoks to your feeds. And the good news is all four of the major platforms, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook if you want to, it's really easy to link with your Instagram and TikTok are all asking for similar content. So what you can do now on social media for the first time in a lot of years is you can create one piece of content for one platform, but you can spread it across all fours. You can post the same thing to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts, and Facebook Ourto for example, I posted these this week. This week, a couple weeks leading up to Christmas when I'm filming this. You're going to get this in the new year, but we do thing, and I'm going to detail, it's actually detailed right here.
Nick Clason (07:53):
I'll completely free my ebook, but we're going to go through nine ideas that you can do to start doing entertainment based things on your social medias and stop just posting announcements. One of the things we do are drafts stole this, saw this on someone's TikTok somewhere. So we were doing drafting Christmas movies across all four platforms. We had on TikTok, we had 383 views. We had on YouTube, 280 views we had on Instagram, 214 views. And then on Facebook we had 175 views, which totaled 1052 views across all four platforms. Those aren't great numbers by the way either. That's just very standard. I picked the second most recent post that I posted just to give you a good example of a real time strategy idea. I'm not trying to highlight my best one or anything like that, right? But here's the question. Would you like for your content to get in front of a thousand people probably, right?
Nick Clason (08:46):
And that wasn't great. We've had posts that have hit 13,000 on Instagram, 27,001 time we did a football draft. So we've had way, way bigger success. But then that was a entertainment based one. Also in the same week, we've posted a spiritual based one that one did not do as well. And this is actually an underperformer in my opinion. And we've had ones that do similar to the draft response in around those numbers on all the four platforms. But we had on TikTok, we had 224 views. We had 211 on Instagram, we had only 15 on Facebook, which is pretty low. And then 1 42 on YouTube, which is also relatively low, but still that total to 592. I know for me that feels low, but we don't have 592 students or people come to our youth ministry program. So we post fun content. We also post spiritual content, and then that's anchored underneath the baseline by our long form YouTube video.
Nick Clason (09:48):
And what's crazy is that Opus Pro, the message clip that came through Opus Pro. And so you'll notice there's a little overlay that says, watch the full video on Cross Creek students YouTube channel that is just a preset that I made. And every single one of our videos spits out with that little watermark. I can change it, I can customize, I can do. The stats aren't crazy, but you should subscribe because this is actually part of the 2024 Youth Pastor Masterclass. We're right dead in the middle. If you subscribe and if you hit the bell, you'll get notified when the next video drops. But I like to think about it like this or I want, but I like to think of it like my neighbor. I want to share the gospel with my neighbor. I want to tell them about Jesus. But every single time I have a conversation with my neighbor, I'm not sitting down and telling them about Jesus.
Nick Clason (10:34):
I'm working the relationship. I'm having a conversation. I grew up in church. I grew up in a ministry called Sun Life, and they have a thing called spiritual, CPR, cultivate, plant Reap. And really the cultivate stage is just build the friendship. Plant is like sprinkle in seeds of spiritual conversations in the gospel and then reap is like present the gospel and ask them for a decision to follow Jesus. Yes or no. And a lot of times on social media, we take the approach of reap, ask them for a spiritual decision, ask them to respond to the gospel, yes or no every single time as opposed to trying to cultivate our audience as opposed to trying to plant little seeds of curiosity, spiritual moments, things like that. So here are ideas, things that I do in my own personal context. It's all outlined here. Am I completely free?
Nick Clason (11:23):
Ebook? You should definitely check it out if you haven't yet. But it will help you take your social media from being boring and dumb and announcement based to entertainment based and personality driven. Not just your personality, but students, other volunteer leaders, other staff that you might have. So these are things that we do. We do a thing called a draft, and that's what you just saw the results from. But two people sit down and then they just draft things under a certain category. We've done Christmas movies, we've done potatoes, we've done burger places, we've done Christmas songs, we've done Thanksgiving food, we've done Halloween Candy, we've done Avengers, we've done Blue Characters. Literally anything you can think of. One person next person, one person next person. The only caveat is you can pick anything you want, but if it's already been taken, it's kind of off the board.
Nick Clason (12:12):
The next thing we do is a fun little game called Telepathy or Wavelength or nsync or just guess the number. And two people sit down and one person's thinking of a number, the other person's asking them certain categories, and then the person that has the number in their brain, they're telling the other person their answers from that category based on their number. So for example, if I'm thinking of the number one and you ask me for a day of the week, I'm going to say Monday. And then if you say food, I'm going to say Tomatoes. Okay? And so then at the end of it, you ask four things, four different things. So day of the week, food, movie, Avenger, and then you give 'em all. And then at the end, the other person, I was asking the categories, they say, are you thinking number one?
Nick Clason (12:57):
And if they got it right, they got it right. If they got it wrong, they got it wrong. The one thing I love about this game is we intro it like this. Hey, we're playing this game. The number's going to be right here on the screen. The number pops in on the screen. You can edit that in an editor like Adobe Premier Pro, I got completely free presets. Link down below if you want some of those that will do animations like this and like that, and rotate in, rotate out all those things, all the things you just saw on the screen. If you're not watching on YouTube, all those things are in the link in the description. Go grab the free presets. But if not, you can do that on your phone in a phone editor like TikTok or Cap Cut. But you can say, Hey, the number's on the screen, close your eyes if you don't play along.
Nick Clason (13:37):
Alright, here we go. And then that person can open their eyes and they can watch and they can actually try to guess the number. So it's actually engaging the person on the other side of the phone. I like to do blind rankings. TikTok has a blind ranking filter, so you can blind rank all kinds of things. Disney movies, Disney characters, and a blind rank is just you're ranking them in a one through 10 or one through five order without knowing what's coming next. I also have some examples of that on Download Youth Ministry, a link to that in just a second. I like to do these things called Know it or Nah, so you've probably heard it where they play a little five second clip of a song on TikTok. Just find those audios on TikTok. And then you choose one side of the room.
Nick Clason (14:14):
So I'll get four or five people if they know it, they go to this side. If they don't, they go to that side. We'll do staff video. So we'll have our staff participate in certain things we were just giving away for our Christmas party. Craig Cash, our senior pastor's name is Craig. We were giving away Craig Cash, and so we did the Craig Cash Olympics, we did all kinds of Christmas type things. One of my favorites is a game I have on DYM called Emoji Phrase theology. People just trying to guess the emoji phrase. And I'll just sit down or have a student sit down or a leader sit down or walk around and quiz students, Hey, what's this emoji phrase saying? What's this camp emoji phrase saying, what's this Christmas emoji phrase saying? Was this back to school emoji phrase saying, and I'll clip those in.
Nick Clason (14:54):
So I take a game that's already created, and instead of just doing the kind of static standard screen-based graphics, we customize it to our own space. Link down below are my favorite nine DYM products that I have. Several of them are hybrid based. Several of them don't just focus on the screen only or digital, but it's a melding together of the two. And you can take that next layer to the next level, right? Like my emoji phrase, theology. There's a social media component, but you can take it to the next level and customize it with a host, asking people the answers to those questions. And just some simple video editing on the backside, whether that be in a software like Adobe Premiere Pro, or you can do it on TikTok or in Canva, or not Canva, but Cap Cut. I always get Canva and Cap cut mixed up.
Nick Clason (15:40):
You can use the video clips out of Opus Pro like I was talking about. I got some spiritual practice videos on Download Youth Ministry. One of my favorites is someone's scrolling through TikTok and you just point to the screen right here and it says, stay or scroll, read the Bible with me. Point, point, point, point, point, point, point. Wait a second. And you say, all right, thanks for staying. Let's read the Bible together. And you read a passage of scripture right there on social media. That's all you do. It's super basic, super simple, but it has a great response because what you're doing then is you're cultivating that relationship. You may get those people with the draft or the instinct telepathy game or the blind ranking or the know it or not back and forth, and then you're like, Hey, let's do some spiritual stuff together.
Nick Clason (16:19):
Let's memorize scripture. Let's read the Bible, let's do a prayer. All those types of things. And you can do a lot of that stuff, especially with the bedrock of your messages. Long form video, you can do a lot of that stuff on Opus Pro. Saves you hours. It saves me hours every single week. So continuing on our strategy, you can post all those types of videos to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts, and Facebook. But what about Facebook groups? Well, let's check it out. You should definitely have Facebook groups. You should have a Facebook page also because a Facebook page is where those things dump into, but then have a group associated with that. If you're a youth pastor, my only strategy that I recommend on Facebook is a Facebook parents group. That's mostly where they are. You can post things like car ride questions, and you can use Canva Pro.
Nick Clason (17:06):
It's completely free for churches. It's also linked below. We did an entire video on it, so you can go check that out in the description, but you can just create square graphics for your parents to talk about stuff with their students on the way home. And that's just a great discipleship strategy. If you're a church communications person, you should probably have a little bit more active Facebook group. But for a youth pastor, most students aren't on Facebook, but most parents are. And so that's where the strategy comes in. It's for the parents. Lastly, on Instagram, you got the feed. You also got stories on stories. The ultimate goal, I would say, is to engage with your people. So repost things if they tag you for sure. You can also post engagement style questions. What's your favorite Christmas movie? What's the best Halloween candy? What's your New Year's resolution?
Nick Clason (17:53):
What's one thing you're going to be doing this weekend using only emojis? Tell us what you did this last week. Stuff like that. Engage with your audience. A lot of times, I'll take a reel that I post, so I don't post every single one of those reels to the feed, though that option has recently turned off, so I have to post it, then go back later and take it off the profile grid. I'm sure there's a setting I'm missing, but nonetheless, I'll sometimes then share the reels that didn't also get shared to the feed into a story, and that's just a way to do engagement. And then I may throw a question sticker like a slider bar or a question or a quiz sticker or something like that. Just engagement. That's my goal in stories. And then on the main feed, just post photos of your people and post recap photos from a Wednesday night, from a Sunday morning, from a Sunday night.
Nick Clason (18:36):
Brady Sheer is doing these carousel based education, entertainment based carousel posts where ask the question and he answers it. They are money, and I think that they are here to stay, and you don't need a lot of graphical work to do some of those things. You can do something simple and easy and basic like that simply on Canva. Or even simply maybe in the Instagram stories editor, we have a complete playlist where we look at budget graphic editors, if that's something you're interested in. It's also linked below. But finally, speaking of education, that's one of the main ways that we help disciple and teach our students about Jesus and help them take meaningful next steps towards him, which is the next video in this 2024 Youth Ministry Masterclass video linked right here on the screen. We'll talk to you next time as we're making discipleship easy, possible and accessible. So as always, stay hybrid.