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

======================================

DESCRIPTION
😫 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.

📹In this video, we delve deep into the reasons why posting church announcements on social media might not be the wisest choice.

👍But, don’t worry! We’ll 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

======================================
📓SHOWNOTES
//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

👉 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

======================================

🆓 FREEBIES 🆓
📅 "1 Month Done for You Social Media Posting Tool"
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

🎅 "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

🍩 "FREE World's Greatest Donut Event Guide"
GUIDE: https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/worlds-greatest-donut

😨 "Have I already Ruined my TikTok Account?"
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook

📹 "Adobe Premiere Pro Presets for Animating Layers"
https://share.hsforms.com/1VL1oWwWwQ82PLwsPFkPITgnumis

======================================
🛠️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

//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

--------------
🕰️TIMECODES
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?

✍️TRANSCRIPT
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.

You can get full episode transcripts at:
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/051

You can watch the show at:
http://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick

TikTok:
http://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick

Instagram:
http://www.instagram.com/hybridministry

SHOWNOTES
http://www.nucleus.church

TIMECODES
00:00-02:45 Intro
02:45-07:36 Should My Church Focus on Social Media or Website?
07:36-17:06 There are too many announcements to make, what do I do?
17:06-21:56 What are Digital Media Ideas for Churches in 2023?
21:56-25:03 What are my Top 5 Cell Phone Apps as a Content Creator
25:03-26:02 Outro

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:01):
Well, hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. In this episode, we are going to be answering three pressing and one maybe not so pressing church communication related questions. Before we do, excited to have you with us. I am here drinking my coffee Joffreys if you know, you know, in my new Avengers mug, cuz we just got back from Disney World. It was amazing. Uh, I took a week off from recording and editing and all the things, but you missed nothing cuz we did some peer recording. So you are all set to go. Anyway, pumped about that. If you, uh, want to see any of the recaps of that stuff, it is on my YouTube channel, my TikTok, or if you just wanna see me hold my new Avengers mug that is currently streaming on YouTube right now as well. If you're just listening to this, you can go to the link in our show notes and hit the YouTube button, hit the subscribe, hit the bell, hit the, like, all those things are good for the algorithm.

Nick Clason (01:03):
Help us get found. If you're just watching on YouTube and you're like, wait, this is a podcast. Yes it is, it's a podcast. Come hang out with us. Link in the show notes for that in every single episode we provide for you and 100% completely free transcript. Just head to the website and check it out. And, uh, in addition to that, we have a completely free ebook. It is basically your step-by-step guide on how to create a TikTok, post it, save it, and then post it to other social platforms so that you can be up on what's going on social media right now, vertical video is king and it is giving the church a leg up for one of the very first times in social media history. So we don't want you to be missing out on that. Finally, hey, if you are here, a rating, a review would be incredible.

Nick Clason (01:51):
It really helps us get indexed and found and helps get this word out to other people. So if you feel so inclined to leave a rating or a review, we would just absolutely love that. Without any further ado, let's dive into these three pressing and one not so pressing church communication questions. They are going to be question number one, what should I focus on first? Social or my website? Question number two, there are altogether too many events happening at my church to effectively announce anything. What do I do? I have some advice on that. And what is the best digital media for churches in 2023? What should I be doing? And they're maybe not as popular out there. Like, what are some ideas? And finally, what are my top five used apps on my phone? So there you go. That's what we're diving into. Let's go.

Nick Clason (02:46):
Okay, question number one, what should I focus on? Should it be social or should it be my website? And this one's, honestly, my personal estimation, pretty easy. I think the answer should be your website. Here's a couple reasons why. It is your home base. If you create your website, you own it. You are the, you are the primary real estate manager of it. If you're on social media and you're growing a following over there, you should do that as well. But if you had to pick between one or the other, social media is a little bit finicky because it changes its rules. I e the algorithm you've been there before where someone's gotten big on, on some sort of platform, whether it be Facebook or Instagram or TikTok. And then one of those platforms shifts underneath them, the algorithm, and they're no longer getting found.

Nick Clason (03:38):
Their videos are not getting as many plays, they're not getting as many likes, and that's because they are not the owner of their content. They're on borrowed or rented space on social media. Meanwhile, on your website, you can make it everything that you need or want it to be. And I honestly recommend, and I, this is not an original idea with me at all. I stole this one 1000% from the guys up at Pro Church Tools Nucleus Church, but make it your centralized hub. The reason for that is because like on social media, for example, you might post, uh, a fleeting thought or an idea or a devotional or, uh, engage in ministry in the dms in some sort of way with people. However, if, if you are using social media as your primary vehicle for announcements, if it is a glorified billboard, then people are going to be like, wait, I saw that post a couple of weeks ago, let me scroll back and try and find it.

Nick Clason (04:37):
That's a pain in the butt, man. But if you put it on your website and if they know, if people know that it's on your website, then what you can do is you, when they ask you a question, you can be like, Hey, yeah, the answer is whatever. But also it's on the website. Anytime you need that and you do that a few times to any individual person and they learn, you kind of start to feel like a jerk, like early on with it. Like we're in that phase right now. We just got a website that we are dumping everything too. I told you a couple episodes ago, it's not exactly what I hoped it would be. I want to go with like a nucleus site. Uh, but we have to go, you know, with our church communications people. Uh, I, I work in our youth mystery department and so like I have to make sure that what I'm doing jives with the rest of the church, which I totally get and I'm am in support of that.

Nick Clason (05:28):
Um, however, because of that, the website has certain things on it that we just, we are not able to kind of work around ourselves yet. And so, uh, anyway, all that to be said, it's still a full service location. And so if a parent or someone's like, Hey, you send an email a couple weeks back, where was that information about? Or what you can just say, yeah, yeah, you know, camp deadline is May 31st, but also did you know that it's on the website at film url? And you say that, you just start saying that a bunch, right? And it becomes like a part of your, like vernacular a part of your answer. And that's why I think that you should go website first because website is your own real estate. It's the equivalent of owning or renting an Airbnb from somebody for vacation, which can be fun, it can be exciting, it can be sexy.

Nick Clason (06:23):
And you have like all your stuff. Like that's kinda like social media, right? It's kind of fun, it's kind of exciting and it might even feel a little more sexy than building out a full website. But at the end of the day, you don't own it. It's owned by Mark Zuckerberg or someone in China who, whoever's owning TikTok or the YouTube gods that be that pick the algorithm. But if you own your house, it's not as fun. You know, when the HVAC system goes out that it's on you to fix. You can't just call the owner or call the landlord. Like that's your responsibility because it's your house and you own it, however, it's yours and you build equity in it and you get to ride the housing market and it's all the unseen, not as fun, not as glamorous, not as shiny things, but it is still better.

Nick Clason (07:09):
That's how we, we all know, like when you own a house, it's better. However, it's more of a pain in the butt and it's not as shiny, it's not as glamorous, but it's better. So that's what I would recommend. I would recommend if you have to pick between the two social or website, definitely lean website. Make sure that you own your real estate, your videos, your uh, announcements, your, uh, people are aware of where to go and what to do when they get there. Okay? There are too many ministries and too many events vying for attention and wanting to be announced. What do I do? Well, I would create some sort of rubric, some sort of, uh, church communications, uh, ranking system. And you have to make a determination and certain things get certain priority, right? Like the Easter service, which affects the entire church body is going to get all the publicity and all the stage time.

Nick Clason (08:10):
Meanwhile, the woman's bunko night, while still important and still matters and no hard feelings to Phyllis who's planning it, uh, is not going to maybe get the same amount of announcement or same amount of run, but you know how it goes, right? You don't announce it. And now Phyllis is angry because you didn't announce her thing from the stage, but you got Pastor John over here who needs the Easter announcement to go out as well. And so you're trying to make Phyllis and Pastor John both happy, but you work for Pastor John and Phyllis is just this like, uh, volunteer sweet old lady who's volunteering for the women's ministry, but you work for Pastor John, right? And so that's kind of, that's what maybe the mental gymnastics are that you're going through when you're determining what to announce and how to announce it. Now here's the thing.

Nick Clason (08:59):
I think that churches have very much fallen in prey to announcements being a one track sort of thing. It being the announcement time on Sunday morning from the platform. And that's it. And that's just simply not true. So, uh, while you can create your, uh, rubric and you can grade like, okay, the woman's bunko night, unfortunately we don't have enough space for these announcements. Uh, and so it's gonna get bumped from the Sunday morning announcement time. However, there are other channels and other avenues in which you can lean into and which you can help create so that people are in the loop about what is going on. And so create your rubric, create your metric or your grading system about what pops through what actually gets a stage announcement so that you're not, you know, announcing 25 things, you're announcing only a handful of things or, or honestly, if I could find a way, I would make it be announcing only one thing so that people really know it.

Nick Clason (09:58):
And then really craft that announcement to be good and well done. Um, captivating, inspirational, perhaps try and find a way to share a story. People are gonna connect to a story, especially a story about life change and then announce it. But then, yeah, you did, you left Phyllis's, uh, bunko on the cutting room floor. So what are you gonna do? So there are multiple communications avenues and I wanna just kinda like, uh, stream of consciousness, rapid fire, some of the ones that I have, uh, or that are in my brain and maybe, and so doing that, that sparks something that works for you and uh, you can use that in your setting as well. But, uh, one of them is your pre-roll, right? As people are coming into service, utilize that time with rotating or scrolling announcement slides. It's not very innovative, I know, and it might even seem outdated and antiquated, but it is, I think, worth it because you have a very captive audience, people filtering in, sitting down, looking ahead at a screen.

Nick Clason (10:57):
And you can have announcements, you can have things popping through, obviously. Also you can utilize, uh, your social media channels on there though. What I would do is I would try and lean into what social media is made for. So for example, instead of just posting graphics on reels or TikTok or just like graphics on your Instagram or Facebook feeds, I would find a way to creatively, uh, do memes or games or, uh, silly like p o v type content. But you do those things and it, it adjacently announces your event while also being something on there that is, uh, leaning towards entertainment. Uh, also think about signage. Where is the signage and what is the available signage in your church? Could be bathroom signage, which is one of my favorites. Having a sign above urinals for men is a great place to put something because why no man wants to look side side.

Nick Clason (11:53):
So look good straight ahead. Okay? Uh, you also got banners if you have like a table setting, like we, in our student ministry, we have a table setting, um, where like people sit around round tables and there's a like clear placard that sits right in the middle. You can do tabletop type announcements or tabletop type signs. You also have your work weekly church email and then also your weekly stage announcement, right? And then I think every announcement, no matter what should get included into your one-stop centralized hub, your one stop website so that everybody knows no matter what to always go there. So even if they see Bunco in the pre-roll, but they're like, ah, shoot, I didn't catch all the details, that's okay, because they know it's on the website, right? It's the same thing. That's true of like, if you watch a movie trailer, if you watch a movie trailer online, you're like, man, I have to go see the new Marvel movie.

Nick Clason (12:48):
Yeah, you do. But what it didn't do was it didn't pop up an end card at the end of the trailer and say your hometown, your movie theaters and the showing times for each day for the next week. No, it puts the onus on you If you wanna see the movie, if you wanna go to Bunko night, then you will chase down that information. Historically, what's been the issue, churches haven't done a very good job of making that information readily available. They think they do by, by including it in the announcement or the graphic is like a bunko thing. And then it's just got like worlds and worlds of text, like six 30 to eight in the f building with Phyllis. And uh, if you want to go make sure you email Phyllis at flower lady 37 29 aol.com cuz apparently Phyllis is still using aol.

Nick Clason (13:38):
And, uh, if you have questions, you can swing by the welcome desk in the front lobby. And you see what I'm saying? Like, instead, if you streamline everything and you say Bunco Night Info app, boom, your website, everything you go to your website provides itself as a bit of a backdrop. Now let me give you one of my favorite church communications hacks of all time. And that hack is, this is, this is a little bit not a pet peeve, but I I just, I think that you're missing an opportunity if you do it this way. So for example, I am an author on Download Youth ministry, and one of the things that has made very famous, made very available are five minute countdowns. They put the five minute countdown on, um, right, you know, five minutes before the service is supposed to start. And that's a very popular thing.

Nick Clason (14:28):
Our churches do it. Your church probably has some sort of iteration of a five minute countdown. One of my pet peeves, or one of the things I just honestly think is a little bit of a miss is that you have a, a lot of churches, they'll have a pre-roll and then at the five minute mark, they'll switch off of the pre-roll to this five minute countdown. Um, and this actually happened yesterday where I was gonna church. I looked around five, there were, I don't know, probably like 20% of the people that were going to end up being in the service, um, or that ended up being in the service at that time. And they switched off the pre-roll, which was very information and announcement heavy to a generic, um, a good, very good like cinematic good, uh, picture and encapsulation of the church and the life of the church and like serving and events and all the things, but no information.

Nick Clason (15:21):
And in that five minute time, it went from 20% of the service to probably like 70, 80% of the service. And all the people that walked into the room at that moment, they didn't get any of that benefit of the pre-roll. And if they got in there a minute early, if the pre-roll was still rolling, they could sit there and they could still see the last little bit of the pre-roll. They would still catch some of the things and maybe, maybe Bunco would roll in front of them and then they would know, oh, Bono's coming up. And so one of my favorite hacks is create a pre-roll and, and create a dynamic pre-roll if you have what it takes, one that's video based and all the things. And then, and instead of swapping a five minute countdown, just create a loop and then put a five minute countdown on through pro presenter or just throw a five minute overlay on a video and render out two videos, one without a five minute countdown, one with a five minute countdown.

Nick Clason (16:17):
And so that way when they switch from the pre-roll to the five minute countdown, the sa it's the same thing. That's, that's what I do in my ministry. It's the same video. Just one has a five minute countdown timer on it, one does not. And that's one of my favorite hacks because I believe that you have a captive audience of people filtering into your auditorium. They are actually paying attention to the screen once it starts counting down, or they should be at least because they don't want to be late or they have to get from one place to the other. And so in so much as paying attention, the theory then is that they're at least going to be mildly aware of the other announcements that are going on behind the five minute countdown. So that's one of my favorite hacks for you as a church communications person.

Nick Clason (17:01):
Hope it's helpful. Let me know if you implement it. Let's move on to question three. What are three digital media ideas for churches in 20 20, 20 23 that aren't as popular? So idea that I have number one that I don't think is as popular now, they're very popular, don't get me wrong, but they may not be as popular with churches are podcasts. And I don't just mean your Sunday sermon podcast, though, you 100% should be doing that. It's probably the lowest hanging fruit and the most available opportunity for you to start regularly posting podcasts and a podcast catcher. But I also think what about finding ways to create podcasts that educate, that explain, um, different facets of faith or spiritual disciplines or fill in the blank, right? But podcasts I think are an amazing tool that churches should be leaning into as churches. Church leaders and pastors are professional content creators.

Nick Clason (18:02):
And so your people, you are creating content for them every single week on a Sunday morning. And for quite frankly, it is a lecture style piece of information that you are creating for your church. So why are you not taking that skill that you have honed that you are good at? Um, and honestly, maybe you're like, well, I'm, I'm the senior pastor, like I don't have time. Maybe you work at a church with additional other staff and pastors who don't preach as often as you. Maybe this would be an outlet or an avenue for them to exercise their teaching gift to grow in what their, uh, and what God has given to them. Uh, but they don't have time or you don't have time or the sermon preaching calendar doesn't allow for the time or the space for them to get a lot of stage time.

Nick Clason (18:47):
That's okay. You can give this other outlet, this other avenue for them to exercise those gifts for them to teach people via podcast. So I think podcasts are a really creative way and a really potentially effective way for churches to lean in, um, and to create additional content for their churches and for people who are interested in what the church has to offer. Another idea that I have are TikTok style teaching or inspirational videos. So while podcast is long form, I think TikTok style videos are the best, like zig to the zag of that where they are, uh, short. So podcast, really no, no matter how long it is, you can go as long as you want. TikTok, make it as short as humanly possible, and perhaps to even marry those two, just film your podcasts and then cut out clips of from the podcast.

Nick Clason (19:43):
And then the short videos can serve as both inspirational and educational, but they can also serve as an advertisement of sorts or a marketing technique for your podcast. So you post on your social channel some of those short clips, and then people begin to discover and realize that there's a longer form version of this out there via audio podcast or even video podcast. I mean, if you're gonna capture the, the video, uh, and you have the bandwidth for it, there's really no reason to then marry the, the audio and the video, put it together, and then just create a video based podcast as well. And then idea number three that I have eBooks right, the, in the same vein, you are a professional content creator. So just take the content that you have that's good, that's useful, that's beneficial that you have studied, that the Holy Spirit has laid on your heart, and that you then are now, uh, presenting and showing to your church congregation.

Nick Clason (20:40):
Take that and put package that in a way that makes it available for people. Why maybe you, uh, maybe it hits a different audience than those who are in the church on Sunday morning. Maybe they weren't there on Sunday morning, but it's still something that's out there and that's available for them to do, right? Like if you're a pastor and you create like three ideas for studying God's word, you can create that in an infographic or an ebook or something like that, and you can offer that to your church and you have that to live on in perpetuity. Meanwhile, if you preach that sermon on March 12th, 2016, that's lost back on March 12th, 2016. But if you repurpose some of that content, then anytime anyone has a question about, Hey, how do I spend time with God, Jack? You know, I created this resource, and you just pull it back out or you, you post it on your website or you have it somewhere that's accessible, that's available for people to come to, for you to share with them.

Nick Clason (21:37):
And that's, I think another way that you can help kind of, uh, rejuvenate or repurpose some of your already created content into something that feels fresh. It isn't fresh, but it's beneficial and it's helpful to people's spiritual growth and their journey and their information and understanding of God's word. All right, question number four. What are the top five apps that I as a youth pastor and as a, uh, content creator used on my phone often? Number one is Google Drive. I would be sunk without Google Drive. I store all of my photos, all of my videos on Google Drive, and they sit there and then I download them off of Google Drive and then I post them and then I can delete the storage off of my phone. So that is the first thing. I would absolutely be lost without it. I use it both for business and for personal, and I can toggle very easily between both of those accounts in my Google Drive.

Nick Clason (22:33):
Do it often, do it all the time. The other app on my phone that I use a lot is Cap Cut. There are templates galore out there, and TikTok, um, honestly is pushing cap cut templates right now. So if you post a tick, uh, cap cut template, you can go viral pretty easy. Um, I have not had as good of luck with that on TikTok, but you know, where I have is YouTube shorts. I can get videos up over a thousand views pretty easily just by using a cap cut template. Uh, another thing that I use is gonna sound weird, but I use my Google Chrome app all the time. And if I post something that I created in TikTok by itself, then I go into Google Chrome and I search, download TikTok video without watermark, I go to the very first search engine result there.

Nick Clason (23:18):
I paste the link from my TikTok video, I download it, I copy the caption that I, that I created in TikTok. I go over to Instagram and I post it and I paste the, the caption and then I go over to YouTube shorts and I post the video and I paste the caption. And that is one of the quickest, easiest and hackiest ways for me to get the TikTok, uh, watermark off of my videos and onto other social media platforms. Couple others that I use that are just kind of for me, uh, cast box. I'm an Android guy, so I don't have the purple podcast app for podcasts, but I listen to podcast galore. Like I told you at the beginning. I was in Disney World last week and I got behind on my podcast. So I have something like 60 podcasts in my catcher right now that I need to, uh, pound through.

Nick Clason (24:06):
I also am subscribed to maybe way too many, and so I might need to cut some of those back. But I listen to podcasts a lot. I have a decent commute and so, um, I'm able to, you know, listen to them as I go. And finally, one, uh, that I don't use a ton, but it's good to have there for reference is Kindle. I use Kindle across all of my devices. Uh, if I'm reading some sort of book for work, I try to get it in a Kindle version. That way I don't have to lug the book with me. Or if like I'm at a doctor's or dentist's office and I wanna sit and wait for a minute, I can pull it open and read wherever I am on my phone, on my iPad, on my computer. Um, and then I can quickly reference back to other things, other books, other, um, ideas that I've read before.

Nick Clason (24:49):
If I want to use them for something on social media or whatever the case might be, those are five must have apps that I use on a pretty frequent and regular basis to help make my life easier as a social media manager in a church. Well, hey everyone. So glad you hung out with me on this episode. And if you're on the YouTube stream, you're looking at my Avengers mug right now. Glad that you hung out and you stuck around as always. Transcript hybridministry.xyz, give us a light, give us a rating, give us a share, give us a review. All those things would mean the world to us. And as a token of my and our appreciation back to you, we would love to give you our 100% completely free ebook title. Have I already ruined my church's TikTok account? The answer is no. But go download the book so that you know how to use and post to TikTok whenever, and however you want, head to the link in the show notes for that. And without any further ado, we're gonna get you outta here. Thanks for hanging out. Don't forget to, as always, stay hybrid.