https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

======================================
DESCRIPTION
🏅Travel Sports and Youth Group. They have been the bain of youth pastor’s existence for years.
🗓️What if they don’t have to be the enemy?
🥱What about Youth Group Kids who exhibit complacency?
======================================
📓SHOWNOTES
//SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/087

//YOUTUBE VIDEO
https://youtu.be/HV6V1GbWEvU

//FREE EBOOK STRATEGY GUIDE
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

YOUR MESSAGES ARE BORING
//https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqOPjD5hN-g&t=8s

STOP IGNORING SOCIAL MEDIA
//https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slB0Rmf_X0c&t=390s

👉 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 🆓
📅 "The Full Hybrid Ministry Strategy"
https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book

🖥️ "My 9 Favorite DYM Resources"
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym

🎅 "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 The Two Biggest Enemies to your Youth Ministry
01:46 Extra Curriculuars are Killing my Attendance
05:15 Complancey is also killing my youth group
08:04 The Suprising Solution to Youth Sports and Complacency in your Youth Group

TRANSCRIPT
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;32;17
Nick Clason
The two biggest enemies in youth ministry are extracurricular activities and the complacent attitude of your students. Tell me if you've heard this before. Tuesday night is karate so that kid can't come on Tuesdays. If that's when you had youth group and then Wednesday nights is when you have show choir. Thursday night, that same kid also has karate. And of course, you can't do Friday night because that's when the football games are like if you've been in that position.

00;00;32;22 - 00;00;53;10
Nick Clason
Give me a subscribe. If you've had to navigate when you meet for youth night and turn the bell on for good measure because we're starting a brand new playlist exploring all the different issues of youth ministry, and one of them is scheduling. Like how do you schedule around students and their extracurricular activities? What in the world should we meet?

00;00;53;15 - 00;01;17;43
Nick Clason
They're so busy and it almost makes it feel like extracurricular travel, sports, school sports are the enemy. And here’s the fact even when they do show up in the room, you might be so boring that they're not really willing to make your thing a priority. In fact, we have a video right here where we explore all of that and how you can make your youth ministry one of belonging and purpose and serving.

00;01;17;50 - 00;01;43;18
Nick Clason
But I just had a student the other day say, Hey, listen, I just got so much going on. Sometimes student ministry, it just it doesn't make the cut. And unashamedly that was a text that they sent. And so if the two biggest enemies are travel sports and complacency, I want to challenge you to stick around to the very end of this video because I have a solution for each of those two things extracurriculars and complacency.

00;01;43;33 - 00;02;11;00
Nick Clason
Welcome to the High Road Ministry show The Year was 2012 brand new youth Pastor right here. And there were literally three students in my student ministry starting out, one by the name of Brandon, who didn't last very long, one by the name of Megan and then one by the name of Sabrina and Megan and all her friends. And she brought a lot of her friends to youth group.

00;02;11;00 - 00;02;31;58
Nick Clason
So this kind of mattered because she could bring two or three or four different friends with her to youth group. They had show choir and met every single Wednesday night. And so that made Wednesday nights a really tricky night to do youth ministry. But Brandon, the only other boy in the youth ministry, had Tuesday night and Thursday night karate.

00;02;32;03 - 00;02;58;34
Nick Clason
And then of course, Friday nights are like the football game. Like for most towns USA, that's when the high school team is playing its football game. So that really left us with Monday night as an option, which for I can't remember why, but for whatever reason it really wasn't an option. And so I had no idea like what am I supposed to do in to, to make matters worse, I had three kids, so if I choose Wednesday, I lose Megan and all her friends.

00;02;58;34 - 00;03;21;41
Nick Clason
If I choose to, their Thursday, I lose Brandon over to karate. And then the group of three, that's 33% of my students. So like, when am I supposed to plan to do this? I had another student one year who missed summer camp due to a baseball tournament. And then I remember he came up to me after we got back.

00;03;21;41 - 00;03;41;49
Nick Clason
His brother went and all his friends went and so he was at the recap of camp and we shared the recap video and all the students had all their energy and and his tournament had gotten rained out while we were gone. And he came up to me and he said, Next year I'm going to camp no matter what you see.

00;03;41;49 - 00;04;08;43
Nick Clason
Here's what happens once you create some sort of an environment where a student actually wants to be a part and actually wants to belong, it can be a game changer. But the fact of the matter is, especially when you're just getting started out, what do you do when they don't even know you in their thing, their show choir, their karate, their baseball, their basketball, their football, their you fill in the blank, whatever it is.

00;04;08;48 - 00;04;31;46
Nick Clason
What happens when that thing is actually providing more of a place of belonging and more of a place of community than your church? It makes it difficult and honestly, you want to compete with it. You want it to be you want church, you want youth group to be providing more of a place of belonging, more of a place of community.

00;04;31;51 - 00;04;55;39
Nick Clason
But in the life of that student, let's be honest, it really isn't. It's not really providing a place of belonging more than their sport. And so one of the challenges is you are trying to compete with something that is like family to them and you want them to come to something that's already a probably not feeling a little bit like family to them.

00;04;55;44 - 00;05;22;28
Nick Clason
And then B is adding another thing onto their already busy plate of calendaring and activities and things that they have to be committed to doing. And so what do we do about youth sports? Listen, I got an idea. Just hang on. What do you do about complacency? Like you've been there, right, where you have kids, Church kids, non church kids, whatever the case might be.

00;05;22;28 - 00;05;41;52
Nick Clason
And they really like they don't want to be there like you. Like the archetype of student I'm thinking of is the junior in high school comes to youth group hood on air pods in back row. They're just not interested. Like you get up, you got a game, They don't care about the game. You get up, you got a cute video.

00;05;41;52 - 00;06;01;46
Nick Clason
They don't care about the cute video. You see them saying like, how do you reach that kid? And in most cases, that kid is his heart's definitely not in to youth group. And there's a lot of factors for that, one of which might be his level or feeling of belonging. And it doesn't have to just be a him.

00;06;01;46 - 00;06;25;02
Nick Clason
It could be her, right? But we're we're using a certain archetype, and so we'll just keep using that junior boy student with the AirPods in as an example. But nothing's changing. Like just because you have a game, just because you have a cool message, just because you have clever announcements, none of those things are reaching them because he's complacent.

00;06;25;02 - 00;06;55;47
Nick Clason
He's he's not or she's not into whatever you have doing. They're honestly they're being forced to be at church. And here's the thing. That is a really tough pill for us to swallow. Sometimes as youth pastors, is students physical attendance in the room Does not equal an our authentic heart level buy in of what's going on, not only in youth group, but frankly, in faith as it pertains to their relationship with God.

00;06;55;52 - 00;07;17;22
Nick Clason
Because you don't want to just go after their physical attendance, you know what I'm saying? Their physical attendance is not the goal, only their heart being bought into it. Their heart being bought into it is the goal. And so you might be asking, Well, how do I chaste their heart? That's a great question. And in a lot of cases you don't.

00;07;17;27 - 00;07;45;09
Nick Clason
That's the Holy Spirit's role in their life. So you can pray for them and you can try to program creatively in such a way that that they find that and you can try to develop a type of community that's authentic and real and raw that most Gen Z, most Gen Alpha students are actually looking for and that community can take root and that student's life so that they belong to their group before they really truly start to exhibit elements of belief.

00;07;45;14 - 00;08;13;59
Nick Clason
But you can't change their heart. You know that that's the Holy Spirit shop. But just like travel sports and now with an attitude of complacency or just a bad attitude in general, I do have two ideas that I think can change the game in both of those arenas, and we're going to hit that in the next section. So my idea for travel sports and my idea for a complacent attitude is actually one in the same.

00;08;14;04 - 00;08;45;58
Nick Clason
And the idea, of course, is to try to go hybrid. Now, listen, you're like, dude, you're the hybrid ministry podcast. Of course you're thinking that. And yeah, I am. But I have detailed an outline for you in my 100% completely free e-book. It's basically my Nick Clason and the church I'm at now Strategy Guide for Social Media. And it's twofold and the two fold, they actually hit both of the things that we're trying to talk about.

00;08;45;58 - 00;09;12;05
Nick Clason
So the first fold of it is pre film your talks in what pre filming your talks does not only gives you some practice and some opportunity to kind of get ahead of your calendar so that you're not giving up live whenever you're preaching on a Wednesday or Sunday night and looking at your notes for the first time, you've had an opportunity to do it, to deliver it direct to camera, very much like I'm doing right here in this setting, but too, especially for the busy kids.

00;09;12;10 - 00;09;34;24
Nick Clason
It allows them, if they're truly interested in church, to to to consume the message that you've given to them. I know in my show choir example and karate example from the beginning that Brandon I don't really know because he didn't last very long. His family left the church not too long later. But Megan, like her and her family, like they were committed.

00;09;34;29 - 00;09;59;26
Nick Clason
And if I couldn't have offered youth group for them, I know that she would have at least went back and watched the messages because that was something that she was interested in. And so a hybrid approach can actually help the busy kids who can't make it on a Sunday, on a Wednesday, on a Thursday, on a Tuesday, on a whatever day of the week, you end up deciding they can still listen to the message and word of God directly from you, from your mouth, from their youth pastor.

00;09;59;31 - 00;10;35;38
Nick Clason
And you can pre film those messages and post those to YouTube. Now you might be thinking like, Yeah, but, but that doesn't really do much for me, especially by way of the kid who's complacent and doesn't really want anything to do with it. And you know, where I would say with that is the other approach to that is when you pre film your messages, it not only gives you some short form message based clipped content that you can post and use and sprinkle in an all throughout your social media, but it also can let you kind of do another set of social media, which is add more of an element of fun.

00;10;35;43 - 00;10;59;21
Nick Clason
And when you add more of an element of fun, you can go after that student's heart and again, still, that's the Holy Spirit's job. But what if the reason that they're not interested is just because you youth ministry is boring? And so one of the things that we'll do in our student ministry is we’ll film some fun, quirky, silly, entertainment based content as a staff, as a student ministry team.

00;10;59;25 - 00;11;24;40
Nick Clason
But then other times we will challenge ourselves to do some sort of social media challenge where we'll will invite students to be on camera with us. And so that will give them an opportunity to engage and interact. And then when we've invited them onto camera with us, they'll have an opportunity. Now to see themselves later on social media throughout the week.

00;11;24;45 - 00;11;47;00
Nick Clason
And so you can take your long form message content and that can solve the the problem for travel sports. And then you can clip those up into shorts and push people who discover them to watch a YouTube video. And then you can also film some silly content to be discovered by your algorithm and to to engage with the complacent student, the junior with the hood on in the back of the room.

00;11;47;05 - 00;12;14;20
Nick Clason
And you can even films from that content with him and post it. And if you take my strategy fully laid out right here on screen, link down below in the show notes, I will detail for you all of how to do that. And I hope that if you go hybrid, it helps of your extracurricular activities and it also helps of your student ministry, complacency, activities and actually, I have detailed for you the entire strategy in the video that's linked right here on the screen.

00;12;14;25 - 00;12;32;31
Nick Clason
So go ahead, take a look at that. Stop posting announcements to social media. Be better, level it up. You can do it because we're trying to make digital discipleship easy, possible and accessible. So, as always, don't forget stay hybrid.

Follow Along on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g

Full Transcript:
http://www.hybridministry.xyz/043

The Spreadsheet with the Metricool Results:
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/metricool

Follow Along on TikTok:
http://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick

FREE E-Book:
https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook

SHOWNOTES
Metricool Posting Service:
http://www.metricool.com

TIMECODES
00:00-01:39 Intro
01:39-08:53 My journey to using a social media posting service
08:53-13:07 The Results from 18 posts used on a social media posting service
13:07-18:30 Breaking down the stats from Metricool
18:30-20:08 3 TakeAways from using a Posting Service
20:08-25:23 What does this mean for social media moving forward?
25:23-26:02 Outro

TRANSCRIPT
Nick Clason (00:00):
One. Well, hello there, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I, as always, am your host, Nick Clason, thrilled and excited to be with you wherever you are consuming this. Whether you are over on YouTube or whether you have found this via your podcast catcher, know that we do offer the other. So if you are on YouTube, you wanna check it out on podcasts, you can head to http://www.hybridministry.xyz If you're just listening to this. And today in particular, I am gonna drop some like visual aid representation stuff on screen as we're chatting through what we're chatting through. You can head over to YouTube today. We are going to talk about a scheduling service. Yes, I have been against this for years and years, and if you have been listening to this podcast, do you know that it has taken a minute for me to ever convert our TikTok account over from a personal to a business?

Nick Clason (00:56):
I've finally made that shift. I will tell you why, and make sure you stick around to the very end of the video for me to give you my final conclusion on whether or not you should be using a scheduling service for your social media. Before we dive in though, let me let you know that we have created a 100% completely free e-book and checklist, and for signing up for our email newsletter, you will get a copy of both of those immediately sent to your inbox. So go ahead, head to the link in the show notes for that. And without any further ado, let's dive in and let's start talking about scheduling services on social media. Here we go. All right, let's talk about scheduling services. Now, if you've listened to this podcast any length of time, you know that I have not really been much of a scheduling service person.

Nick Clason (01:51):
And so let me give you just a little brief history on all of that for me. So, uh, I started really getting into social media and social media scheduling and planning. Every church I've been in, I've had that to some level, some degree, but I've gotten mu I've really honed that in, I would say within the last three ish years. Um, and it dated back a couple churches. I'm trying to think like I really got into trying and experimenting with some stuff. Um, when I was at church in Cincinnati, I was there for a couple of years. Um, and then when I moved to Parkview, which is the church I was at before here, uh, in, in the South Chicago suburbs, I had nothing to do with social media. But then I offered to have something to do with it. Like I took on a portion of it.

Nick Clason (02:46):
And, uh, there is when I really started to hone in on more of what I'm focusing on now, TikTok and reels and stuff like that. And then that's when I met Matt, if you've been around since the beginning, you know, Matt was my co-host, the first, you know, 10 or so episodes. And so, uh, he worked at Parkview with me. Anyway, all that to be said, one of the things I discovered, cuz I had used both at my church in Cincinnati, and at the start of my time at Parkview, I used Hootsuite as a scheduler. And I think Hootsuite is fine as a scheduler, uh, for anything like Instagram feed posts or Facebook posts. Those are fine. The issue was, and I, and it may have changed, and so I may be eating my words a little bit on this. It may have changed since I most recently used it, but it could, when I started really, really taking over social media at my last church, I went to Matt, um, and I said, Hey, is there any way for me to schedule stories and, and reels or tos?

Nick Clason (03:44):
And he said, not really. And then I think within about a month of that conversation, a both of us started our exit strategies out of there, A and b, TikTok, A and Instagram all came out with, uh, schedulers. Okay? And so, uh, about a week or month ago, actually, about a month ago, I had a conversation with another youth pastor friend of mine from Indiana, and he's like, do you know that you can schedule your TikTok? And I was like, what? And so I did dive into it and yes, in fact you can, if you are a business account, you can, uh, schedule TikTok through the TikTok website. And so I was like, okay, interesting. So I started to play around with all these different things and I was like, this might be a game changer. Now let me explain to you what happened and what my journey was to end up where I ended up.

Nick Clason (04:37):
So, uh, you can natively schedule through all four of the core platforms. We're talking about Facebook, uh, which Facebook and Instagram are linked together through the Meta Business Suite, TikTok, and then YouTube. Of course you can schedule on YouTube. Um, but, but none of them, in my personal opinion, are, are optimal. And I'll give you some reasons why. Uh, when I was trying to schedule through the Facebook Business Suite, I personally, our account for whatever reason, wouldn't allow me to schedule Instagram reels. I could schedule Facebook reels, but I couldn't schedule Instagram reels. And so then that sent me on a search and I could do the other ones. I could do TikTok and I could do YouTube. However, I will say YouTube, it's just like you're uploading a regular video. And when I, when I upload on YouTube shorts on my app, it's a completely different interface.

Nick Clason (05:33):
And so, honestly, half the time I wasn't sure if I was doing it right because I'm like, is this where I put the caption? Is this where I put the title? And YouTube shorts are still a little weird and they're, I think they're still trying to figure out what they're doing over there. Um, they have put a lot more time and effort and energy into it. And so it's getting better for sure. Um, but YouTube has actually been my number one, uh, culprit, uh, downfall in all this. Anyway, I'll get to all that in a second. Uh, so I went, I searched through all these things, discovered and landed on a platform called Metro. Cool. I'll drop the link in the show notes. It might be helpful, it might be useful for you. Check it out. I can't make a blanket statement and say like, you should do this, you should do that.

Nick Clason (06:13):
I'm just gonna give you my experience and then what I would recommend if you were consulting or asking me. Um, but you might not be. And so you might be like, oh yeah, that totally works for me. Uh, but I landed on this thing called Metric Cool. I could link all four of those services, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube shorts. I could link all four of those and I could post auto post to all of those. I could schedule it ahead of time and then it would post on its own when I, I said to post it. Okay? And so I was like, this is going to change my life. And so let me tell you the results, the stats and how it all went down, uh, on metric. I used it for two and a half weeks. I posted a total of 18 videos on that time.

Nick Clason (07:00):
And, uh, the reason I didn't use, you know, post every single piece of content that I was planning to post is cause I had some TikTok sitting in my TikTok drafts. I had some that had, I had, uh, like recaps that I hadn't even filmed yet that I couldn't like preschedule. And I was like, I'll just take care of these live. Also, metrical is free for up to, um, what was it I I calculated that was free for up to like 30, uh, days. Um, not like a trial, but like 30 days worth of posts. Um, but however, it's like if I posted Instagram reels and Facebook and TikTok a and YouTube, that counts as four. So it was like, it was more than 30, it was like 120 I think. Um, but if I post on four of those four 30 days, then I'm going to use them all up, right?

Nick Clason (07:49):
And so that was another reason I didn't schedule everything. Cause I was like, I can leave some gaps in here, uh, to save back some of their, their free, you know, posting stuff, whatever. Anyway, I digress. So I used it. Um, and the reason I used it right was because I couldn't figure out a way to do Instagram and, uh, real scheduling and all these things. The other thing is I liked it cuz it's all in one, right? If I was gonna do all the native schedulers, I'd have to have like three tabs open and do TikTok and then go over to YouTube and then go over to the meta business suite. Possible doable and definitely worth my time if that takes away from me having to schedule live, you know, live posting. And so, um, finding this was, I was really exciting moment for me.

Nick Clason (08:35):
And so I, like I said, I went all in. I was like, let me try this thing and see what happens. So I'm gonna give you the results here. Let's dive in and look at the actual nitty gritty stats. And this is where, if you're listening, you may wanna switch over to YouTube, um, and see some of these things cuz I'm just gonna, um, screenshot my spreadsheet and put it on the screen. So here we go. Okay. Like I said, I, uh, uploaded and used metrical for 18 different posts over the course of about two and a half to three weeks. Um, I posted on all four platforms, morning, evening, and night. And here were some of the results that I came up with. So, uh, let's just go, uh, one by one through each platform. So on TikTok, like I said, I posted 18, here were our watch results.

Nick Clason (09:22):
1 63, 1 44, 141, 1 77, 1 52 91, 2 21, 1 49, 1 50, 1 28, 1 35, 1 40, 1 40, 1 48, 1 40, 1 53. Those are low for us. Um, we typically, um, and we don't go super viral on TikTok. I'll just be honest. I honestly, I think we started at a time where TikTok is kind of choking down the watches. And um, you know, like I mentioned Matt, he even said something to me interesting. He's like, I think TikTok might know you're church and if they know you're a church, he's like, I don't know that they're gonna give you a ton of organic reach, which was an interesting thing. Um, so he was saying that even back when I was at Parkview that it might not be, you know, that might be some of the case. So anyway, um, we, you know, we typically live in the two 300 s and then we'll pop, you know, for some over a thousand or whatever here and there. Uh, so the average TikTok wa uh, watch analytics of my metrical posts were an average of 122.

Nick Clason (10:24):
The highest I got was 2 21 and I had two tied for the lowest at 41. So not great. Okay? Um, Instagram reels, this is what we did on Instagram reels 2 51 8 5 19 3 18, 1 38, 1 46, uh, 2 53, 2 1 45. There was one that didn't post cuz there was an error that happened actually a couple different times. I had to go in and manually redo it. That's another story for another day. 2 2 3 2 0 2 180 6, 1 34, 3 94 for an average, uh, view of 1 68. And so our highest was that one of five 19, which was the third one that we posted. And then we had three that were tied with only two views. So again, not great, we did have some perform better. And I will say this, um, between TikTok and Instagram reels, we go, we have much higher views on Instagram reels than we do on TikTok, but I think we have less engagement on Instagram than we do on TikTok.

Nick Clason (11:27):
And so it's, it's, you know, watch isn't isn't equal to engagement and engagement is a loose term, I get it. But that's comments, that's shares, that's likes those types of things. Uh, Facebook reels. Interestingly, and this was really helpful for me, and I'll share some of this in a minute with some of my takeaways, but Facebook was actually quite a beneficial, uh, it was quite beneficial for me to go back and look on Facebook. Honestly, I had it and just let it do its thing. Um, and I never really go back to Facebook to engage much, but we had some decent traction on Facebook, surprisingly, and as a youth pastor, not necessarily my goal, right? Uh, we're probably catering to and reaching parents over there. Um, which might be a good thing, might be a bad thing. I don't know. Like, I don't have like a stance on whether or not, you know, I'm happy with that or whatever.

Nick Clason (12:15):
But we did quite well on Facebook. So here's what we had on Facebook. 1 92, 62 18, 3 38, 98 4 19, 2 24, 2 57, 2 62, 1 98 42, 2 0 6, 1 93, 3 78 39, 180 9, 2 0 3. Average view of two 18 with our highest being four 19, our lowest being 39. And then finally on shorts, this is where it got bad. 4 0 7 7 4 15, 2 3 17, 6, 6, 8, 6, 3, 2, 2, 1 for an average view of 5.4 highest 17 lowest zero. So let's extrapolate and look at some of the takeaways from all of this. What does this mean? All right, so what does all of this mean? Should you schedule? Should you not, should you use metric? Cool. Here's, here are my personal takeaways. So you need to know this. I'm not using it anymore. Like what it did to us on YouTube was, was horrific. Um, and I'm not blaming metrical necessarily, right? But I I, after a couple of days I started screenshotting some of these things to my, um, free under the table consultant, Matt, Matt Johnson, former co-host of the podcast.

Nick Clason (13:36):
May he rest in peace. Uh, but anyway, I was like, bro, what's going on here? And he's like, yeah. He's like, I was worried about that for you. Cuz they, those platforms, they, they don't typically like you using third party services. So these third party services, they may be able to tap into the api, uh, and, and like allow you this, this may be a thing that they're able to actually allow happen. But basically what he was saying is he's like, I don't know that that is your optimal strategy moving forward. Kind of a bummer because it's easy for you or me as a social media manager, but it's more difficult. Um, you know, and your views might go down. And so you have to weigh out like what's more valuable. And honestly, there is a moment where it being easier for you, especially if you're going to post at the volume that I have recommended you do.

Nick Clason (14:26):
Uh, that's a lot. And so sometimes you're like, I don't wanna have to always be thinking and remembering to like get on there and live post everything. I don't wanna have to input every single thing into to Google Calendar. You know, like I used to put every single thing into Google Calendar to remind myself to post, honestly. Now I just kind of know like, oh, I gotta post three. And so I, I go to just like a picture I took of like a calendar that I wrote it all out on and I just go off of that. I don't even have anything alerting me cuz it's so woven into my rhythm and habit of just posting. So anyway, here are some of my observations. First observation is this. Not one single video across all four of the platforms was like highest. Like, it's not like this video performed well and it performed well across all four.

Nick Clason (15:15):
Like when I say the highest performing one, like the highest performing one overall, um, I think was the, the Instagram reels one. And that was one about Fruity Pebbles, right? Meanwhile on TikTok it was, it only got a hundred views on Facebook reel, it got 218 and on YouTube shorts I had four. Then my lowest overall video was the one that got zero plays on on YouTube shorts, but it got 260 on Facebook, eight on Instagram reels and 144 on TikTok. So it, it's a lottery ticket we've talked about, right? Like you punch it in all four places because it might perform well over here and not well over there. And so similarly, the highest on Instagram, I could read you those same like stats across the line. And, and the same thing, like it's not the best performing video overall, it's just simply the best performing video on that platform.

Nick Clason (16:10):
The other observation I had was that, uh, of my overall, um, analytics, Facebook had the best watches and YouTube had the worst watches, okay? In the midst of this, like I said, right, I used it for 18 posts. In the midst of this, I did have a video that had 300 or 3000, um, 556 views on TikTok. And that was posted in the middle of this run of me using Metrical for two and a half weeks. It wasn't one of the metrical videos, it was one that I posted live. Cuz it was one of those that is like, um, it splits the room in two and you got a bunch of people and you decide like, do you know this song? Do you not know this song? If you know it, go to this side of the room and sing it. If you don't walk over here in shame and then it'll change to another song.

Nick Clason (16:54):
And if you know that one, you can move over to the room, but if you did know this one before, you have to move back over here. It was one of those and it went well for us, and we're gonna do more of those and, and shoot more of those and post more of those because it worked for us. And who knows, it may be a thing that we can lean into more. Uh, or it was just a one-off. You never know how those, how those work, right? So we're just gonna try some stuff. Um, my Facebook views remained consistent. It, I saw no appreciable difference between before Metric Cool after metric, cool during metric, cool. Whether I posted it via Metric cool, or whether I posted it manually. My Facebook views pretty much remained the same. Um, this was the most disheartening one before I started using Metrical.

Nick Clason (17:37):
Like right before I had videos within a week or 10 days of posting on YouTube shorts that got 2,400 views, 1,400 views and 634 views. There were some other smaller ones in there, right? But I had some pretty hefty and big views on YouTube shorts since posting on metrical, like pulling the plug and being like, I'm not using this anymore. The highest I've gotten on YouTube shorts is 49. I've had the majority of my views in single digits and I've had several with just no views at all. And so that's disheartening. And I have to, I have to start back over basically on YouTube shorts and I may have dinged myself permanently, um, or at least for a really long time by using Metric. All right, so three takeaways. What does this mean? So three takeaways. As of right now, I'm back to posting everything manually.

Nick Clason (18:37):
I'm not using the service scheduling service anymore. Perhaps, uh, that's takeaway number one. Takeaway number two, perhaps the native schedulers would, would be more advantageous. You know, I'm assuming if TikTok has a scheduler built into their website that they're gonna, um, promote and prioritize that more than they would like just a third party service like Metrical. Um, but like I said, right now I need to focus on growing our YouTube engagement back. And so therefore it's for me, I'm an all or nothing kind of person, so I could, yes, I know you're think you're listening, watching, like why don't you just schedule on on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, again, remember Instagram, I couldn't figure out a way to schedule. So for that one it would be like, I can schedule for Facebook and TikTok, but then I need a live post for Instagram and YouTube.

Nick Clason (19:29):
It just, it, I I I would rather do it all at the same time, um, to just know, like I post all four, boom, boom, boom, boom, and I'm done. And when I say all four, I only need to post in three places. I need to do TikTok, I need to do Instagram and make sure Facebook is toggled on, and then that's taken care of. And then I need to go do YouTube. So when I say four, it's three. It's still a lot, but it's not, you know, as many as that sounds. Uh, the other thing, the other, the third takeaway for me is it's definitely tedious work, but a non bot scheduling still has proven to be the best for engagement for me, for us, and for our ministry. So, big picture, um, I have been for years, um, and on this podcast, if you go back and listen, I have been promoting two to three posts per day, five to seven days a week.

Nick Clason (20:21):
And that's a hefty content load. Uh, one, a couple things like, you know, just let you know, I, so for example, I have like a lot of games over on D y m. Um, I'll link some of those in the show notes if that's something you're interested in going, checking out. But like some of my favorites are like a gif flashback game. You watch a gif for five to seven seconds and then you're asked a question about it to immediately recall it. Another one, my all-time favorite is called emoji phraseology and it's like emoji phrases. And so I have these emojis come in animated. And so one of the things we've been doing is I've just been taking those games and we've been playing them. Um, they're 10 questions each, but I use them as one singular piece of content. And so I, I film someone playing the game or someone trying to guess the emoji phrase, but then that also like all the animations or all the like icons or whatever, all on the screen, all at that same time, so the viewer can also watch it.

Nick Clason (21:18):
And so those have really proven helpful. Those and other like I've, I've gone on D Y M and gotten other games and just had like, film students playing those games. Like those each usually come with 10 questions and I can edit those down to be like one TikTok with 10 questions each. But I've decided to extrapolate those out. We've done that with other things. Like we've used like an ABC cheese game where you bite cheese, you know, and then make a letter and the other person has to guess. And instead of, I originally shot that with the intent of it being like a one, a one hitter, but it took so long and I was like, there's a lot of like funny laugh moments and like silly things happening in between that. Like I didn't want to cut those all out and I could use, I could go from one to 10 and that can really help flesh out my calendar.

Nick Clason (22:05):
So I've done that. Um, and that's proven pretty helpful for me in helping fill out that calendar. But all that being said, I'm personally debating on scaling back a little bit after. Um, currently I'm in the month of April. This may drop in May, but I'm currently in the month of April planning out my TOS and Instagram reels and stuff like that. And I'm doing three a day and I'm personally thinking maybe I can scale this back a little bit. Um, and scaling it back will help me on the edit side not have to be so frantic and quick with everything. Um, and then I might be able to focus more on quality content instead of necessarily quantity. Um, I've been doing two to three for about six to eight months now at this point. And so our platforms are sort of leveled out, stabled out.

Nick Clason (22:49):
We've grown, we've reached the people we need to reach. Now that we're there, maybe we can focus more on bringing like some quality content. And again, I'm the editor and in a lot of cases I'm on this side of the camera too. Like I am the person doing the talking as well. And so, um, you know, I I focus a lot of timer energy on one side or the other. And so that might mean if I'm focusing more energy on the editing side, I'm not focusing as much effort on the content delivery side. And that also needs to be really good too. The editing needs to be good, the content needs to be good. And so you can't have all, you know, you can't have all those things if uh, all those things need to be good. You can't have so many and a great edit and great content.

Nick Clason (23:29):
Sometimes you just gotta throw out not so great stuff. So I'm wondering about scaling it back a little bit and I'll let you know right on here. Like, you guys will be the first to know. I will be honest with you all the way through. I'll take you with me on the journey. Like I want, if you guys have questions, like I want this to be a place where like I just workshop what I'm doing and you're hearing what I'm doing. Um, however, lemme say this, going back into the analytics, um, on all my platforms was actually encouraging and helpful to me because I thought that this third party service metric flopped and tanked me and on YouTube it for sure did. But I, like, I hadn't looked at a single one of those Facebook stats until last night when I was preparing for this episode.

Nick Clason (24:12):
And so it was helpful for me. And let me just say this as a guiding principle, not for social media only though it definitely count, but also for other areas. Go back and look at the stats. I mean that's honestly, that's one of the things about journaling, right? Is like if you journal, you can go back and you can see this is what I prayed about a year ago and here's where I am now. And it's a completely different moment than you were even a year ago, you know, but where you are right now feels overwhelming and crazy and whatever the case might be. And so go back and look and remind yourself. That's why the Israelites often built monuments. They could go back, they could look and they could be reminded of where they were and then they could see how God had been faithful to them, to his people and how they could continue to take steps forward closer to him.

Nick Clason (25:02):
So that's just what I wanna say is help, what was helpful for me, I need to do that more. I'm always looking ahead, rarely looking back. So I just wanna encourage you, if that's something that's helpful, try and find a way to bake that into your regular rhythm as a social media manager, as a youth pastor, as a pastor, whatever your role is as you navigate this. But I just wanna remind you that what you're doing matters. You are trying to reach the people of God, um, and the people who are maybe even far from God through the means and methods that God and, and the world has allowed us. We can use these things to help spread the good news of the gospel. So blessings on you, blessings on your ministry as you continue on this. And as always, don't forget, stay hybrid.