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The front door of your church building is no longer the front door of your church.
Confused?
The majority of people who visit your church will have already checked you out online. If you don’t have an online presence, or if you don’t keep it current, it leaves a similar first impression as having overgrown bushes, chipping paint, or crumbling sidewalks on your actual building. The front door of your church has moved online, and the easiest and best way to make sure a guest’s first impression is a good one, is by using these social media tips for small churches.
By social media, I mean any of the apps or websites where people can interact with each other. This includes Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
The Power of Social Media and Why We Should Use It
The internet and social media have paved the way for people to “know” you before they’ve ever met you. While this may seem uncomfortable or frustrating, it’s a fact that isn’t going away. Trying to avoid having people learn about you online by forgoing having any kind of online presence will simply mean fewer people know who you are and even fewer people will visit you. We live in a culture that does not like the unknown.
What do you do before trying out a new restaurant? Check out the menu, get a sense of prices, see what people are saying about it, and maybe see if there are any pictures of the restaurant so you know what you’re looking for.
What do you do before booking a hotel? Read reviews, look at the pictures, and hunt for a good deal.
Need a handyman? Chances are, you’ll find someone you trust and get their recommendation. But maybe you’ll also post on your Facebook page asking a broader group of people for their recommendations. And if that handyman has a Facebook page, you’ll almost certainly check it out so you can see their work.
What do you think people are doing before they visit your church? They’re going online, checking out your social media presence to see what church events are happening, what worship services look like (and when your services are!), who goes to your church, etc. Fear of the unknown can keep a lot of people stuck, so if your social media presence allows people to “know” you before they step foot in your door, you’ve removed a hurdle to helping them connect with God and others.
People who are new to the area or deciding to try church again for the first time are going to search the internet for churches in their areas. Larger churches may have a bigger budget to present well-crafted Facebook pages, TikTok videos, and websites, but you don’t have to compete to have a place. You don’t have to mirror what the big churches are doing (and really, you shouldn’t!), but you do need to be findable. Having a presence on social media platforms is the best way to make sure visitors can find your front door.
The First Step Towards Developing The Best Social Media Strategy
Before you overwhelm yourself by trying to create a Facebook page, an Instagram account, a TikTok profile, a YouTube account, a Twitter handle, and a Pinterest account tonight, take some time to do some research and consider which accounts would be best for you. Then start with one, or maybe 2, and get used to that social media account before trying to learn a second, or third, or fourth.
Before you create a church profile and start making social media posts on any social media platform, take time to decide what your goal and mission are for your social media presence. Do you want to reach new people? Do you want to keep your church connected during the week? Do you want to share church events? Do you want to share encouragement? What is your target audience? Baby Boomers? Millennials? Single Parents? Families? Who you want to reach and what you want to do will determine which social media platform will be the best place to start.
Regardless of which social media platform you start with (which we’ll dive into in the tips), it’s important to note that for most platforms, you need to have a personal account before you can create a “business” account, which means you’ll need to have your own profile on whichever social media platform you want to use before you can build one for your church. For all platforms, you’ll want to ensure you have an email address dedicated to the church. This can be anything from a simple Gmail address to a “branded” email.
7 Social Media Tips For Small Churches
1. Pick The Right Place
As promised, the most important tip to having a social media presence is to pick the right place to have it. If you are uncomfortable making videos, TikTok is probably not the place to start. If you are focusing on reaching GenZ, then Facebook may not be the place for you. If you are going to emphasize establishing a community where church members can interact with each other during the week, Instagram isn’t going to have a space for that.
Here’s a very broad and brief overview to give you an idea of the demographics that use each social media platform. This data comes from Pew Research:
- YouTube: Used by 83% of all adults. 93% of adults between the ages of 18 and 50 use YouTube. Across the board (age, gender, race, socioeconomic status, political affiliation, etc.), YouTube is the most used social media platform.
- Facebook: Remains the second-most used social media platform. It’s more popular among the millennial and older generations, women, and rural residents. People who earn an income more in line with the average American household are also more likely to be on Facebook than those who are above/below that average. The overall percentage of people on Facebook is in declining, but Facebook still won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
- Instagram: Most popular among GenZ and Millennials. Used more in urban areas than suburban, as well as among those who have a higher income. The number of people who use Instagram is steadily increasing each year.
- TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest: Most users on all three of these platforms are GenZ, with an overwhelming proportion of those users being female. They all continue to gain popularity among the younger generations.
- LinkedIn, Twitter (X), and Reddit: These are the only platforms used more by men than women. They also tend to skew towards those with higher incomes and levels of education.
How Does This Help You Decide Where To Start?
Well, if you want to start by reaching the broadest group of users, you probably want to start with YouTube and Facebook. Also, good news, these are probably 2 of the platforms that you and most of your church members are already on, so it’ll be relatively easy to start there! That being said, don’t discount the other platforms. They’re going to be gaining popularity as the demographics of the country get younger.
One other important note within Facebook, there are groups and pages. These have two different functions, and there’s a good chance it’ll be wise for your church to have one of each. The Facebook group is a good place to establish your church community. Facebook groups are a great way to facilitate conversations and relationships outside of Sundays with church members and attendees who call your church their home.
Usually, these should be private so that people feel comfortable sharing prayer requests, praises, thoughts, etc. It would also be the place where you’d share events that aren’t outreach-focused, such as an annual business meeting or training for volunteers.
Facebook Pages are more for that “front door” idea that we talked about earlier. This is where new members and potential visitors will first get a feel for your church. This is where you’ll post church events and other things that have an outward focus. If you don’t feel like you’re at a place where you can maintain both a group and a page, pick the one that best corresponds to what your “social media mission” is.
2. Post Consistently (but not too much!)
Regardless of what social media platform you’re on, you have to be on it. This may not mean making a post every single day, but it does mean that at least a few times a week, you should be putting something up. However, you also need to make sure you don’t go too far the other way and post too much. If you post 2+ things every day, most social media platforms will stop showing your content to people. It’s okay to have more than one post in a day sometimes, but generally, you don’t want to share/post more than one thing in a day. The sweet spot for posting tends to be 3-7 times a week.
Social media is run by algorithms, which means there are a whole bunch of numbers, formulas, rules, data, and other math involved in getting your content in front of people. Stray outside of the “sweet spot” and the algorithm will show your stuff less.
If you struggle to stay consistent, maybe because you don’t know what to post or you struggle to not overshare, you can always make yourself a schedule of what type of post you want to share each day. A simple schedule could look like this:
- Monday: Recap of Sunday with photos, a sermon quote, application questions, etc.
- Wednesday: Encouraging Bible verse or a question to spark engagement. This can be a simple “How can we be praying for you?” or, “What worship song could you listen to on repeat?”
- Friday: Invitation to church/event or photos from past event
- Sunday: Livestream service or a link to watch the sermon/service online later
Many social media platforms even let you schedule posts, so you can prepare the whole week or month in one afternoon and schedule them out so you don’t have to take time every single day to post.
3. Be Real
I can spot a stock photo a mile away. So can most other people. That’s not to say stock photos and videos don’t have their place, but they shouldn’t be your main content. You don’t need a professional camera to get some real shots. Your phone’s camera is sufficient. You don’t need to perfectly frame your shots, candid photos and video clips demonstrate the realness of who you are.
Social media is already full of picture-perfect, best-face-forward, carefully-crafted content. If you want people to connect with who you are, what you are, where you’re going, and why you’re going there, then be clear and real with who you are.
For visitors looking to possibly come to your church, being real has the benefit of clearly showing what they can expect when they walk in the front door. If you use stock photos that show a multi-cultural, cross-generational church but your church is predominantly one generation and one race, you’re essentially lying about what your church is. Sure, maybe your hope is that you’ll have all cultures and generations represented in your church, but if that’s not where you are, don’t post like it is. Be real. You’ll see a better payoff.
4. Shake It Up
Posting the exact same kind of stuff all the time is boring. It’s boring to make. It’s boring to post. It’s boring to see. It’s boring to share. Even the algorithms we mentioned previously will find it boring and they’ll stop showing your stuff if it’s all the same.
Try posting a mix of different types of content. On Facebook, this means playing with posting straight text, photos, videos, polls, live streams, etc. For YouTube, this could mean posting just your sermon, your full service, or short video clips. For Instagram, this could mean posting images or videos called reels, which are usually a minute long, or experimenting with stories which are images and videos that go away after a day.
Sharing a variety of things will allow a variety of people to connect with your content. Some individuals prefer watching long videos, some enjoy reading, some want to have a conversation, and some love seeing pictures of themselves or loved ones. Sharing a variety of posts keeps you from getting into a rut.
You don’t have to be intimidated by trying different things. Remember that being real is better than being polished. If you wait until it’s perfect, you’ll never post anything.
5. Pay Attention
On the flip side of shaking it up, pay attention and lean into your strengths. Pay attention to the types of posts that seem to get the most traction. Pay attention to which type of content people tend to comment on, react to by clicking the like button, which posts get shared, etc. While you don’t want to post only one type of item, it is a good idea to post what people want so that there’s a better chance they’ll see what they need.
While there’s a good chance you’ll be able to see anecdotally what’s better received, that one post with pictures from an event you had got 20 likes, when normally your posts only get 2 likes, maybe real pictures of things you really do are popular. You also have a powerful tool at your disposal to help get some concrete ideas of what’s helpful. This tool is called “insights,” and just about every social media platform has a place where they give you the data about what you’re posting.
For Facebook and Instagram, this is together in the Meta Business Suite, and TikTok, YouTube, etc. have pages for insights, too. These insights tell you which posts are most popular, who likes and follows your account, how many people are seeing your content, etc. When you share more of what people are connecting with, more people will connect!
6. Encourage Engagement
It’s easy for us to be consumers. It’s easy to unplug our brains and scroll for hours without actually connecting to what we’re watching, reading, or seeing. Help stop the doom scrolling by sharing things that make people stop, think, like, comment, and share. Ask questions. Respond to comments. Encourage people to engage. Make an effort to respond to comments and direct messages from your followers. This helps to build a sense of community and can encourage more people to engage with your content.
Especially when you’re starting off, don’t be afraid to ask church leaders or church members to make a point of liking, commenting, or sharing posts when they see them. This is called “organic reach” and costs you nothing, but it pays off big for the algorithms. If the algorithm sees that your posts are being liked, commented on, and shared, it’ll make sure even more people see them because they want people to engage beyond doom scrolling, too!
7. Don’t Reinvent The Wheel
Not everything you post has to be completely from scratch. That’s a lot. That’s exhausting. If graphic design is not your thing, that’s terrifying. Don’t take that to mean “steal.” If you use something that someone else created, make sure you give them credit or share it from their page.
If you want to create original content without having to start from scratch every time, I highly suggest utilizing Canva. They not only have a wide variety of templates that you can use as a starting point, regardless of whether you want to make a video or an image, but they have also added some AI tools to help you make content quickly and uniquely. This gives you the benefit of being able to make things for your social media page without having to spend hours on end for every single piece of content. The best part? If your church is a registered non-profit, you can get the professional version of Canva for free.
Remember Where Your Front Door Is
Your front door is online. It’s on social media. The first impression that visitors will have will happen before they ever step foot in the church.
Maintaining a social media presence can be daunting, but it can also be a space for a lot of fun and creativity! It can be a place to provide hope and encouragement both for you as you establish community beyond Sunday mornings, and for those who see your stuff.
Make sure you’re picking a good social media platform for whom you want to reach. If you’re just starting out, that’ll most likely be YouTube and/or Facebook. Once you’ve made your church’s account, have fun posting consistently and in a variety of ways, while still being true to who you are as a church!
Social media may be a challenge to navigate, but it’s here to stay, and you don’t have to let it scare you. Instead, I invite you to be excited about the possibilities that lie before you! You can do it! Blessings on your journey as you tend to your new front door!
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