Spring 2024 Church Social Media Trends

Hey, it’s Brady,

This is your quarterly look at the social media landscape.

• What's changing?

• What's staying the same?

• How does it affect your church?

These are the Spring 2024 church social media trends I’m watching…

Trend #1: The Sermon Clip “Fly On The Wall” POV

We want people to be genuine online. But most of the time? They’re not. Interviews on the street are often scripted. Actors play in skits we’re meant to believe are real encounters.

You know what’s actually real? A live event where a person is talking to an in-person audience: church. This POV is becoming more and more valuable online because people intuit it’s actually real.

Just don’t dress it up too much. The fancy decorative trim? Pulsing audio bed? You forfeit that unique POV when you overproduce the clip.

Trend #2: High Contrast Text-Only Carousels Keep Winning

High contrast stops the scroll. Simple text is very approachable. You almost have to read it because it’s so bold.

The font I use on the cover of my carousels is Neue Haas Grotesk Black - but with a twist.

In Photoshop, I add an extra 10 pixel stroke to the font. In the same color. To make it even thicker. Even more bold.

Trend #3: Creative Differences Per Platform Despite Identical Specs

Every platform does vertical video. The format is the same. But the creative expressions per platform are beginning to diverge.

For example, Instagram has a greater appetite for production and gloss. Whereas TikTok culture is more…”sit in your car and talk to your phone in one take.”

Does this mean your church needs to adjust? No. See Trend #1. That unique POV insulates churches from this - at least with sermon clips.

Trend #4: DM Automation

The ‘link in bio’ call-to-action is dead. The era of DM automation on Instagram and Facebook has arrived. We use the tool Manychat for this. And here’s a link to a full tutorial on how I do it.

Trend #5: Social Media For Search

I wanted to cook an orzo recipe last week. So I searched for it on TikTok. Then on Instagram. Not Google.

For the next week my feeds were flooded with great orzo recipes. Which is why I searched on social in the first place - and not a traditional search engine.

Social media’s definition is expanding. It’s entertainment. It’s commerce. It’s your social graph. It’s search.

What’s next?

Let’s circle back in the summer and see what trends emerge then.

Stop Saying “Link In Bio!” Say This Instead…

It’s been a long time coming, but the phrase “link in bio” is dead.

So what do we do instead?

I want to show you an alternative - because the results I’m seeing are very promising.

Full tutorial link here.

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