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If you’ve wondered how to use social media best for your small church, you’re not alone.
Join me in a conversation with Sheila Chester, a marketing manager for several small churches in the Denver Metro area. Raised in a small rural church and now part of a smaller church in a big city, Sheila talks about the real reason social media presence matters for all churches and how understanding the purpose behind your posting is key.
Listen in to hear:
- Top social media mistakes that small churches make and how to avoid them
- Two main reasons social media presence matters for every small church
- Why Facebook ads might not be your best strategy for outreach
- Tips on what to post and how often for the greatest impact
Links Mentioned:
Connect with Sheila Chester:
www.sheilakchester.com
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Episode 050: Social Media & Small Churches: Why It Matters & How To Do It Better With Sheila Chester
Laurie Graham 0:01
Hey, this is Laurie Graham. Welcome to the Small Church Ministry Podcast.
Laurie Graham 0:15
Hey, welcome to another episode of the Small Church Ministry Podcast. I am super excited today to have my friend Sheila Chester on the episode with us, and she’s going to tell you more about her, but she’s does social media, marketing, and works with churches. And she’s, we’re so grateful to have her speaking at our Women’s Ministry Conference coming up in January too. So, let’s just kick it off. Sheila, tell us a little bit about you and your church.
Sheila Chester 00:42
Sure, I fell into my church, but I started as the music director for the celebration, or the contemporary service. My friend became the senior pastor there and said they need a contemporary service and Sheila, you’re the person to do it, and I don’t know how he did it, but he convinced me to do it. So, I did that for about three years and then the pandemic hit, and we all had to learn a whole bunch of things that we never thought we would have to learn. So our church is,
Laurie Graham 01:17
You and the rest of the world, right? What a crazy couple years it’s been.
Sheila Chester 01:21
Right! Our churches in the middle of Denver Metro, and we have about 60 to 80 people show up per service. We have the two services. So we’re still a small church, denominational PCUSA church in the middle of Denver.
Laurie Graham 01:36
I love it! So I love that you just said you’re in Metro Denver. I just talked to a pastor, like a week ago who said, but all your churches are rural churches, right? Like he thought the churches in our small church community were rural, and there is such a miss, I don’t know, misconception that small churches are all rural, because it’s not true. We have people inner city, we have people suburbia, we have people small towns. And so, how fun! Is it different to be a small church in a metro area do you think than the rural areas?
Sheila Chester 02:02
Yeah, I actually grew up in rural South Dakota and I grew up in a small Lutheran Church. And I’m talking about like, 20 people, 50 people, if you count everybody that’s left over the last 25 years. I think they still have me on their roster as a member. But yeah, having a small church, you know, I grew up in this church where of course, my mom was the volunteer. When these rural small churches, this is what happens, like, my mom was never the pastor, but she was, we were there 10 times a week. And she was the, you know, she would read the, she would read the sermon if we didn’t have a pastor that week, you know, because we’re a small church, we couldn’t afford to hire a pastor, and they’re still kind of go through all that stuff. But then I came to the big city, and I was like, I’m gonna go to a big church, and I tried all these mega churches, and I never fit in. And I felt very alone and I felt anonymous. And so, you walk into these dark churches, and you love the music. It’s like going to a rock concert, and man, I love music, because I’m a singer. And I tried singing in the churches, and it just never hit it and I, again, got convinced, heavily convinced to, to start working for this other church and man has it changed my life. It’s changed my spirituality. I, I feel like I’m going to a family every Sunday, because, you know, they’re small. They’re, you know them, you know what’s going on with these people, and I’ve been there for five years now and they’re my people.
Laurie Graham 03:30
Awe, like, I don’t even have to ask you the question of what do you love about small churches because just naturally, like, started talking about it.
Sheila Chester 03:37
They’re my family!
Laurie Graham 03:37
It’s so interesting. I could talk to you about like, a million different things right now, but you mentioned that you fell into worship leading, being the music director at your church. So how and, by the way, that’s so small churchish, right? Like people find themselves accidentally leading and then learning like, whole new skill areas and all sorts of things, because we love that in small churches, but how did you transition or move, or maybe you still do music, how did you move into this, I don’t know, marketing, or social media, managing kind of thing?
Sheila Chester 04:07
Sure. Well, during the pandemic, you know, I was, I’m still doing the music, but we had to reach our congregation somehow, you know. People were alone. People were in their houses, they were, they felt trapped, they felt disconnected. And so, between me and my pastor, and we had a small staff, we kind of decided, how are we going to connect with these people. And so, for my job, we are the music people. A couple of my band members they recorded before, and I’m like, let’s record it. Let’s record as much as we can. And then we learned about, you know, public domain. Like, we had to learn all that stuff the hard way, and luckily, Facebook was pretty nice this that first year and didn’t tag anybody for, for recording music that they didn’t have licenses for. And then, I learned more about social media like, we need to post this on Facebook and then I kept learning more about that. And we didn’t really have anybody doing that. So I’m like, that’s fine. I’ll figure it out. I got time. I, you know, I’m just homeschooling my children and dealing with my husband who’s working from home. And you know, it’s everything’s, so I needed that. I needed that to, to, I needed a place for myself, my brain to go that wasn’t the insanity of what was happening in my family and in our, in our house. I mean, we wouldn’t even go to our neighbor’s house, we would just wave over the fence. So social media, I think was a way for a ton of people to get outside of their house. That was the only way. So I really just dove into that, and that, of course, leads to marketing, leads to communications within the church and then I just took on that whole extra role. So I added to my role.
Laurie Graham 05:47
Yeah, and you said that you work for a few churches, right? You actually do some social media managing for several churches. Is this a new skill area for you that you actually learned during the pandemic or do you like have an education in marketing or something?
Sheila Chester 06:00
I have nothing. I have a lot of educations, Laurie. My poor mother. I have several educations and certificates and licenses, and none of them are in marketing or social media. So this I just fell into, yeah. What happened was, somebody had called the church, another PCUSA church in Colorado, called Our Church and said, “Who does your social media?” And our office manager was like, well, Sheila does it and I’m like, do I, do I? Why are we telling people that I do this? It’s so, so I talked to them. They’re like, nope, we want to hire you. I’m like, okay. So I just started working with them, and then working on their marketing, and what does marketing mean for a small church in the mountains of Colorado? I mean, you’re looking at a 500 population town in the mountains of Colorado. I’m like what are you, what are you looking for with your social media? Well, we want more members. I’m like, well, that’s not really what social media does. It shows people who you are as a community, and as a church family. That’s what social media does. So I did that. And then another church, PCUSA, was like, hey, you know, who’s doing your social media. So, somebody’s looking at our social media, Laurie. Apparently, something’s working. So I’m working now for another PCUSA church, another small under 200 church in the Denver Metro area, doing the exact same thing, building up their social media, showing the public, showing their congregation, this is who we are, this is our family, and really connecting in between Sundays because that’s what social media is. It is creating that connection in between Sundays.
Laurie Graham 07:34
So two things you’ve mentioned. One is that it’s for connection, it’s connecting people between Sundays, and also that you’re showing people who you are. And I love that you’ve brought this up because we’re going to get into a lot of the struggles in small churches, because that’s what you’re here. And thank you for being here and being willing to share things for free on a podcast that is really going to help small churches with social media, because we have these questions come up all the time. How do we do it better? What do we do? And I think, sometimes, it comes down to that purpose. Like, we’re like running around, just trying to grab on to things like, we got to do this better, but we haven’t even defined like, what it’s for. And so, when you think about small churches, and you grew up in a rural, tiny church, you’re working in small churches in Denver Metro now like, that’s a, that’s a good leap even. So I know that you get small churches. When you think about small churches, why should they bother with social media? Because some people, even with the pandemic, they were streaming and now they’re not. They’re like, oh, we just did that for a time. And since you mentioned it, you know, was that just for a time or why should we still even bother with it?
Sheila Chester 08:40
Sure. So here’s an example for that. So, I recently went home to visit my family in South Dakota, and the churches had recently combined. So small towns, you have to be creative on how to hire a pastor, right? You’ve got a church of 25 people, how do you pay a pastor to to work there? So these two churches actually combined, it was a United Methodist combined with a Lutheran. So, totally crazy stuff happening up there.
Laurie Graham 09:08
But it worked!
Sheila Chester 09:09
It worked. It worked. The pastor said, I tried to look up information about who your church is and what you guys are about, but I couldn’t find anything on social media. Like, there’s nothing. You don’t have a website. You don’t have, you don’t have social media because you think you’re in these small towns, and everybody knows about you. Everybody, you know, well, I don’t need to advertise myself. Well, let me ask you this question. Who do you know that’s on social media right now in your small town? And every single person that was in that room when I was talking to them about why they should be on social media, raised their hand. I’m like, why are you on social media? Oh, I just wanna. I just want to follow my, my kids and my grandkids and I just want to. And then I see, you know, this, these feeds and I follow them. I’m like, yeah, you’re on social media all the time. Everybody in this community is on social media, and why not advertise, not even advertise, show off your family, your church family, to the community. A lot of people have a preconceived notion about what church is, and so they won’t even step foot. And if you show them the picture of what church is, what that family looks like, maybe they’ll be more willing to step foot in, in your church, or maybe they’ll be more willing to come to an event that you’re hosting. But you have to, first, go where your community is at, and let me just tell you, your communities on social media, even if it’s just 70% of your community, even if it’s a town of 700, like my hometown is, that’s a lot of people.
Laurie Graham 10:38
Yeah, yeah. I love what you said because there is such a difference between people knowing you exist and people knowing who you are, like people knowing you. And in so many, whether it’s small town or big city, you know, you’re like, well, people see us they know we’re here. Yeah, but they don’t know you. And so, to be able to connect that way. You mentioned, I don’t know if it was earlier when we talked or on the podcast so far, but you mentioned that using social media to grow your church like, to try to build your congregation probably isn’t the best goal. Can you talk a little bit about that and why it wouldn’t be? Because I know there’s churches who are like, paying Facebook ads, and boosting their posts and everything, and they’re wondering why they’re not seeing the results that they, that they’re, they feel like they’re paying for.
Sheila Chester 11:22
Sure. So, one thing I want to, kind of, talk about. Our church members, our church prospects, they’re not our customers, so why are we treating them like our customers? Like we’re selling them something, right?
Laurie Graham 11:43
Oh, I love it.
Sheila Chester 11:44
Because we’re not selling them anything. We are showing them the love of God in our lives and in our families. That is what social media is for. It’s for social networking, social connecting. So sure, you can pay for Facebook ads for certain events that you might have going on, but ultimately, it’s just not worth it. I tell you, I realized I don’t have a certification in this, a degree in this, but quite frankly, I don’t, I don’t think you could keep up even if you did, because the algorithms. If we’re just talking Facebook, like I’m not even talking Tik Tok and Pinterest, and oh my gosh, it’s the Twitter’s I don’t do the tweets, I don’t do the twits tweets. You know, the algorithms people are always talking about in small businesses or talking about on Facebook and Instagram, I can’t even begin to follow that and understand what all of that means. All I know is when you post everyday, something that is important to you as, as a person, as a church body, something that is meaningful, not just something that is floofy, right? Not just shallow level, but like a deep, meaningful thing.
Laurie Graham 12:58
Yeah!
Sheila Chester 12:59
And we can talk about how we do that later because I know you’re already overwhelmed thinking “I can’t come up with deep posts every five minutes. It’s too much!” It is, trust me! You’re not, you know, there are ways to around that, but we are looking for ways to connect with people and have them like, follow, and share your posts. Focus on organic growth. Just like when you’re, when you’re having people come into your church, you’re not out there giving them $5, please, please come to my church. They’re gonna come to your church for $5, okay. You can say I love you. Let me know how I can support you. I’ll be at church on Sunday, you can join me if you’d like. That’s how you get people to church, organically. You can’t buy people to come to your church. I mean, you can try, but that’s not realistic and that’s not going to last. That’s not a lasting relationship.
Laurie Graham 13:50
I think that’s a really big differentiation to think about the fact that we sell to customers, but we invite friends. Like, selling and inviting is very, very different and I honestly think in this day and age, we can tell when we’re being sold to and I’m not even against sales. I sell things. You sell things. We all know people who sell things. Like, if selling is done ethically it’s meeting a real need, but it really is a difference between selling versus sharing and inviting. So, let’s get to some good practical tips because we want to make sure we, you know, we give people like great things to kind of go on. But what do you see churches doing like, as mistakes? Like, where do you see small churches making mistakes in social media? Like let’s just unpack that first.
Sheila Chester 14:35
Well, first of all small churches are not on social media. So there’s that.
Laurie Graham 14:39
Okay, not being on social media. That’s number one right there.
Sheila Chester 14:43
Or they’re on social media and they’re not posting. They post once a year when they have their annual bizarre or their annual picnic. They post once a year or maybe three times for Easter and Christmas and their annual picnic. When they do post, they post scripture only, or a picture of scripture. You are in, I have opinions anyway. You have, you’re not posting the people in your church. You’re posting, if you are posting all the time and you’re just finding pictures on Canva, which is my favorite place to find pictures, but pictures of random people that are not part of your church, that’s obvious. The pictures are too perfect. You need imperfect pictures of your imperfect people in the perfect world that God has created.
Laurie Graham 15:34
Wow. Okay, say that again. Sorry, like, imperfect pictures of imperfect people in God’s perfect world.
Sheila Chester 15:42
Perfect world. We have to be organic and authentic about who we are. Or say, okay, so say I grew up in South Dakota, right? We’re very, very white group of people. Say we start posting a bunch of pictures of different races, different ethnicities, and somebody comes to our church, and they’re like, that’s weird. I thought I would see different faces here. I feel, now they feel alone. They’re like, this is really uncomfortable. I did not realize, you know. Be authentic about who you are and what your beliefs are. When you say, we accept all, we accept everyone, and somebody very different comes into your community and you don’t accept them. Maybe don’t say we accept all, we accept everyone. Show pictures of who you are and who is already there. Who is, how you are helping the community. Show pictures of working at the soup kitchen. Show pictures of handing out, we did, we did bags for the homeless, pictures of, ask your congregation. Send me pictures of what you’re doing in the community.
Laurie Graham 16:53
Yeah. So when you talk about being authentic, I’ve seen churches, small and big churches both do this, where they’re posting things on social media, and even on their website, pictures that don’t represent them, like you’ve just said. Like, you see this lights and camera worship, young worship team, and you go, and it’s like, everybody is middle aged and older. And you do kind of feel deceived like that. But then I’ve had these conversations with pastors and other leaders in churches who say, but we want to attract what we want to be. And that’s where I just want to say, become that church and post what you’re doing. So if you want to be a church that does outreach, go do outreach, like you just said, and feed at the, you know, the, the shelter or, you know, take these things out to the school and take pictures of yourself doing those things. Like, become that church, and post about that. Like, I love that you’re even talking about even keeping things currently. So current. So when it comes to not posting regularly, which you said was kind of a big mistake. How often should a church be posting regularly if they’re wanting to build connection and relationships and, you know, really be putting their family, I don’t know, family out front so people can see who they are? What is regularly to you?
Sheila Chester 18:06
So to stay relevant in this mythical algorithm that Facebook has, you want to post three to five days per week. So, Facebook has this magical thing in the background that you’ll have to come to my presentation to figure out how to find, where you can schedule your posts 90 days out. And so, you’re not actually on the computer every single day posting. But let’s be honest, if you’re on Facebook, you’re on the computer every single day. You’re either consuming content or creating content all the time, but we’re looking for three to five days a week on Facebook. If we’re talking about Twitter, they want three to five times a day. I’m not gonna.
Laurie Graham 18:50
Yeah, let’s not do Twitter.
Sheila Chester 18:51
I’m not doing that and I don’t do videos. So, yeah.
Laurie Graham 18:55
So three to five times a week with Facebook. For people who are not used to this, or this may feel very overwhelming to them, how to get something creative and deep and images three to five, you know, times a week, but you mentioned scheduling ahead of time. Can you unpack that a little bit? Because when you schedule ahead of time, to me, it’s like you can do an hour, you know, have spent one or two hours and do your entire month ahead of time. Can you talk about how people could do that easily?
Sheila Chester 19:19
Sorry, here’s my simple schedule that I’m going to share with you. Every Friday I post “Happy Friday! Church services are on Sunday at 9:30. See you there!” I have a picture. I always have a picture and text. Every Wednesday, “How can we pray for you today?” I have a picture. How can we pray for you today and text. “How can we pray for you today? What are some things you’re struggling with? Do you have any friends or family that are struggling right now too?” I can, I know that I’m doing those two things every single week for the next three months, easy. Right? Every Monday, I post what, like a little blurb about the sermon from Sunday. That doesn’t you can, it’s hard to post those out super far in advance. Every Tuesday, I post from my favorite, a couple of my favorite theologians. For me, Ann Voskamp has some really great pre-downloadable images that she encourages you to use on your, on your Facebook page. Now, what I do is, I download those images and in the text, because I always have text and image, I write exactly what it says on her picture. I don’t have to be creative at all. And then, other, other whatever your favorite theologians are. If they have emails, which I get an email every day from Henry Nouwen. Richard Rohr has a wonderful selection of just content, they’re just like flowing over free content all over in the world, and I always hashtag and tag whoever it is that I’m quoting. Just to make sure that they get the, they get the credit.
Laurie Graham 20:54
Nice! And hashtags are fun to you, and honestly almost even grow some things because people are like, oh, they, you know, kind of bring people together in different ways. So one thing that I learned when I was first getting into, you know, trying to grow an organic reach, even for Small Church Ministry is just adding a question can help. Like when you’re posting a scripture verse, or Ann Voskamp, or Henry Nouwen, or whatever, that they have, like this quote, and what I noticed is when I added to the text, a question like, “what do you think of this?” or “When have you experienced this?” or, you know, just something that I was learning that I actually had to ask people if I wanted them to respond. Like people say, nobody’s engaging, and I’m like, well, have you asked them a question?
Sheila Chester 21:37
Right.
Laurie Graham 21:37
Like, even on your Friday posts, like, what are you doing this weekend? People love to share! And so, you know, it’s like with anything else, if we don’t ask we don’t get. And I think it’s, I think it helps to build community when you can just ask a question or ask for some feedback. Have you noticed that too, with the posts that you do for the churches that you work with?
Sheila Chester 21:57
You know, it really just depends, and you can’t get discouraged when nobody answers your question on social media too, you know? Like, so many times, you’re sitting through, you’re just scrolling picture, picture, picture, picture picture. You like the quote, okay, now I’ll click the text. What does she got to say about this? You really just can’t get discouraged, but you have to add some sort of text and some sort of context as why is this important to me? What is it say for you? Even if it’s there, it just creates a thought in their head that they don’t necessarily write down. But what you’re doing is you’re interacting, and the hardest part is, is that you don’t know. There’s no way to track that. No, you can’t, but I get people coming to me. They’re like, Sheila, I was on your Facebook, I was on the church Facebook, and I just loved that post about, and they didn’t like it, and they didn’t comment on it. But you know what, you’re interacting and you’re creating that community, even though you can’t see it. And sometimes you just have to let that go of, nobody commented, nobody liked my post. Just let it go.
Laurie Graham 22:58
Yeah. Wow, that’s really good. So we talked about some mistakes churches are making. And Sheila, you said, you’re opinionated and that’s why I had you on here because we need to hear some opinions, right? We need to hear from people who are doing this and people who see, and you talked about a few things already about not being on social, not posting regularly, not posting pictures. So we want pictures of people in our church. But I think you might have an opinion on Facebook ads. Can we talk about this? Because I’ll have people in our Facebook community for Small Church Ministry, we have a huge Facebook community, and people will say, oh, pay for ads, boost your ads. I have an opinion on this too, but is this a mistake or is this a good thing? Sheila, just from your context, from what you’ve seen, talk to us about Facebook ads.
Sheila Chester 23:41
Okay, so we can talk about Facebook ads pretty easily because I’m in Denver Metro. We have a small church in a big city. So we’ve got this huge amount of people that we can access. So, here’s an example. Our church tried to do a family service, a family only, kids family service. We’ve been doing this for months and my pastor said, “You know what, we’re throwing a Facebook ad at it.” And I said, “I just, I don’t know. I don’t have a good feeling about this.” We have not had good experience with Facebook ads. So, we spent $300. We did two weeks. I did a personal video inviting people to come. I did the whole like , I selected my demographics. I wanted families with children of 2 to 15 years old. I wanted within a five mile radius of the church. I did very like, specific. Laurie, how many people showed up to my event?
Laurie Graham 24:37
I don’t know.
Sheila Chester 24:38
One family showed up. One family showed up and we did a full Facebook blitz. Let me just tell you. That’s not the type of event we’re going to, we’re going to buy a Facebook ad for. A church service, a Sunday church service is not an event you’re going to buy a Facebook ad for. I wouldn’t even buy a Facebook ad for Christmas Eve services because if somebody wants to go to Christmas Eve services, they’re going to type into Google, I would like to go to a Christmas Eve service. They don’t need your Facebook ad saying that there’s Christmas Eve services because they know. They know it’s Christmas Eve, this is what happens. If they want to go to a church, you don’t need to advertise that you’re having one because you’re having one. Every church is having a Christmas Eve service. So they’re gonna go out and find their local neighborhood, their, their favorite denomination, wherever their family is going. Listen, I’m not saying don’t use Facebook ads, but don’t use Facebook ads. Don’t waste your money. Put your money somewhere else, because you have to, I mean, we put $300 into that ad and what a waste. It’s just so expensive. One thing that I will do Facebook ads for is our annual Easter egg hunt because that is community driven. That is not religious, and it is welcoming to all. You’re not inviting them to church. You’re not asking them to come pray. You’re not going to judge them. They’re not going to have to even walk into the church. People are so afraid of religion these days. And I’m not saying we have to avoid that, but if you can advertise for those community-style events, like your Easter egg hunt and, what is the other one that we do every year, we do a huge festival, a Fall Festival. So sometimes I’ll advertise for that, but even that. The Easter egg hunt gets the best. Like, we really get a phenomenal show up for the Easter egg hunt.
Laurie Graham 26:32
Sweet. I’m actually a little surprised, because I would think there would be quite a few Easter egg hunts in Denver Metro and maybe, maybe not so much. Because I think what you’re saying about how people find events, I would think it would be very similar for Vacation Bible School. If you’re a parent with kids, and you want them to find Vacation Bible School, you do Google it, and you see what it is. And it’s not like a Facebook ad is gonna make you go oh, you know? So, I also, I, Facebook ads, not saying they’re terrible, and definitely not. I’ve heard some churches say they’ve had some good success and I would encourage people like, if you want to experiment or try it, feel free, but my experience, similar to what Sheila has said, with with churches, it’s not, it’s not doing what you think it’s going to do. Facebook ads are very complicated. The algorithms are very interesting. If you want to do it well, and Sheila, you just said you did it right. Like you went through there like a lot of small changes, just hitting Boost Post. That’s not gonna help it all. You looked at demographics, you put in targeted audiences, and all of this and a variety of different types and still had no results. So thank you for sharing your experience on that. I really appreciate it.
Sheila Chester 27:40
Let me give you some free tips. How about this?
Laurie Graham 27:43
Yeah!
Sheila Chester 27:44
Here’s a couple of ideas. Here’s one that just popped into my head that I will try next time. What if you offer gift cards to your congregation. $5 gift cards for anybody that shares your post. Hey, we have an event coming up. If you share our post with your, with, you know, we’ll give you $5 at the Starbucks gift card or we’ll give you a, you know, I don’t know, whatever your church has to offer. If you have water bottles, or fidgets, or whatever. That’s an option. Also, always have an event like a Facebook event. Because I could go on Facebook right now and say events in my location. You don’t have to pay to have an event on your Facebook page, and I’ll, I’ll show all the events going on in my zip code automatically because of course Facebook is stalking everyone, and they have your location on your phone. You can literally just look events in my area, and it’ll pop up. If you don’t even have an event up there how people gonna find it? So, events, posting on your Facebook page, posting in your community groups. So like, we friends of Highlands Ranch Colorado, or just easy mom’s groups in the area, post in those. Those get a ton of feedback. I actually get quite a few people that come from those specific groups.
Laurie Graham 29:00
So you just branched into how to use Facebook to really do some outreach there. And I will absolutely echo that asking people from your church to share on their pages is really effective. We could not pay hours. I mean, that would be like crazy amount of money. I’d be like, Oh yeah, pay me $5. But for most small churches, if you just asked your people to, would you please share this and tag your friends?That’s the other thing, is when people share something on their page again, the algorithms mean hardly anybody’s gonna see it, but once you tag your friends and be, this is like an invitation. Like, be specific. Be, be intentional. Be kind. Like, who do I really think in my friendship circle is going to want to come to the egg hunt or who do I think in my friendship circle is going to want to come to that men’s event? And actually tag your friends. Like I think we can teach our congregation to share and use social media as invitations, as we used to use, you know, going to the corner store and inviting our friends where we don’t don’t see people in person in the same way a lot of times, but we can use Facebook in that way too. So. Well, Sheila, we’ve talked about a lot. We’ve talked about a lot of mistakes. Do you want to wrap up your biggest tips for people? Because we, I mean, we kind of we wandered a little bit, but you gave a lot of really good things here. So what should people do or what should they remember, even if it’s a wrap up of what we’ve talked about?
Sheila Chester 30:24
Absolutely. I think the biggest thing that I want to get across to people is that we are, we are here to support and love and encourage our community. Whether it be, that be the community that is already inside of our church, let’s just say especially the community that’s already inside of our church. Really love and care for them in between Sundays, in between events, and that will grow to the rest of the community as well. It’s all about organic and authenticity, and I think, just really doing it for the love of people and for the love of God. I think that’s gonna really be the most successful thing you can do.
Laurie Graham 31:08
I think one of my favorite takeaways from just talking with you today, Sheila, was really just the shift of why are we paying to advertise as though people are clients. And again, I’m not anti-advertising. I’m really not, but there’s just a shift that happens in our mind, and I think that’s so true of of small churches. Like, what we have to offer and what is so valuable and beautiful about small churches are our relationships. And that is, I think that’s the gold of being in small churches, of being known and being seen. And when we move into a place of, you know, heavy advertising, or marketing, or getting upset by the results, even when you talked about it, like, nobody responded to me, nobody responded to me, we’re kind of crossing over just into a little bit of a different mindset when we’re moving from just being relational and serving and sharing to, you know, really looking at that, I don’t know, that payback or that result from that. Hey, Sheila, before we run out of time today, you are going to be speaking at our upcoming Women’s Conference at the end of January ’23. We are so excited. And I don’t want to give your whole talk away, but for those who are even able to come as women, because there’s gonna be a bunch of men here who are going to be like, I can’t go to that, I can’t hear her speak. But for those who are able to come to the free conference we have going on on January 28, 2023, why should they come hear you? Because they just like, got to hear you for 30 minutes. So what else will you be sharing?
Sheila Chester 32:31
Sure, I’m going to be very specific when it comes to that, to that meeting. I mean, we’re not going to have all these questions, obviously. I’m just gonna go through, do this, then do this, then do this. And for everybody that attends my presentation, I will make sure you get a downloadable sheet that will show you, give you some best practices for social media use, maybe for your volunteers. You can hand that to your volunteers, you can hand that to other staff members, hopefully volunteers. And honestly, one more tip I want to give everybody. If you’re not on social media already, don’t feel like you have to learn it. There is somebody in your church that already knows how to, how to do this. You don’t have to be the one, you don’t have to be the buck stops here, like, find somebody that’s good at it already and they’ll learn it way faster than you can learn the whole system altogether. But I look forward to talking on, in January. I’ve got a whole bunch of information shoved in a tiny amount of time. So I hope it’ll be helpful!
Laurie Graham 33:31
I’m sure it will be! This has already been so great. Like, I have like five other conversations I want to have with you like, about the denominational thing that you talked about, about that church that came together. Like we’re gonna have so many more conversations after this, but in the meantime, if people do want to connect with you, how can they find you?
Sheila Chester 33:50
Sure. I have a website. It’s sheilakchester.com. I actually do a podcast, a parenting podcast, where I interview other families’ best practices and how they cope with parenting because it can be pretty crazy stuff. Yeah, you can find all of my social media from that webpage, either personal or my podcast. And yeah, that’s the best way to get hold of me.
Laurie Graham 34:16
Fun! So sheilakhester.com and we will make sure to drop that link in the show notes so you all can stay connected with Sheila because she’s quite a hoot in many ways and a parenting podcast huh?
Sheila Chester 34:30
Why not? Let’s, what else do I got to offer?
Laurie Graham 34:33
I love it! Okay, so before we go one little rapid fire question that I didn’t ask you. I was gonna ask you. So what is one thing you’re really looking forward to like, in the next month or in the next, you know, season?
Sheila Chester 34:44
Looking forward to.
Laurie Graham 34:46
Yeah, just in your life.
Sheila Chester 34:49
I just started working with yet another church and I’m just so excited to meet more people and help people streamline marketing for small churches. Like it turns out I’m passionate about this, I had no idea. Don’t tell 19 year old Sheila though, she would not have approved.
Laurie Graham 35:06
Isn’t it fun to do something that you love?
Sheila Chester 35:09
Absolutely. It’s so exciting.
Laurie Graham 35:10
Wow. Hey, for all you who have been here listening, whether you’re listening live when it’s happening or a year down the road, I’m so happy that you’re here and we are here to support and serve small churches. Really all over the planet, and keep in touch like find us on Facebook and Instagram at Small Church Ministry. And until next week, be a light.
Laurie Graham 0:01
Hey, this is Laurie Graham. Welcome to the Small Church Ministry Podcast.
Laurie Graham 0:15
Hey, welcome to another episode of the Small Church Ministry Podcast. I am super excited today to have my friend Sheila Chester on the episode with us, and she’s going to tell you more about her, but she’s does social media, marketing, and works with churches. And she’s, we’re so grateful to have her speaking at our Women’s Ministry Conference coming up in January too. So, let’s just kick it off. Sheila, tell us a little bit about you and your church.
Sheila Chester 00:42
Sure, I fell into my church, but I started as the music director for the celebration, or the contemporary service. My friend became the senior pastor there and said they need a contemporary service and Sheila, you’re the person to do it, and I don’t know how he did it, but he convinced me to do it. So, I did that for about three years and then the pandemic hit, and we all had to learn a whole bunch of things that we never thought we would have to learn. So our church is,
Laurie Graham 01:17
You and the rest of the world, right? What a crazy couple years it’s been.
Sheila Chester 01:21
Right! Our churches in the middle of Denver Metro, and we have about 60 to 80 people show up per service. We have the two services. So we’re still a small church, denominational PCUSA church in the middle of Denver.
Laurie Graham 01:36
I love it! So I love that you just said you’re in Metro Denver. I just talked to a pastor, like a week ago who said, but all your churches are rural churches, right? Like he thought the churches in our small church community were rural, and there is such a miss, I don’t know, misconception that small churches are all rural, because it’s not true. We have people inner city, we have people suburbia, we have people small towns. And so, how fun! Is it different to be a small church in a metro area do you think than the rural areas?
Sheila Chester 02:02
Yeah, I actually grew up in rural South Dakota and I grew up in a small Lutheran Church. And I’m talking about like, 20 people, 50 people, if you count everybody that’s left over the last 25 years. I think they still have me on their roster as a member. But yeah, having a small church, you know, I grew up in this church where of course, my mom was the volunteer. When these rural small churches, this is what happens, like, my mom was never the pastor, but she was, we were there 10 times a week. And she was the, you know, she would read the, she would read the sermon if we didn’t have a pastor that week, you know, because we’re a small church, we couldn’t afford to hire a pastor, and they’re still kind of go through all that stuff. But then I came to the big city, and I was like, I’m gonna go to a big church, and I tried all these mega churches, and I never fit in. And I felt very alone and I felt anonymous. And so, you walk into these dark churches, and you love the music. It’s like going to a rock concert, and man, I love music, because I’m a singer. And I tried singing in the churches, and it just never hit it and I, again, got convinced, heavily convinced to, to start working for this other church and man has it changed my life. It’s changed my spirituality. I, I feel like I’m going to a family every Sunday, because, you know, they’re small. They’re, you know them, you know what’s going on with these people, and I’ve been there for five years now and they’re my people.
Laurie Graham 03:30
Awe, like, I don’t even have to ask you the question of what do you love about small churches because just naturally, like, started talking about it.
Sheila Chester 03:37
They’re my family!
Laurie Graham 03:37
It’s so interesting. I could talk to you about like, a million different things right now, but you mentioned that you fell into worship leading, being the music director at your church. So how and, by the way, that’s so small churchish, right? Like people find themselves accidentally leading and then learning like, whole new skill areas and all sorts of things, because we love that in small churches, but how did you transition or move, or maybe you still do music, how did you move into this, I don’t know, marketing, or social media, managing kind of thing?
Sheila Chester 04:07
Sure. Well, during the pandemic, you know, I was, I’m still doing the music, but we had to reach our congregation somehow, you know. People were alone. People were in their houses, they were, they felt trapped, they felt disconnected. And so, between me and my pastor, and we had a small staff, we kind of decided, how are we going to connect with these people. And so, for my job, we are the music people. A couple of my band members they recorded before, and I’m like, let’s record it. Let’s record as much as we can. And then we learned about, you know, public domain. Like, we had to learn all that stuff the hard way, and luckily, Facebook was pretty nice this that first year and didn’t tag anybody for, for recording music that they didn’t have licenses for. And then, I learned more about social media like, we need to post this on Facebook and then I kept learning more about that. And we didn’t really have anybody doing that. So I’m like, that’s fine. I’ll figure it out. I got time. I, you know, I’m just homeschooling my children and dealing with my husband who’s working from home. And you know, it’s everything’s, so I needed that. I needed that to, to, I needed a place for myself, my brain to go that wasn’t the insanity of what was happening in my family and in our, in our house. I mean, we wouldn’t even go to our neighbor’s house, we would just wave over the fence. So social media, I think was a way for a ton of people to get outside of their house. That was the only way. So I really just dove into that, and that, of course, leads to marketing, leads to communications within the church and then I just took on that whole extra role. So I added to my role.
Laurie Graham 05:47
Yeah, and you said that you work for a few churches, right? You actually do some social media managing for several churches. Is this a new skill area for you that you actually learned during the pandemic or do you like have an education in marketing or something?
Sheila Chester 06:00
I have nothing. I have a lot of educations, Laurie. My poor mother. I have several educations and certificates and licenses, and none of them are in marketing or social media. So this I just fell into, yeah. What happened was, somebody had called the church, another PCUSA church in Colorado, called Our Church and said, “Who does your social media?” And our office manager was like, well, Sheila does it and I’m like, do I, do I? Why are we telling people that I do this? It’s so, so I talked to them. They’re like, nope, we want to hire you. I’m like, okay. So I just started working with them, and then working on their marketing, and what does marketing mean for a small church in the mountains of Colorado? I mean, you’re looking at a 500 population town in the mountains of Colorado. I’m like what are you, what are you looking for with your social media? Well, we want more members. I’m like, well, that’s not really what social media does. It shows people who you are as a community, and as a church family. That’s what social media does. So I did that. And then another church, PCUSA, was like, hey, you know, who’s doing your social media. So, somebody’s looking at our social media, Laurie. Apparently, something’s working. So I’m working now for another PCUSA church, another small under 200 church in the Denver Metro area, doing the exact same thing, building up their social media, showing the public, showing their congregation, this is who we are, this is our family, and really connecting in between Sundays because that’s what social media is. It is creating that connection in between Sundays.
Laurie Graham 07:34
So two things you’ve mentioned. One is that it’s for connection, it’s connecting people between Sundays, and also that you’re showing people who you are. And I love that you’ve brought this up because we’re going to get into a lot of the struggles in small churches, because that’s what you’re here. And thank you for being here and being willing to share things for free on a podcast that is really going to help small churches with social media, because we have these questions come up all the time. How do we do it better? What do we do? And I think, sometimes, it comes down to that purpose. Like, we’re like running around, just trying to grab on to things like, we got to do this better, but we haven’t even defined like, what it’s for. And so, when you think about small churches, and you grew up in a rural, tiny church, you’re working in small churches in Denver Metro now like, that’s a, that’s a good leap even. So I know that you get small churches. When you think about small churches, why should they bother with social media? Because some people, even with the pandemic, they were streaming and now they’re not. They’re like, oh, we just did that for a time. And since you mentioned it, you know, was that just for a time or why should we still even bother with it?
Sheila Chester 08:40
Sure. So here’s an example for that. So, I recently went home to visit my family in South Dakota, and the churches had recently combined. So small towns, you have to be creative on how to hire a pastor, right? You’ve got a church of 25 people, how do you pay a pastor to to work there? So these two churches actually combined, it was a United Methodist combined with a Lutheran. So, totally crazy stuff happening up there.
Laurie Graham 09:08
But it worked!
Sheila Chester 09:09
It worked. It worked. The pastor said, I tried to look up information about who your church is and what you guys are about, but I couldn’t find anything on social media. Like, there’s nothing. You don’t have a website. You don’t have, you don’t have social media because you think you’re in these small towns, and everybody knows about you. Everybody, you know, well, I don’t need to advertise myself. Well, let me ask you this question. Who do you know that’s on social media right now in your small town? And every single person that was in that room when I was talking to them about why they should be on social media, raised their hand. I’m like, why are you on social media? Oh, I just wanna. I just want to follow my, my kids and my grandkids and I just want to. And then I see, you know, this, these feeds and I follow them. I’m like, yeah, you’re on social media all the time. Everybody in this community is on social media, and why not advertise, not even advertise, show off your family, your church family, to the community. A lot of people have a preconceived notion about what church is, and so they won’t even step foot. And if you show them the picture of what church is, what that family looks like, maybe they’ll be more willing to step foot in, in your church, or maybe they’ll be more willing to come to an event that you’re hosting. But you have to, first, go where your community is at, and let me just tell you, your communities on social media, even if it’s just 70% of your community, even if it’s a town of 700, like my hometown is, that’s a lot of people.
Laurie Graham 10:38
Yeah, yeah. I love what you said because there is such a difference between people knowing you exist and people knowing who you are, like people knowing you. And in so many, whether it’s small town or big city, you know, you’re like, well, people see us they know we’re here. Yeah, but they don’t know you. And so, to be able to connect that way. You mentioned, I don’t know if it was earlier when we talked or on the podcast so far, but you mentioned that using social media to grow your church like, to try to build your congregation probably isn’t the best goal. Can you talk a little bit about that and why it wouldn’t be? Because I know there’s churches who are like, paying Facebook ads, and boosting their posts and everything, and they’re wondering why they’re not seeing the results that they, that they’re, they feel like they’re paying for.
Sheila Chester 11:22
Sure. So, one thing I want to, kind of, talk about. Our church members, our church prospects, they’re not our customers, so why are we treating them like our customers? Like we’re selling them something, right?
Laurie Graham 11:43
Oh, I love it.
Sheila Chester 11:44
Because we’re not selling them anything. We are showing them the love of God in our lives and in our families. That is what social media is for. It’s for social networking, social connecting. So sure, you can pay for Facebook ads for certain events that you might have going on, but ultimately, it’s just not worth it. I tell you, I realized I don’t have a certification in this, a degree in this, but quite frankly, I don’t, I don’t think you could keep up even if you did, because the algorithms. If we’re just talking Facebook, like I’m not even talking Tik Tok and Pinterest, and oh my gosh, it’s the Twitter’s I don’t do the tweets, I don’t do the twits tweets. You know, the algorithms people are always talking about in small businesses or talking about on Facebook and Instagram, I can’t even begin to follow that and understand what all of that means. All I know is when you post everyday, something that is important to you as, as a person, as a church body, something that is meaningful, not just something that is floofy, right? Not just shallow level, but like a deep, meaningful thing.
Laurie Graham 12:58
Yeah!
Sheila Chester 12:59
And we can talk about how we do that later because I know you’re already overwhelmed thinking “I can’t come up with deep posts every five minutes. It’s too much!” It is, trust me! You’re not, you know, there are ways to around that, but we are looking for ways to connect with people and have them like, follow, and share your posts. Focus on organic growth. Just like when you’re, when you’re having people come into your church, you’re not out there giving them $5, please, please come to my church. They’re gonna come to your church for $5, okay. You can say I love you. Let me know how I can support you. I’ll be at church on Sunday, you can join me if you’d like. That’s how you get people to church, organically. You can’t buy people to come to your church. I mean, you can try, but that’s not realistic and that’s not going to last. That’s not a lasting relationship.
Laurie Graham 13:50
I think that’s a really big differentiation to think about the fact that we sell to customers, but we invite friends. Like, selling and inviting is very, very different and I honestly think in this day and age, we can tell when we’re being sold to and I’m not even against sales. I sell things. You sell things. We all know people who sell things. Like, if selling is done ethically it’s meeting a real need, but it really is a difference between selling versus sharing and inviting. So, let’s get to some good practical tips because we want to make sure we, you know, we give people like great things to kind of go on. But what do you see churches doing like, as mistakes? Like, where do you see small churches making mistakes in social media? Like let’s just unpack that first.
Sheila Chester 14:35
Well, first of all small churches are not on social media. So there’s that.
Laurie Graham 14:39
Okay, not being on social media. That’s number one right there.
Sheila Chester 14:43
Or they’re on social media and they’re not posting. They post once a year when they have their annual bizarre or their annual picnic. They post once a year or maybe three times for Easter and Christmas and their annual picnic. When they do post, they post scripture only, or a picture of scripture. You are in, I have opinions anyway. You have, you’re not posting the people in your church. You’re posting, if you are posting all the time and you’re just finding pictures on Canva, which is my favorite place to find pictures, but pictures of random people that are not part of your church, that’s obvious. The pictures are too perfect. You need imperfect pictures of your imperfect people in the perfect world that God has created.
Laurie Graham 15:34
Wow. Okay, say that again. Sorry, like, imperfect pictures of imperfect people in God’s perfect world.
Sheila Chester 15:42
Perfect world. We have to be organic and authentic about who we are. Or say, okay, so say I grew up in South Dakota, right? We’re very, very white group of people. Say we start posting a bunch of pictures of different races, different ethnicities, and somebody comes to our church, and they’re like, that’s weird. I thought I would see different faces here. I feel, now they feel alone. They’re like, this is really uncomfortable. I did not realize, you know. Be authentic about who you are and what your beliefs are. When you say, we accept all, we accept everyone, and somebody very different comes into your community and you don’t accept them. Maybe don’t say we accept all, we accept everyone. Show pictures of who you are and who is already there. Who is, how you are helping the community. Show pictures of working at the soup kitchen. Show pictures of handing out, we did, we did bags for the homeless, pictures of, ask your congregation. Send me pictures of what you’re doing in the community.
Laurie Graham 16:53
Yeah. So when you talk about being authentic, I’ve seen churches, small and big churches both do this, where they’re posting things on social media, and even on their website, pictures that don’t represent them, like you’ve just said. Like, you see this lights and camera worship, young worship team, and you go, and it’s like, everybody is middle aged and older. And you do kind of feel deceived like that. But then I’ve had these conversations with pastors and other leaders in churches who say, but we want to attract what we want to be. And that’s where I just want to say, become that church and post what you’re doing. So if you want to be a church that does outreach, go do outreach, like you just said, and feed at the, you know, the, the shelter or, you know, take these things out to the school and take pictures of yourself doing those things. Like, become that church, and post about that. Like, I love that you’re even talking about even keeping things currently. So current. So when it comes to not posting regularly, which you said was kind of a big mistake. How often should a church be posting regularly if they’re wanting to build connection and relationships and, you know, really be putting their family, I don’t know, family out front so people can see who they are? What is regularly to you?
Sheila Chester 18:06
So to stay relevant in this mythical algorithm that Facebook has, you want to post three to five days per week. So, Facebook has this magical thing in the background that you’ll have to come to my presentation to figure out how to find, where you can schedule your posts 90 days out. And so, you’re not actually on the computer every single day posting. But let’s be honest, if you’re on Facebook, you’re on the computer every single day. You’re either consuming content or creating content all the time, but we’re looking for three to five days a week on Facebook. If we’re talking about Twitter, they want three to five times a day. I’m not gonna.
Laurie Graham 18:50
Yeah, let’s not do Twitter.
Sheila Chester 18:51
I’m not doing that and I don’t do videos. So, yeah.
Laurie Graham 18:55
So three to five times a week with Facebook. For people who are not used to this, or this may feel very overwhelming to them, how to get something creative and deep and images three to five, you know, times a week, but you mentioned scheduling ahead of time. Can you unpack that a little bit? Because when you schedule ahead of time, to me, it’s like you can do an hour, you know, have spent one or two hours and do your entire month ahead of time. Can you talk about how people could do that easily?
Sheila Chester 19:19
Sorry, here’s my simple schedule that I’m going to share with you. Every Friday I post “Happy Friday! Church services are on Sunday at 9:30. See you there!” I have a picture. I always have a picture and text. Every Wednesday, “How can we pray for you today?” I have a picture. How can we pray for you today and text. “How can we pray for you today? What are some things you’re struggling with? Do you have any friends or family that are struggling right now too?” I can, I know that I’m doing those two things every single week for the next three months, easy. Right? Every Monday, I post what, like a little blurb about the sermon from Sunday. That doesn’t you can, it’s hard to post those out super far in advance. Every Tuesday, I post from my favorite, a couple of my favorite theologians. For me, Ann Voskamp has some really great pre-downloadable images that she encourages you to use on your, on your Facebook page. Now, what I do is, I download those images and in the text, because I always have text and image, I write exactly what it says on her picture. I don’t have to be creative at all. And then, other, other whatever your favorite theologians are. If they have emails, which I get an email every day from Henry Nouwen. Richard Rohr has a wonderful selection of just content, they’re just like flowing over free content all over in the world, and I always hashtag and tag whoever it is that I’m quoting. Just to make sure that they get the, they get the credit.
Laurie Graham 20:54
Nice! And hashtags are fun to you, and honestly almost even grow some things because people are like, oh, they, you know, kind of bring people together in different ways. So one thing that I learned when I was first getting into, you know, trying to grow an organic reach, even for Small Church Ministry is just adding a question can help. Like when you’re posting a scripture verse, or Ann Voskamp, or Henry Nouwen, or whatever, that they have, like this quote, and what I noticed is when I added to the text, a question like, “what do you think of this?” or “When have you experienced this?” or, you know, just something that I was learning that I actually had to ask people if I wanted them to respond. Like people say, nobody’s engaging, and I’m like, well, have you asked them a question?
Sheila Chester 21:37
Right.
Laurie Graham 21:37
Like, even on your Friday posts, like, what are you doing this weekend? People love to share! And so, you know, it’s like with anything else, if we don’t ask we don’t get. And I think it’s, I think it helps to build community when you can just ask a question or ask for some feedback. Have you noticed that too, with the posts that you do for the churches that you work with?
Sheila Chester 21:57
You know, it really just depends, and you can’t get discouraged when nobody answers your question on social media too, you know? Like, so many times, you’re sitting through, you’re just scrolling picture, picture, picture, picture picture. You like the quote, okay, now I’ll click the text. What does she got to say about this? You really just can’t get discouraged, but you have to add some sort of text and some sort of context as why is this important to me? What is it say for you? Even if it’s there, it just creates a thought in their head that they don’t necessarily write down. But what you’re doing is you’re interacting, and the hardest part is, is that you don’t know. There’s no way to track that. No, you can’t, but I get people coming to me. They’re like, Sheila, I was on your Facebook, I was on the church Facebook, and I just loved that post about, and they didn’t like it, and they didn’t comment on it. But you know what, you’re interacting and you’re creating that community, even though you can’t see it. And sometimes you just have to let that go of, nobody commented, nobody liked my post. Just let it go.
Laurie Graham 22:58
Yeah. Wow, that’s really good. So we talked about some mistakes churches are making. And Sheila, you said, you’re opinionated and that’s why I had you on here because we need to hear some opinions, right? We need to hear from people who are doing this and people who see, and you talked about a few things already about not being on social, not posting regularly, not posting pictures. So we want pictures of people in our church. But I think you might have an opinion on Facebook ads. Can we talk about this? Because I’ll have people in our Facebook community for Small Church Ministry, we have a huge Facebook community, and people will say, oh, pay for ads, boost your ads. I have an opinion on this too, but is this a mistake or is this a good thing? Sheila, just from your context, from what you’ve seen, talk to us about Facebook ads.
Sheila Chester 23:41
Okay, so we can talk about Facebook ads pretty easily because I’m in Denver Metro. We have a small church in a big city. So we’ve got this huge amount of people that we can access. So, here’s an example. Our church tried to do a family service, a family only, kids family service. We’ve been doing this for months and my pastor said, “You know what, we’re throwing a Facebook ad at it.” And I said, “I just, I don’t know. I don’t have a good feeling about this.” We have not had good experience with Facebook ads. So, we spent $300. We did two weeks. I did a personal video inviting people to come. I did the whole like , I selected my demographics. I wanted families with children of 2 to 15 years old. I wanted within a five mile radius of the church. I did very like, specific. Laurie, how many people showed up to my event?
Laurie Graham 24:37
I don’t know.
Sheila Chester 24:38
One family showed up. One family showed up and we did a full Facebook blitz. Let me just tell you. That’s not the type of event we’re going to, we’re going to buy a Facebook ad for. A church service, a Sunday church service is not an event you’re going to buy a Facebook ad for. I wouldn’t even buy a Facebook ad for Christmas Eve services because if somebody wants to go to Christmas Eve services, they’re going to type into Google, I would like to go to a Christmas Eve service. They don’t need your Facebook ad saying that there’s Christmas Eve services because they know. They know it’s Christmas Eve, this is what happens. If they want to go to a church, you don’t need to advertise that you’re having one because you’re having one. Every church is having a Christmas Eve service. So they’re gonna go out and find their local neighborhood, their, their favorite denomination, wherever their family is going. Listen, I’m not saying don’t use Facebook ads, but don’t use Facebook ads. Don’t waste your money. Put your money somewhere else, because you have to, I mean, we put $300 into that ad and what a waste. It’s just so expensive. One thing that I will do Facebook ads for is our annual Easter egg hunt because that is community driven. That is not religious, and it is welcoming to all. You’re not inviting them to church. You’re not asking them to come pray. You’re not going to judge them. They’re not going to have to even walk into the church. People are so afraid of religion these days. And I’m not saying we have to avoid that, but if you can advertise for those community-style events, like your Easter egg hunt and, what is the other one that we do every year, we do a huge festival, a Fall Festival. So sometimes I’ll advertise for that, but even that. The Easter egg hunt gets the best. Like, we really get a phenomenal show up for the Easter egg hunt.
Laurie Graham 26:32
Sweet. I’m actually a little surprised, because I would think there would be quite a few Easter egg hunts in Denver Metro and maybe, maybe not so much. Because I think what you’re saying about how people find events, I would think it would be very similar for Vacation Bible School. If you’re a parent with kids, and you want them to find Vacation Bible School, you do Google it, and you see what it is. And it’s not like a Facebook ad is gonna make you go oh, you know? So, I also, I, Facebook ads, not saying they’re terrible, and definitely not. I’ve heard some churches say they’ve had some good success and I would encourage people like, if you want to experiment or try it, feel free, but my experience, similar to what Sheila has said, with with churches, it’s not, it’s not doing what you think it’s going to do. Facebook ads are very complicated. The algorithms are very interesting. If you want to do it well, and Sheila, you just said you did it right. Like you went through there like a lot of small changes, just hitting Boost Post. That’s not gonna help it all. You looked at demographics, you put in targeted audiences, and all of this and a variety of different types and still had no results. So thank you for sharing your experience on that. I really appreciate it.
Sheila Chester 27:40
Let me give you some free tips. How about this?
Laurie Graham 27:43
Yeah!
Sheila Chester 27:44
Here’s a couple of ideas. Here’s one that just popped into my head that I will try next time. What if you offer gift cards to your congregation. $5 gift cards for anybody that shares your post. Hey, we have an event coming up. If you share our post with your, with, you know, we’ll give you $5 at the Starbucks gift card or we’ll give you a, you know, I don’t know, whatever your church has to offer. If you have water bottles, or fidgets, or whatever. That’s an option. Also, always have an event like a Facebook event. Because I could go on Facebook right now and say events in my location. You don’t have to pay to have an event on your Facebook page, and I’ll, I’ll show all the events going on in my zip code automatically because of course Facebook is stalking everyone, and they have your location on your phone. You can literally just look events in my area, and it’ll pop up. If you don’t even have an event up there how people gonna find it? So, events, posting on your Facebook page, posting in your community groups. So like, we friends of Highlands Ranch Colorado, or just easy mom’s groups in the area, post in those. Those get a ton of feedback. I actually get quite a few people that come from those specific groups.
Laurie Graham 29:00
So you just branched into how to use Facebook to really do some outreach there. And I will absolutely echo that asking people from your church to share on their pages is really effective. We could not pay hours. I mean, that would be like crazy amount of money. I’d be like, Oh yeah, pay me $5. But for most small churches, if you just asked your people to, would you please share this and tag your friends?That’s the other thing, is when people share something on their page again, the algorithms mean hardly anybody’s gonna see it, but once you tag your friends and be, this is like an invitation. Like, be specific. Be, be intentional. Be kind. Like, who do I really think in my friendship circle is going to want to come to the egg hunt or who do I think in my friendship circle is going to want to come to that men’s event? And actually tag your friends. Like I think we can teach our congregation to share and use social media as invitations, as we used to use, you know, going to the corner store and inviting our friends where we don’t don’t see people in person in the same way a lot of times, but we can use Facebook in that way too. So. Well, Sheila, we’ve talked about a lot. We’ve talked about a lot of mistakes. Do you want to wrap up your biggest tips for people? Because we, I mean, we kind of we wandered a little bit, but you gave a lot of really good things here. So what should people do or what should they remember, even if it’s a wrap up of what we’ve talked about?
Sheila Chester 30:24
Absolutely. I think the biggest thing that I want to get across to people is that we are, we are here to support and love and encourage our community. Whether it be, that be the community that is already inside of our church, let’s just say especially the community that’s already inside of our church. Really love and care for them in between Sundays, in between events, and that will grow to the rest of the community as well. It’s all about organic and authenticity, and I think, just really doing it for the love of people and for the love of God. I think that’s gonna really be the most successful thing you can do.
Laurie Graham 31:08
I think one of my favorite takeaways from just talking with you today, Sheila, was really just the shift of why are we paying to advertise as though people are clients. And again, I’m not anti-advertising. I’m really not, but there’s just a shift that happens in our mind, and I think that’s so true of of small churches. Like, what we have to offer and what is so valuable and beautiful about small churches are our relationships. And that is, I think that’s the gold of being in small churches, of being known and being seen. And when we move into a place of, you know, heavy advertising, or marketing, or getting upset by the results, even when you talked about it, like, nobody responded to me, nobody responded to me, we’re kind of crossing over just into a little bit of a different mindset when we’re moving from just being relational and serving and sharing to, you know, really looking at that, I don’t know, that payback or that result from that. Hey, Sheila, before we run out of time today, you are going to be speaking at our upcoming Women’s Conference at the end of January ’23. We are so excited. And I don’t want to give your whole talk away, but for those who are even able to come as women, because there’s gonna be a bunch of men here who are going to be like, I can’t go to that, I can’t hear her speak. But for those who are able to come to the free conference we have going on on January 28, 2023, why should they come hear you? Because they just like, got to hear you for 30 minutes. So what else will you be sharing?
Sheila Chester 32:31
Sure, I’m going to be very specific when it comes to that, to that meeting. I mean, we’re not going to have all these questions, obviously. I’m just gonna go through, do this, then do this, then do this. And for everybody that attends my presentation, I will make sure you get a downloadable sheet that will show you, give you some best practices for social media use, maybe for your volunteers. You can hand that to your volunteers, you can hand that to other staff members, hopefully volunteers. And honestly, one more tip I want to give everybody. If you’re not on social media already, don’t feel like you have to learn it. There is somebody in your church that already knows how to, how to do this. You don’t have to be the one, you don’t have to be the buck stops here, like, find somebody that’s good at it already and they’ll learn it way faster than you can learn the whole system altogether. But I look forward to talking on, in January. I’ve got a whole bunch of information shoved in a tiny amount of time. So I hope it’ll be helpful!
Laurie Graham 33:31
I’m sure it will be! This has already been so great. Like, I have like five other conversations I want to have with you like, about the denominational thing that you talked about, about that church that came together. Like we’re gonna have so many more conversations after this, but in the meantime, if people do want to connect with you, how can they find you?
Sheila Chester 33:50
Sure. I have a website. It’s sheilakchester.com. I actually do a podcast, a parenting podcast, where I interview other families’ best practices and how they cope with parenting because it can be pretty crazy stuff. Yeah, you can find all of my social media from that webpage, either personal or my podcast. And yeah, that’s the best way to get hold of me.
Laurie Graham 34:16
Fun! So sheilakhester.com and we will make sure to drop that link in the show notes so you all can stay connected with Sheila because she’s quite a hoot in many ways and a parenting podcast huh?
Sheila Chester 34:30
Why not? Let’s, what else do I got to offer?
Laurie Graham 34:33
I love it! Okay, so before we go one little rapid fire question that I didn’t ask you. I was gonna ask you. So what is one thing you’re really looking forward to like, in the next month or in the next, you know, season?
Sheila Chester 34:44
Looking forward to.
Laurie Graham 34:46
Yeah, just in your life.
Sheila Chester 34:49
I just started working with yet another church and I’m just so excited to meet more people and help people streamline marketing for small churches. Like it turns out I’m passionate about this, I had no idea. Don’t tell 19 year old Sheila though, she would not have approved.
Laurie Graham 35:06
Isn’t it fun to do something that you love?
Sheila Chester 35:09
Absolutely. It’s so exciting.
Laurie Graham 35:10
Wow. Hey, for all you who have been here listening, whether you’re listening live when it’s happening or a year down the road, I’m so happy that you’re here and we are here to support and serve small churches. Really all over the planet, and keep in touch like find us on Facebook and Instagram at Small Church Ministry. And until next week, be a light.