Episode 106

Start Your Church Social Media From Scratch

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About this Episode

πŸ”₯ [FREE] Hybrid Ministry Strategy GuideπŸ”₯

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DESCRIPTION
Church Social Media and Digital Communication complete starting from scratch guide.
How do you start posting online and to digital if you don't have anything set up yet?
No infrastructure?
No plan?
No video equipment?

This 4th and final episode of the "Hybrid Tools" series will not only show you how to deploy the tools we've discussed in the previous 3 episodes, but will tell you exactly what to start posting to get things going!
PREVIOUS EPISODES:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLPfgGH9Nbunic_FErarFIx

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πŸ““SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/106

Step #1 Website Builder: Nucleus
//Nucleus Website Builder
https://www.nucleus.church

Step #2 Determine Your Platform
//VidIQ
https://vidiq.com/hybrid

//YouTube for Churches
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLHMhNNfqmmmAsKRJ1VCBJl

Step #3 What to Start Posting this Week
//Complete Hybrid Guide
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

Step #4 Work Up to More and Better Content
//Metricool

https://metricool.com/

πŸ‘‰ 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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πŸ†“ FREEBIES πŸ†“
πŸ“… "The Full Hybrid Ministry Strategy"
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

πŸ–₯️ "My 9 Favorite DYM Resources"
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

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🍩 "FREE World's Greatest Donut Event Guide"
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😨 "Have I already Ruined my TikTok Account?"
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook

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πŸ› οΈTOOLS
Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products
VIDIQ
https://vidiq.com/hybrid

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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πŸ•°οΈTIMECODES
00:00 Church Social Media
01:25 Step #1 Website
03:01 Step #2 Determine Your platform
07:31 Step #3 What to Post This week
13:47 Step #4 Work Up to More and Better Content

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✍️TRANSCRIPT

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:14:00
Nick Clason
Church and youth ministry. Social media. Marketing and communications. As we've been exploring in this playlist linked right here at the top of the screen, we have looked at how important having the right

00:00:14:00 - 00:00:31:19
Nick Clason
tool is. I talked about like different softwares that I'm using every single day. I've talked about different pieces of hardware that I'm using every single day as it pertains to cameras and microphones and lighting and then like putting it all together in the platforms that you use.

00:00:31:19 - 00:00:33:17
Nick Clason
But like, if you're watching this and you're like,

00:00:33:17 - 00:00:55:22
Nick Clason
what do I do for my church, social media, for my church marketing? Like, what is the first step if I'm just getting started, if I'm just starting from scratch, where do I go? What do I do? How do I do this? Here's how I would recommend getting started if you have nothing going for you.

00:00:55:22 - 00:00:57:01
Nick Clason
So first and foremost,

00:00:57:01 - 00:01:11:14
Nick Clason
determine the platforms that you want to be on. Okay? Like you got to know where you want to go. If you don't want a TikTok, then don't create a TikTok account. If you don't want YouTube, don't create a YouTube account.

00:01:11:14 - 00:01:16:08
Nick Clason
But if you call me and you're like, hey dude, I'm starting from scratch, what do you recommend?

00:01:16:08 - 00:01:41:11
Nick Clason
So for scalability and sustainability, what I would aim for, first and foremost, let's check this off. The box. Let's make sure you have a church website. If you're in youth ministry, that conversation might not begin with you. You might have a church communications person or something like that that they're doing the website. But if you're in youth ministry, make sure your youth ministry website is actually up to date.

00:01:41:11 - 00:02:08:18
Nick Clason
I can't tell you how many youth pastor websites I go to, and what's on there is like events that have already expired, like events from October and it's like November already or something like that. So get in, make sure and keep your website 100% completely up to date. maybe even send a visitor to it or somebody that doesn't go to your church and ask them, like, does this website look good and makes sense?

00:02:08:18 - 00:02:25:06
Nick Clason
And probably the most important question in that is, does this make sense? Because the fact of the matter is like, if you're in youth ministry and someone else is building your website, you don't have a lot of control over like the look and the feel of it. And then last than the last episode of our playlist, I talked about nucleus, right?

00:02:25:07 - 00:02:45:22
Nick Clason
I talked about, the nucleus website builder. So if you don't have one and you're in the market for one, check them out. They are affordable, their sales team is fantastic. And it's it's a church website, builder for churches. It's not like a WordPress site or something like that. It's like four churches. So check it out, make sure that your website is up to date.

00:02:45:25 - 00:03:08:12
Nick Clason
But then from there, if and when, like people land on your website, they know where to go. They know what to do. It makes sense. It's not confusing. They're not getting turned around. So if your website is good to go, that is like the very, very, very baseline of it. Okay. From there, you need to then determine, like we've talked about, you need you need to determine which platforms you're going to be on.

00:03:08:14 - 00:03:30:04
Nick Clason
Now, for me, because of the virality like potential of short form vertical video, I want to be on them off. And because we're going to be creating, at least I'm going to be creating a lot of short form, vertical based video. And all of the major platforms support short form, vertical based video. Then I'm just going to be on all four of them.

00:03:30:04 - 00:03:58:06
Nick Clason
But if you like have a theological or like preferential stance against one of the social networks for one reason or another, then make your determinations and choose what you want to do. But I would implore you to consider and not overlook the platform of YouTube 95% of teenagers say that they're on YouTube. That is also a corresponding statistic for adults as well.

00:03:58:06 - 00:04:32:28
Nick Clason
Like the majority of people are on YouTube. Now, if you think about what most people's just typical habits are on YouTube, aside from getting on there for entertainment, they're getting on there to ask specific questions. And so if you yourself are also answering specific questions, namely about God and faith and matters of salvation and things that that people might be looking for and and if you don't know the the answers to those things, like you can check out a resource like vid IQ linked down below.

00:04:33:00 - 00:04:56:28
Nick Clason
to kind of give you an idea for what people are searching on YouTube and what keywords are ranked really high. But if you don't want to use a platform like that, use your intuition. I mean pastors and church ministry leaders. Like that's actually what we're doing every single day and every single week when we're coming up with different sermon series that we think people need to and want to hear and explore and learn from.

00:04:56:28 - 00:05:14:25
Nick Clason
Like the whole idea of what YouTubers are trying to do is they're trying to get into people's heads and figure out, like, what are they? What are they asking? So that I can answer so that they'll click my video and so that they'll watch it? Pastors are doing the same thing, right? We're thinking like, what does my congregation need to hear?

00:05:14:25 - 00:05:19:03
Nick Clason
What is my student interested in? What do we look? What are they looking for?

00:05:19:03 - 00:05:36:12
Nick Clason
what do they need? Even though maybe they don't like, want it, you know? And so you're doing the same type of thing. And that's why I recommend in our, YouTube for Youth Ministry playlist, I recommend pre filming your messages. So, so so

00:05:36:12 - 00:05:38:12
Nick Clason
establish a YouTube account.

00:05:38:14 - 00:06:00:00
Nick Clason
And that's going to be like your home base right? Your website, home base, your YouTube is probably your home base for social media. Your longest form, your most like substantial pieces of content are going to live on YouTube. You're going to do long form, videos. And if you have the ability to do teaching videos, we're going to work up to that at one point in time.

00:06:00:00 - 00:06:20:27
Nick Clason
But if you don't have the infrastructure or bandwidth or editing, first and foremost, let me just say I'm available to reach out for coaching. link down below is a link if you are interested in you. You are starting to kind of build this from scratch, but you're getting hung up somewhere or stuck on something, or you just you just want to pick an outsider's brain.

00:06:21:04 - 00:06:52:27
Nick Clason
Click that link, reach out to me, start a conversation. First session is free, and let's just figure this thing out together. But that being said, you're going to work yourself up to full, long form YouTube based videos like that's where you're going to hope to end up. However, if you're just getting started and you want to like, start kind of like dipping your toe in the digital waters, you need to I would recommend that you have all the platforms that you're going to want to start using.

00:06:52:27 - 00:07:11:23
Nick Clason
Now, I don't know what other platforms might kind of burst on the scene here in just a little bit, but as of today, as of right now, what I think is useful and recommended for churches is YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. And I would probably rank them in that order.

00:07:11:23 - 00:07:19:20
Nick Clason
that being said, like I said, make your determination like what is going to work for you and your ministry in your context.

00:07:19:20 - 00:07:38:15
Nick Clason
But if you're going to work yourself up to full time YouTube long form accounts, in the meantime, we can start posting things on your shorts feed on YouTube. Okay, so we're going to work ourselves up to it and then to just get started, at a bare minimum, right. Like I have detailed

00:07:38:15 - 00:07:41:12
Nick Clason
an outline here in my 100% completely free e-book.

00:07:41:12 - 00:08:10:12
Nick Clason
You see it here on screen. If you are watching on YouTube, all kinds of different ideas and strategies and things to get you started. But to scale all that back because like, that's my full strategy to post per day, all those things long form video once per week, like all that stuff. But to scale that back to a more manageable, more bite sized and more like, helping someone like you who's starting from scratch with no other, like prior experience and no other infrastructure to get stuff like this done.

00:08:10:14 - 00:08:33:01
Nick Clason
Here's how I would recommend getting started. First of all, on Monday morning, if you have a service on Sunday with a sermon of some sorts on Monday morning, what I would do is I would post a like selfie style less than one minute, because YouTube shorts is a maximum of one minute long. And so if you make all of your short form vertical based videos less than one minute

00:08:33:01 - 00:08:33:20
Nick Clason
they will go.

00:08:33:20 - 00:08:55:08
Nick Clason
You will be able to use that singular piece of content across all platforms YouTube shorts, Instagram Reels, TikTok and Facebook. But on Monday I would do some sort of recap post, and all you're doing is a selfie style video and you are rehashing the sermon. If you're the pastor, this is great because you know your main points.

00:08:55:10 - 00:09:22:17
Nick Clason
You know your takeaway, you know your best illustration. Like just kind of riff on it for 60s like, you know, let's say, let's say yesterday your topic was, you know, living in let living life and community and how to love other sacrificially like Jesus did from first, or not from first, from John chapter 15. So you might hold your phone up and be like, you know, Jesus taught us the idea about living and giving our lives for other people.

00:09:22:23 - 00:09:43:22
Nick Clason
And you just kind of like you can riff on that for 60s. And if you're holding your phone, you can see the little timer, like how long it's taking, right? one thing that I think is good practice is this you're going to be posting this on reels. Okay? Or TikTok or YouTube shorts. And so people may not find it in a quote unquote timely manner.

00:09:43:29 - 00:10:10:28
Nick Clason
And so don't say something like yesterday at church, we talked about like drop that language, just dive straight into what the topic is, because if you want someone to find you, they're not finding you based on your like, calendar of events or the fact that you had church yesterday. So just just go straight to the content plus that like it's the first two seconds of a video or a reel that matters most.

00:10:10:28 - 00:10:31:03
Nick Clason
Getting people right to like, actually hook, pay attention and not leave. And so don't do this. Hey, this is pastor Bill here from, Calvary Church. And don't forget that yesterday we talked about life and community and not forget about the church picnic potluck. But I want to remind you that we, like, drop all that, right? Living life in communities hard.

00:10:31:06 - 00:10:55:13
Nick Clason
How do we do it? Well, Jesus actually gives us a roadmap. You see the difference between those two? Like one dropped the five second intro and the five second fluff, and it helps you, like, then be able to cram more content into your 62nd time limit. And also someone comes across this video three months later. It's okay because the content is still relevant and it's not timestamped in any sort of way.

00:10:55:14 - 00:11:19:07
Nick Clason
Now, if you are long form, filming your videos or posting a live stream, somewhere posted to YouTube, because what you can do then on YouTube is you can link a related video, right? And so if you have a short form video about the topic, you can link a long form video and then you get that person over to that section and that part of your channel, right?

00:11:19:07 - 00:11:47:21
Nick Clason
If YouTube is the the, the home base of your social media, then everything you're doing, you're going to want to get them over there to that thing. And if you create a little end card or a watermark that you put on your videos, it can also point them from other platforms over to YouTube. It can follow like a link in bio, on TikTok or on Instagram, or on Facebook and, and actually in Facebook, you can post a legitimately live, link that can take them to that platform.

00:11:47:21 - 00:12:26:01
Nick Clason
But then on on, let's say Wednesday, what I would do is I, would you like some sort of like devotional type thought? Similar, right. But different and unrelated to the sermon or like, you know, if if we're doing like the life and community and living sacrificially, then on Wednesday, I might just do a quick 62nd blurb video about love and the importance of love and, or or you could do a like a video, with no talking and just some, like some backing track and like some text on it.

00:12:26:01 - 00:12:48:25
Nick Clason
Right. And it's kind of like a how to video. And so you could title it like How to Love Someone and then like are three, three steps to loving Someone who's unlovable. Step one step two, step three. You can post something like that. So again it's it's adjacent or semi tied to your content. But again it it has the the purpose of being evergreen to be found later on down the road.

00:12:48:25 - 00:13:07:15
Nick Clason
And then Friday do something fun, post a bunch of memes post like something that shows your personality. and this is where I would. Even if you're in a church and you're not in youth ministry, this is where I would grab my book and I would start doing some of the things that I recommend. Blind ranking filters on TikTok.

00:13:07:22 - 00:13:25:17
Nick Clason
No, it or not, go to one side of the room of the other with yourself, your volunteers, your staff. you can do like, one of my favorite things is called drafts. And it's like talking about, ranking different, like things in different categories. Seven questions. telepathy. Like, all kinds of different, like, game styles that we've done.

00:13:25:17 - 00:13:43:25
Nick Clason
Again, all of those are listed in my e-book and you can just do like drafts Friday and every single Friday you post a draft, or you can sprinkle in a variety of those different pieces of content. But once you start doing these things on some sort of regular rhythm, some sort of regular clip, then you want to start working yourself

00:13:43:25 - 00:13:46:08
Nick Clason
up to be able to post once a day.

00:13:46:12 - 00:14:13:01
Nick Clason
Right? And my goal, what I do is I post once a day for every day that I work. So if you're in ministry, you probably are off like Friday and Saturday. So I post two months. right now I post two on Sunday, two on 1I2 on Tuesday, two on Wednesday, two on Thursday. but if you know so like if that's your schedule like post on the days that you're on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday or something like that, like figure out a rhythm within your calendar that you work, don't post on days that you don't work.

00:14:13:01 - 00:14:34:25
Nick Clason
Now, if you want to do some sort of scheduler, you can you can check out, scheduler that I've used in the past called Metro. Cool. it will get the videos on the thing, unlike the platforms, but just being honest like it, I don't think the algorithms really enjoyed it coming from a third party. So it took down a lot of my reach and a lot of my places, especially YouTube.

00:14:35:03 - 00:15:07:26
Nick Clason
And YouTube is, the platform that I'm actually, like, most interested in as a youth pastor in 2024 and beyond. And so I didn't like that my, my reach and my, my views were all down on YouTube and I, I blame that on the third party posting service. But, sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's helpful. if you're only using like, Facebook and Instagram, I do think you can use the meta business suite, to post things, and there is no issue with, throttle down reach because it's not third party, it's from meta directly.

00:15:07:26 - 00:15:27:15
Nick Clason
And so that is that is a worthwhile one. But getting on like TikTok in those type of things, that's that's trickier. and so then all throughout the rest of your week, like what else do you post? Well, you can post some, some photos, like photo dump type things, on your Instagram feed, in Facebook groups, Facebook pages.

00:15:27:17 - 00:15:56:18
Nick Clason
you can also post some a couple of like static graphics and one announcement, one announcement per week. No more than one announcement per week. and then if you have a Facebook group, try to drum up and build up some good community in there, maybe consider giving some giveaways and stuff like that to like kickstart and spark some conversation and community, so that it actually, can kind of carry on without you having to be the primary initiator of all of that content.

00:15:56:18 - 00:16:02:27
Nick Clason
But then you're gonna eventually work yourself up to two posts per day, right?

00:16:02:27 - 00:16:21:15
Nick Clason
and right now we're just at three a week, one every other day. And so to go beyond that, then start sprinkling in one on a, on the off days. Right. And so then your one every day and then start sprinkling in two on maybe two of the days out of the, out of the five total or whatever that might look like.

00:16:21:15 - 00:16:57:08
Nick Clason
And but then eventually to like, the biggest priority for me would be find a way to get your long form content down to a 15 minute type thing. That's why I recommend pre filming your messages, because a live stream is typically 30 to 35 minutes. But if you can get your long form down to to 15 minutes or so and that can be clipping your live or that can be, filming direct to camera, there's multiple different ways to kind of attack that, but start posting those videos to YouTube, work on your titles, work on your descriptions, work on your tags, and work on your thumbnails.

00:16:57:15 - 00:17:18:15
Nick Clason
Add those things to playlists on YouTube. All those things are helpful and you getting seen, found, and indexed in your community. and so that will also be an avenue to not only serve your church. People who weren't there live for the sermon, want to watch it again, whatever the case may be. and also potentially reaching new people.

00:17:18:21 - 00:17:39:00
Nick Clason
So that's how I would take all the different tools that we've talked about and how I would package them and make them hybrid. Now, the next episode, I actually do a sit down interview with my resident and he's been working with me now for, the last year at the church now. And he was an intern with me previously in a different context.

00:17:39:00 - 00:17:55:24
Nick Clason
And so I ask him his opinion of what it's been like to work in a hybrid ministry environment, what he learned from it, his thoughts, his takeaways, and, what he's going to take with him on into his next endeavor. So that video is going to be linked right here on screen. Tap that. We'd love to have you go check that out.

00:17:55:24 - 00:18:03:22
Nick Clason
But don't forget, as always, we're making digital discipleship easy, possible and accessible. So as always, stay hybrid.