07/15/2024
Secret 6: Understand Facebook.
This is a 10 part teaching series that covers all chapter (all 10 secrets of extraordinary church growth) from the influential book, The Funnel, written by Ross Turner, CEO & Founder of Vibrant Agency.
This book shows the proven methods for using digital marketing for churches. Using branding, team leadership, social media, website, and paid ads to help a church bring their message to their community.
Want to read or watch the other training videos? You can here: https://www.vibrantagency.com/church-growth/
If you would like to learn more about Ross, or to contact us, please do so using the following:
Ross Turner Instagram: .turner.official
Vibrant Agency Instagram:
Vibrant Agency Website: https://www.vibrantagency.com
Email: [email protected]
Secret 6: Understand Facebook.
_____
Understand Facebook.
What is the right way to use Facebook as a church?
I love Instagram, and for now it is my go-to, but donāt sleep on Facebook. If you use Facebook the right way, you will see huge impact. You just have to understand peopleās state of mind when they are using Facebook. Itās different than Instagram, different than Snapchat, TikTok, or Twitter. Each social media platform has its own user behaviors and mindsets. Facebook also has a totally different audience demographic. Great marketers try to make their strategy unique and tailored for each social platform. They think about what kind of people are on Facebook, and what content they would want to see. There are moments every day when people at work or at home have gaps in their schedules. Little gaps when they have a second to check social media. These gaps are where you win the battle. Gaps between appointments, during commercials, and gaps where there shouldnāt be a gap but your brain just needs a break. This is when we grab our phones and scroll through our social media platforms. Some people instinctively open Instagram, some scroll through Facebook, and many check both. The strategy to win with Facebook is different than anywhere else. It has its unique advantages and challenges, but if done right, you can gain massive amounts of interaction and depth.
It is not just the mindset and functions that are different on Facebook, it is the actual people. At the core, I am a data nerd. I love analytics, charts, and even spreadsheets. Ew, I know. One thing I love about Facebook is that they give you analytics and data on your audience. If you are an admin on your churchās Facebook business page, you will see an Insights button. This is a tab where you can see in-depth details about your specific audience on Facebook. In this Insights page, you can see the top locations of the people who most engage with your page, their ages, gender, and even key times of the day that they interact online. If your church is like most, you will notice that the majority of the interaction you get on Facebook is from 45- to 54-year-old females. This is pretty common across the hundreds of churches that we have evaluated. Taking that statistic into consideration, when you are on Facebook, consider that you might get more traction if you focus your content on family happenings and posts that ask for interaction and comments. These kinds of posts perform very well with this demographic. Know who you are speaking to, and you will deepen your engagement.
When posting Facebook content, think about ways to reach the friends of your current followers. If you can tap into the influence of other peopleās Facebook friends, your church will get more of a social reach than you can on your own. A great way to do this is by tagging people in photos whenever possible. When you tag someone in a photo, it appears on that personās main feed and is shown to all of their friends. By doing this, many that have never been to your church will be introduced to your page just by seeing tagged photos of their friends. Another great tip is to ask your serve team, staff, and everyone you can to ācheck inā on Facebook on Sundays. When someone checks in on Facebook, it shows up on their feed for all of their friends to see. Many churches will put up a request on their main screens reminding people to check in because of this very reason. By the time you are reading this book, there will likely be more options like this. Use them as much as possible. Anytime you can have something about your church show up on someoneās personal feed, do it. The organic reach of content from others is as good as a personal recommendation to check out your church.
Remember who your audience is, and what they want to see on Facebook.