Church Social Media Strategies That Died In 2024

Hey, it’s Brady,

Did these four social media strategies die in 2024? Honestly, some of them died a long time ago.

Churches still tend to obsess over them though.

Which is fine.

Most of them won’t be detrimental to your reach.

But putting energy into these kinds of things means less energy for the stuff that actually matters.

In our tests, hashtags make virtually zero impact on a post’s reach. The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, has acknowledged this as well.

Nothing wrong with adding them to your caption. Just don’t sweat them.

Of course, hashtags were first introduced to help with search. That was a decade ago.

Social algorithms are now considerably more intelligent. SEO from the words used in captions and posts is what I focus on nowadays.

Taking that viral audio and adding it to your latest Reel? Don’t expect extra reach - unless you’re specifically doing an actual trend.

(remember the Wes Anderson thing last summer?)

Not to mention as record labels continue to battle over copyrights, you wouldn’t want your audio to be muted unexpectedly after your post is live.

That happened to my most viral post ever on TikTok and isn't uncommon.

Churches love to obsess over post timing. The thing is? It really doesn’t matter. So long as you publish during waking hours.

If your post is quality, it will find its audience. You can’t trick the algorithm into extra reach by posting at 8:26 a.m. instead of 9:15 a.m.

Someone sends your church a DM and they get an auto reply - “We’ll get back to you soon!”. 😖

The whole point of DMs is to connect with a real person. Don’t substitute real for robot. It’s okay if you don’t reply immediately!

This week a church DM’d me first, I responded, and then I got an auto reply back. When they were the ones the initiated the conversation in the first place! 😆

Big Changes On Social Media That Have Churches Worried

You hear it all the time: "Social media changes so fast! How can I ever keep up?"

So today on the show we're discussing those changes.

We're joined by Danielle Davis, church social media savant, and both her, Alex, and myself have each brought two topics to discuss.

First, something about social media that excites us about the future.

And second, something about social media that concerns us about the future.

We're here to keep your church in the know on all of the changes happening on social. So let's dive in.

Full episode link here.

Thanks as always for your time, attention, and trust. Talk to you next Thursday. - Brady Shearer