church communications

⚡ [FREE] Crush Social Media This New Year ⚡ https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book 2024 [FREE] Youth Ministry Masterclass on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg ====================================== DESCRIPTION 😫 Are you tired of seeing church announcements flood your social media feeds? It's time to rethink this strategy and take a closer look at the potential hazards it poses. 📹In this video, we delve deep into the reasons why posting church announcements on social media might not be the wisest choice. 👍But, don’t worry! We’ll show you exactly what to do! And how to not lose your life to it! Especially if you follow our time management tips, which is a part of the 2024 Youth Ministry [on-demand] Masterclass https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaLIJceFHg7w8vxlx5ARqXeg ====================================== 📓SHOWNOTES //SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS http://www.hybridministry.xyz/080 //YOUTUBE VIDEO https://youtu.be/slB0Rmf_X0c PURPOSE OF SOCIAL MEDIA //OPUS.PRO [1 CLICK VIRAL SHORTS SOLUTION] https://youtu.be/TiW4ooQpAvo?si=W_4pCZZbZmUnzsB9 //METRICOOL https://metricool.com/ POST YOUR MESSAGES ON YOUTUBE //[FREE] E-BOOK https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book //$100 STARTER KIT https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit //YOUVERSION LIVE EVENTS https://my.bible.com/events TAKE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA TO THE NEXT LEVEL //OPUS.PRO [1 CLICK VIRAL SHORTS SOLUTION] https://youtu.be/TiW4ooQpAvo?si=W_4pCZZbZmUnzsB9 //SONLIFE https://www.sonlife.com/ //[FREE] E-BOOK https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book IDEA #2: TELEPATHY //ADOBE PREMIERE PRESETS https://share.hsforms.com/1VL1oWwWwQ82PLwsPFkPITgnumis IDEA #3: RANK 'EM //DYM RANK 'EM RESOURCES Christmas: https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/rank-%27em%3A-christmas-edition/christmas-games-9126.html Fall: https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/rank-%27em---fall-edition/holiday-or-seasonal/fall-8962.html IDEA #6: EMOJI PHRASEOLOGY //MY FAVORITE 9 DYM PRODUCTS https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym IDEA #8: SPIRITUAL PRACTICE VIDEOS //SPIRITUAL PRACTICE VIDEOS https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/spiritual-practice-videos/social-media/instagram-8804.html WHAT TO DO ABOUT FACEBOOK? //CANVA PRO FOR [FREE!] https://youtu.be/g0FQWvKjP_E?si=D6jJLxEdkEy9z0FV WHAT TO DO ABOUT INSTAGRAM? //BUDGET GRAPHIC DESIGN EDITORS https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaIdZ-RLm5uVVlHj46FKrMYw 👉 STAY CONNECTED WITH NICK YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HybridMinistry Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz ====================================== 🆓 FREEBIES 🆓 📅 "1 Month Done for You Social Media Posting Tool" https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book 🎅 "The Ultimate (and FREE!) Christmas Party Gude" GUIDE: https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/christmas-party-run-sheet PRACTICAL YM TIPS: https://www.youtube.com/@practicalyouthministrytips 🍩 "FREE World's Greatest Donut Event Guide" GUIDE: https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/worlds-greatest-donut 😨 "Have I already Ruined my TikTok Account?" https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook 📹 "Adobe Premiere Pro Presets for Animating Layers" https://share.hsforms.com/1VL1oWwWwQ82PLwsPFkPITgnumis ====================================== 🛠️TOOLS Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products //BEST DYM RESOURCES https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/dym OPUS.PRO FOR AI SHORTS & REELS https://www.opus.pro/?via=a5d361 //YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100 https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit AUTO POD https://autopod.lemonsqueezy.com?aff=MX7Vv TRY REV.COM FOR TRANSCRIBING https://rev.pxf.io/R5nDOa -------------- 🕰️TIMECODES 00:00-01:06 Stop Doing this on Social Media 01:06-04:14 What is the purpose of social media? 04:14-07:04 Post Your Messages to YouTube 07:04-11:42 Taking your social media to the next level 11:42-12:12 Idea #1: Drafts 12:12-13:45 Idea #2: Telepathy 13:45-14:04 Idea #3: Blind Rankings 14:04-14:20 Idea #4: Know it or Nah 14:20-14:33 Idea #5: Staff Videos 14:33-15:39 Idea #6: Emoji Phraseology 15:39-15:44 Idea #7: Sermon Clips 15:44-16:35 Idea #8: Spiritual Practice 16:35-16:46 Where to Post all these videos? 16:46-17:34 What to do about Facebook? 17:34-19:27 What to do about Instagram? ✍️TRANSCRIPT Try Transcribing for Yourself at Rev.Com http://www.rev.pxf.io/R5nDOa Nick Clason (00:00): Summer camp, fall retreat D. Now your next outreach experience, the reality is there are always things to do. You're always trying to get students to come to you. You're always trying to get people to fill and populate your next church events. So naturally, what do we do? Well, we need to put it on the church website. We need to make sure that it gets listed in the church bulletin. We need to add it to the pre-roll before the service and post it to social media. Stop it. No, seriously, stop it. Stop posting your announcements to social media. Don't do it. Don't do it. We're tempted always to post our announcements to social media because we think it's another outlet, another strategy, another place to inform people. But the reality is nobody wants that on their social media feeds. I hear you. You're like, yeah, but what else should I do? Nobody listens, dude. I get it. Okay, but let's look at it. What should we be doing on social media? Nick Clason (01:07): So stop posting your announcements on social media. I saw this reel the other day about this guy talking about the Red Bull social media experience, and he said, red Bull is crushing it. He said, what are the local pizzerias and restaurants in your town doing? People are not getting on social media and thinking like, man, I wonder what's on the menu today. Because if you look at a pizzeria on social media, you know that they're going to be posting or you know that they're going to be serving pizza. That's just a part of the experience. And so he said, what Red Bull's doing on social media, we know that Red Bull serves Red Bull energy drinks, but what their primary goal on social media is entertainment. So that's why people get on social media. They get on social media to be entertained. Can we as a church adopt some of those strategies not forever and forsaking some of the spiritual components that can come about on social media, but can we do that on social media? Nick Clason (02:08): And the fact is, yeah, actually social media has ushered in a new era with the discovery platforms, with short form video based and videos are still king. And you know what you can do? You can actually take clips and snippets of your message and use this strategy right here. It's linked at the top of the video and this completely free tool Opus Pro. Check out in that video link in this description, link in that video description. But the fact of the matter is you can use tools out there. You can use AI to help you and aid you if you're not a great video editor, if you don't know how to clip things up on social. But the fact is, you might even be thinking, well, what am I supposed to do? How can I post things there? There's a lot of services out there to post things on the feed. Nick Clason (02:52): So you may be scheduling your lock-in post. You may be scheduling your church announcement post. You may be scheduling your summer camp. Stop doing those things. You can create videos, you can create moments of entertainment, and you can use a posting service if you want. Linked Below is my experience with a posting service called Metrical. That's probably who I would recommend. I do still like to just post everything I do live. I find that the algorithms prefer that and that things just perform better from a views and metrics standpoint. But if you don't have time for that and you're like, there's no way I could do that, then check out Metrical. It's completely free for most up to a certain number of posts and it's worth it. But you never want to get on a feed. Think about your own habits. You never just want to get on a feed that's just littered with, come to this event, come to this event, come to this event, come to this. Nick Clason (03:47): That's boring. And you know what? Your social media probably reflects that. If all you're doing is posting announcements, you're probably only getting a single digit number of likes because the reality is that's not what people are looking for when they get on social media. And so I know you got a lot to announce, you got a lot to get out there, but social media is not the place. So what should we be doing? Well, let's check that out. So churches, youth pastors, regardless of where you are in this on the org chart at your church, what should you be doing? Well, number one, start posting long form to YouTube. And now when I say that if you have live streaming capabilities in your room and you don't have time to sit down direct to camera, then go ahead and post your live streams to YouTube. Nick Clason (04:38): But if you don't, I don't. I'm a youth pastor and we are in our very own room, our very own space, and our room is not outfitted for live streaming capabilities. So we actually sit down very similar to what I'm doing here direct to camera. I have a teleprompter and I do deliver a message there. Now, that entire strategy is laid out completely for you, for free right here in my 100% completely free ebook. But that is the baseline. That's the basis for all my social media, everything else sort of branches off of there. So all of our messages that we produce and that we perform, everything that we produce in the room, we also then go ahead and do it directly on YouTube. So pre film your messages, it gives you two strategic advantages. Number one, if you don't have live streaming capability, it gives you a way to film it that is good, helpful, beneficial, looks good, direct to camera. Nick Clason (05:32): You can do most of that for under a hundred dollars. That's also linked below in the show notes with just a cell phone camera and a few little pieces of gear. But then from there, what you can do is you can take those messages, post them to YouTube. You also get an opportunity to practice your message. So then when you are standing up live in the room in front of a bunch of students, it's not the first time that you're looking at that material. You have done it before. You have delivered it before, once you've pre-filed, done direct to camera. The one thing that I love about that is in YouTube, they have a description thing, just like me, a lot of things down to the description in this video. Also over at hybridministry.xyz/080 But you can do the same kind of concept. Nick Clason (06:16): You can paste a next steps form. And so for every single one of your messages, you can push students towards a next steps form. We like to use the you version events, live events for in the room. Students can follow along, take notes, read scripture, but we also post the link to that in every single video. So if they're watching on a laptop, then they can sit down, they can scroll through that on their phone, they can take notes, they can engage with the Bible on their phone right in front of them. So you can link certain things. And then by the way, hey, if you are announcing summer camp, you can be like, Hey, summer camp registration link in the description. You don't have to make it some static boring graphic post. You can actually weave it into the rest of your strategy. But then dovetailing off of your long form YouTube videos is this next piece that you definitely don't want to miss. Nick Clason (07:05): So after YouTube video, the next thing I recommend that you do is that you post shorts, reels, tiktoks to your feeds. And the good news is all four of the major platforms, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook if you want to, it's really easy to link with your Instagram and TikTok are all asking for similar content. So what you can do now on social media for the first time in a lot of years is you can create one piece of content for one platform, but you can spread it across all fours. You can post the same thing to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts, and Facebook Ourto for example, I posted these this week. This week, a couple weeks leading up to Christmas when I'm filming this. You're going to get this in the new year, but we do thing, and I'm going to detail, it's actually detailed right here. Nick Clason (07:53): I'll completely free my ebook, but we're going to go through nine ideas that you can do to start doing entertainment based things on your social medias and stop just posting announcements. One of the things we do are drafts stole this, saw this on someone's TikTok somewhere. So we were doing drafting Christmas movies across all four platforms. We had on TikTok, we had 383 views. We had on YouTube, 280 views we had on Instagram, 214 views. And then on Facebook we had 175 views, which totaled 1052 views across all four platforms. Those aren't great numbers by the way either. That's just very standard. I picked the second most recent post that I posted just to give you a good example of a real time strategy idea. I'm not trying to highlight my best one or anything like that, right? But here's the question. Would you like for your content to get in front of a thousand people probably, right? Nick Clason (08:46): And that wasn't great. We've had posts that have hit 13,000 on Instagram, 27,001 time we did a football draft. So we've had way, way bigger success. But then that was a entertainment based one. Also in the same week, we've posted a spiritual based one that one did not do as well. And this is actually an underperformer in my opinion. And we've had ones that do similar to the draft response in around those numbers on all the four platforms. But we had on TikTok, we had 224 views. We had 211 on Instagram, we had only 15 on Facebook, which is pretty low. And then 1 42 on YouTube, which is also relatively low, but still that total to 592. I know for me that feels low, but we don't have 592 students or people come to our youth ministry program. So we post fun content. We also post spiritual content, and then that's anchored underneath the baseline by our long form YouTube video. Nick Clason (09:48): And what's crazy is that Opus Pro, the message clip that came through Opus Pro. And so you'll notice there's a little overlay that says, watch the full video on Cross Creek students YouTube channel that is just a preset that I made. And every single one of our videos spits out with that little watermark. I can change it, I can customize, I can do. The stats aren't crazy, but you should subscribe because this is actually part of the 2024 Youth Pastor Masterclass. We're right dead in the middle. If you subscribe and if you hit the bell, you'll get notified when the next video drops. But I like to think about it like this or I want, but I like to think of it like my neighbor. I want to share the gospel with my neighbor. I want to tell them about Jesus. But every single time I have a conversation with my neighbor, I'm not sitting down and telling them about Jesus. Nick Clason (10:34): I'm working the relationship. I'm having a conversation. I grew up in church. I grew up in a ministry called Sun Life, and they have a thing called spiritual, CPR, cultivate, plant Reap. And really the cultivate stage is just build the friendship. Plant is like sprinkle in seeds of spiritual conversations in the gospel and then reap is like present the gospel and ask them for a decision to follow Jesus. Yes or no. And a lot of times on social media, we take the approach of reap, ask them for a spiritual decision, ask them to respond to the gospel, yes or no every single time as opposed to trying to cultivate our audience as opposed to trying to plant little seeds of curiosity, spiritual moments, things like that. So here are ideas, things that I do in my own personal context. It's all outlined here. Am I completely free? Nick Clason (11:23): Ebook? You should definitely check it out if you haven't yet. But it will help you take your social media from being boring and dumb and announcement based to entertainment based and personality driven. Not just your personality, but students, other volunteer leaders, other staff that you might have. So these are things that we do. We do a thing called a draft, and that's what you just saw the results from. But two people sit down and then they just draft things under a certain category. We've done Christmas movies, we've done potatoes, we've done burger places, we've done Christmas songs, we've done Thanksgiving food, we've done Halloween Candy, we've done Avengers, we've done Blue Characters. Literally anything you can think of. One person next person, one person next person. The only caveat is you can pick anything you want, but if it's already been taken, it's kind of off the board. Nick Clason (12:12): The next thing we do is a fun little game called Telepathy or Wavelength or nsync or just guess the number. And two people sit down and one person's thinking of a number, the other person's asking them certain categories, and then the person that has the number in their brain, they're telling the other person their answers from that category based on their number. So for example, if I'm thinking of the number one and you ask me for a day of the week, I'm going to say Monday. And then if you say food, I'm going to say Tomatoes. Okay? And so then at the end of it, you ask four things, four different things. So day of the week, food, movie, Avenger, and then you give 'em all. And then at the end, the other person, I was asking the categories, they say, are you thinking number one? Nick Clason (12:57): And if they got it right, they got it right. If they got it wrong, they got it wrong. The one thing I love about this game is we intro it like this. Hey, we're playing this game. The number's going to be right here on the screen. The number pops in on the screen. You can edit that in an editor like Adobe Premier Pro, I got completely free presets. Link down below if you want some of those that will do animations like this and like that, and rotate in, rotate out all those things, all the things you just saw on the screen. If you're not watching on YouTube, all those things are in the link in the description. Go grab the free presets. But if not, you can do that on your phone in a phone editor like TikTok or Cap Cut. But you can say, Hey, the number's on the screen, close your eyes if you don't play along. Nick Clason (13:37): Alright, here we go. And then that person can open their eyes and they can watch and they can actually try to guess the number. So it's actually engaging the person on the other side of the phone. I like to do blind rankings. TikTok has a blind ranking filter, so you can blind rank all kinds of things. Disney movies, Disney characters, and a blind rank is just you're ranking them in a one through 10 or one through five order without knowing what's coming next. I also have some examples of that on Download Youth Ministry, a link to that in just a second. I like to do these things called Know it or Nah, so you've probably heard it where they play a little five second clip of a song on TikTok. Just find those audios on TikTok. And then you choose one side of the room. Nick Clason (14:14): So I'll get four or five people if they know it, they go to this side. If they don't, they go to that side. We'll do staff video. So we'll have our staff participate in certain things we were just giving away for our Christmas party. Craig Cash, our senior pastor's name is Craig. We were giving away Craig Cash, and so we did the Craig Cash Olympics, we did all kinds of Christmas type things. One of my favorites is a game I have on DYM called Emoji Phrase theology. People just trying to guess the emoji phrase. And I'll just sit down or have a student sit down or a leader sit down or walk around and quiz students, Hey, what's this emoji phrase saying? What's this camp emoji phrase saying, what's this Christmas emoji phrase saying? Was this back to school emoji phrase saying, and I'll clip those in. Nick Clason (14:54): So I take a game that's already created, and instead of just doing the kind of static standard screen-based graphics, we customize it to our own space. Link down below are my favorite nine DYM products that I have. Several of them are hybrid based. Several of them don't just focus on the screen only or digital, but it's a melding together of the two. And you can take that next layer to the next level, right? Like my emoji phrase, theology. There's a social media component, but you can take it to the next level and customize it with a host, asking people the answers to those questions. And just some simple video editing on the backside, whether that be in a software like Adobe Premiere Pro, or you can do it on TikTok or in Canva, or not Canva, but Cap Cut. I always get Canva and Cap cut mixed up. Nick Clason (15:40): You can use the video clips out of Opus Pro like I was talking about. I got some spiritual practice videos on Download Youth Ministry. One of my favorites is someone's scrolling through TikTok and you just point to the screen right here and it says, stay or scroll, read the Bible with me. Point, point, point, point, point, point, point. Wait a second. And you say, all right, thanks for staying. Let's read the Bible together. And you read a passage of scripture right there on social media. That's all you do. It's super basic, super simple, but it has a great response because what you're doing then is you're cultivating that relationship. You may get those people with the draft or the instinct telepathy game or the blind ranking or the know it or not back and forth, and then you're like, Hey, let's do some spiritual stuff together. Nick Clason (16:19): Let's memorize scripture. Let's read the Bible, let's do a prayer. All those types of things. And you can do a lot of that stuff, especially with the bedrock of your messages. Long form video, you can do a lot of that stuff on Opus Pro. Saves you hours. It saves me hours every single week. So continuing on our strategy, you can post all those types of videos to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts, and Facebook. But what about Facebook groups? Well, let's check it out. You should definitely have Facebook groups. You should have a Facebook page also because a Facebook page is where those things dump into, but then have a group associated with that. If you're a youth pastor, my only strategy that I recommend on Facebook is a Facebook parents group. That's mostly where they are. You can post things like car ride questions, and you can use Canva Pro. Nick Clason (17:06): It's completely free for churches. It's also linked below. We did an entire video on it, so you can go check that out in the description, but you can just create square graphics for your parents to talk about stuff with their students on the way home. And that's just a great discipleship strategy. If you're a church communications person, you should probably have a little bit more active Facebook group. But for a youth pastor, most students aren't on Facebook, but most parents are. And so that's where the strategy comes in. It's for the parents. Lastly, on Instagram, you got the feed. You also got stories on stories. The ultimate goal, I would say, is to engage with your people. So repost things if they tag you for sure. You can also post engagement style questions. What's your favorite Christmas movie? What's the best Halloween candy? What's your New Year's resolution? Nick Clason (17:53): What's one thing you're going to be doing this weekend using only emojis? Tell us what you did this last week. Stuff like that. Engage with your audience. A lot of times, I'll take a reel that I post, so I don't post every single one of those reels to the feed, though that option has recently turned off, so I have to post it, then go back later and take it off the profile grid. I'm sure there's a setting I'm missing, but nonetheless, I'll sometimes then share the reels that didn't also get shared to the feed into a story, and that's just a way to do engagement. And then I may throw a question sticker like a slider bar or a question or a quiz sticker or something like that. Just engagement. That's my goal in stories. And then on the main feed, just post photos of your people and post recap photos from a Wednesday night, from a Sunday morning, from a Sunday night. Nick Clason (18:36): Brady Sheer is doing these carousel based education, entertainment based carousel posts where ask the question and he answers it. They are money, and I think that they are here to stay, and you don't need a lot of graphical work to do some of those things. You can do something simple and easy and basic like that simply on Canva. Or even simply maybe in the Instagram stories editor, we have a complete playlist where we look at budget graphic editors, if that's something you're interested in. It's also linked below. But finally, speaking of education, that's one of the main ways that we help disciple and teach our students about Jesus and help them take meaningful next steps towards him, which is the next video in this 2024 Youth Ministry Masterclass video linked right here on the screen. We'll talk to you next time as we're making discipleship easy, possible and accessible. So as always, stay hybrid.

📲 Why Every Youth Ministry Needs a Strong Social Media Presence 📲 In this episode we'll give you a COMPLETELY FREE Done for you, reproducable month long social media posting tool and stratgey framework. Just copy and paste this month after month for a strong social media presence in your church's youth ministry! Hit the link below! 👇👇👇👇👇 🆓FREEBIES 📅 "1 Month Done for You Social Media Posting Tool" https://hybrid-ministry-40060036.hubspotpagebuilder.com/free-hybrid-ministry-e-book 😨 "Have I already Ruined my TikTok Account?" https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook 📹 "Adobe Premiere Pro Presets for Animating Layers" https://share.hsforms.com/1VL1oWwWwQ82PLwsPFkPITgnumis 🛠️TOOLS Some of the below links are affilate links in which we do recieve a small commission based on your purchase or use of products //YOUTUBE STARTER KIT FOR UNDER $100 https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/youtubestarterkit AUTO POD https://autopod.lemonsqueezy.com?aff=MX7Vv TRY REV.COM FOR TRANSCRIBING https://rev.pxf.io/R5nDOa RISE OF THE NONES https://amzn.to/44YyZlT In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, it's crucial for every church to embrace the power of social media. Whether you're a small local congregation or a thriving mega-church, marketing the church effectively can help you connect with your community like never before. We'll be discussing tried-and-true marketing church strategies that include utilizing social media platforms to create a strong online presence. From crafting compelling content that resonates with your audience to developing a comprehensive church social media strategy, we've got you covered. Looking for innovative church social media ideas? Look no further! Our channel is your go-to resource for church social media management tips and tricks. We'll guide you through crafting a church social media policy that ensures your online presence aligns with your church's values and mission. With our insightful videos, you'll learn how to become a proficient church social media manager or even explore the option of bringing in a dedicated professional. Together, let's unlock the potential of social media for churches and take your ministry to new heights. 🌟 Don't miss out on our game-changing advice for creating the best church social media strategy. We'll provide you with customizable church social media templates and actionable steps to execute a flawless plan. If you're wondering how to effectively use social media to extend church invites and foster engagement, we have the answers you need. Join us as we delve into real-life examples, including the social media strategy of renowned churches like Elevation Church. Prepare to elevate your church's online presence and witness the incredible impact it has on your youth ministry and congregation as a whole. Subscribe now and embark on your journey to a Strong Digital Presence for your church's youth ministry! 🎉🏛️ 📓SHOWNOTES //SHOWNOTES & TRANSCRIPTS http://www.hybridministry.xyz/060 //NPR ARTICLE https://www.npr.org/2023/05/17/1175452002/church-closings-religious-affiliation#:~:text=Estimate%3A%20In%202019%2C%20the%20year,opened%20and%204%2C500%20churches%20closed. //YOUTUBE STARTER KIT EPISODE https://www.hybridministry.xyz/033 //FINDINGS FROM BARNA E-BOOK https://www.hybridministry.xyz/006 //SIX FINDINGS FOR THE HYBRID CHURCH EXPERIENCE https://shop.barna.com/products/6-questions-about-the-future-of-the-hybrid-church-experience //PEW RESEARCH ARTICLE: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/attendance-at-religious-services/ 📱NICK'S SOCIAL MEDIA RESOURCES SPIRITAL PRACTICES TIKTOKS •https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/spiritual-practice-videos/social-media/instagram-8804.html INSTAGRAM TOOLS •https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/instagram-slider-engagement-tool-vol-1/social-media/instagram-8118.html •https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/p/instagram-stories-slider-tool---hot-takes-edition/social-media/instagram-8034.html ALL RESOURCES •https://www.downloadyouthministry.com/featured-authors/nick-clason/?cgid=shop-nick-clason&q=nick+clason&start=18&sz=18 👉 STAY CONNECTED YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Website: https://www.hybridministry.xyz 🕰️TIMECODES 00:00-02:19 Intro 02:19-10:18 How can our church be more relevant for Gen Z & Gen Alpha? 10:18-21:52 Why youth ministries need to post their messages to YouTube 21:51-25:05 40 Done for You Social Media Posting Ideas 25:05-26:50 Where to get all these resources? ✍️TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:00): Well, hey, everybody. In this episode, we are going to answer this question why I believe every single youth ministry needs a strong social media presence. We're going to look at some trends, some statistics, and share with you why now is the time to double down, to engage and to make social media and a digital presence important in your church's student ministry. Well, everyone, if you and I have not had a chance to meet, my name is Nick Clason. I am an actual youth pastor in the D F W Dallas-Fort Worth area, host of the Hybrid Ministry Podcast. So welcome to that. Excited to have you with us. We are going to dive into some statistics and some, some trends and some quotes, and I got all kinds of fun stuff. If you are not already subscribed to our YouTube channel, hit that subscribe button, hit that notification button, hit that like button. Nick Clason (00:57): All those things help us get seen by other people who also need to hear this message about the importance of digital and student ministry in your church in 2023 and honestly, far beyond. So excited to have you with us. Hey, I also wanna let you know we got a couple of freebies. So link down below in the description in the show notes. If you're listening on a podcast, hit those up. We got your free ebook on how to create a complete TikTok from scratch. And in this episode, we are also going to, with that exact same link, we are going to drop another free done for you social media structure plan, um, 40 free videos, your social media plan. I'm gonna give it to you for you and for your youth ministry. Make it happen, download that ebook. Also, if you are a video editor and you use Adobe Premier Pro, we have some free presets for you so that you can use those Adobe Premier Pro presets in your editing. Nick Clason (01:52): Completely free, super easy to use, just want to encourage you to check those things out, uh, a like rating, subscribe, all those things. We are on TikTok, we are on Instagram. We are all the places. Hit the description, YouTube, hit the link in the show notes on a podcast. But without any further ado, let's hop in and let's dive in to the topic of why every youth ministry needs to have a strong social media presence. Let's go. So I was recently reading through, uh, the comment section of YouTube channel, and I saw this question and I thought it was fascinating, and I thought that it was worth exploring the question read like this, what elements can we bring into our service and our church, whether innovative or just a mood that increases our relevancy to Gen Z and Alpha? It may cost us discomfort, but we are willing to stretch. Nick Clason (02:44): First of all, I love the notion here that we are willing to stretch understanding that the times that we are in with Generation Z and generation alpha, gen Z, um, most people are saying, uh, the old, the, the youngest of them are born 2010, uh, on up through young adulthood. Now they're in their twenties, mid twenties or so just now graduating college, just now getting started to, um, have a career. And in addition to all of that, joining your church force for the first time. And so if you're in youth ministry, gen Z is not in your youth ministry. Uh, maybe like your high school we would say is, is Generation Z, gen alpha, um, eighth grade, seventh grade or so, right in that range. Um, down on through, uh, having been born between, uh, 2010 and 2025. So some of them aren't even born all the way yet. Nick Clason (03:35): They're in the kids' ministry, but they're waving on up. So Z and alpha are so, so completely different. I wanna share just some, some kind of state of Gen z state of gen alpha statistics with you. But those things are gonna help us frame this conversation about why social media is so important for the next generation. A lot of churches have a social presence and it operates as their outreach arm, their evangelism, uh, branch of their ministry, so to speak. And I, I think that is a great tactic and a great tool, and if you're not doing that, you definitely should. However, that being said, I think there are also opportunities to, um, promote discipleship growth, theological and spiritual connection and commitment, not only with each other, but also just with connection to God's word. And so I want to dive into some of those things, but before we do that, let's look at who Gen Z and who Gen Alpha are, what we know about them, what some of our learnings are, and what we can kind of like take from that and how that's gonna help us frame this conversation. Nick Clason (04:38): So, uh, over here, before we dive into that though, over 4,000 churches close their door yearly, over 4,000 churches. This from npr.org. Um, and the estimate is this, in 2019, the year before the pandemic, before the pandemic, keep that in mind. So the pandemic was already, or, or was, or was going to be hard on people. This right here, right? Like this is pre pandemic, more Protestant churches closed than opened in the us. Um, 2014, 4,000 churches opened, and 3,700 churches closed 2019. Then that number started to shift and get a little bit more. And so churches are slowly becoming, um, starting to close at a rate greater than their opening. And you know that with that trend over time, that's going to make churches more and more obsolete, less and less relevant. Now, is that because Generation z generation alpha don't want to go to our church, perhaps, and there may be some things worth learning, but why? Nick Clason (05:45): And where does social media play into this? I'm gonna give you that in a second. But first, 56% of Generation Z claim to be Christian. And you might think, oh, that's pretty good. That's encouraging. I thought that might be lower. I did. However, 25% of Gen Z claim to have no faith at all. James Emery White wrote a book called The Rise of the Nuns. And this is that trend right here being played out. This is the highest classification of no religion at all by any generation. Gen Z, millennials, Xers, boomers, all the things. Gen Z the highest at 25% claiming to actually have no faith whatsoever. Furthermore, the five biggest terms, when, when, uh, this is done by a study from Barna, the five biggest terms that Generation Z used to describe their faith were these five growing at 47%, open at 38%, curious at 35%, spiritual at 33%, and then exploring at 32%. Nick Clason (06:48): And so what that tells me is that Gen Z, while they may have a classification, right, of not having religion, um, not claiming one at all, they are open and they are willing and they are curious. And so I think that pairs well and creates a really good kind of groundwork and ecosystem for us as student ministry leaders and personnel to, uh, continue to answer some of their questions. Here was where this gets fascinating, and I think personally where the rubber meets the road. In response to this statement, Barna said, Hey, the statement is this. The church does not answer my questions. 13% said that that statement was completely true. 13% said the church does not answer my questions 24%. That's somewhat true. So more true than not that the church doesn't answer their questions, um, 28%, somewhat not true. Uh, so, uh, it's getting a little bit better. Nick Clason (07:46): And then 35% said that's, that's not true at all. Okay? What I wanna highlight and kind of pull out there is that 37%, almost four out of 10 people would say that the church doesn't really answer their questions yet. However, they would classify themselves as growing, open, curious, spiritual, and exploring. And so if there's an opportunity for the church to lean into a demographic that is curious, open exploring, um, asking questions, why would we not answer those questions? Well, I hear your rebuttal on the other end of the camera, right? Well, I, I am handling those, uh, questions I am asking and answering big questions through my teaching series, through my bible studies, through my devotionals, and that's great. However, pew Research recently said that 58% of evangelical protestant church attenders attend church get this at least one time a week, 58%. So that means out of your, uh, your a hundred percent membership, people who call your church your student ministry home, only six out of 10 are actually coming on a week to week basis to even hear that teaching. Nick Clason (09:00): Also, Warren Bird, on our last podcast, we, I, I shared some, some snippets from Warren Bird, uh, but Warren Bird says this, he says, people tend to over exaggerate when it comes to this question. When it comes to their church attendants. They overinflate the numbers, right? They want to look better perhaps than they actually are. And if 58% are actually attending at least one time a week, then there's this to keep in mind that there are still 40% who of their own admission and of their own classification are not hearing your weekly messages unless they're actually there because only 58% are attending at a week to week sort of clip. And so what should I do about that? You're asking, you're like, I am trying to answer their questions. They say they're open, they're spiritually engaging. This is where I think that all churches, especially all youth ministries, should be posting their weekly message content. Nick Clason (09:55): And you should be doing so uploading to YouTube. Okay? Here's the thing. You probably already have a soundboard that you're using in your room, and if you do, in most cases, you're able to add a minimum capture the audio, and you can start uploading that to podcasts. But YouTube is king right now, and I wanna share with y'all why after this. So here's the reality. If you head back into the archives of any of my podcasts, YouTube videos, um, we talk a lot about YouTube, in fact, episode, um, 33 http://www.hybridministry.xyz/033, link in the description link in the show notes talks about how to start a YouTube channel completely with links to all the gigs that you're gonna need and how to do that directly off of your phone. It will help you upgrade your audios just ever so slightly. I am now using, I got a couple lights here. Nick Clason (10:49): I got a camera that I'm recording off of. I'm also going to drop here in just a couple weeks, probably next week. Um, a a complete gear rundown of us after a year of YouTube upgrading our camera equipment. And I say a year, I look at my watch here, which actually gives me my date today as I record. This is July 31st. We officially launched our YouTube channel at the student ministry that I work in, in January 1st of this year because we, our church changed their name. And so I was holding the YouTube channel to launch along with the name change and all that stuff. We, so far this year on YouTube have posted well over, um, I think it's over 200 videos. Um, I'm trying to go to it right here on live, that auto channel player player, oh, 399 videos. I just uploaded a short this morning, uh, by this afternoon, I'll post my second short. Nick Clason (11:42): We'll be at video number 400 since January 1st of this year until now, July 31st. We are currently at 202 subscribers. Not crazy numbers, not anything that you wanna write home about necessarily. But if you had the opportunity to reach 200 additional people in your student ministry or in that 202, there are probably people who, well, I do know this. There are students who subscribe to our channel. There are parents who subscribe to our channel. Would you not want the opportunity to speak to those people? And that's the key, right? If Pew Research says only 58% of people are attending church once a week, then YouTube offers you an opportunity to share that message with them. But why YouTube? 3.48 billion people according to Hootsuite, roughly 45% of the world's population use social media. That's where they are millennials, which is not necessarily our target demographic. That's us as the youth pastors. Nick Clason (12:39): However, this is a trend worth watching because millennials are setting the pace, I think for some of these younger generations. Millennials say that they prefer YouTube to traditional tv two to one. That's crazy to me. I don't, but that's how millennials are, are consuming it. And that's also how Gen Z and Gen Alpha are consuming it. I had a kid yesterday walk up to me and I was recording some videos for some of our social media stuff, and he's like, oh, I wanna do it. I wanna do it. Look, I have a YouTube channel. I have over a thousand subscribers, and I was low-key jealous of him. 'cause that's my goal right now is to get my channel up to a thousand subscribers. I was like, no, you don't. Let me see. And he showed me, and he is just doing like goofy Minecraft tutorials and stuff like that. Nick Clason (13:17): He has 1.1 K subscribers via his YouTube channel. It is bunkers. Uh, also check this out, 51% of YouTube users say that they visit YouTube, get this daily. So why should we be on YouTube for all of those reasons? So if you wanna know how to start your own YouTube channel as a church, as a student ministry, you definitely should hit up episode 0 3 3 link in the show notes for that, and we will help make that happen. Um, help you get the gear and all that type of stuff going. Now, here's the thing in our context, this is why I want you to hear this in our context. We are in a large auditorium space. We have a soundboard, but it's not retrofitted and it's not graded to livestream. Okay? Our big church auditorium is, but our main service is not. And so because I didn't, uh, we're gonna be delivering live messages and, um, I, I also wanna post to YouTube. Nick Clason (14:09): I had to have a kind of like reconciling moment. What I decided was I was gonna do video. If you're watching our YouTube right now, it's just like this direct to camera. I'm talking directly into the camera with a scripted teaching video. We've got a teleprompter. It goes right in front of the camera here and it scrolls and you can watch it and you can read your notes and you can deliver a message with a YouTube hook that's hopefully engaging, um, with video, uh, lower thirds, uh, text that'll bounce in, bounce out sound effects. You can weave in other clips, B-roll, all that type of stuff. But it's made for YouTube. It's not just a camera perched in the back of the room, which is what most of us do for time reasons. And here's why that's important. In episode six of this podcast, me and my previous co-host, Matt Johnson, looked at some of the findings of the Future Church. Nick Clason (15:00): Um, this was from Barna. They, they dropped an ebook a little over a year ago called Six Questions About the Future of the Hybrid Church Experience. We pulled out some stats, we chatted about it. I'll drop the link to that episode in the show notes. I'll also drop the link to the Barna ebook in the show notes if you wanna explore more about that. But I wanna 0.2 things out to you from that ebook. It says, 60%, 60% of those participating in church that offer an online service during the pandemic say that this is the only digital offering that the church makes, their live stream of their service. And furthermore, 63% of church adults believe that the church should use digital resources for the purposes of spiritual formation and disciple discipleship. 63% of churched adults, not Gen Z, not gen alpha, the church adults in this classification. Nick Clason (15:55): So this is millennials, this is Xers, this is even maybe some boomers giving us some of this data. Um, according to this ebook, they have a quote in there that says, churches, if if churches more than a building, can digital ministry be more than a sermon? And I would contend the answer to that is unequivocally yes. We're gonna dive into the nitty gritty, the tactical, and give you a free downloadable resource on how stick around for that. But before we do, I wanna drop one more eye-opening thing out of this ebook. It said, this faith, this is, uh, a stat I'll, I'll put the, um, graph on YouTube if you're following and watching there. Faith expression during the pandemic, the question was, do you use the internet? The percent answered yes. Um, there are three categories practicing Christians, church, adults, and dropouts. 66% of practicing Christians say that they use, uh, faith, uh, in the internet. Nick Clason (16:48): They use the internet for faith practices during the pandemic at 66%. Church adults at 56%. And dropouts, even those who've dropped out at 36% say that, um, as a faith supplement, 52% of practicing Christians, 42% church adults, and 30% of dropouts as a faith supplement. And then as a substitute for physical church, 50% of practicing Christians say that 46% of church adults say that. And 30% of dropouts would claim that. In addition, they broke that out, uh, with, uh, a deeper classification of church, gen Z Church, millennials, church Gen X, and church boomers, obviously, no surprise to you, gen Z was the highest of that. 67% as, um, for faith purposes, 56% as a faith supplement and as a substitute for physical church, uh, that was at 58%. So Gen Z, and mind you, this was old enough. So at least 18 years of age Gen Z. Nick Clason (17:43): So that's not counting kids in our youth ministry. And that's not counting Alpha, 'cause none of them were old enough to be pulled on survey. So if it's that high in churched adult Gen Z, how much more for the teenagers in your youth ministry? Uh, James Emery White has a quote out of his most recent book, hybrid Church, rethinking the Church in a post-digital age said the vision. This vision, talking about the metaverse, this vision led Zuckerberg, c e o of Facebook to change the name of its company to Meta. Zuckerberg described a grandiose vision of a metaverse as an even more immersive and embodied internet. When or where you're gonna be able to do almost anything that you can, uh, imagine, get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create as well, uh, as entirely new categories that don't even fit how we think about computers or phones today. Nick Clason (18:37): If you, uh, wanna reference point, think of the movie Avatar. The Metaverse would be a shared social space where avatars represent users, a world that avatars interact and inhabit. And in that metaverse, you could own virtual property just as you would physical property or even create, uh, your, even create your own virtual property. Not to mention, you can buy and sell property. The last step in achieving all this would be a full three D telepresence v uh, via VR or AR glasses. Hubo technology is a technology company that manages hybrid and virtual events, predict that soon events will be, um, less about chronology and speakers and more about exploration and interaction. That quote right there is worth weight in gold. Um, I, and I'm just kind of picking it up 'cause I read this at 1:00 AM last night, the end of a standard webinar is coming near and being replaced with live streaming VR entertainment and Oculus Rift parties. Nick Clason (19:34): What Emory White says is this, and this is what made me pull this quote out. Needless to say, the internet is not gonna be flat for too much longer. And why do we want to do this for Gen Z and Gen Alpha? This is the internet that they are going to be ushering in and growing up in. They're spending time on the internet, on their phones. And while there are, uh, digital hygiene things that we as youth pastors need to model and teach our students to do, I think gone are the days of just, Hey, no phones. Like, yeah, that's easier. And we all know that like reducing our technology use helps us. However, you got a new kid walking into your student ministry, are you really gonna take his phone and lock it up in a locker and tell 'em you can't have it until the end? Nick Clason (20:18): Is he coming back after his first week of visiting your church? Probably not. But if you help teach students, Hey, here's technology, here's resources. Here's a way that you can grow in your faith beyond the walls of this sermon and service while I'm up here trying to answer your questions, but give you more to study with because this is what I was studying this week as I was preparing this content. And here's something for you. Here's a P D F, here's a checklist, here's a devotional, here's a prayer guide, whatever the case might that's gonna help students grow in their faith. And all of that can exist and live on your digital platforms. In particular YouTube. But wait, I'm so busy, but wait, I don't have time. I'm already preparing messages. I'm sitting in meetings. I'm running C c b or I'm running church data management reports. Nick Clason (21:05): I don't have an admin. I used to have an admin. I might get an admin. I'm probably never gonna have an admin. And I'm stacking chairs and I'm repainting the youth room and I'm patching the wall from the kid whose butt fell through the thing. I get it. I'm there. I'm a youth pastor being in youth mystery 12 and a half years. Here's why this, uh, this is why we are dropping this resource. So we are going to be giving you all the month long social media posting tool done for you and your youth ministry free ebook link in the show notes. When you download that, you're gonna get a link to two eBooks, my TikTok from scratch, and now this month long youth ministry social media thing. Let's dive into what is actually going to be in that. Let's go. So we will detail this a little bit more in the ebook, but essentially I'm giving you a basically 40 ideas that you can post, uh, five days a week. Nick Clason (22:01): So there's seven days in a week. I recommend that you take two off just to practice Sabbath and, uh, not working whatever your two days off that you want to be. So for example, I post Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I don't work on Fridays in the office or Saturday. So I don't post either of those days. And each of those days I post two tos. I recently talked a couple episodes back about how we went from three down to two, and then I'm gonna give you three or I'm, I'm sorry. I'm gonna give you, uh, a video thing to post every single day. So for me, my Sunday, I post the message hook from our teaching video that we do, we we capture it like this, then I clip it out and make it vertical. And I post a game on Monday. I'll do Meme Monday, and then I'll post some sort of spiritual practice video, either a talking head or pre uh, existing resource. Nick Clason (22:50): I have some resources in the show notes on Download youth ministry that you can ahead and grab if you want. Um, on uh, Tuesday I'll post a message clip, and then I'll do some sort of game or fun thing, uh, Wednesday, another spiritual practice video, and then a recap of our Wednesday night youth ministry, just some B roll and some audio that I did the sync auto sync on TikTok around cap cut. And then finally the third message clip, and then another game or activity. And so here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna help teach you how to clip those messages. Um, I want to, I wanna let you know about a, a resource. I'm gonna include the link in the show notes called Auto Pod. It is taking my long form sequence in Adobe Premier Pro and shrinking it and making it vertical. That's something that you can use and that's helpful, uh, to you if you are a, a video editor in that way. Nick Clason (23:38): If not, just clip it in on your phone using cap cut and, uh, you cap cut's a super powerful tool you can use. Um, and then, uh, and then also I'm gonna give you about 10 to 15 different game ideas or activity type ideas that we've done in our youth ministry. You can check it out, link to, um, you can check out our student ministry link in the description, cross Creek Student Ministry, social, go to our shorts, watch just some of the goofy stuff that we do. But I'm gonna give you ideas on how you can repurpose like d y m type games or other fun things like that and use it on camera or, or one thing I did yesterday was I, uh, me and a student took the camera around and he asked people, Hey, we're going back to school soon. What do these back to school? Nick Clason (24:22): Emoji phrases mean? He'd show them a picture on the phone and then they would try to guess, um, and to like incentivize them to actually choose to be on camera. We'd give 'em a fruit snack if they said yes, and then I captured it, and then I'm gonna go edit it and post, um, and have the, uh, emojis pop in. But if you don't wanna do all that right, you can just video it and just do like a quick picture and picture overlay of the emoji phrase. So there's all kinds of ideas, but all of that is going to be done for you. 40 ideas, replicatable, reproducible, the same framework, but also different videos every single week on your social media because vertical short form video is still king, bro, I missed all that. Great. We offer free transcripts for every single episode at our, uh, podcast page, hybridministry.xyz. Nick Clason (25:14): This is episode 0 6 0. So you can go there, pick up the free transcript, also link in the show notes for free editing presets for my TikTok video and now my, um, month long social posting tool done for you for youth ministries. Check that out. And hey, listen, if you're not in youth ministry, grab it and adapt it to your church. Because here's the thing, you don't have to just be silly and goofy in youth ministry churches wanna see their pastors having fun as well. So, uh, hope that you guys found this episode helpful. Hey, if you did, would you do me a favor and just share it? I would be forever grateful if you shared it, if you liked it, if you rated it, if you reviewed it, if you dropped a comment so I could engage with you in the comments. So pumped to be here walking through this with you. Nick Clason (25:56): Listen, I'm in the trenches just like you. If you're in youth ministry, if you're in church communications, if you're a social media manager for a church or business, I'm right there with you. I'm doing this podcast in my free time early morning before everyone else gets into work. And then I'm gonna turn around. I'm gonna start working right after this because I'm doing it with you. And so I want to be along on this journey with you. Make sure you follow us on TikTok, subscribe on YouTube, hit me up on Instagram. And until next time, and as always, we are making digital discipleship easy and accessible. Don't forget to stay hybrid.

Welcome to Part 3 of the Hybrid Ministry Podcast's (hybridministry.xyz) captivating mini-series! In this episode, Nick Clason delves into the exciting world of video editing and he will explore the art of seamlessly integrating Adobe Photoshop files into Adobe Premiere Pro. Join us as we embark on a crash course designed to empower both beginners and seasoned editors with the skills they need to create stunning, professional-looking videos. From basic editing techniques to advanced tips, we've got you covered. Learn how to bring your vision to life and take your video content to new heights. Don't miss this opportunity to sharpen your creative prowess and join the ranks of skilled video editors! Subscribe now and hit that notification bell so you won't miss a moment of this enriching series. Let's unlock the potential of your video projects together! While you can certainly listen to this, this episode is best consumed via video: PART 1: https://youtu.be/uZzatZ4KFyE PART 2: https://youtu.be/VAKSwE97nYE Hang out on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick ShowNotes & Transcripts: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/056 FREE E-Book: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/hybridministry SHOWNOTES FREE Animation Effects for Adobe Premiere Pro: https://share.hsforms.com/1VL1oWwWwQ82PLwsPFkPITgnumis FREE Stock Photo Site: https://unsplash.com/ FREE Church Motion Backgrounds: https://www.churchmotiongraphics.com/free-worship-media/ TIMECODES 00:00-02:43 Intro 02:43-04:10 Opening up Adobe Photoshop and getting things started 04:10-07:47 Creating a Background with a photo 07:47-10:09 Using layers from an old design 10:09-11:06 Creating a Still Graphics from a Video Frame Using Adobe Premiere Pro 11:06-12:16 Adding in a transparent layer ontop of your background 12:16-14:27 Bringing in Layeres from an Old Photoshop Project 14:27-15:29 Replacing a Missing Font 15:29-16:27 How to Make a Clipping Mask over a Text Layer 16:27-17:32 Editing Text in Photoshop with the text tool 17:32-18:39 Adding in other design elements 18:39-19:10 Finalizing and Saving a Graphic 19:10-21:01 Starting Graphic Number 2 21:01-21:19 Repositioning Layers in Adobe Photoshop 21:19-21:31 Using, Adding and Editing Text Layers in Photoshop 21:31-23:12 How to Add drop Shadow to your text in Photoshop 23:12-23:38 Incorporating other layers into photoshop 23:38-24:04 Transforming Layers in Photoshop 24:04-24:55 Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:02): What is up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Hybrid Ministry. My name is Nick. I am your host today drinking out of my work Cross Creek Students coffee mug. You gotta be on YouTube. See this? Nick Clason (00:22): Mm. Nick Clason (00:23): It's from a Keurig, so it's super mid. Anyway, uh, we are going to be rounding out our third and final, um, Adobe tutorial session. So once again, if you're listening, this is going to be a better one for you to watch. Um, all of that's uploaded to my YouTube. Oh, sorry about that. All that's uploaded to my YouTube channel. So hit the link in the show notes for that. Um, go subscribe, go light, go do all the things. Those things help us a lot. Um, all that being said, um, we have done a long form Adobe, uh, premiere Pro editing. We've done some short form video stuff. Um, and then finally we are gonna round out today with Adobe Photoshop. So I'm gonna make two graphics that I'm going to use in our student ministry pre-roll and I'll just wanna give you a step-by-step tutorial on how to do those. Nick Clason (01:12): Um, the benefit of using Photoshop and Adobe Premier Pro, in my estimation, I've never really used Final Cup Pro or any of the other ones, so I can't speak for those. But the benefit is that when you make a layer in Adobe Photoshop and you bring it into Adobe Premier Pro, you can animate it, you can move it around. And if you need to make adjustments and changes, you just need to go back to your original source file of Adobe Photoshop, change it, and it's changed. You don't have to render it out in a final form thing like A P N G. Um, but keeping it just in that Photoshop file will allow it to be, um, edited and used in Adobe Premiere Pro. So all that to be said, if you've not seen our other videos, go back and look. This video might actually be the best video to start with, like editing videos, one thing, but then animating layers and on top of it via Adobe Photoshop is gonna be what this one's all about. Nick Clason (02:03): And so if you don't have photo, a basic Photoshop skill yet, then maybe start here. Episode 56, go back to episode, uh, 53 and 54. Uh, in the meantime, 55 if you didn't know was our one year celebration. And so that was just kind of a rehash on what is hybrid, why are we passionate about it, and why do we keep doing it? So be sure to check all that stuff out. Finally, I got a couple freebies for you in the show notes, free ebook and free Adobe Premiere Pro, um, animations effects. So go grab either one of those and uh, leave us a like rating, review, subscribe, all the things. Thanks for hanging out. Let's jump in. Nick Clason (02:45): All right, so you are seeing my desktop. Now this is what it looks like if you open up Adobe Photoshop. It's gonna start with a screen that looks something like this. I'm gonna click here, new file. And we are going to make a graphic about our upcoming event called Space Jam. So the width that you want is 1920 by 10 80. If you're going wide screen, if you are going um, vertical, um, you're gonna want 10 80 by 1920. But we are going wide screen. These are your pixels, 1920 by 10 80. The resolution that you want is 72. Um, if you were gonna go for like a print piece, um, you want 300 and if you're gonna go for a print piece, you're gonna wanna switch it from RGB to C M Y K. Those are different color coding things. I don't know a ton about that, but I used to work with a guy who printed banners and that's what he told me. Nick Clason (03:39): So I'm gonna go with him. Um, shout out to Eber, Cincinnati, Ohio. Anyway, uh, RGB is uh, what you want for a screen and that's what we're gonna be doing these for. And uh, the rest of this stuff I am not that worried about. You can click into those. Those are just some advanced options. So any, anyway, we're gonna hit create. So here we go with a completely blank Photoshop canvas. Now, oh, um, so what we're gonna do is, um, I am going to grab, um, a photo. And so I'm gonna go over here and all of my photos are saved in an Amazon photo and Google photos as an automatic backup. Uh, so I am going to log into my photo storage and I'm gonna get a photo of, uh, our students or video of our students. Um, and so let me go to, I have some album, there we go. Albums, cross Creek Students go to some of the more recent ones that's Broomball from winter. That's definitely not the most recent. Um, let me just go here. I got a bunch from camp. Maybe not, you know what, I also have it in Google Photos. Nick Clason (05:18): Yeah, here we go. So it's going to be called Space Jam Basketball and Frisbee Night. So none of these super encapsulate that. Um, I'm just gonna try and find like a fun one. Here's just like, oh, that's the whole video I was gonna get. Let me pick, Nick Clason (05:56): These are all from camp, so half the battle's fine. I'm a good background. So I think I'm just gonna pick this, this one right here. This is them just in the room. So I'm gonna download that sucker. Uh, it's gonna take me a minute cuz it is a video. Um, and so if I didn't want to do a video and I just wanted to do any sort of generic background, I could also do that. So another, uh, resource for you, a couple resources. Um, you can go to unsplash.com, um, and search for anything. So if I wanted to do basketball, just pick basketball. Um, if I also wanted to do Frisbee, I could go here and just do Frisbee. So unsplash.com is a completely free stock footage, um, website. Um, another one for you that isn't footage but is also completely free. CMG create, um, here's your free, they have free like stills. Nick Clason (07:05): So, um, if you get, let's just say like it's more like abstracty than it is like photos. So, um, and I haven't been on here in a minute, so it looks a little different, but I know that they have, yeah, these are all free. So if I just click view all still backgrounds and just kind of scroll through here, you know, and if you wanted like this or, or like one of these, you could totally go for that. So I'm gonna get this Norwegian tones flow, I might use that. So anyway, back to that. Now the other thing I have is I have in my, um, calendaring, I have some, this is our summer calendar just for frame of reference for y'all. Um, lemme pull it up here. So you can see this is where our summer calendar. So it's kind, kind of got like a theme, like a vibe to it. Nick Clason (08:07): So we already got this little icon guy here. We already got these sort of texts and everything like that. And so I've been doing that. Like anytime I would build like a a thing, I would build it with like that sort of vibe, right? The little like oval, the same text using in, out, in Inc. Incorporate the use of the icons. And so that's probably what I'm gonna do here. Um, again and as well. But I got some of those different layers and stuff to work with. And so, um, what I'm gonna do, because later I'm actually going to animate this, um, probably not with y'all, but, but I am probably gonna animate it. I do kinda want to use that. Um, I do kinda wanna use that video that I downloaded of all the students screaming. And so I just need to stick, I'm gonna start this, um, this premiere file. Um, let's see, where did I store those? I think I might actually stored it in social media. Uh, 2023 events. Summer. Yeah. So I'm gonna call this oh four Space Jam and we're just gonna store it there for now. And so all I'm gonna do here is I'm just gonna, uh, pull in Nick Clason (09:33): That video of them screaming into my sequence here so you can hear trying to volume up. All right, so let's go, Nick Clason (10:10): Let's go with that. So this right here exports the frame. I'm gonna put it, um, where I store all of the graphics. So I'm gonna go to graphics announcements, summer slides, actually it's in P S D. Um, and I'm gonna actually make a folder so it all stores in the same spot. Actually, you know what I'm gonna put it, I don't have a great file storage for this, so do not borrow my file storage methods cuz everyone tells me that they can't figure it out. And um, sometimes I can't even figure it out. I'm gonna put it in there. So there's just the frame. Okay, so that being said, now we're back in Photoshop. So now I can go grab just the still frame, um, that I'm gonna use later. And so it's in social media, TikTok and Res 2023 events, summer calendar, space Jam. Nick Clason (10:59): So there's my still boom. Okay, now I, I am going to landry's face, I am going to pull this Norwegian water thing in. And uh, now it's on top of it. So now it covers up my picture. However, if I go over here and I right click or command click or whatever you do to get your other options and go to blending, I can reduce down the opacity. So now my, uh, my video or my, my photo back there, you can see back through here that it's, it's, it's, uh, showing. So I'm gonna click okay for that. Um, and I'm gonna turn this. All right. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna make that background black and white. So image adjustments, black and white. So now it's black and white. I'm gonna just increase the opacity a little bit. I want it to be just faint. All right, it's back there. Can't really tell a lot. Um, and then out of my old graphics, cuz it, I think it's worth, you know, admitting I don't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel every single time. Um, so I'm gonna go pull open, oh, it's in PSDs, I'm gonna go pull open, Nick Clason (12:40): Do water wars. Okay, so it, what it does is it just creates like a second tab there. Now it's worth noting that it, this hasn't been saved anywhere. So I'm gonna go file save as p s D, I'm gonna save it where I save all my stuff, which as you've found out is not very good. But, um, most still graphics, I put in this graphics folder, p s d and I'm gonna save this as space jam. I dunno why I'm so tempted to always put an E on it. All right, so when I click on this, it pulls open the, it, it clicks on this layer right here. I need that and the text beneath it. I also want this wars right here. I also want that and I also want this text. So when I hit shift, it selects all of those things. And now when I pull this over, boom, it's right there. If I were to add those myself, I could go here to the text tool, drag it to whatever size I want, and type in whatever I want, highlight it, change the font over here, all those good things. Um, I don't want that. So over here in my Layers panel, I'm just gonna delete that entire layer, hit backspace and it's gone. Now I don't have this text. I did, I have gotten a new, I've gotten a new computer. As I've told you, I I have backed them all up. So we're gonna go there Nick Clason (14:34): And I think it was called summer but it actually might not have backed up. So it's called Summer regular. So honestly I think I got it from DeFont. So DeFont summer regular, I'm gonna go back over here and I'm just gonna search. There it is. Download Open, installed. So now, yeah, now I can edit it cuz now I have it installed. So it's called space. And what this is right here is, this is a whole layer. So I'm gonna release the clipping mask so that you can see. So this is just a downloaded gradient thing. It kind of goes along and in line with our summer calendar theming and vibes. Um, but if you put a layer, a photo over top of another item, if you right click on it, you can create a clipping mask. So now that text is just got that same gradient file, but it's just over top of it. So now type in Space Jam and the event is July 19th. So we're gonna adjust this to that. And I'm gonna, I gotta move, I gotta select all of it. I gotta select the layer and the text and everything. So Space jam, Nick Clason (16:44): I'm gonna put it here. And then since that event in of itself doesn't really to me explain what the heck it even is. Um, I'm gonna write a little blurby blurb right here. I can make it center aligned. Come join us for some basketball and ultimate Frisbee space, Frisbee jam, basketball Space Jam. That's where I got the name from. It's corny. It's Youth Ministry. Welcome to it Spelled Frisbee wrong. So updating that and then I'm gonna go back over here and I'm gonna go to my icons and I'm gonna include that Nick Clason (17:48): I, Nick Clason (17:53): I'm looking for that. Where it tells me it's centered. I'm actually thinking about just adding it right here and then taking this sucker, just taking this, uh, off screen there. Nick Clason (18:19): Actually, I might go, no, I'll just leave it down so I can bring this select, select, bring all those up, bring this down a little center. Bring that down a little. I gotta grab both of these over here. So select, grab 'em both, put it there, let Jamb in the front a little bit and boom, it, I'm just gonna go with that. So command shift S for save, we're gonna save it where we saved it earlier. Command option shift W and now we'll export it as um, whatever we want. I'm gonna export it their format as a jpeg and then I'm gonna go drop it in that graphics folder. Um, announcements, summer, space, jam, save. Boom. It's done. All right, um, I got one more I wanna do for you. Um, and I'm gonna pull open WhatsApp cuz I sent this photo to my wife. And I'm also gonna just borrow from, I had a slide at camp that I used. You know what, I might have done the whole thing and might have done the whole thing. So I'm gonna download this photo from what I sent to my wife. You're not seeing it cuz it's on a different screen. Nick Clason (20:15): I can't think of where, I'm trying to find where it is. I can't find it so forget it. I'm gonna go back here to see him, to create though and just get me something random. Nick Clason (20:38): I Nick Clason (20:39): I something that I kinda like. I might use one of these just like Rock ones Cali Coast. So here I am. I'm gonna save this as a new one cuz this is going to be, um, a scavenger hunt slide. So scavenger hunt. So over here and downloads Cally coast. I'm just gonna drag it in, takes up the whole thing. I'm gonna drag this to the very top. So that covers everything over here. And this is like your order, right? That things lay. So this is gonna be at the top there. Um, I'm gonna add a text here that says find, I'm gonna command a that I'm gonna change the font to Gotham Black. This is italics and this is Boulder. I'm gonna give it a little bit of a drop shadow. That's too much. It also isn't gonna show up, so I'm gonna give it a little bit of a white drop shadow. Um, yeah, I'm gonna keep it white, but I'm just gonna make it real tight. All right, so it's still a little bit far now that it's that tight, I think no, we'll make it like a deeper purple background. You can see it there moving, right? That's my distance, Nick Clason (22:12): That's my size, that's my spread. Find the name of our guys. Pugsley. Make that a little smaller. I'm bringing that download of him. I'm gonna give Valla a drop shadow. I don't want purple though. If I hit command T, that's how I can change the size. Nick Clason (23:38): I Nick Clason (23:39): Just stay right there. Just a look. Command t again, just a little bit off screen and boom, that's just gonna be that command shift. W Nick Clason (23:59): And that's not a summer slide, so we're just gonna put it regular in here. Save. Done. Well I hope that that tutorial on, um, Adobe Photoshop was helpful for you. That is how I get my layers. And then like a next step would be if I'm adding those to any sort of like pre-roll or whatever, I'll bring those into Adobe Premiere Pro and I can animate each of those individual layers. If you want a completely free animated um effect, go grab that in the show notes, something that's just free and available for y'all. Hope you find that helpful. Like subscribe, leave a comment and hey, ask us any questions that we have. We would love to help y'all out. But until next time, and as always, don't forget, stay hybrid.

VIDEO: Clipping up a Long-Form Video for Short-Form Vertical Video for TikTok, Reels and Shorts for Church Sermons. In this video come sit down and watch as Nick clips up a teaching video in Adobe Premiere Pro (from http://www.hybridministry.xyz/053) to now turn it into a couple of vertical video based pieces of content. Long Form Video: https://youtu.be/uZzatZ4KFyE Hang out on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick ShowNotes & Transcripts: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/055 FREE E-Book: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/hybridministry SHOWNOTES FREE Animation Effects for Adobe Premiere Pro: https://share.hsforms.com/1VL1oWwWwQ82PLwsPFkPITgnumis TIMECODES 00:00-01:13 Intro 01:13-02:14 Setup For Editing a Short Form Vertical Video for Church Social Media 02:14-02:52 Converting from Widescreen to Full Screen in Adobe Premiere pro 02:52-03:12 Setting in and out spots on a Sequence in Adobe Premiere Pro 03:12-03:26 Starting your TikToks to catch people's attention 03:26-03:55 Shaving Down Excess Space for Quicker Jump Cuts on TikToks and Reels 03:55-04:19 Zooming in and out for TikTok Videos and Shorts 04:19-05:12 Animating Text Layers in Adobe Premiere Pro 05:12-06:08 Adding Sound Effects 06:08-07:14 Add a Call to Action to Watch the Long Form YouTube Video 07:14-07:57 Adding Music to your Short Form Video 07:57-11:30 Adding Captions to your Reels and TikToks in Adobe premiere Pro 11:30-12:19 Rendering the Short Video for Social out of Adobe Premiere Pro 12:19-14:33 Determining Which Clips to Add for a Social Media Clip 14:33-19:13Clipping out the Spaces 19:13-19:48 Adding the Call to Action 19:48-22:49 Transcribing the Sequence for Reels and Shorts in Adobe Premiere Pro 22:49-22:32 Rendering out the Sequence 22:32-24:17 Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:02): What is going down everybody? Welcome back. Another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. If, uh, you have not, um, if you've not gone back and seen the last one where I edited a full, uh, video down, then I want to encourage you to go back and check that out. That is what I would do for, um, editing a full video for YouTube. Once that's done, render out some thumbnails and some time codes and stuff like that. However, for, um, this episode, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna edit out three short form TikTok style videos. So I wanna make sure that you can see that. So I'm gonna be using the same premiere file. I'm just gonna resave it and make it vertical as opposed to horizontal. So I wanna show you how that goes down. Um, hey, don't forget, we are on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Nick Clason (00:46): Go subscribe all three places, check those things out and hit the show notes for transcripts and my free ebook. Um, tell you how to post a TikTok from scratch on your phone. This, however, is about posting a TikTok. Um, first saving it on, uh, in a video editing software. In particular, this one's Adobe Premier Pro. And then, um, saving those somewhere that you can repost them later. So, without any further ado, let's dive in. Check the sucker out. So, like I said in the last video, you would've seen, um, something like this. This is, um, me opening up the Adobe Premiere Pro file. Um, I don't think I need those, so I'm not gonna worry about those. All right, so here's the, the final. So the first thing I do, Nick Clason (01:36): Okay, you'll never be left Nick Clason (01:38): Out. All right, so the first thing that I do is I, um, file save as. Um, and I'm gonna save it as underscore social one. I do every social, I do a new one, um, just cuz I sometimes move around like backing tracks and audio and resync some things. This is more, this happens a lot more with my podcast than these, but I just try and do a different one every single time. Sometimes I forget, but the more that I I file save as the source file, the less chance for error. Um, and so I'm just gonna start here. Um, so now this is the source file. So now I can change the sequence settings. I'm going up here, sequence settings. Frame size is 1920 by 10 80. That is wide screen. I'm gonna change it to, um, up, up and down, whatever that's called. Verticals vertical video. So that's 10 80 by 1920 pixels, click. Okay. And then, okay, so now you'll see here in my preview I have it, um, uh, 10 80 by 1920. Problem is I need this video to be fully screened. So that's why I kind of change it every single time. So I'm gonna, um, zoom that in in a minute. But first I am going to, um, create a title track. So I'm gonna make it this one right here. In this Nick Clason (02:52): Video we're gonna talk about how, about how, how you, how you can get, Nick Clason (03:01): So I want to do it right there. So I clicked I how you go in. Um, and then right there I hit C to get my razor tool and then v to select that and get it outta here. Now one of the things I like to do is I like to open it with an animation. I feel like as people are scrolling, when they see an animation, it jars them and at least gets their attention at least a little bit Nick Clason (03:22): How you can get, Nick Clason (03:24): I'm going to need to zoom that in though, right? So it needs to be like that. Nick Clason (03:28): How you can get invited to every single party. Nick Clason (03:34): I'm gonna do c v, get rid of that, bring that in ever. I'm gonna make these quicker cuts, you'll Nick Clason (03:42): Never be left out again. Nick Clason (03:44): So where there's a gap there in the audio, how I'm clipping Nick Clason (03:50): This party started and find out. Nick Clason (03:53): So go back here and now I'm gonna just do some zoom. So that's at 1 94. I'm gonna zoom in even more to 2 27, 2 27 and then 2 27. So Nick Clason (04:10): How you can get invited to every single party ever. You'll never be left out again how this party started and find out. Nick Clason (04:19): All right, so, um, I also want to take my, uh, thumbnail, which I made in Photoshop. Um, I don't think I showed that on camera, but that's what I ended up making. So I'm gonna bring that in in the P S D and then since I have all those layers, I'm gonna animate those and this is gonna be like my announcement or like title sequence. So I always do one that just like explains what the video is. It's just like an announcement. Um, and so this is that one. This is me, you know, right here at the beginning. So I'm gonna go Nick Clason (04:51): How you can get invited to ev. Nick Clason (04:56): So I'm gonna have that come in at the same time and then I'm just gonna move it so it fits Nick Clason (05:07): How you can get invited to every single party ever. Nick Clason (05:13): I'm gonna do a sound effect as that comes in. I still have that sfx saved from earlier. If you don't have it, um, go find it. Um, wherever you have sound effects saved, um, go find it in your finder and then you can drop it right here in this bin. Since I did use that earlier in my long form video, it's already saved in here. Um, so that's one of the reasons too where I like to go back to the original file cuz all the things that I pulled in are already still there. So I'm gonna do I right there, o right here. I have a lot of other options, but I'm just gonna pick that one. Let's see how that sounds. Nick Clason (05:49): How you can get invited to every single party ever. You'll never be left out again. How Nick Clason (05:58): I feel like that needs to be Nick Clason (06:00): How let's get party start. Oh, how, let's get this party started and find out. Nick Clason (06:08): All right, so over here, um, in my shared file, I have created a graphic that I use for my enders. So it's in, uh, shared students social media, TikTok and reels. And then I think I have it in admin. And this is just where I push people to watch the full video on YouTube. So I'm gonna put that right here. I'm gonna let that bounce in, right? And I'm gonna get a, I'm gonna get a whoosh sound with it. Take just the audio there. Boom, put it right there. Yep, Nick Clason (06:51): Let's get party started. Nick Clason (06:53): I wanna make that a little later. Let's do it right here. Nick Clason (06:57): Party started. Find out Nick Clason (07:00): We let it linger a little bit past the talking. Make that oh for out and then I'm gonna go back in here into messages. Um, start the party and I'm gonna get the party music so that there's a little audio track with it. Um, is it necessary? No. Um, does it add to it? Maybe you can be the judge of that. Um, I'll just, I'm just gonna drop it in here. I'm gonna make it negative 25. So it's real low. Nick Clason (07:27): You can get invited to every single party. Nick Clason (07:32): Adjust. I'm gonna adjust these audios right here. So I'm just gonna highlight them all. Select, all right, click audio game. I'm gonna make it 15. So it should be pretty substantial difference how you Nick Clason (07:42): Can get invited to every single party ever. You'll never be left out again. How, let's get this party started and find out. Nick Clason (07:52): All right, the only thing is I lost my right there. Nick Clason (07:56): Start and find out. Nick Clason (07:58): All right. Now last thing is I wanna add captions. So I'm gonna go to window workspaces, captions and graphics. Um, here's where I transcribe it. So I'm gonna click, um, from captions to transcript. I'm gonna click transcribe. Uh, okay, I don't know what this is doing. This is new. Okay, so let's do transcript. Nick Clason (08:37): Oh, Nick Clason (08:48): All right, let's try it again. So this is just gonna take a minute. There used to be, this is an updated version. So like I said, I have a new computer in my last video. So there used to be an option to just transcribe the in and out portion so it wouldn't take quite as long. Uh, looks like it got it right here. All those right there. So I'm gonna click captions, click captions from transcript, click this dropdown arrow. I like to do single lines and then create captions. So Nick Clason (09:37): I do, Nick Clason (09:37): So there you see they right there. So I'm gonna go over here and highlight that one. Click command A to select all. And then I'm gonna go change all. So I'm going to, I like to do, uh, every one of my captions for students has been Babe New Pro. Um, I put it in the middle here, but then I do uh, bottom line text, um, take away the shadow and I want to give it a little background. So I'll give it a black background. I'm gonna make it a hundred percent a opaque and then I'm gonna give it some roundedness and some size. See, so it looks like that. Now problem is, it's still covering that. So I have two options. I can lower that. I can lower the texts. So I can do like this and then like top aligned or middle aligned, or I can move this, um, in, in affects controls. And so I think I might do that so my face isn't covered. Um, and then, but that still doesn't solve this problem. If I go there, yeah, if I go there, it's still a little bit. So I might still move this down, just ale and then over here and text command A. Nick Clason (11:01): Yeah, I'm just gonna leave it there in the middle. It's fine. Nick Clason (11:04): Oh, you can get invited to every single party ever. You'll never be left out again. How, let's get, Nick Clason (11:13): You just gotta go back in here and edit anything that didn't get picked up. So how, let's get this party started and find out, out Nick Clason (11:22): Again how, let's get party started and find out started and find out. Nick Clason (11:30): I'm going to cut it right there, back to V to select it. So now when my under slide comes in, it's gone. All right, so now I'm gonna click on sequence command M, make sure my format is set to H 2 64. That's for MP4 files. And now I'm gonna go back out here. Instead of putting it in messages, I'm gonna put it in TikTok and reels. 2023, start the party oh three Nick, oh one title and change it from, uh, entire source to in and out. So it's just gonna do that a little bit right there. Export, there's TikTok number one. Nick Clason (12:20): All right, sweet. Now I'm going to go file save as I'm gonna gimme social two, I'm gonna go back up here to window and get my effects panel back. Some switch from workspaces, from captions to effects. It's probably an easier way to do it, but I'm not gonna worry about it now. It autogenerated all these captions for me. That could be good, that could be bad as long as I keep the same order. I like to tell stories on TikTok as much as I can. So if this story right here can make sense, I'm gonna go with it. Nick Clason (12:54): Church, I, I used to work at one time, likes to be the person ever. Nobody. Nick Clason (13:12): All right, so these captions are messing me up. So honestly, I'm just gonna start this over. So no, I'm not gonna save that. Um, I'm gonna go back in here three premiere and pull this up. So now I'm going to just get myself a clean copy and all I gotta do is change the sequence settings, file, save as social. I'll just make this three. All right, sequin. Gotta click on sequence. Sequence settings. 10 80 by 1920. All right. Now back to my story. So I don't want these things here, okay? I don't need those things for TikTok Nick Clason (14:00): Ever. Whoop, Nick Clason (14:08): Cut V out. I'm gonna animate this in motion. Presets position in smooth bottom. Let's be Nick Clason (14:17): On Nick Clason (14:18): And I'm gonna zoom in, go over to effects controls, and I gotta cut the gaps. Nick Clason (14:27): Nobody, let's be honest, nobody ever likes to be the person left out. One time I moved away from a church that I used to work at Nick Clason (14:54): Just cutting out all these gaps. So C then V and then sliding over. Nick Clason (14:59): And at this church at this, Nick Clason (15:04): I don't need that big long. And Nick Clason (15:09): At this church I did retreats with an Nick Clason (15:25): So I'm gonna bring all of these photos over Nick Clason (15:33): Treats. What's another, Nick Clason (15:36): I just gotta zoom in. Nick Clason (15:38): A friend of mine down the road, he worked at a church. And so together our church would, our two churches would come together. We went on this fall retreat. And so before I moved, I was was one of the ones who went on the, Nick Clason (16:08): All right, let's go back here and shave out any fluff. I don't need whatever this is. Nick Clason (16:14): Our church would come to our two churches would churches. So together our church would come to our Nick Clason (16:21): Cut out that, so it's just this Nick Clason (16:25): Boat. He worked at a churches, our two churches would come together and we went on this fall retreat. And so before I moved, I was one of the ones who went on the retreat, helped plan it, Nick Clason (16:42): Speak, Nick Clason (16:42): Do all the things. And so every single fall we went to camp Fall retreat. And so Nick Clason (16:49): I'm gonna cut all that goal is to make it as short as possible. And Nick Clason (16:52): So every single fall we Nick Clason (16:53): Went to, I felt losing the story Nick Clason (16:56): CSA in Briston, Indiana. And we called the retreat, the Recharge retreat. And it was awesome. And it was awesome. It was awesome and the same place. And because I followed both my and it was awesome, Nick Clason (17:23): Roll Nick Clason (17:23): Around, Nick Clason (17:26): Same. Nick Clason (17:27): And it was awesome. I leave that church, I move on to another one, and that same weekend rolls around. Nick Clason (17:33): Gotta get that out of there. I could have left. It just chose not to the same place. Nick Clason (17:39): And because I follow both my old church and my buddy's church on Instagram, I see that they're both on a retreat. Nick Clason (17:47): And I Nick Clason (17:47): Was like, God, it's interesting both that church and this church are both on a retreat together at, but on the same Nick Clason (17:54): Weekend, probably gonna cut all this out. That's Nick Clason (17:56): Interesting. Wait, Nick Clason (17:58): It Nick Clason (18:00): Go wait. Nick Clason (18:04): And that same weekend rolls around. Nick Clason (18:07): Wait, Nick Clason (18:17): And it was awesome. I leave that church. I'm watching that same weekend roll around, wait in ton Indiana, hold on, hold on. They're together. And what I began to notice, hold on, was that these two churches came together and instead of calling it the Recharge retreat, they called it the Lifeline Retreat or something like that, that these two churches came together and instead of calling it the Recharge retreat, they called it the Lifeline Retreat or something like that. I don't remember, but I felt, so Nick Clason (18:59): This is why I wanna end on right Nick Clason (19:00): Lifeline retreat, but Nick Clason (19:01): I, I felt so left out, left, boom. And then I just wanna kind of leave a little cliff hangry. So I'm gonna go back over here. I'm gonna grab my ender screen. I'm gonna bring it in. It's gonna position in, right? I'm gonna get the sounder for it. Nick Clason (19:31): Same weekend. Nick Clason (19:35): So that's at 1 30 46. All right, so it's less than a minute. Um, YouTube shorts only allows a minute. So I always make my goal to be less than a minute. So transcript, get this outta here. I think that that's my in-out points. I just want the audio transcribed. I don't need all that transcribed. That might be all the little ones. Listen, you and I are learning this all together with the new transcription interface. In the meantime, Marvel at me in this old shirt. All right, so I don't want that. I want create new caption track there. So I need to get all these, I'm gonna do Babes New Pro. I'm gonna do another black. Actually, I'll do a white background with black text this time. I don't want shadow, I want background. And I'm just gonna put it right in the middle and then lower it down just a little bit beneath my face. And let's see how it looks. Nick Clason (21:48): Let's be honest. Nobody ever likes to be the person left out. One time I moved away from a church that I used to work at this church. I did retreats with another friend of mine down the road. He worked at a church and our two churches would come together and we went on this fall retreat. And so every single fall we went to a camp called Camp Tecu Tecumsah in Brookstown, Indiana. And we called the retreat the Recharge Retreat. And it was awesome. I leave that church, I move on to another one. And that same weekend rolls around. Hold on. Was that these two churches came together and instead of calling it the Recharge retreat, they called it the Lifeline Retreat, but I felt so left out. Nick Clason (22:38): I'm just gonna cut that right there. I'm gonna put my out there. I'm gonna come back over here, put my in, and then command M, switch it to H 2 6 4 TikTok, start the party. Boom. All right. And then one more. I like to do three week. I typically post my Title one on Sunday, um, and then I post the other two, um, on a Thursday and a Tuesday. So that's just kind of been my rhythm. Leaves some gaps in the calendar or in the TikTok posting schedule for some other things. So, all right, as this encodes, I am going to wrap up to the next one, Nick Clason (23:37): Actually. Um, I'm going to, you get the gist. Um, I will do the third one the exact same way. Uh, just realized I have a meeting in two minutes, so I'm gonna go ahead and wind this down. Um, I will, I will make the third one without you here. Um, but I hope that you found this helpful, um, in pre-recording and then making TikTok in Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Photoshop. So, sounds helpful. Leave a like, subscribe, rating, review, hit the notes, uh, show notes for transcripts or my free ebook. And, um, we'll talk soon. Don't forget, stay hybrid.

3 Church Communications Questions In this episode Nick Answers the following questions •Should I focus on my church website or social first? •There are too many announcements in my church, what do I do? •What are Digital Media Ideas for Churches in 2023? •And just for fun, what are my top 5 cell phone apps? You can get full episode transcripts at: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/051 You can watch the show at: http://www.youtube.com/@clasonnick TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/hybridministry SHOWNOTES http://www.nucleus.church TIMECODES 00:00-02:45 Intro 02:45-07:36 Should My Church Focus on Social Media or Website? 07:36-17:06 There are too many announcements to make, what do I do? 17:06-21:56 What are Digital Media Ideas for Churches in 2023? 21:56-25:03 What are my Top 5 Cell Phone Apps as a Content Creator 25:03-26:02 Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:01): Well, hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. In this episode, we are going to be answering three pressing and one maybe not so pressing church communication related questions. Before we do, excited to have you with us. I am here drinking my coffee Joffreys if you know, you know, in my new Avengers mug, cuz we just got back from Disney World. It was amazing. Uh, I took a week off from recording and editing and all the things, but you missed nothing cuz we did some peer recording. So you are all set to go. Anyway, pumped about that. If you, uh, want to see any of the recaps of that stuff, it is on my YouTube channel, my TikTok, or if you just wanna see me hold my new Avengers mug that is currently streaming on YouTube right now as well. If you're just listening to this, you can go to the link in our show notes and hit the YouTube button, hit the subscribe, hit the bell, hit the, like, all those things are good for the algorithm. Nick Clason (01:03): Help us get found. If you're just watching on YouTube and you're like, wait, this is a podcast. Yes it is, it's a podcast. Come hang out with us. Link in the show notes for that in every single episode we provide for you and 100% completely free transcript. Just head to the website and check it out. And, uh, in addition to that, we have a completely free ebook. It is basically your step-by-step guide on how to create a TikTok, post it, save it, and then post it to other social platforms so that you can be up on what's going on social media right now, vertical video is king and it is giving the church a leg up for one of the very first times in social media history. So we don't want you to be missing out on that. Finally, hey, if you are here, a rating, a review would be incredible. Nick Clason (01:51): It really helps us get indexed and found and helps get this word out to other people. So if you feel so inclined to leave a rating or a review, we would just absolutely love that. Without any further ado, let's dive into these three pressing and one not so pressing church communication questions. They are going to be question number one, what should I focus on first? Social or my website? Question number two, there are altogether too many events happening at my church to effectively announce anything. What do I do? I have some advice on that. And what is the best digital media for churches in 2023? What should I be doing? And they're maybe not as popular out there. Like, what are some ideas? And finally, what are my top five used apps on my phone? So there you go. That's what we're diving into. Let's go. Nick Clason (02:46): Okay, question number one, what should I focus on? Should it be social or should it be my website? And this one's, honestly, my personal estimation, pretty easy. I think the answer should be your website. Here's a couple reasons why. It is your home base. If you create your website, you own it. You are the, you are the primary real estate manager of it. If you're on social media and you're growing a following over there, you should do that as well. But if you had to pick between one or the other, social media is a little bit finicky because it changes its rules. I e the algorithm you've been there before where someone's gotten big on, on some sort of platform, whether it be Facebook or Instagram or TikTok. And then one of those platforms shifts underneath them, the algorithm, and they're no longer getting found. Nick Clason (03:38): Their videos are not getting as many plays, they're not getting as many likes, and that's because they are not the owner of their content. They're on borrowed or rented space on social media. Meanwhile, on your website, you can make it everything that you need or want it to be. And I honestly recommend, and I, this is not an original idea with me at all. I stole this one 1000% from the guys up at Pro Church Tools Nucleus Church, but make it your centralized hub. The reason for that is because like on social media, for example, you might post, uh, a fleeting thought or an idea or a devotional or, uh, engage in ministry in the dms in some sort of way with people. However, if, if you are using social media as your primary vehicle for announcements, if it is a glorified billboard, then people are going to be like, wait, I saw that post a couple of weeks ago, let me scroll back and try and find it. Nick Clason (04:37): That's a pain in the butt, man. But if you put it on your website and if they know, if people know that it's on your website, then what you can do is you, when they ask you a question, you can be like, Hey, yeah, the answer is whatever. But also it's on the website. Anytime you need that and you do that a few times to any individual person and they learn, you kind of start to feel like a jerk, like early on with it. Like we're in that phase right now. We just got a website that we are dumping everything too. I told you a couple episodes ago, it's not exactly what I hoped it would be. I want to go with like a nucleus site. Uh, but we have to go, you know, with our church communications people. Uh, I, I work in our youth mystery department and so like I have to make sure that what I'm doing jives with the rest of the church, which I totally get and I'm am in support of that. Nick Clason (05:28): Um, however, because of that, the website has certain things on it that we just, we are not able to kind of work around ourselves yet. And so, uh, anyway, all that to be said, it's still a full service location. And so if a parent or someone's like, Hey, you send an email a couple weeks back, where was that information about? Or what you can just say, yeah, yeah, you know, camp deadline is May 31st, but also did you know that it's on the website at film url? And you say that, you just start saying that a bunch, right? And it becomes like a part of your, like vernacular a part of your answer. And that's why I think that you should go website first because website is your own real estate. It's the equivalent of owning or renting an Airbnb from somebody for vacation, which can be fun, it can be exciting, it can be sexy. Nick Clason (06:23): And you have like all your stuff. Like that's kinda like social media, right? It's kind of fun, it's kind of exciting and it might even feel a little more sexy than building out a full website. But at the end of the day, you don't own it. It's owned by Mark Zuckerberg or someone in China who, whoever's owning TikTok or the YouTube gods that be that pick the algorithm. But if you own your house, it's not as fun. You know, when the HVAC system goes out that it's on you to fix. You can't just call the owner or call the landlord. Like that's your responsibility because it's your house and you own it, however, it's yours and you build equity in it and you get to ride the housing market and it's all the unseen, not as fun, not as glamorous, not as shiny things, but it is still better. Nick Clason (07:09): That's how we, we all know, like when you own a house, it's better. However, it's more of a pain in the butt and it's not as shiny, it's not as glamorous, but it's better. So that's what I would recommend. I would recommend if you have to pick between the two social or website, definitely lean website. Make sure that you own your real estate, your videos, your uh, announcements, your, uh, people are aware of where to go and what to do when they get there. Okay? There are too many ministries and too many events vying for attention and wanting to be announced. What do I do? Well, I would create some sort of rubric, some sort of, uh, church communications, uh, ranking system. And you have to make a determination and certain things get certain priority, right? Like the Easter service, which affects the entire church body is going to get all the publicity and all the stage time. Nick Clason (08:10): Meanwhile, the woman's bunko night, while still important and still matters and no hard feelings to Phyllis who's planning it, uh, is not going to maybe get the same amount of announcement or same amount of run, but you know how it goes, right? You don't announce it. And now Phyllis is angry because you didn't announce her thing from the stage, but you got Pastor John over here who needs the Easter announcement to go out as well. And so you're trying to make Phyllis and Pastor John both happy, but you work for Pastor John and Phyllis is just this like, uh, volunteer sweet old lady who's volunteering for the women's ministry, but you work for Pastor John, right? And so that's kind of, that's what maybe the mental gymnastics are that you're going through when you're determining what to announce and how to announce it. Now here's the thing. Nick Clason (08:59): I think that churches have very much fallen in prey to announcements being a one track sort of thing. It being the announcement time on Sunday morning from the platform. And that's it. And that's just simply not true. So, uh, while you can create your, uh, rubric and you can grade like, okay, the woman's bunko night, unfortunately we don't have enough space for these announcements. Uh, and so it's gonna get bumped from the Sunday morning announcement time. However, there are other channels and other avenues in which you can lean into and which you can help create so that people are in the loop about what is going on. And so create your rubric, create your metric or your grading system about what pops through what actually gets a stage announcement so that you're not, you know, announcing 25 things, you're announcing only a handful of things or, or honestly, if I could find a way, I would make it be announcing only one thing so that people really know it. Nick Clason (09:58): And then really craft that announcement to be good and well done. Um, captivating, inspirational, perhaps try and find a way to share a story. People are gonna connect to a story, especially a story about life change and then announce it. But then, yeah, you did, you left Phyllis's, uh, bunko on the cutting room floor. So what are you gonna do? So there are multiple communications avenues and I wanna just kinda like, uh, stream of consciousness, rapid fire, some of the ones that I have, uh, or that are in my brain and maybe, and so doing that, that sparks something that works for you and uh, you can use that in your setting as well. But, uh, one of them is your pre-roll, right? As people are coming into service, utilize that time with rotating or scrolling announcement slides. It's not very innovative, I know, and it might even seem outdated and antiquated, but it is, I think, worth it because you have a very captive audience, people filtering in, sitting down, looking ahead at a screen. Nick Clason (10:57): And you can have announcements, you can have things popping through, obviously. Also you can utilize, uh, your social media channels on there though. What I would do is I would try and lean into what social media is made for. So for example, instead of just posting graphics on reels or TikTok or just like graphics on your Instagram or Facebook feeds, I would find a way to creatively, uh, do memes or games or, uh, silly like p o v type content. But you do those things and it, it adjacently announces your event while also being something on there that is, uh, leaning towards entertainment. Uh, also think about signage. Where is the signage and what is the available signage in your church? Could be bathroom signage, which is one of my favorites. Having a sign above urinals for men is a great place to put something because why no man wants to look side side. Nick Clason (11:53): So look good straight ahead. Okay? Uh, you also got banners if you have like a table setting, like we, in our student ministry, we have a table setting, um, where like people sit around round tables and there's a like clear placard that sits right in the middle. You can do tabletop type announcements or tabletop type signs. You also have your work weekly church email and then also your weekly stage announcement, right? And then I think every announcement, no matter what should get included into your one-stop centralized hub, your one stop website so that everybody knows no matter what to always go there. So even if they see Bunco in the pre-roll, but they're like, ah, shoot, I didn't catch all the details, that's okay, because they know it's on the website, right? It's the same thing. That's true of like, if you watch a movie trailer, if you watch a movie trailer online, you're like, man, I have to go see the new Marvel movie. Nick Clason (12:48): Yeah, you do. But what it didn't do was it didn't pop up an end card at the end of the trailer and say your hometown, your movie theaters and the showing times for each day for the next week. No, it puts the onus on you If you wanna see the movie, if you wanna go to Bunko night, then you will chase down that information. Historically, what's been the issue, churches haven't done a very good job of making that information readily available. They think they do by, by including it in the announcement or the graphic is like a bunko thing. And then it's just got like worlds and worlds of text, like six 30 to eight in the f building with Phyllis. And uh, if you want to go make sure you email Phyllis at flower lady 37 29 aol.com cuz apparently Phyllis is still using aol. Nick Clason (13:38): And, uh, if you have questions, you can swing by the welcome desk in the front lobby. And you see what I'm saying? Like, instead, if you streamline everything and you say Bunco Night Info app, boom, your website, everything you go to your website provides itself as a bit of a backdrop. Now let me give you one of my favorite church communications hacks of all time. And that hack is, this is, this is a little bit not a pet peeve, but I I just, I think that you're missing an opportunity if you do it this way. So for example, I am an author on Download Youth ministry, and one of the things that has made very famous, made very available are five minute countdowns. They put the five minute countdown on, um, right, you know, five minutes before the service is supposed to start. And that's a very popular thing. Nick Clason (14:28): Our churches do it. Your church probably has some sort of iteration of a five minute countdown. One of my pet peeves, or one of the things I just honestly think is a little bit of a miss is that you have a, a lot of churches, they'll have a pre-roll and then at the five minute mark, they'll switch off of the pre-roll to this five minute countdown. Um, and this actually happened yesterday where I was gonna church. I looked around five, there were, I don't know, probably like 20% of the people that were going to end up being in the service, um, or that ended up being in the service at that time. And they switched off the pre-roll, which was very information and announcement heavy to a generic, um, a good, very good like cinematic good, uh, picture and encapsulation of the church and the life of the church and like serving and events and all the things, but no information. Nick Clason (15:21): And in that five minute time, it went from 20% of the service to probably like 70, 80% of the service. And all the people that walked into the room at that moment, they didn't get any of that benefit of the pre-roll. And if they got in there a minute early, if the pre-roll was still rolling, they could sit there and they could still see the last little bit of the pre-roll. They would still catch some of the things and maybe, maybe Bunco would roll in front of them and then they would know, oh, Bono's coming up. And so one of my favorite hacks is create a pre-roll and, and create a dynamic pre-roll if you have what it takes, one that's video based and all the things. And then, and instead of swapping a five minute countdown, just create a loop and then put a five minute countdown on through pro presenter or just throw a five minute overlay on a video and render out two videos, one without a five minute countdown, one with a five minute countdown. Nick Clason (16:17): And so that way when they switch from the pre-roll to the five minute countdown, the sa it's the same thing. That's, that's what I do in my ministry. It's the same video. Just one has a five minute countdown timer on it, one does not. And that's one of my favorite hacks because I believe that you have a captive audience of people filtering into your auditorium. They are actually paying attention to the screen once it starts counting down, or they should be at least because they don't want to be late or they have to get from one place to the other. And so in so much as paying attention, the theory then is that they're at least going to be mildly aware of the other announcements that are going on behind the five minute countdown. So that's one of my favorite hacks for you as a church communications person. Nick Clason (17:01): Hope it's helpful. Let me know if you implement it. Let's move on to question three. What are three digital media ideas for churches in 20 20, 20 23 that aren't as popular? So idea that I have number one that I don't think is as popular now, they're very popular, don't get me wrong, but they may not be as popular with churches are podcasts. And I don't just mean your Sunday sermon podcast, though, you 100% should be doing that. It's probably the lowest hanging fruit and the most available opportunity for you to start regularly posting podcasts and a podcast catcher. But I also think what about finding ways to create podcasts that educate, that explain, um, different facets of faith or spiritual disciplines or fill in the blank, right? But podcasts I think are an amazing tool that churches should be leaning into as churches. Church leaders and pastors are professional content creators. Nick Clason (18:02): And so your people, you are creating content for them every single week on a Sunday morning. And for quite frankly, it is a lecture style piece of information that you are creating for your church. So why are you not taking that skill that you have honed that you are good at? Um, and honestly, maybe you're like, well, I'm, I'm the senior pastor, like I don't have time. Maybe you work at a church with additional other staff and pastors who don't preach as often as you. Maybe this would be an outlet or an avenue for them to exercise their teaching gift to grow in what their, uh, and what God has given to them. Uh, but they don't have time or you don't have time or the sermon preaching calendar doesn't allow for the time or the space for them to get a lot of stage time. Nick Clason (18:47): That's okay. You can give this other outlet, this other avenue for them to exercise those gifts for them to teach people via podcast. So I think podcasts are a really creative way and a really potentially effective way for churches to lean in, um, and to create additional content for their churches and for people who are interested in what the church has to offer. Another idea that I have are TikTok style teaching or inspirational videos. So while podcast is long form, I think TikTok style videos are the best, like zig to the zag of that where they are, uh, short. So podcast, really no, no matter how long it is, you can go as long as you want. TikTok, make it as short as humanly possible, and perhaps to even marry those two, just film your podcasts and then cut out clips of from the podcast. Nick Clason (19:43): And then the short videos can serve as both inspirational and educational, but they can also serve as an advertisement of sorts or a marketing technique for your podcast. So you post on your social channel some of those short clips, and then people begin to discover and realize that there's a longer form version of this out there via audio podcast or even video podcast. I mean, if you're gonna capture the, the video, uh, and you have the bandwidth for it, there's really no reason to then marry the, the audio and the video, put it together, and then just create a video based podcast as well. And then idea number three that I have eBooks right, the, in the same vein, you are a professional content creator. So just take the content that you have that's good, that's useful, that's beneficial that you have studied, that the Holy Spirit has laid on your heart, and that you then are now, uh, presenting and showing to your church congregation. Nick Clason (20:40): Take that and put package that in a way that makes it available for people. Why maybe you, uh, maybe it hits a different audience than those who are in the church on Sunday morning. Maybe they weren't there on Sunday morning, but it's still something that's out there and that's available for them to do, right? Like if you're a pastor and you create like three ideas for studying God's word, you can create that in an infographic or an ebook or something like that, and you can offer that to your church and you have that to live on in perpetuity. Meanwhile, if you preach that sermon on March 12th, 2016, that's lost back on March 12th, 2016. But if you repurpose some of that content, then anytime anyone has a question about, Hey, how do I spend time with God, Jack? You know, I created this resource, and you just pull it back out or you, you post it on your website or you have it somewhere that's accessible, that's available for people to come to, for you to share with them. Nick Clason (21:37): And that's, I think another way that you can help kind of, uh, rejuvenate or repurpose some of your already created content into something that feels fresh. It isn't fresh, but it's beneficial and it's helpful to people's spiritual growth and their journey and their information and understanding of God's word. All right, question number four. What are the top five apps that I as a youth pastor and as a, uh, content creator used on my phone often? Number one is Google Drive. I would be sunk without Google Drive. I store all of my photos, all of my videos on Google Drive, and they sit there and then I download them off of Google Drive and then I post them and then I can delete the storage off of my phone. So that is the first thing. I would absolutely be lost without it. I use it both for business and for personal, and I can toggle very easily between both of those accounts in my Google Drive. Nick Clason (22:33): Do it often, do it all the time. The other app on my phone that I use a lot is Cap Cut. There are templates galore out there, and TikTok, um, honestly is pushing cap cut templates right now. So if you post a tick, uh, cap cut template, you can go viral pretty easy. Um, I have not had as good of luck with that on TikTok, but you know, where I have is YouTube shorts. I can get videos up over a thousand views pretty easily just by using a cap cut template. Uh, another thing that I use is gonna sound weird, but I use my Google Chrome app all the time. And if I post something that I created in TikTok by itself, then I go into Google Chrome and I search, download TikTok video without watermark, I go to the very first search engine result there. Nick Clason (23:18): I paste the link from my TikTok video, I download it, I copy the caption that I, that I created in TikTok. I go over to Instagram and I post it and I paste the, the caption and then I go over to YouTube shorts and I post the video and I paste the caption. And that is one of the quickest, easiest and hackiest ways for me to get the TikTok, uh, watermark off of my videos and onto other social media platforms. Couple others that I use that are just kind of for me, uh, cast box. I'm an Android guy, so I don't have the purple podcast app for podcasts, but I listen to podcast galore. Like I told you at the beginning. I was in Disney World last week and I got behind on my podcast. So I have something like 60 podcasts in my catcher right now that I need to, uh, pound through. Nick Clason (24:06): I also am subscribed to maybe way too many, and so I might need to cut some of those back. But I listen to podcasts a lot. I have a decent commute and so, um, I'm able to, you know, listen to them as I go. And finally, one, uh, that I don't use a ton, but it's good to have there for reference is Kindle. I use Kindle across all of my devices. Uh, if I'm reading some sort of book for work, I try to get it in a Kindle version. That way I don't have to lug the book with me. Or if like I'm at a doctor's or dentist's office and I wanna sit and wait for a minute, I can pull it open and read wherever I am on my phone, on my iPad, on my computer. Um, and then I can quickly reference back to other things, other books, other, um, ideas that I've read before. Nick Clason (24:49): If I want to use them for something on social media or whatever the case might be, those are five must have apps that I use on a pretty frequent and regular basis to help make my life easier as a social media manager in a church. Well, hey everyone. So glad you hung out with me on this episode. And if you're on the YouTube stream, you're looking at my Avengers mug right now. Glad that you hung out and you stuck around as always. Transcript hybridministry.xyz, give us a light, give us a rating, give us a share, give us a review. All those things would mean the world to us. And as a token of my and our appreciation back to you, we would love to give you our 100% completely free ebook title. Have I already ruined my church's TikTok account? The answer is no. But go download the book so that you know how to use and post to TikTok whenever, and however you want, head to the link in the show notes for that. And without any further ado, we're gonna get you outta here. Thanks for hanging out. Don't forget to, as always, stay hybrid.

In this episode Nick discusses what to do before, during and after your gigantic summer events of Vacation Bible School (VBS) and Youth Summer Camp. How do you handle social and digital media? How do you promote? And what are the best practices to recap and successfully bring your entire church along for the ride on some of your biggest events of the summer! FREE E-BOOK: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick?lang=en INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/hybridministry/ GOT QUESTIONS? WE GOT ANSWER: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/contact SHOWNOTES RUNNING A DIGITAL AD: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/009 MY CHURCH YOUTH MINISTRY ON SOCIAL MEDIA: https://www.instagram.com/crosscreekstudents/ MY CHURCH ON SOCIAL MEDIA: https://www.instagram.com/crosscreekcolleyville/ TIMECODES 00:00-01:56 Intro - VBS & Camp 01:56-05:31 Classify the Proirity of Your Events 05:31-08:36 Before your Event 08:36-13:17 During Your Event 13:17-15:05 After Your Event 15:05-16:41 Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:00): Well, hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. You can head to http://hybridministry.xyz for all of your needs, including transcripts, show notes, and old archived episodes. But today, and in this episode, what I want to talk about is I want to talk about church communications and church social media for VBS and summer camp. How do you handle these two major monumental tent pole style events in your church that you no doubt are having to already probably try and reconcile and figure out? And so we want, I want to talk about what to do before your event, what to do during your event and what to do after your event. Now, here's what you need to know. In most cases, when this episode is dropping here in the middle of June, you were probably already full bore into your pre VBS or pre-camp planning, and I get that. Nick Clason (00:56): And so this episode may be helpful for future, uh, years, future seasons, as well as give you some good ideas or thoughts during your, um, during your event or after your event of ways to handle church communications or church social media. Before we dive in, I wanna remind you that we are on YouTube, head to our YouTube channel to subscribe. We're on TikTok and I wanted to let you know that you can head in either of those places, the website or on YouTube or on TikTok to our show notes where you can get our completely free ebook on how to post to TikTok. It'll also put you on our email newsletter, which we are going to start getting going on a more regular basis. So far it's mostly just been, Hey, sign up for this ebook. Thanks. You're on our email newsletter and we've done nothing with that. Nick Clason (01:40): Um, but we're gonna start sending out some thoughts and ideas here in the future. Uh, noth nothing in the works just yet, but it will be coming. So without any further ado, let's dive in. How do you handle VBS and how do you handle camp in your church? Let's go. All right, so at our church, we have events classified as tier one, tier two, and tier three. Tier one are like the lowest rung events. They may get like an a scrolling announcement and that's it. Tier two is a little higher and then tier three, all right, honestly, I might have that reverse tier one might be the best. Tier three might be like the worst quote unquote. Uh, but both VBS and camp are like the top tier events. And so in your church, I would recommend that VBS and camp also be top level events. Nick Clason (02:26): If you are a senior pastor, uh, that recommendation is for you. If you're a church communications person, that recommendation is for you. If you're a youth pastor or kids pastor listening and you're screaming at your car or your phone or your headphones right now, like, yes, it is the most popular event. Like, you already know that, right? And you're trying to get other people on board with that idea. So I would recommend making it your top tier event and pulling out as many of the stops as it takes in order for you to be able to do that. Now, before we dive into the pre, during and post suggestions for your event, I do just say, if you don't have an event or a communications classification, uh, spelled out in like a handbook of some sorts, let me, let me recommend that that might be your first step because one of the challenges in churches, you, every ministry wants to announce their thing. Nick Clason (03:15): The women's minister wants to announce her thing. The senior adults ministry wants to announce their thing. The college ministry wants to make sure that their thing is announced. The kids' ministry of course, wants VBS announced Student Ministry of courts wants camp announce. How do you announce those? How do you celebrate those when they're over? Like how do you categorize and classify what gets air time? What gets screen time, what gets stage time? And that is where I would say if you have a classification, tier one, tier two, tier three, and then explain what falls under each of those categories, it's helpful, um, so that like people can request those things. And then when, like ladies bunko on a Friday night at, you know, Pauline's house is vying for the top tier event, you as a church communications person, you're gonna have to say, well, that's not a top tier event because it doesn't affect more than 50% of our population. Nick Clason (04:05): Or, you know, whatever the reasons might be. But sit down, work through what those things might be. A good rule of thumb is typically that you want the event or you want the thing that you're announcing that you're, you know, making known. You want it to affect a wide and vast majority of your people. And the reason that VBS does that is because it not only is for all of the kids in your church, but also you're gonna need just about as many volunteers or more than kids in your church to, to step up and serve. And so it is a big wide scale production. The entire church, the entire staff is usually involved in it. It's usually like a non-negotiable. You are not on vacation if you're on church staff during that week, like you are there. And so that's one of the reasons why it is such a top tier event camp is a little trickier, honestly, cuz it probably doesn't hit 50% of your people. Nick Clason (04:53): Uh, but it is a massive financial investment. And it is also probably your student ministry's most, uh, coveted or or biggest like event moment throughout the year. Um, it does also require a good portion, definitely a good portion of your student ministry, student ministry staff, student ministry volunteers. Does it include everybody? Maybe not. Um, but you may. And and that's where, right, like you can have your, you can have your, uh, categorizations, your classifications, but then sometimes like in that case you may fudge that and be like, this is still gonna be tier one. So let's dive into some ideas that you can do promoting and before your event, let's go. Nick Clason (05:33): All right, so if this is a top tier event and before your event starts, I wanna just give you some ideas. Do whatever you can pull all the stops to give it all the publicity that you can. What does that mean? Well, I would say give it all of your in church announcement moments. Give it all of your, um, give it all of your promotion that you can do inside the church. Video announcements, stage announcements, bathroom signs, uh, ev everything that you pull out, church bulletin, everything that you do on a week to week basis for your church. Give it everything that you got. All right. Like put all your gas behind all your effort, energy behind this event. Make sure that everyone in your church at least is very well aware of it. And then from the digital perspective and digital standpoint, how do you do and what do you do beyond that? Nick Clason (06:22): Well, I would recommend that you create for yourself a individual dedicated landing page on your church website. Maybe it's, maybe you buy a domain, maybe it's whatever the theme is, you know, dot com. Like, uh, if your theme is like wet and wild rapids.com. Now if you're doing like VBS in a can or VBS from like a curriculum content place, that that website is probably gonna be taken by another church or just by the, the VBS curriculum provider in general, right? But create some sort of like website and maybe you can get like VBS in yourtown.com or VBS in yourtown.church or something like that, that you can just own and use every single year. And then recycle it and refresh it to match and go along with whatever the theme is. But then when people, um, are searching for VBS in your town, that is hopefully gonna index well in SEO and in Google search for the town that your church is in. Nick Clason (07:18): Uh, but, but create a website. And in my mind, that website can be your centralized hub. Now, you should already have some sort of centralized hub to your church. And so if people do go to your church and then they do wind up going to vbs, you can just simply link it over to that one. It can also be a subset of your page. You already are paying for a church page. You can just do, you know, whatever church.com/vbs, uh, or whatever church.com/camp. But give it its own dedicated page. And in vbs laying a camp, you want to do packing list, you wanna do themes, you want to be, let that be the place where parents can go for daily recaps posts, uh, links out to social links, out to videos, um, packing lists, forms if you're going away. Um, let's see. Uh, like I like to include Spotify playlists, uh, that the kids, uh, have been worshiping to so that people can access that. They can continue to listen to that on their own time. And then also, last but not least, an idea might be put some energy and effort behind some Facebook advertising. All right, I'll link in our episode here on how to run a Facebook ad, uh, with me and Matt from a couple of, uh, almost a year ago at this point. But I'll link the how-to step-by-step process of running, creating, targeting on a Facebook ad. But get some ad power behind your, uh, your two events, VBS and camp. Nick Clason (08:38): All right, what are you gonna do during vbs and what are you gonna do during camp? Right? Like I said, odds are when this video and, uh, podcast drop, you're already there. You don't really have a lot of the, the pre-work probably to do anymore. Or if not, you're, you're, you're minimal. And most of those decisions have already been, it may be too late to create a website. It may be too late, you know, to uh, run an ad. And so during, I would do whatever you can to create daily content for your screens in your room. And so what I mean by that is you're gonna have large projector screens, probably wherever you are, camp vbs, either of those. And if you can have 1, 2, 3, uh, photographers, videographers around the better VBS is probably easier for that cuz you can get volunteer ones, um, camp, you probably need to pay to have that person go and pay them to be there, right? Nick Clason (09:26): You gotta pay for their, their room and board and lodging. And then you also have to pay them to be there. If you're on a bigger church staff, you may have a full marketing department, communications department and they may be able to spare a, a member of their team to go to camp with you for the week. Um, and so you don't have to necessarily pay them cuz they're getting paid by the church, but you do have to pay for them to be there, if that makes sense. But those investments are worth it because capturing those memories, capturing those photos and being able to capture those videos are amazing. And one of the best things I think to do is every single day have a daily recap that you post on your screen. So as soon as the kids come in, the top of the service is a daily recap video. Nick Clason (10:07): They can screen for their team, they can scream for 'em, they see themselves, they can laugh, they can giggle, they can sing along with the songs. I think all those are great, amazing ideas. Um, also I think you should post daily recap stuff for social media. So think about the multiple avenues in which you may wanna post. You may wanna post on, uh, the feed, Facebook feed, Instagram feed in on Instagram. It's gonna be 10 photos. You may also wanna post videos or things in your stories. Um, and you may also wanna post some reels. So one of the things we just got done with VBS this last week at our church, our church was doing a daily recap video with like a voiceover. So one of the people on staff did it, I did it from one of the days cuz we were hosting, um, a sixth grade event called Cross the Creek Week. Nick Clason (10:50): Um, and it's for our incoming, uh, sixth graders that was running in tandem in conjunction with their VBS across the, across the way. Um, but I would do like a recap, Hey, here's the, here's the theme, here's the word of the day, here's the verse. Um, and all the while there was just b-roll back behind of things going on events, uh, footage that they had for, for the event. I also posted on our own individual student ministry channels. The first two days I just did basic recaps. I just like got my phone out and just kind of captured the day, put a video on it, honestly edited it in TikTok or cap cut and just like let it be. And it was super simple text on screen, you know, cross Creek week day one. Uh, super easy way to do that. The, the third day I pulled students aside individually and I asked them, what's your favorite part of this event? Nick Clason (11:38): And I, I just clipped all those together real fast. And then on the fourth and final day we had our missions offering and we offered a contest to our sixth graders that if they were able to meet some sort of goal, um, they could pie a leader of their choice in the face. And so there were six groups, six teams, and five of the six teams met that goal. And so five of the six teams got a pie leaders. And so we captured five pies in the face. If you're on YouTube, check this out, here's my photo of me getting pied in the face. Cuz they did in fact choose me for one of them. Um, but I posted a video all five, like boom, boom, boom, just real fast. And then at the end, the group photo of the five of us being pied. Nick Clason (12:16): And so, um, I captured that. So on social, I would just, uh, look for different ways to capture what's going on. Um, I thought what, what my church was doing with the voiceover for the theme. I thought that was really good, um, and really well done. Um, and so I would, again, so you're looking at the, the challenge with it right? Is that you're looking for, uh, stuff for your screen. So you're looking for 10 80 by 1920, you're also looking for, um, you're also looking, what is that? No, that's 1920 by 10 80, then you're also looking for verticals. So then you're looking for 10 80 by 1920. Uh, so the way you capture it is gonna be different. So if you can have some people like you do social and you do, um, for the screens, vice versa, or you're just gonna have them like, come in, film this way and then come in and film this way, right? Nick Clason (13:02): Whatever the case might be, I would, uh, try and find a way. And the more people you hand have, the more hands you have on deck to help with that, the better for during your event that you can produce on a daily sort of basis. Let's check out what we can do after, all right, after, I would do a big total recap of the whole event. So you've done daily recaps and now you're doing like the big total recap that can just be B roll and uh, maybe voiceover or something like that. One of my favorite things to do is bringing that like camp person, uh, with me. The video person to camp is have them capture eight to 12, uh, testimonies of people, um, student and a couple leaders, and then splice that up together with some good B-roll over it and, um, show it in the service or show it in the, um, like whatever sort of recap event you have, uh, for, for your people. Nick Clason (13:58): Uh, and also post it, you know, to YouTube clip it up verticals so you can post it to social. Um, we did an event, uh, we will do an event after camp this year called camp. So it's the camp recap, um, and we're gonna invite parents to it. And that's what we're gonna show our, our video for, for camp, for returning students, um, and for returning parents to be able to check out what's going on with, uh, what went on at camp, what went on with student ministry, um, and get that also, um, if it's good enough, it'll be able to get played in your big church lobby. Um, and it, what it'll do is it will help your parents. It'll help your donors, it will help anyone who gave fundraisers invested in student ministry. It will give them a picture of what their financial and what their monetary and what their time investment went to. Nick Clason (14:45): And so, uh, this is why I think that capturing these moments digitally, um, and on video is so, so widely important because it just gives such a good picture and it helps bring your church along to what's going on in these monumental events for these, uh, for kid ministry and for student ministry. Well, hey everyone, so glad you hung out. I, uh, am thankful that you stuck around to the end of this video. Hey, I also just want to say like, I hope that you found this helpful and I also hope that you, um, have a great vbs and a great camp this season. Whether you're just finishing it or whether you're jumping into it this week. Um, prayers, blessings on you. I hope that it's amazing for any, uh, if you want to, to preview any of the content we did, I'll link both our, our overall church and, uh, my church's, uh, student ministry, which I run in the show notes. Nick Clason (15:40): You can check both of those out. You can again, head to YouTube to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Um, see the photo of me having Pie in the face. Uh, you can also follow me on TikTok for short video clips. And don't forget show notes and transcripts are available every single week http://hybridministry.xyz. This is gonna be episode number 049. Hey, listen, I'm gonna give you quick heads up. I may say that in some future episodes I lost a bunch of episodes on a hard drive, um, that is currently getting recovered now. Um, and so unfortunately, uh, there may be some, some shuffling. That's mostly a problem I have to deal with. Um, but I'm just letting you know that there be, there may be some clerical errors here in the next couple of weeks of me staying episode, whatever, and then it posting later cuz I currently don't have access to it. So anyway, all that to be said. Without any further ado, glad you're here. Thanks for hanging out. Head into the show notes to get everything you need. And as always, don't forget, stay hybrid.

In this Episode Nick revises and takes another look at his 2023 posting strategy, and he explains the shifts and tweaks he is going to be making moving forward for the second half of 2023. Dive in and take a look at what you can learn and adapt into your church's social media strategy for 2023 and beyond to maximize your reach of Millennials, Generation Z and the future of Generation Alpha. Follow Along on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g Come Hang with Nick on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick?lang=en Shownotes & Transcripts for this Episode: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/048 SHOWNOTES The Original 2023 Posting Strategy: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/025 FREE E-Book on Posting to TikTok in 2023: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook To see Nick's Church's Social Media in Action: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crosscreekstudents/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4f4bABQ6RgYF8CHY9G4HKw TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@crosscreekstudents?lang=en TIMECODES 00:00-04:37 Intro 04:37-06:55 Why I'm shifting from posting less content on social media in 2023 06:55-15:30 Reason #1: Quantity to Quality 15:30-18:59 Reason #2: Margin for more variety of Social Media posts 18:59-23:03 In Conclusion TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:02): Hey, what is up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I am with you as always as your host, Nick Clason. Excited and thrilled to be with you on this episode. And in this episode, I want to give you my updated church social media posting strategy for 2023. Uh, I will link in the show notes if you've been around any length of time, my ultimate, uh, church social media posting strategy. Um, and I, I gave that back, I believe, around Christmas time, um, in 2022. And so here we are. It's May or June, depending on when you're catching this, or maybe even later if you're watching back through the archives, um, or listening back to the archives. Um, but now I want to just give an update and, uh, say, Hey, here's what I have been doing. Here's where I have been, and here's what I now know and here's the direction that I am now gonna go. Nick Clason (01:06): So tune in for that. But before we do, uh, if you haven't already figured out, we are on YouTube. So join us over there. Give us a, like a subscribe, all that stuff. Super duper helps with the algorithm. Um, and we would super appreciate it if any of those things, uh, were available or a thing that you could do for us. Uh, if you're in a podcast catcher, uh, subscribe so that you get this episode for free. It will automatically, uh, download, automatically show up in your feed every single Thursday morning at 4:00 AM when these things drop. And a rating or a review, either on Apple Podcast, on the YouTube podcast, any of those places, Spotify, we are all those places. So we would welcome a rating or a review. Um, it really helps with the algorithm. And, um, I believe in this message. I hope that if you're listening, that you two also believe in this message. Nick Clason (01:57): And if you are finding it helpful, um, getting that word out there in some way, just by helping us give it a rating that helps other people find their show, that helps other people attach to the mission message, um, of what hybrid ministry is all about. If, if you're new, you know, what we're essentially saying is, uh, this is not a all about digital ministry, though. There is a lot of elements of digital ministry in here. Um, and this is not all about in-person ministry. What this really is, is this is a melding of the two, and it's helping kind of fuse where, where the road meets between, um, just in person or just on online or just in digital. And so that's why we're calling it hybrid. It's a both and sort of experience. That being said, most churches are really good with their in-person experiences, um, and they may not be as good with some of their hybrid experiences, and it could be streaming your service. Nick Clason (02:57): That could be what a hybrid experience is. That's what most churches, uh, do. That's, that's what most of their online or digital strategy is, is like, well, we streamed the service, COVID forced us to buy a camera, stick it in the back of the room and stream the service. And that's all well and good. And if you're doing that, I'd recommend continue doing it. But there are many more ways, I think, to enter into that space, uh, and to offer more than just your Sunday morning experience to your church members, your church attenders, and your perspective people. So again, thank you for joining us. One of the major players right now in 2023. Um, and this will still bear itself out and you're about to see and hear in my updated church, uh, media posting strategy in 2023 is short form, vertical based video. And I have created for you a 100% free ebook. Nick Clason (03:49): I would love for you to click the link in the show notes and head there and download your very own copy of it. Uh, it's just a way for you or a church social media manager or an intern or a college student to grab a phone and start creating tos completely free and from scratch. It is an ebook that we created step by step, walking you through. It's titled, have I Already Ruined My Church TikTok account? And we would just love for you to check that out and use it, and hopefully that will be to your benefit and your advantage as you're trying to lean into more and more of the hybrid space here in 2023 in an effort to reach Gen Z and millennials and beyond. So again, without any further ado, glad you're here. Thanks for joining us. Let's dive in to my updated church social media posting strategy in 2023. Nick Clason (04:38): The day was May 7th, 2023. That's the day I finally shifted my strategy from before. So a little bit of historical context so that you understand. Like I said, if you wanna go back and listen, drop the link to that in the show notes, check that out. But I have been posting three short form vertical video based content pieces every single day for five days a week. The reason I choose the five days a week thing is because I'm attempting to have rhythm and rest in a Sabbath and a weekend. And so I don't post on Friday and Saturday as a a member of church staff. Sun Sunday is for sure a working day, right? Um, and so therefore I just, I choose Friday and Saturday as my two days off. It works pretty well. So I post Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. That's why really, that's really the rhyme or reason works well with my schedule. Nick Clason (05:32): Um, and I would recommend that, like, I would recommend not overdoing it on your days off, because the, the reality is social media is relentless. It is a never ending beast, and it is always hungry. And so the more that you give to it, the more it's gonna want and the more it's gonna need. And so unless you have boundaries, there is really no, uh, stopping to it. And so it's up to you to create the boundaries to stay healthy, to stay in a spot that is gonna keep you mentally strong and all those types of things. So anyway, I've been posting three times a day, five days a week, and I just now shifted down and this is my new strategy. It's not earth shattering, and it's not a big shift. Okay? I've shifted down from three a day to two a day. So let's talk about what caused and what brought me to that shift. Nick Clason (06:19): It's multifaceted. There are two main points, and in the next couple sections, I'm gonna break down point number one, I'm gonna break down point number two. Um, but all of this is, while it's not monumental, it is a slight shift. And so if you have been following my recommended strategy, I will explain why I still think that there is benefit and merit to the three posts a day versus maybe the two posts a day. That is honestly ultimately gonna be up to you and up to your call. But before we do that, let me dive into my two-pronged reason for shifting from three a day to two a day. Let's go. Reason number one, why I am making this shift is I am hoping that shifting from posting three day to two a day, it's gonna take my weekly from 15 down to 10. Um, and there's already a rhythm baked in what I'm doing. Nick Clason (07:12): Like, for example, we're pre-filing all of our message content on video. And so out of that, I pull three, uh, shorts, three tos every single week, um, that are short message clips, um, Brady Shearer and the, and the people at Nucleus call it social sermons. Um, but essentially we're clipping a, a message with hopefully what I would consider to be a good hook, whether it is or not, I don't know. I'm still growing in that skill, I would say. And then at the end, we're pushing them to go consume longer sections of our YouTube, um, or podcast content. Uh, and so hopefully they find it and then they go, they go discover and, and become, you know, more engaged, more entrenched in what we're doing on social media. Anyway, all that to be said, right? Like, I am trying to, so, so there's three right there. Nick Clason (08:02): Okay, so outta my 10. Now I already have three. I only have to come up with seven more. And so ultimately I'm trying to shift, uh, creating quantity content to quality content. Now, I, I have not been trying to produce crap. Like, that's not been my goal, right? By any means. Like, I'm trying to do good work. I'm trying to be thoughtful, I'm trying to be creative, but there's just something about three a day that just feels relentless. And yesterday, May 7th was actually the very, and that May 7th, as of this recording, this will drop multiple weeks later. But, um, May 7th, when I first posted this, like, that was my very first day of posting only two a day. And it, it felt different. Like, I don't know it, you know, you might think like, what are you talking about? Like, it's only one different, like, I know, but it just, it, there's something about it, it just did. Nick Clason (08:48): And, uh, the illustration that I would make is I'm trying to produce really good quality content now, like part of the quantity, um, has been a little bit of an antiquated, I think, algorithm thing. And by antiquated, I mean, like a couple months ago, in social media land that's antiquated. You had to show up a lot and you had to show up frequently. You had to show up often. And if you can do three a day, if you can do quality content multiple times a day, you should. And I would still a hundred percent recommend it, but I just know my personal margin, like was not really allowing that anymore. Um, I was ha I was struggling with coming up with good ideas. And in like one of my original iterations of our plan, I've told you before, I work as a youth pastor. Nick Clason (09:30): I'm on a team. I'm one of three on our team. I have a director. There's me, I'm like the, the social media guru. And then we have, uh, another associate on our team. And, and she's a female. And so like the two of them, like I I, I dished out some social media stuff early on, like, Hey, you take three and you take three and I'll take the remainder. And they each both struggled with it for different reasons. Um, and, and so I pulled us back together and I said, what if we filmed some stuff together? We got all of us on camera at the same time. Instead of it just being like my talking head than your talking head, than your turn for your talking head. And they loved that idea. It was easier for them, but that dumped a lot more of the editing load back on my plate. Nick Clason (10:12): And so as a result of that, that's why I'm making this shift. The other thing is, you, you're in grow mode. I think when you're starting from scratch and you're doing a lot a day, we've, we've grown a lot. Go back to the last episode, I'll link it in the show notes. I give you my progress support. We have a fair bit of followers, we have a fair bit of subscribers in all four of the places. And so I think we've established ourselves. So now I wanna start creating really good content because that is the other thing that the recent TikTok algorithm has made very clear, is that like they are now going for good solid quality content. It's not just about hopping on a trend or a sound. And if you're on that sound, you can ride that wave to a lot of views, a lot of subscribers like that just doesn't work anymore. Nick Clason (10:56): I mean, and you saw that born out in some of my most recent like deep dives into analytics, is that like, we're not catching those waves the way that we were hoping that we would. And so therefore we have to not just try to rely on good cap cut templates or good trending sounds and funny dances. We have to actually create quality content that people are going to want to see, watch and consume. That's gonna be the path forward. And so to do that, I'm trying to pull back the number of, of posts I do a day so that I can spend more time on quality content. Right now, I am doing a series, you can check it out. It's at Cross Creek Church right now. I'm hoping it'll change to at Cross Creek students, but TikTok and name changes. So, um, but I'm doing a series, um, on all of our, our short form video platforms called Grow. Nick Clason (11:47): And i, I want to give bible and Bible study hack ideas. And so I'm opening with a hook with, it's all gonna be like bot ai voice, uh, filtered. And so it says like, this Bible study hack is an absolute game changer. That's how it starts. And then I post screenshots from the Bible app, or I post, uh, screenshots or downloaded images from other things. Uh, like the one today is gonna be about the, uh, printing press and how we now have access to the Bible everywhere. The early church didn't have that, right? We have it now in our pockets on our devices. Um, I also post one about like second Timothy three 16, how God's word is, uh, God breathe and useful for teaching, re repeating, correcting and training and righteousness and how that's gonna benefit to us. And so break down some of those verses give them hacks in the you version Bible app. Nick Clason (12:42): So that's gonna require some more effort on the prep side before I just get out there and start farting out, right? Some, like, some some TikTok. So I'm trying to put in some good thoughtful preparation, and then once I do the prep, then I have to turn around and edit it. So I'm, I'm really seeing a lot of these things from start to finish. In a lot of cases, if you're like a church social media manager, you might just be on the editing portion of it. And so you have the time and the bandwidth. Um, if you have content creators, pastors, whatever you're gonna call them on the backend doing the work, great. Like keep, keep letting them pump that stuff out. And the more you can produce, the better. If you have a good strategy and can post more than five times a day and you're handing it off some people on their days off and whatever, like yes, yes to all of that, right? Nick Clason (13:29): But at the end of the day, like, I am making this move to just try and build in a little bit more, uh, margin for me. And so, um, like I said, I'm, I'm trying to, um, in addition to creating good content, I'm trying to become a little bit more aggressive on my edits too. Um, spending more time on my edits, edits that are gonna be, um, good and stop the scroll and grab people's attention and all those types of things. So all of that just takes more time. And the more time I have, uh, is gonna be used to create 10 really good pieces of content every single week that I may have to edit every single one of them in like Adobe Premier Pro or my video editing software of choice. Um, as opposed to just pulling some random quick ones out off my phone, which is what I, I have been doing for some of the filler pieces. Nick Clason (14:18): There's nothing wrong with it. I mean, quite honestly, on my personal YouTube shorts, I posted, uh, one of those Jonas Brothers filters a couple weeks ago. Like, don't get stressed, we're gonna get figured out. Oh, deep conversations at the Waffle House. You might have seen it if you've been on TikTok, if not, you're welcome for that glorious singing in your ear holes. But I posted that and it's got like 53,800 views on YouTube and it helped drive my subscribers up over like 30 overnight. So you never know when one of those is just gonna like catch. And quite honestly, I posted it a week and a half ago and yesterday was when I saw my subscribers just freaking skyrocket, like outta nowhere. And so those still play a part. Those still work and those still happen, you know, every now and then. And so, um, leave space for some of those good cap cut templates, I would say for some of those good training audios, um, so that you can ride some of those waves cuz that that stuff does still happen. Nick Clason (15:19): So that's reason number one. I'm, I'm hoping to, uh, shift from quantity to quality. I'm hoping to buy back some, some time and some margin just in my working flow and schedule. Reason number two is I would like to create additional quality content that's not just video based. Now, hear me right when I say that you're gonna be, like you said, video was king and it is, and it, it a hundred percent still is. Everything we've posted on social media since I've been at my church has essentially been video based and I love it. Um, but I , i I will liken it to my current rhythm with video is, uh, one day, there was a day when I was working a couple years ago and I had to have a really tough conversation with a resident of mine. We ended up, I believe this day, or maybe it was a couple days later, uh, letting him go and, um, I needed to sit down and create for him what we call in our organization, a p I p a performance improvement plan. Nick Clason (16:19): He needed to sign off on that p i p and if he didn't like see it through to the end, we had, we had to and were going to let him go. Um, but my schedule that day was stacked. I had like two liter lunches, um, or a liter coffee and a liter lunch. I had several other meetings filtered in there. And so my boss at the beginning of the day sent me, um, his like templatized, p i p and maybe one that he'd used for someone else before. And by the time I got to that meeting, I literally swapped out the name that he sent me on his, with my, my residence's name and flew into the meeting five minutes late, slapped it down and had the conversation. And, uh, I told my boss about it later and he's like, that's not the way to have that conversation. Nick Clason (17:03): And I knew that, right? I just didn't have the margin in my schedule that was necessary that day. There was no other gaps, there was no other breaks to make that happen. And in a lot of the same way, the three a day is very aggressive. It's an aggressive growth strategy and it's caused me to not have any additional margin because I do want to lean into some carousel posts on Instagram that are more like learning based. Um, and that's gonna just take some time with me sitting down in Photoshop, building some of those out, thinking through them. And so all of this really, I would say at the end of the day is, is to build out a more robust social media strategy. One that is including good, strong and frequent quality content, short form video based things, but also has some supplemental content happening like on our Instagram feeds and stuff like that. Nick Clason (17:54): And so this isn't because Instagram, uh, is not working on reels anymore, it very much still is, we're still catching fire on there. Um, you know, I I just have a bigger vision and more things I want to do. So more feed posts more, I would like to do more longer form YouTube videos that aren't just messages. Like I would like to start creating some classes and, and fun things like that. But like, I don't have the margin for it. Some podcasts that are more regular, like I would like to do some of those. I don't have the margin for those. And so the, the more things, more a more fleshed out parent Facebook strategy, like, uh, any of that stuff I don't have the time for right now because of what I'm doing with, with Rios. And so this is hopefully gonna help me take a step back on the video slightly. Nick Clason (18:39): I, I'm, I'm, I, it's still king and so I don't want to abandon it at all, but I just wanna take a slight step back, focus on my editing and my content and then focus on my additional pieces of content, additional avenues of social media, um, as we trudge forward. So that is why I am shifting here in 2023. So ultimately, in conclusion, this is a margin move for me. I gave it a fair shake, an eight to nine month runway. We evaluated it, we've done that in recent episodes. Um, we took a couple accounts from zero and, and complete scratch to where they are today. And that the, the aggressive three times a day vertical video posting strategy helped get us there. Um, and frankly, I am in a church that, you know, when I, when I dropped my strategy for you, I was taking it from a multi-site megachurch with people from all over the Chicagoland area that called our church home and was still very much in the midst Andros of C O V I D or at least like living in the wake of that to a church that is in Texas in the conservative Bible belt, where they very much live out an in-person experience. Nick Clason (19:49): And so those were not apples to apples by any means. And so I was in a church, has a very in-person, um, environment and strategy. And so leaning into a hybrid ministry in there, still necessary for generation Z, not necessarily because it's like a Bible belt, you know, thing. But Gen Z still appreciates and uses hybrid ministry. We've even seen it here. People have appreciated it and liked it, but it's been a shift and it's, it's not the norm for what you would normally see in Texas. And so, uh, I, I say all of this to say like, I only wanna point out how big and how long and how far that hill was that we have been taking. And now as we step back, as we do deep dive into some analytics, it is causing us to shift ever so slightly. And that is why. Nick Clason (20:38): And so I hope that you, um, you know, I hope that you can take my context and compare it to yours and like, is this true for us as well or do we have the margin to continue to keep going with what we've been doing? Like I just want to let y'all know and be honest with you, like, this is where I am, this is where I'm coming from and I, um, always just wanna shoot it straight with you. Like here's where I am, here's where I'm coming from and here's how it's going. And uh, I will always do that and I will never fabricate or lie or say one thing's going better than another. Like this is just what it is and how it is. And, and this is where we are today as it stands. And so when I make another shift, you guys will be the first to hear about it. Nick Clason (21:24): Cuz I love to workshop it. And, and part of the reason why is y'all help give me a community, uh, for me to like, filter out some of my thoughts. I'll make shifts. But like sitting down to prep this podcast helped me figure out the, these are my two main reasons why I'm making this shift and that makes me more articulate in my job or with my boss or whatever the case might be. So I appreciate it, it's cathartic for me. I hope it's helpful for you. If it is, please drop us a rating, a review, all those things. Grab the free ebook, that will subscribe you to our email newsletter list. And it'll also give you a freebie on your own that you can use and help. Um, moving forward for a social media posting guide and strategy. Um, as always, we are appreciative of you. If you found this episode helpful, please consider sharing it with a friend, a family member, a coworker, a grandparent, your cat. I don't care. But sharing really helps. So if that's something that you have the margin or are able to do, please consider sharing it. We love you guys. Thanks for sticking around until the end and until always, that's not how I do it. Let's, I butchered it. Nick Clason (22:35): How do I say it? as always. No, don't forget, this is it. This is it. That was the worst ending in the history of mankind. And you know what, I'm keeping it in there. I face planted in front of you. Not everything's perfect. That's okay. We're gonna show the realness. Don't forget. And as always, stay hybrid.

In this episode, Nick will give you 9 Church Marketing Tips. 5 Tips for those who are members or who consider themselves a regular part of your church 4 Tips for reaching people who are not a part of your church yet, and how best to reach them Follow Along on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g Show Notes & Transcripts: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/045 Follow me on TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick FREE E-Book: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook SHOWNOTES Plain Text vs. HTML https://www.mailmunch.com/blog/html-vs-plain-text-email Singular Calls to Action: https://unlayer.com/blog/call-to-action-in-emails Central Hub: Nucleus.Church (nucleus.church) LHC.life (LHC.life) Posting Content Online or to YouTube: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/042 Running Ads: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/009 TIMECODES 00:00-04:19 Intro 04:19-07:26 What is Marketing? And Should Churches even be focused on it? 07:26-09:14 Church Marketing Tip #1: Plain-Text Emails 09:14-11:12 Church Marketing Tip #2: Send From Your Pastor 12:12-15:23 Church Marketing Tip #3: Single CTA 15:23-15:52 Church Marketing Tip #3a: Include a PS Section in Email 15:52-18:00 Church Marketing Tip #4: Create a Central Hub Style Website 18:00-20:00 Church Marketing Tip #5: Put your messaging and sermon content online 20:00-20:48 Marketing Your Church to Those not a part of your church 20:48-21:53 Church Marketing Tip #6: Consider Running an Ad 21:53-22:58 Church Marketing Tip #7: Use Short-Form Video Content 22:58-26:19 Church Marketing Tip #8: Create an e-book for your community 26:19-28:28 Church Marketing Tip #9: Captialize on Word of Mouth 28:28- Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:00): Well, hey there everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. In this episode, I am going to give you nine church marketing tips. We're just gonna fire through them one by one. However, we're gonna break them up into two different sections. Section number one is marketing tips for people who already considered themselves a part of your church and a part of your congregation. And then the back half. So those are gonna be the first five. The back four are going to be church marketing tips for people who are not yet a part of your church congregation. So, so excited to have you with us. Hey, if this is your first time ever, welcome to the show. Excited to have you. If you don't know, we stream and film every single one of these episodes out to our YouTube channel. So you can grab the link to that in the show notes. Nick Clason (00:48): If you're on YouTube and you're like, wait, this is the podcast, yes it is. Hit the link in the show notes and that will take you to hybridministry.xyz. And there will be a specific link that will take you directly to this episode number and will give you completely free access to our transcripts, which is a free resource that we offer for each and every single episode. So make sure that you go and take advantage of that because listen, if you're anything like me, you're on a run, you're cooking dinner, you're walking your dog, and you might hear a thing that you're like, that's interesting. I want to dive deeper into that. And if that is the case, it's often hard and and difficult to do that, you know, when you are on that run, when you're walking that dog, when you're doing those dishes. Nick Clason (01:29): So you just make a quick earmark and like, I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna download those transcripts, I can see a little bit more. So that is an opportunity and definitely an option for you. So make sure that you take a look into that and take advantage of that. We're so excited to have you with us. Hey, listen, if you are excited to be here, if you're excited to be listening, it would mean the absolute world to us. If you would share this episode with a friend, it would mean the absolute world with us. If you are going to, if you help us by making a rating or a review, we would be thrilled with those things. Um, it just helps us get the word out. It helps us get indexed and ranked and search. Um, not because we're trying to go big, go viral or go famous, but man, we just, we're passionate about this message and we just really want to get the word out there. Nick Clason (02:18): You know what's interesting, before we dive into the church marketing tips, I was at a Bible study last night. Um, if you don't know me, my story, my name's Nick Clason, I'm your host, uh, here every single week with y'all. Um, new episodes drop every single Thursday at four o'clock in the morning. But I'm a youth pastor. I'm a youth pastor in the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex area, um, at a big church for most, but in Dallas it's not super big, uh, cuz everyone goes to church here. But I was at a, a bible study that we do, it's a yearlong bible study on Sunday night, which is not a normal ministry night, and it's for seniors only. So it's creative name called fso. So it's that fso and they're talking about finding a church when you go off to college. And um, it was just interesting cuz like the hybridness of ministry really reared its head in those moments, uh, because they're talking about visiting a church, how often you should visit a church, uh, what if you go in the main pastors, isn't there preaching like how many more times you need to give that church a shot? Nick Clason (03:20): And I just was like, guys, um, I was nice, right? But I was like, guys, you don't have to just only attend in person. Like if what you're looking for is the pastor's message and the content. I said Covid has forced just about every single church in America online. So check out their services, check out his preaching, uh, check those things out online, gather some of those data points. And then when, you know, based on what I've heard so far, this church, this church and this church are all options for me, then go visit them in person. So I just wanna say like even in my own life, even in my own realm, even in my own world, hybrid ministry is rearing its head. So encourage you, stick with it, it's important, it matters. There's a world out there of people that are trying to grasp and grab a hold of this message and you just might be the key for some of those people. Nick Clason (04:09): So what you do is worth it. What you do matters. And so without any further ado, let's dive in to nine different church marketing tips before we give you marketing tip number one, I just wanna do a quick like 10, 30 seconds, something like that. Little primer on what is marketing. If you Google search, what is marketing? This is a response you're gonna get. It says this, it's the activity or uh, the activity of business, sorry, the activity or business of promoting and selling products or services including market research and advertising. So you might be sitting here thinking like that. Yeah, great, but that's not what the church is supposed to do. And I agree with you mostly, uh, in the traditional sense, like you might think of marketing as a way to make money for a business, and that's true. Um, however, that is not necessarily the church's goal. Nick Clason (05:03): Our goal though is to bring about brand awareness and not cause we're a brand, but because we want people to know about our church. So what is your church about? Does your church even exist? Um, and then beyond that, once they do know that you exist, how do you help add value to their lives? And not because we're trying to get their tithe money, though, maybe we are at some point. That's part of the thing. You gotta make money. You know, you gotta, you know, you gotta take people's ties and use that for the overall betterment of the church. And if you don't, the crass reality is that your church that's gonna have to shut their doors. And so at some level you are gonna want that, but that's not the main reason. And you know that, and that's honestly not why you're in this. Nick Clason (05:48): Okay? You're in this so that people know about you, know about your church and then make a decision to commit and connect to your church. And with that commitment and connection, especially if that person is far from God and doesn't know Jesus, that's not only gonna come with a decision to join a social gathering and entity, but that's also gonna come with a major crisis of faith and a major faith hurdle decision that they're gonna have to make. So this isn't just, you're like, Hey, do you want to come shop at Walmart? This is, do you wanna give your life to Jesus radically and and forever change everything about that. And then do you want to commit to our social gathering where we help equip you and encourage you in that? And if you've grown up a Christian your whole life, you're like, yeah, that's exactly what this is. Nick Clason (06:37): But if this is completely new to you of faith, you're like, that is a lot and it is right? You gotta just keep that in mind like that. There are about 37 things that go into that. And so while our logo and our color scheme matter, we are asking people to do major things in their life. And so what is marketing? It's bringing about awareness of your church. It's adding value to people's lives. It's helping them commit and connect to you and your uh, organization. And then finally it's helping create, um, fans out of them disciples, super fans, people who will give their lives to the mission of Jesus and the mission of your church. So that's just a quick primer on marketing, specifically what is church marketing? But let's dive in now to nine different church marketing tips. Here we go. Church marketing. Tip number one is send emails and send plain text emails to your church. Nick Clason (07:36): Now what am I talking about? There's a difference between uh, plain text email, which is just white background, black text. Just like you would send an email to a friend, a coworker or your son or daughter's elementary school teacher, right? And then there are graphically designed newsletters that look amazing. It's what you'd get from Bath and Body Works or Target or Old Navy, right? And they're trying to sell you something. And a lot of times, especially foreign in church communications or foreign church marketing, we have a graphic design skill and we like to use that and show that off. We can make that newsletter if we're honest, look incredibly sexy and sleek and amazing. However, there's been a lot and considerable amounts of research shown. And it goes to show that email marketing is done best in plain text. I have a quote here from a male Munch article is from a blog, it's HTML versus plain text email and they dive deep into it. Nick Clason (08:30): I'll add that link there in the show notes if that's something that you're interested in. But their conclusion said this, it can be a pickle to choose one type of email, but here's the secret that no one lets you onto in email. Less is always more so less is more. And I just wanna encourage you don't lose sight of that fact. Less is more. And if less is more, you may get your message across more clearly, more concisely. Two more people. You may get more clicks, you make it more opens. And so I'll just encourage you in your email marketing, if you are doing a graphically designed thing, consider trying and beta testing and AB testing if you will. Send some graphically designed ones and then send some plain text ones and see which perform better. Church marketing tip number two, when sending emails, edit your from section and send the emails from your pastor's name. Nick Clason (09:25): There's a very big difference psychologically when you're getting an email from Pastor Todd as opposed to getting an email from Crossroads Church. You see what I'm saying? You're getting an email in one case from a friend, from a person, from a human being, somebody who you know, who you connect with, who you love, and then you're getting an email from an entity or, or an organization and he doesn't have to actually be from Pastor Todd. If Pastor Todd's worried about putting his name on something, then ghost write it for him and then just send it over to him to get a stamp of approval and let him make the final edits and tweaks before you send that out. But you are gonna, you are going to see your email open rates skyrocket when you're doing both plain texts and when you're sending it from Pastor Todd, because think about it, people open their emails and I don't know if you're anything like me. Nick Clason (10:12): I open my emails and I see junk, junk, junk, junk, junk. And then there's like one or two things that I'm like, oh, this is from a person, let me read it. And when there's something from a person that's personal, that's different, that's not the same, it's going to peak my interest differently because I actually want an email. Like if I get an email from my grandma or my grandpa, they're checking in on my life. They're trying to see how things are going. Like I don't delete that email, but I delete the Old Navy email. I delete the emails from my kid's school. I delete the emails from frankly my church because they come from not anybody, right? And all I know they are is they're just lists and bullets of announcements. Announcement, announcement, announcement. There's nothing personal in there. And here's the reality, when you are sending an email from a church, it is going to have an announcement flare to it. Nick Clason (10:59): So if you can personalize it a little bit more in these two ways by making it plain text, cause that's how you would send an email to a friend and by sending it from your pastor, that's gonna help your open rates skyrocket. Church marketing tip number three, give yourself one singular call to action. Call to action is just a marketing word for what are you trying to get the people that you're communicating with to do what is the one call to action or the one thing, the one action step that you're hoping that they take. Now here's the thing, we will put together a full on smorgasboard of a church newsletter, basically a bulletin board of church email stuff all in one email. And that's why we do these html amazing graphically designed newsletters cuz we can include everything and the kids ministry and the women's ministry and the senior adult ministry in the youth ministry in college of ministry. Nick Clason (11:56): And everyone gets their announcement in the church newsletter. And so nobody's left out and nobody has to worry it. But you will see a dramatic rise in calls to action if you give one singular call to action. Now, you might be thinking, wait a minute, you just named like five ministries just off the top of your head, that doesn't even include some of the real ones that I have in my church. How in the heck am I supposed to get all of these things communicated if I'm also only, maybe you're maybe only sending an email newsletter one time a week. Well, we fear this, right? We fear because we are afraid that some people might not know all that's going on. We also are afraid that some people won't get the info that they need. And also for just honest, we live and work in an office culture. Nick Clason (12:42): And so there's gonna be awkward vibes if you pick the Kids ministries announcement over the youth ministries announcement and the kids pastor loves you, but the youth pastor now hates you, right? And, and so you got that pressing on you too, and you shouldn't let that be a reason why you do it, but it is, if we're honest, we're all human, right? And so I wanna, um, link, uh, an article for you. Um, I'm gonna read a little excerpt for you, but it's from unlayer.com. It's a blog called Call to Actions and Email. And here's what it says, just a reminder of this, when you are sending to somebody, you're saying, Hey, it's a selfish world out there. And the question that they're asking is, what's in it for me? So here's what it says, what's in it for me? Selfish world out there? Why expect your audience to listen to you, right? Nick Clason (13:25): For them to perform your desired action, you need to highlight what's in it for them. So let's take the example of an e-book of reducing debt you're offering as a reward for subscribing to your mail list. Which call to action sounds better, download now or give me financial freedom. So as you're writing these things out, be thinking about how can you offer and provide value to these people's lives? That's what they're saying, right? Like this give me financial freedom button is gonna be a lot more appealing than simply download now because in the back of people's minds, they're thinking, what is in this for me? Now the tricky thing is you're gonna have to get really vigilant with which announcements get promoted where, especially if you're only doing one email a week and one singular call to action. But what I would do is I would choose one thing every single week, the number one thing, and send that out. Nick Clason (14:17): And if the entire email is focus on signing up for kids vbs and nothing else is vying for his attention, for people's attention in the email, because it's a plain text email, it's from Pastor Todd and Pastor Todd's inviting you to VBS because he's sharing a story of life change and life transformation that happened at last year's vbs. You can't help but be compelled to be like, give me that same experience and I want to invite my friends, I wanna invite my neighbors into it. And that's the email. But then next week, maybe it's not about kids, maybe it's about youth camp. The next weekend Pastor Todd's doing the same thing in a plain text email because it feels like he's emailing a friend. Narrow your emails down to one singular call to action and then you are as a, this is why you get paid to big bucks as a church communications, a church marketing manager, church, you know, marketing director, whatever your title is, to figure out how to communicate the other elements, the other announcements without just cramming more and more and more and more and more into an email. Nick Clason (15:24): Let me give you church marketing tip, bonus tip four or three a, um, in your emails include a PS section. A lot of times we as as, uh, humans, we just skim our emails and we, we skim, skim and then we see a PS boom. Give the same message in the body of your email as you do in the PS of an email. One singular call to action all the way down. Boom. PS don't forget it sounded from vbs. Church marketing tip number four, create for yourself a one-stop shop centralized hub. Uh, this has made famous and I have been on record on here promoting the mess out of them from the guys up at Proach Church Tools in Canada, Brady Shear. Um, and all those guys, they have made famous the idea of a central hub. They call it Nucleus. So you can go ahead to nucleus.church and make that your website's one stop shop. Nick Clason (16:20): So every single next step lies on your website. That's gonna help, especially if we are doing these one singular call to action emails where not everything is on your, um, not everything is on your email, but everything is on your website. And so if they go there, it's a full service bar. A lot of times we make it where it's like, Hey, if you wanna send up for vbs, go to the children's lobby and if you wanna sign up for youth camp, go talk to Pastor Doug. And if you wanna sign up for the women's brunch, you need to email Kathy. And if you're interested in the senior adult ministry, make sure that you email Harry. Um, but Harry's not here this week, so email his wife Sue today to make sure that you get, you see what I'm saying? Like we have all these different scattering spots. Nick Clason (17:05): The human brain is not wired and frankly not interested in remembering all those specific intricacies. But if you beat it weekly into their head, central hub, central hub, central hub. And listen, don't call it that. One church I worked at was called Liberty Heights Church. And so short lhc, right? And the centralized hub was lhc.life. In fact, we outfitted a whole section in the lobby, um, as like a next steps hub in the lobby, but we called it lhc.life. So both the web URL and the in-person room were all called the same thing. And that was it. We ingrained it from the stage, we ingrained it in our emails, we ingrained it online. lhc.life, lhc.life lhc.life eventually becomes a part of the vernacular. Um, and people know where to go when they're looking for things. Number five, I just wanna remind you, create and put your message content out there somehow. Nick Clason (18:07): You may or may not have the live streaming capabilities. Odds are in your church, you're at least using a soundboard. And if you're using a soundboard, you have the ability in most cases, if not with a couple of adapters, you're gonna have the ability to record your sermon audio at a minimum starting there. You can record the sermon audio, you can take that and you can put that on a podcast. Um, and you can be on Spotify, you can be on Apple Music, you can be, um, apple Podcast, all the places that you are gonna want to be on a podcast. If you do have video capabilities, I would recommend posting those to YouTube. And I also, honestly, I recommend doing a direct to camera message anyway. So if you're not pre-filing in some sort of way or, or filming your message content in like a studio type of form, pre-fill it, even if it's just on a phone or whatever, have someone edit that down and post those to YouTube and then leave your live streams as a completely different entity. Nick Clason (19:04): So yeah, you may have duplicate content out there, but one's gonna be aimed towards your YouTube audience and one's gonna be aimed towards just your people that are in person, right? And finally, uh, if you have the bandwidth ability margin, brain power, come up with some additional forms of content to supplement your weekend weekly messages. But put your content out there, like I said at the top right, the seniors in FSO trying to figure out where to go. This is going to be a goal mine for people as they're trying to discover your church. And it's also gonna be a goal mine for the people that can't make it every single week or don't make it every single week or aren't in the discipline yet of attending church on a Sunday morning every single week for whatever reason. They're a new believer. They're out late on a Saturday night, they just had a new baby. Nick Clason (19:51): So getting up early is hard and getting the baby there. Maybe you don't feel comfortable bringing the baby to the nursery, but let them still feel part of what your church has going on. All right, so what do we do when we are looking to reach people who are not yet considered a part of your church? Let me give this caveat that these are all gonna be digital marketing ideas only, not because your in-person experience doesn't matter. Your in-person experience matters greatly. I'm gonna just give the caveat that you have to crush your in-person experience. And so I'm going to carry in two assumptions with this. Number one that you are doing that, that you are attempting with all your might to make your in-person experience as rock solid as possible. But number two, this is a hybrid ministry podcast. And so I wanna focus on the areas in hybrid space, in digital space to help reach some of the people that are gonna be out there that you want to be bringing into your church. Nick Clason (20:49): So with that being said, maybe consider, if you really wanna market to people that are unaware of your church, really maybe consider running an ad. If you go to hybrid ministry.xyz sa slash 0 0 9, episode nine, I talk to Matt who I consider a marketing genius and guru about the step-by-step process of running an ad. Now granted, that was in 2022, and so we may need to revisit that and look at that maybe one day I'll see if I can get him back on the podcast. For those of you who don't know, he was our um, co-host on this show for like the first 12 or so episodes. And then him and I both made cross country moves and, uh, for a lot of different reasons, he did not make that jump back into podcast co-host dumb. Uh, and so maybe one day I'll bring him back on as a special guest to help us walk back through that. Nick Clason (21:37): Definitely not my forte. Maybe you personally have some experience doing it, so that'd be great. But if not, if you have no idea what you're doing, head there. Hybrid ministry.xyz/ 0 0 9 for a free look into that. Um, and check out how to run an ad. Number seven, uh, church marketing tip is use short form video content. Short form video content is still king. We talk about it weekly. YouTube shorts, Instagram and Facebook reels and TikTok. All four blowing up right now, all four asking for the same types of content. So create quality content in short form video versions. Post it, put it on your social media channels. And here's the other good news about it, right? Like once you've done one that does well, you can boost that or turn that into an ad. And so that will help also bring about awareness. But just in your general area, TikTok specifically shares geographically in your area first. Nick Clason (22:34): And so post in your area, geotag it. And then as people are experiencing and spending time on TikTok, just consuming things for themselves, they may run across on therefore you page something about your church, a video, whether it's spiritual content, fun content, marketing type content, but create some of those short form video pieces for the chance and for the opportunity to go viral. Church marketing idea number eight, this one is next level in my personal opinion. We were doing it at the church. I was at both Matt and I, the co-host I had, like I had just mentioned, um, create an ebook for your community. So one of the things that we started doing was we were creating, uh, a seasonal e-book. And so the first one we did was leading into summer and I think we titled 101 things to do in this area, like South Chicago land in this area for the summer. Nick Clason (23:29): And it was aimed at families with younger kids and it just gave them like park ideas, splash pad ideas. It gave them like movie night dates and places that they could go see movies under the stars or you know, whatever. Um, but then what you can do with that is if you're giving away your a right, you're adding value to people if you give some of those things away. The other thing is you can include your stuff in there. So you give them 95 ideas of things all around the community. Splash pads and parks and ice cream cone trails and all those types of things that you either borrow off of or just create, like we created our very own ice cream trail in the South Chicago suburbs area. There wasn't one in existence, but we just brain pooled our heads together, like this place, this place, this place. Nick Clason (24:14): It's make an ice cream trail. And then you give them like the family, like a one page tear out, you know, thing that they can use and put in their fridge and they can keep track of all the different ice cream places that they want to go throughout the summer. So you give 'em 95 ideas of just like places around. But then five ideas are your ideas and maybe you like make those colorful, you know, where you print the rest of the ebook and like black and white or whatever, but your pages are full page spreads color, whatever, and you're highlighting your church vbs, you're highlighting your own church movie nights, you're highlighting, you know, whatever stuff you are doing that would, that would be a great place for somebody not connected to your church to make an introductory connection step with your church, with your faith family and with your organization. Nick Clason (25:03): And then replicate that. Make a fall one winter one spring one. You see what I'm saying? Um, or it doesn't have to be that, but but think about ways in which you can add value. What you're looking to do in those is you're looking to capture people's emails, name and email. You could and should be able to do that through your church communications, um, or church marketing, uh, database. But those aren't always geared and built for marketing. So I do remember when Matt would work, um, at Parkview we used like the Rock as like a church management software, but Matt was like, I want to use HubSpot and you can do all the same stuff through HubSpot. I don't know if Matt knew all of the things that we needed, um, for like a pastoral side of things with like baptism dates, membership and whatever and whatnot. Nick Clason (25:52): But he knew that you could do a lot of stuff with like, um, an actual marketing tool like that. And so, um, you'll, you may have to figure out the best way to do that, to capture those names. Um, it is difficult to find a free email capture list out there, so you will more than likely have to pay for it, but it's worth it, especially if you're saying we wanna reach people who are far from God, who are not connected to our church and help get them connected to our church. The last idea, not necessarily a digital marketing idea, but word of mouth and, and you can take word of mouth and turn it into a digital marketing thing, right? Like when you're encouraging your church congregation to invite people to Easter, give them some shareable Easter graphics that they can download and share on their, their social media platforms. Nick Clason (26:40): You know, um, give them some of those tips and tools like, Hey, text us to a friend. Send this to a friend. Post this on your Instagram, post this on your Facebook, you know, whatever. Because that word of mouth, like while all the best ads, e-books, signs, website, like all those best things are valuable, the most valuable. It's when a friend says, Hey, you know what I've been doing recently, going to this church, going to this restaurant, reading this book. I mean, I'll say like, I was listening to a podcast the other day, we're gearing up to go on vacation here in just a couple short weeks. And I was like, I need a book. Like I need to read a book when I'm on vacation. I never do that. I always just read non-fiction books. Someone said, you know, I read such and such book and I'm not a non-fiction reader, but that book was phenomenal. Nick Clason (27:25): Or he's not a fiction reader, but that book was phenomenal. That's all I needed to hear. I'm also not a fiction reader. He's a pastor. I'm a pastor. That book's phenomenal. Boom, bought it. I literally got on Amazon and write that moment and bought it. Word of mouth. I have no clue who that author is. I'm sure they did all kinds of book tours, podcast marketing. I didn't listen to a single word of it, but someone else gave a word of mouth reference and boom, I bought it instantly. So think about that. Your people can become a raving fans of your church question, are they willing to be raving fans of your church or are they embarrassed by it? And if it's the latter, I would do some heavy introspection to figure out why that is. Because you want your people to be proud where they go to church so that they tell their friends, then they come, that could be digitally or that could just be very analog in a backyard barbecue scenario when they're at their kids', you know, sporting event, end of season recap or whatever, and they're just talking about stuff. Nick Clason (28:23): So those are some nine different church marketing ideas. Hey, hope you found them helpful. So thankful that you stuck around to the very end of this episode. If you did find it helpful, please consider shooting a rating or review alike, a subscribe, any of those things really help the algorithm and we will be forever in your debt as a token of our thanks to you for that, head to our website, hybridministry.xyz, click on blogs, click on the article that says ebook and grab your very own free copy of this e-book. TikTok. Have I already ruined my account? A complete guide, I'm posting your church's TikTok from start to finish. You're the church marketing manager, or you're the pastor and you know you need to make short form video content and you just don't know how to do it or where to turn. Take this e-book ZBook, hand it to a friend, hand it to a student, hand it to a trusted anybody who you're like, Hey, help me out with some of this stuff. Nick Clason (29:19): And if they don't know what they're doing, it will be their complete guide to starting from scratch, from start to finish. So hope that you find that helpful and with, again, as always, we're so grateful that you're here. Head to the episode, uh, show notes for all the links to articles and all the different things that we've referenced throughout this, this episode so far. But if you did find it helpful, please consider sharing it with a friend that would mean the absolute world to us. I'm so glad you're here. So glad you're along for the ride. This matters. What you do matters. So don't forget. And as always, stay hybrid.

In this episode Nick will breakdown what led to him FINALLY changing his accounts to business accounts, using a posting service, the results from that, and his ultimate take away. Follow Along on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g Full Transcript: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/043 The Spreadsheet with the Metricool Results: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/metricool Follow Along on TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick FREE E-Book: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook SHOWNOTES Metricool Posting Service: http://www.metricool.com TIMECODES 00:00-01:39 Intro 01:39-08:53 My journey to using a social media posting service 08:53-13:07 The Results from 18 posts used on a social media posting service 13:07-18:30 Breaking down the stats from Metricool 18:30-20:08 3 TakeAways from using a Posting Service 20:08-25:23 What does this mean for social media moving forward? 25:23-26:02 Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:00): One. Well, hello there, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I, as always, am your host, Nick Clason, thrilled and excited to be with you wherever you are consuming this. Whether you are over on YouTube or whether you have found this via your podcast catcher, know that we do offer the other. So if you are on YouTube, you wanna check it out on podcasts, you can head to http://www.hybridministry.xyz If you're just listening to this. And today in particular, I am gonna drop some like visual aid representation stuff on screen as we're chatting through what we're chatting through. You can head over to YouTube today. We are going to talk about a scheduling service. Yes, I have been against this for years and years, and if you have been listening to this podcast, do you know that it has taken a minute for me to ever convert our TikTok account over from a personal to a business? Nick Clason (00:56): I've finally made that shift. I will tell you why, and make sure you stick around to the very end of the video for me to give you my final conclusion on whether or not you should be using a scheduling service for your social media. Before we dive in though, let me let you know that we have created a 100% completely free e-book and checklist, and for signing up for our email newsletter, you will get a copy of both of those immediately sent to your inbox. So go ahead, head to the link in the show notes for that. And without any further ado, let's dive in and let's start talking about scheduling services on social media. Here we go. All right, let's talk about scheduling services. Now, if you've listened to this podcast any length of time, you know that I have not really been much of a scheduling service person. Nick Clason (01:51): And so let me give you just a little brief history on all of that for me. So, uh, I started really getting into social media and social media scheduling and planning. Every church I've been in, I've had that to some level, some degree, but I've gotten mu I've really honed that in, I would say within the last three ish years. Um, and it dated back a couple churches. I'm trying to think like I really got into trying and experimenting with some stuff. Um, when I was at church in Cincinnati, I was there for a couple of years. Um, and then when I moved to Parkview, which is the church I was at before here, uh, in, in the South Chicago suburbs, I had nothing to do with social media. But then I offered to have something to do with it. Like I took on a portion of it. Nick Clason (02:46): And, uh, there is when I really started to hone in on more of what I'm focusing on now, TikTok and reels and stuff like that. And then that's when I met Matt, if you've been around since the beginning, you know, Matt was my co-host, the first, you know, 10 or so episodes. And so, uh, he worked at Parkview with me. Anyway, all that to be said, one of the things I discovered, cuz I had used both at my church in Cincinnati, and at the start of my time at Parkview, I used Hootsuite as a scheduler. And I think Hootsuite is fine as a scheduler, uh, for anything like Instagram feed posts or Facebook posts. Those are fine. The issue was, and I, and it may have changed, and so I may be eating my words a little bit on this. It may have changed since I most recently used it, but it could, when I started really, really taking over social media at my last church, I went to Matt, um, and I said, Hey, is there any way for me to schedule stories and, and reels or tos? Nick Clason (03:44): And he said, not really. And then I think within about a month of that conversation, a both of us started our exit strategies out of there, A and b, TikTok, A and Instagram all came out with, uh, schedulers. Okay? And so, uh, about a week or month ago, actually, about a month ago, I had a conversation with another youth pastor friend of mine from Indiana, and he's like, do you know that you can schedule your TikTok? And I was like, what? And so I did dive into it and yes, in fact you can, if you are a business account, you can, uh, schedule TikTok through the TikTok website. And so I was like, okay, interesting. So I started to play around with all these different things and I was like, this might be a game changer. Now let me explain to you what happened and what my journey was to end up where I ended up. Nick Clason (04:37): So, uh, you can natively schedule through all four of the core platforms. We're talking about Facebook, uh, which Facebook and Instagram are linked together through the Meta Business Suite, TikTok, and then YouTube. Of course you can schedule on YouTube. Um, but, but none of them, in my personal opinion, are, are optimal. And I'll give you some reasons why. Uh, when I was trying to schedule through the Facebook Business Suite, I personally, our account for whatever reason, wouldn't allow me to schedule Instagram reels. I could schedule Facebook reels, but I couldn't schedule Instagram reels. And so then that sent me on a search and I could do the other ones. I could do TikTok and I could do YouTube. However, I will say YouTube, it's just like you're uploading a regular video. And when I, when I upload on YouTube shorts on my app, it's a completely different interface. Nick Clason (05:33): And so, honestly, half the time I wasn't sure if I was doing it right because I'm like, is this where I put the caption? Is this where I put the title? And YouTube shorts are still a little weird and they're, I think they're still trying to figure out what they're doing over there. Um, they have put a lot more time and effort and energy into it. And so it's getting better for sure. Um, but YouTube has actually been my number one, uh, culprit, uh, downfall in all this. Anyway, I'll get to all that in a second. Uh, so I went, I searched through all these things, discovered and landed on a platform called Metro. Cool. I'll drop the link in the show notes. It might be helpful, it might be useful for you. Check it out. I can't make a blanket statement and say like, you should do this, you should do that. Nick Clason (06:13): I'm just gonna give you my experience and then what I would recommend if you were consulting or asking me. Um, but you might not be. And so you might be like, oh yeah, that totally works for me. Uh, but I landed on this thing called Metric Cool. I could link all four of those services, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube shorts. I could link all four of those and I could post auto post to all of those. I could schedule it ahead of time and then it would post on its own when I, I said to post it. Okay? And so I was like, this is going to change my life. And so let me tell you the results, the stats and how it all went down, uh, on metric. I used it for two and a half weeks. I posted a total of 18 videos on that time. Nick Clason (07:00): And, uh, the reason I didn't use, you know, post every single piece of content that I was planning to post is cause I had some TikTok sitting in my TikTok drafts. I had some that had, I had, uh, like recaps that I hadn't even filmed yet that I couldn't like preschedule. And I was like, I'll just take care of these live. Also, metrical is free for up to, um, what was it I I calculated that was free for up to like 30, uh, days. Um, not like a trial, but like 30 days worth of posts. Um, but however, it's like if I posted Instagram reels and Facebook and TikTok a and YouTube, that counts as four. So it was like, it was more than 30, it was like 120 I think. Um, but if I post on four of those four 30 days, then I'm going to use them all up, right? Nick Clason (07:49): And so that was another reason I didn't schedule everything. Cause I was like, I can leave some gaps in here, uh, to save back some of their, their free, you know, posting stuff, whatever. Anyway, I digress. So I used it. Um, and the reason I used it right was because I couldn't figure out a way to do Instagram and, uh, real scheduling and all these things. The other thing is I liked it cuz it's all in one, right? If I was gonna do all the native schedulers, I'd have to have like three tabs open and do TikTok and then go over to YouTube and then go over to the meta business suite. Possible doable and definitely worth my time if that takes away from me having to schedule live, you know, live posting. And so, um, finding this was, I was really exciting moment for me. Nick Clason (08:35): And so I, like I said, I went all in. I was like, let me try this thing and see what happens. So I'm gonna give you the results here. Let's dive in and look at the actual nitty gritty stats. And this is where, if you're listening, you may wanna switch over to YouTube, um, and see some of these things cuz I'm just gonna, um, screenshot my spreadsheet and put it on the screen. So here we go. Okay. Like I said, I, uh, uploaded and used metrical for 18 different posts over the course of about two and a half to three weeks. Um, I posted on all four platforms, morning, evening, and night. And here were some of the results that I came up with. So, uh, let's just go, uh, one by one through each platform. So on TikTok, like I said, I posted 18, here were our watch results. Nick Clason (09:22): 1 63, 1 44, 141, 1 77, 1 52 91, 2 21, 1 49, 1 50, 1 28, 1 35, 1 40, 1 40, 1 48, 1 40, 1 53. Those are low for us. Um, we typically, um, and we don't go super viral on TikTok. I'll just be honest. I honestly, I think we started at a time where TikTok is kind of choking down the watches. And um, you know, like I mentioned Matt, he even said something to me interesting. He's like, I think TikTok might know you're church and if they know you're a church, he's like, I don't know that they're gonna give you a ton of organic reach, which was an interesting thing. Um, so he was saying that even back when I was at Parkview that it might not be, you know, that might be some of the case. So anyway, um, we, you know, we typically live in the two 300 s and then we'll pop, you know, for some over a thousand or whatever here and there. Uh, so the average TikTok wa uh, watch analytics of my metrical posts were an average of 122. Nick Clason (10:24): The highest I got was 2 21 and I had two tied for the lowest at 41. So not great. Okay? Um, Instagram reels, this is what we did on Instagram reels 2 51 8 5 19 3 18, 1 38, 1 46, uh, 2 53, 2 1 45. There was one that didn't post cuz there was an error that happened actually a couple different times. I had to go in and manually redo it. That's another story for another day. 2 2 3 2 0 2 180 6, 1 34, 3 94 for an average, uh, view of 1 68. And so our highest was that one of five 19, which was the third one that we posted. And then we had three that were tied with only two views. So again, not great, we did have some perform better. And I will say this, um, between TikTok and Instagram reels, we go, we have much higher views on Instagram reels than we do on TikTok, but I think we have less engagement on Instagram than we do on TikTok. Nick Clason (11:27): And so it's, it's, you know, watch isn't isn't equal to engagement and engagement is a loose term, I get it. But that's comments, that's shares, that's likes those types of things. Uh, Facebook reels. Interestingly, and this was really helpful for me, and I'll share some of this in a minute with some of my takeaways, but Facebook was actually quite a beneficial, uh, it was quite beneficial for me to go back and look on Facebook. Honestly, I had it and just let it do its thing. Um, and I never really go back to Facebook to engage much, but we had some decent traction on Facebook, surprisingly, and as a youth pastor, not necessarily my goal, right? Uh, we're probably catering to and reaching parents over there. Um, which might be a good thing, might be a bad thing. I don't know. Like, I don't have like a stance on whether or not, you know, I'm happy with that or whatever. Nick Clason (12:15): But we did quite well on Facebook. So here's what we had on Facebook. 1 92, 62 18, 3 38, 98 4 19, 2 24, 2 57, 2 62, 1 98 42, 2 0 6, 1 93, 3 78 39, 180 9, 2 0 3. Average view of two 18 with our highest being four 19, our lowest being 39. And then finally on shorts, this is where it got bad. 4 0 7 7 4 15, 2 3 17, 6, 6, 8, 6, 3, 2, 2, 1 for an average view of 5.4 highest 17 lowest zero. So let's extrapolate and look at some of the takeaways from all of this. What does this mean? All right, so what does all of this mean? Should you schedule? Should you not, should you use metric? Cool. Here's, here are my personal takeaways. So you need to know this. I'm not using it anymore. Like what it did to us on YouTube was, was horrific. Um, and I'm not blaming metrical necessarily, right? But I I, after a couple of days I started screenshotting some of these things to my, um, free under the table consultant, Matt, Matt Johnson, former co-host of the podcast. Nick Clason (13:36): May he rest in peace. Uh, but anyway, I was like, bro, what's going on here? And he's like, yeah. He's like, I was worried about that for you. Cuz they, those platforms, they, they don't typically like you using third party services. So these third party services, they may be able to tap into the api, uh, and, and like allow you this, this may be a thing that they're able to actually allow happen. But basically what he was saying is he's like, I don't know that that is your optimal strategy moving forward. Kind of a bummer because it's easy for you or me as a social media manager, but it's more difficult. Um, you know, and your views might go down. And so you have to weigh out like what's more valuable. And honestly, there is a moment where it being easier for you, especially if you're going to post at the volume that I have recommended you do. Nick Clason (14:26): Uh, that's a lot. And so sometimes you're like, I don't wanna have to always be thinking and remembering to like get on there and live post everything. I don't wanna have to input every single thing into to Google Calendar. You know, like I used to put every single thing into Google Calendar to remind myself to post, honestly. Now I just kind of know like, oh, I gotta post three. And so I, I go to just like a picture I took of like a calendar that I wrote it all out on and I just go off of that. I don't even have anything alerting me cuz it's so woven into my rhythm and habit of just posting. So anyway, here are some of my observations. First observation is this. Not one single video across all four of the platforms was like highest. Like, it's not like this video performed well and it performed well across all four. Nick Clason (15:15): Like when I say the highest performing one, like the highest performing one overall, um, I think was the, the Instagram reels one. And that was one about Fruity Pebbles, right? Meanwhile on TikTok it was, it only got a hundred views on Facebook reel, it got 218 and on YouTube shorts I had four. Then my lowest overall video was the one that got zero plays on on YouTube shorts, but it got 260 on Facebook, eight on Instagram reels and 144 on TikTok. So it, it's a lottery ticket we've talked about, right? Like you punch it in all four places because it might perform well over here and not well over there. And so similarly, the highest on Instagram, I could read you those same like stats across the line. And, and the same thing, like it's not the best performing video overall, it's just simply the best performing video on that platform. Nick Clason (16:10): The other observation I had was that, uh, of my overall, um, analytics, Facebook had the best watches and YouTube had the worst watches, okay? In the midst of this, like I said, right, I used it for 18 posts. In the midst of this, I did have a video that had 300 or 3000, um, 556 views on TikTok. And that was posted in the middle of this run of me using Metrical for two and a half weeks. It wasn't one of the metrical videos, it was one that I posted live. Cuz it was one of those that is like, um, it splits the room in two and you got a bunch of people and you decide like, do you know this song? Do you not know this song? If you know it, go to this side of the room and sing it. If you don't walk over here in shame and then it'll change to another song. Nick Clason (16:54): And if you know that one, you can move over to the room, but if you did know this one before, you have to move back over here. It was one of those and it went well for us, and we're gonna do more of those and, and shoot more of those and post more of those because it worked for us. And who knows, it may be a thing that we can lean into more. Uh, or it was just a one-off. You never know how those, how those work, right? So we're just gonna try some stuff. Um, my Facebook views remained consistent. It, I saw no appreciable difference between before Metric Cool after metric, cool during metric, cool. Whether I posted it via Metric cool, or whether I posted it manually. My Facebook views pretty much remained the same. Um, this was the most disheartening one before I started using Metrical. Nick Clason (17:37): Like right before I had videos within a week or 10 days of posting on YouTube shorts that got 2,400 views, 1,400 views and 634 views. There were some other smaller ones in there, right? But I had some pretty hefty and big views on YouTube shorts since posting on metrical, like pulling the plug and being like, I'm not using this anymore. The highest I've gotten on YouTube shorts is 49. I've had the majority of my views in single digits and I've had several with just no views at all. And so that's disheartening. And I have to, I have to start back over basically on YouTube shorts and I may have dinged myself permanently, um, or at least for a really long time by using Metric. All right, so three takeaways. What does this mean? So three takeaways. As of right now, I'm back to posting everything manually. Nick Clason (18:37): I'm not using the service scheduling service anymore. Perhaps, uh, that's takeaway number one. Takeaway number two, perhaps the native schedulers would, would be more advantageous. You know, I'm assuming if TikTok has a scheduler built into their website that they're gonna, um, promote and prioritize that more than they would like just a third party service like Metrical. Um, but like I said, right now I need to focus on growing our YouTube engagement back. And so therefore it's for me, I'm an all or nothing kind of person, so I could, yes, I know you're think you're listening, watching, like why don't you just schedule on on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, again, remember Instagram, I couldn't figure out a way to schedule. So for that one it would be like, I can schedule for Facebook and TikTok, but then I need a live post for Instagram and YouTube. Nick Clason (19:29): It just, it, I I I would rather do it all at the same time, um, to just know, like I post all four, boom, boom, boom, boom, and I'm done. And when I say all four, I only need to post in three places. I need to do TikTok, I need to do Instagram and make sure Facebook is toggled on, and then that's taken care of. And then I need to go do YouTube. So when I say four, it's three. It's still a lot, but it's not, you know, as many as that sounds. Uh, the other thing, the other, the third takeaway for me is it's definitely tedious work, but a non bot scheduling still has proven to be the best for engagement for me, for us, and for our ministry. So, big picture, um, I have been for years, um, and on this podcast, if you go back and listen, I have been promoting two to three posts per day, five to seven days a week. Nick Clason (20:21): And that's a hefty content load. Uh, one, a couple things like, you know, just let you know, I, so for example, I have like a lot of games over on D y m. Um, I'll link some of those in the show notes if that's something you're interested in going, checking out. But like some of my favorites are like a gif flashback game. You watch a gif for five to seven seconds and then you're asked a question about it to immediately recall it. Another one, my all-time favorite is called emoji phraseology and it's like emoji phrases. And so I have these emojis come in animated. And so one of the things we've been doing is I've just been taking those games and we've been playing them. Um, they're 10 questions each, but I use them as one singular piece of content. And so I, I film someone playing the game or someone trying to guess the emoji phrase, but then that also like all the animations or all the like icons or whatever, all on the screen, all at that same time, so the viewer can also watch it. Nick Clason (21:18): And so those have really proven helpful. Those and other like I've, I've gone on D Y M and gotten other games and just had like, film students playing those games. Like those each usually come with 10 questions and I can edit those down to be like one TikTok with 10 questions each. But I've decided to extrapolate those out. We've done that with other things. Like we've used like an ABC cheese game where you bite cheese, you know, and then make a letter and the other person has to guess. And instead of, I originally shot that with the intent of it being like a one, a one hitter, but it took so long and I was like, there's a lot of like funny laugh moments and like silly things happening in between that. Like I didn't want to cut those all out and I could use, I could go from one to 10 and that can really help flesh out my calendar. Nick Clason (22:05): So I've done that. Um, and that's proven pretty helpful for me in helping fill out that calendar. But all that being said, I'm personally debating on scaling back a little bit after. Um, currently I'm in the month of April. This may drop in May, but I'm currently in the month of April planning out my TOS and Instagram reels and stuff like that. And I'm doing three a day and I'm personally thinking maybe I can scale this back a little bit. Um, and scaling it back will help me on the edit side not have to be so frantic and quick with everything. Um, and then I might be able to focus more on quality content instead of necessarily quantity. Um, I've been doing two to three for about six to eight months now at this point. And so our platforms are sort of leveled out, stabled out. Nick Clason (22:49): We've grown, we've reached the people we need to reach. Now that we're there, maybe we can focus more on bringing like some quality content. And again, I'm the editor and in a lot of cases I'm on this side of the camera too. Like I am the person doing the talking as well. And so, um, you know, I I focus a lot of timer energy on one side or the other. And so that might mean if I'm focusing more energy on the editing side, I'm not focusing as much effort on the content delivery side. And that also needs to be really good too. The editing needs to be good, the content needs to be good. And so you can't have all, you know, you can't have all those things if uh, all those things need to be good. You can't have so many and a great edit and great content. Nick Clason (23:29): Sometimes you just gotta throw out not so great stuff. So I'm wondering about scaling it back a little bit and I'll let you know right on here. Like, you guys will be the first to know. I will be honest with you all the way through. I'll take you with me on the journey. Like I want, if you guys have questions, like I want this to be a place where like I just workshop what I'm doing and you're hearing what I'm doing. Um, however, lemme say this, going back into the analytics, um, on all my platforms was actually encouraging and helpful to me because I thought that this third party service metric flopped and tanked me and on YouTube it for sure did. But I, like, I hadn't looked at a single one of those Facebook stats until last night when I was preparing for this episode. Nick Clason (24:12): And so it was helpful for me. And let me just say this as a guiding principle, not for social media only though it definitely count, but also for other areas. Go back and look at the stats. I mean that's honestly, that's one of the things about journaling, right? Is like if you journal, you can go back and you can see this is what I prayed about a year ago and here's where I am now. And it's a completely different moment than you were even a year ago, you know, but where you are right now feels overwhelming and crazy and whatever the case might be. And so go back and look and remind yourself. That's why the Israelites often built monuments. They could go back, they could look and they could be reminded of where they were and then they could see how God had been faithful to them, to his people and how they could continue to take steps forward closer to him. Nick Clason (25:02): So that's just what I wanna say is help, what was helpful for me, I need to do that more. I'm always looking ahead, rarely looking back. So I just wanna encourage you, if that's something that's helpful, try and find a way to bake that into your regular rhythm as a social media manager, as a youth pastor, as a pastor, whatever your role is as you navigate this. But I just wanna remind you that what you're doing matters. You are trying to reach the people of God, um, and the people who are maybe even far from God through the means and methods that God and, and the world has allowed us. We can use these things to help spread the good news of the gospel. So blessings on you, blessings on your ministry as you continue on this. And as always, don't forget, stay hybrid.

In this episode Nick dives deep into areas in his life where he has learned a skill or discipline completely through an online format. And because of that discovery, he then asks if Discipleship can happen completely online? Is it possible for a human being to learn, know, discover and follow Jesus? Or does a one-on-one mentoring type relationship need to be there in existence? And if people can learn to follow Jesus online, what areas should the church lean into in 2023 to help make that more of a priority? Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g Follow Nick on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Full Episode ShowNotes & Transcripts: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/042 FREE e-book: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook SHOWNOTES In this episode, Nick talked about multiple brands, podcasts and areas in which he's learned things online, for a complete list see below: YOUTUBE TRENDS EPISODE: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/032 https://www.youtube.com/trends/report/ https://prochurchtools.com/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fantasy-focus-football/id260537420 https://podcast.downloadyouthministry.com/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/down-to-dunk-okc-thunder-podcast/id599740073 https://www.strandedpanda.com/mcucast https://theologyintheraw.com/ https://www.sonlife.com/ https://www.ramseysolutions.com/ BIBLE VERSES MENTIONED: Hebrews 10:24-25 ESV And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. Colossians 3:16 ESV Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 1 Corinthians 14:26 ESV What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. Matthew 12:30 ESV Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. 1 Thessalonians 5:11 ESV Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. TIMECODES 00:00-02:53 Intro 02:53-11:20 Areas in my life I've exclusively learned something online 11:20-15:10 What is a SuperFan? 15:10-20:40 Should we create SuperFans in Faith? 20:40-28:13 What does the Bible say about relationships? 28:13-31:45 3 raw and unfiltered ideas for Churches to lean into Hybrid in 2023 31:45-32:59 Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:01): Well, hello there everybody. Welcome back to another episode and edition of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I, as always am your host, Nick Clason. Excited to be along with you on the journey. A few are on YouTube. Hello to everyone there on YouTube. If you just got this blared in your ear holes, hello to everyone there. And hey, if you're on YouTube, you didn't know we were a podcast. We are. If you are on, uh, listening in your ear holes, you didn't know we're on YouTube, we are. So check both of the show notes or check the only show notes for both of those links. http://www.Hybridministry.xyz is all the needs and all the stops and all the places and all the things that you need for this podcast. If you're on YouTube, hit the link show notes and I'll take you there, including transcripts, which we offer for free every single episode. Nick Clason (00:54): In this episode, we are going to be discussing and talking about areas in life in which I have learned, discovered a skill, become proficient 100% completely through online mediums. It may be a little bit controversial, but I just want to explore some other avenues and facets and areas of life beyond just a church in which I have lived into this hybrid experience in this hybrid moment. So make sure that you stick around for that and all the way for to the end, because at the end that's where I'm going to talk about three different church ideas and musings and thoughts that I have in ways that we can lean into this and engage in this just a little bit more, um, realistically and also maybe a little bit more robustly as a church start thinking hybrid a little bit more frequently. But before we do, like I said, uh, subscribe on YouTube, hit that uh, bell button so that you know when we post a video, be sure that you subscribe in your podcast catcher so that every single Thursday one of these episodes will just automatically download for you for free. Nick Clason (02:03): And finally, one thing that you can do for us that's free, but is an incredible, incredible way to give back is to just simply give us a quick rating or review. Open your purple podcast app on your iPhone and let us know, hey, love this show that will help us get the word out more and more about this idea of hybrid ministry. Not because we're trying to go big and go viral, but because we want to help share and spread the hope and message of Jesus through the means and channels in which God has given to us. So that would be an incredible way for you to just help us give back. And without any further chatting, without any further discussion, let's dive in to some different areas in which I and people I know have been discipled completely online. All right, so let's talk about this idea of learning something 100 and completely online. Nick Clason (03:02): So real quick, the definition of a disciple, just a real quick Google search elicits me this response. A follower, someone who is adherent, a disciple, a partisan mean one means one who gives full loyalty and support to another follower may apply to people who attach to a certain person mission or method. So obviously that's gonna have some religious undertones and some religious connotations. But I was listening to a podcast the other day, shout out to my one of my favorite people, Brady Sheer, Alexander Mills, those guys over at Pro Churchill's podcast. Amazing. We'll drop the link in the show notes. By the way, there are gonna be a lot of links to just things that I like in my life in this episode because I'm what I'm talking about, I'm talking about my life, I'm talking about areas and things that I'm into that I've learned from. Nick Clason (03:48): And so hit the link in the show notes. If anything I say sounds interesting to you, I'll try to include it there in the show notes. But I was talk, I was listening, I wasn't talking to them. I was listening to them talk to each other about areas in life in which they have been completely discipled in a certain area, skill, facet or discipline. And it got me to thinking just that was how the title and the whole scope of this episode started. I was like, Hmm, what are areas that I've learned something completely 100% online. So I'm gonna show you two from me. And I also asked my wife last night, and I'm gonna share two from her. So for me, one area that I have exclusively learned online is the art and the area of fantasy football. Now, hear me out. Okay, if you're not into fantasy football, fantasy football is a very intricate sport. Nick Clason (04:37): It is literally drafting real life players. Typically for me, I'm, I'm big into, um, football, not like any other sport, baseball or basketball. So real life football players. But knowing how that plays out in the fantasy realm. So you have to learn things like, like drafting strategies. You have to learn things like ADPs or average draft position. You have to know who is going to be a high scorer or one that's well sought after. You need to know people who are maybe a little more under the radar, a little more, uh, names and nuances, uh, sleepers if you will. I know like I have learned a lot from fantasy football, for example, I'll talk to my dad now, um, who was the biggest football fan I knew growing up. But now I'll talk to him and I'll mention someone like Nick Westbrook at Kenai from the Tennessee Titans. Nick Clason (05:27): And he's like, who? Right now I know that name. Strictly and exclusively through fantasy football means and channels. He is just a casual football fan now at this point. And he, I mean, he plays fantasy football cuz I make him in one league that we're in together. But he doesn't know some of the deeper, more nuanced discussions and people. And I thought about it and the reason I got into fantasy football is, number one, I got asked to be a part of a fantasy football league with some friends who were, uh, know, like real life friends in person at the church or at college or something like that. But then in the years to come, I was a really terrible at fantasy football because I was like my dad. I grew up watching football with my dad. And so I drafted like my dad does, like, oh, that guy's good. Nick Clason (06:14): But then I started listening to podcasts. That was one of my major like avenues of learning. I found podcast, ESPN Fantasy Focused Football podcast, which had Matthew Berry on it for years, all the way up until last year. However, interestingly enough, he rotated off and I think went to NBC Sports and I still choose to follow the ESPN version, but I started listening to them and I got a lot better, a lot more skilled, and I've won some leagues now as a result of it. And I want to be clear, I'm not like bragging or saying I'm some amazing fantasy football player because I'm not, because it's all luck based, but I truly, ultimately really do enjoy it. And, uh, I feel a relationship with the people in the podcast on the other end that I listened to in my ear holes. I listened to 'em on runs. Nick Clason (07:00): I remember, uh, last year after the very first weekend of football, uh, the first thing I wanted to do was listen to their analysis of the first week. I wanted them to help me make sense of what just happened. And so that was something that I was like longing for, striving for. So that's one example. Another example for me is honestly the area of youth ministry. I remember how it started. I was in my office. I decided to clean it out and it was going to be a massive major overhaul change. And I was like, you know what? If I'm gonna do this, I should probably like do it while also listening to something. And that was actually how I started listening to podcasts. I discovered and stumbled upon the Download Youth Ministry podcast with heroes of mine in youth ministry, Doug Fields, Joshua Griffin. They've written books and they are the co-founders of Download Youth Ministry and many other kind of subsidiary ministries and stuff after that. Nick Clason (07:53): But honestly, I had never even really met the guys. And up to this point, I've only met them a handful of times at this point through just different conferences and events that I've gone to. But what happened was I started listening to there at that time they called it the D YM web show, short for download. Youth ministry helped me get better, uh, at youth ministry. But at the, I think the real thing that it helped do and and they even talk about it on the shows, it helped me as a solo youth pastor in a church of under 400 people. I, I, you know, I didn't have a team. I didn't work for a team. Like I had a pastor, like a senior pastor that was my boss and that was it. I didn't have like a youth team, anything like that. And so they were sort of like my youth team place to, to listen to ideas, to chop it up, to hear things. Nick Clason (08:40): They helped me think through some different nuances. They would talk about events that they would do, and then I would figure out how I could bring those and adapt them. And I truly attribute a lot of my just skill and development as a youth pastor professionally to them, to their podcast. Now, in both of my cases, fantasy Football and the Download Youth Ministry podcast, those happened through, uh, podcasts obviously, right? And uh, that's just, that is a means. That is a avenue. Okay? Um, similarly, I asked this question last night as I was preparing for this show to my wife. I was like, what are some areas in life that you have learned or become proficient at completely online? She gave two answers. Her answers were a couple years ago. She used to be a seller on Etsy. She would make decorative wooden signs and she would sell them. Nick Clason (09:31): And she did quite well at it. Actually. She quit her nursing job in an effort to be able to do that. But I remember she learned and discovered the idea and, um, practice best practices of things like search engine optimization on Etsy, how to create good and um, proper listings that are gonna help you get indexed well in search as well as thumbnails and how to do that and all those types of things. And she learned almost all of that through a Facebook group that she discovered that had, uh, just like an Etsy seller Facebook group of people kind of go back and forth, give tips, tricks of the trade. And then another area, um, in the last probably two years or so, she's gotten really into just nutrition, the power of food and how important food is. Food is fuel to your body. Um, and not like dieting per se to just like lose weight, but really like to pursue health, um, in how to do like swaps from the standard American diet, what to avoid, what things to know and look for. Nick Clason (10:31): And for her, she said the area, um, that she really found, uh, interesting, um, in to, to learn all of that was mostly through Instagram and following Instagram accounts. And so in those, for examples, so fantasy football, youth ministry, Etsy sellers, and then like the area of nutrition to me, to my wife, almost 100% of our knowledge, 100% of our, uh, development in those areas happened through online mediums and online channels. Now, don't turn it off, don't freak out. Let's expound upon this just a little bit more and let's bring in some of the church implications and some of the theological conclusions that we, uh, should wrestle with and come to. Now, I will also say, before we dive into some of the theological stuff, I will also say that this sort of idea, especially if you remember me talking about, um, in the last little segment about me wanting to hear the analysis from week one, that is a current YouTube trend. Nick Clason (11:38): I'll drop the link to the episode where I expanded upon the YouTube trends report from 2022 in the show notes. But that is a thing that people are, uh, eager for. So uhno, another area, probably the biggest that I am nerding out on in being a super fan is I am a Oklahoma City Thunder basketball fan. And I wanna listen to what the guys on down to Dunk have to say about just about every game, everything that happens, trades off season moves, like it'll happen and that'll be one thing. But then what I most look forward to is, again, the analysis that these guys have as experts in the field as people who talk about it a lot. Similarly, I'll also do that like over the weekend on Saturday, my wife and I went and saw Antman in the WASP quantum mania, and I immediately went and downloaded the Marvel Cinematic Universe podcast, Antman in the WASP Quantum Mania recap episode because I wanna hear all they have to say, I watched the movie, I like the movie, but they're gonna think deeper about it. Nick Clason (12:41): They're gonna have theories about it. And so that is like this idea of a super fan as someone who attaches to pop culture, but with people who have more analysis to it and in all of these things, right? Like there's something there that can be done in the church space. Now, I wanna get to that in a minute, but before we do, I want to chat through and just think through like in all these things. I learned a lot through podcasts. I learned a lot through y or podcasts and or long form YouTube accounts. My wife learned a lot through like Facebook groups or following Instagram accounts. Um, and neither one of us really honestly said anything about TikTok or short form video content. However, uh, both of the things that the question, right? Was what are areas in which you feel that you've become an expert in through something completely online. Nick Clason (13:33): And I don't, I think my reason for why that would be the case is that, um, most of the areas you become an expert in, it takes time and TikTok and Instagram reels, they just haven't been here for that long of time. But one thing that is interesting to note is that I think that what is, uh, what you discover online in Instagram reel, Instagram reels or TikTok short form video, sort of like formats is you discover new people and new pieces of content, it's harder in those mediums to create super fans. So I think those are there for discoverability. And then I think your goal is to get them to follow for more, to save for later or to get them to watch something longer or listen to something longer that you already produce. So you wanna like just get discovered, find something niche, and then have them, uh, come follow you somewhere else on. Nick Clason (14:30): Um, honestly, and unfortunately, so those platforms are massive and huge right now. However, I think that they are, they help create a, a pathway and a funnel step for those people to, to dive deeper. There are TikTok ERs, Instagram real people that I love to follow, um, when I see them pop up on my for you page, but not my, that's not how I engage with them. That's not how I engage with people. I get on there and I just start going on my for you page. And whatever the algorithm feeds me is what it feeds me. I'm not on there specifically looking or searching for a person or specific, uh, niche piece of content at that moment. I was thinking about this last night, but I don't have a personal relationship with any of the people that I have mentioned or that I have learned from in these areas. Nick Clason (15:21): I would love to, but it's honestly almost never realistic for a lot of different reasons. Maybe one, like the distance of where they live in physical proximity to where I live, or just simply the size and scope of their platform that, um, they, this is how they get their messaging out to the masses and the multitudes because they are so big and they are, they do have such a large scope. And so, uh, when I do find another fan, a person who also listens to this podcast, a person who also is following some certain Instagram account, in my wife's case, we have an immediate connection around our fandom or following of this particular thing. And so I wanted to think through why does scripture discipleship disciple making the Bible? Why doesn't it feel that that same way, like if I find someone who's another down to dunk fan, we're immediately vibing on that. Nick Clason (16:23): But when I find someone who's another Christian, do I immediately vibe with them? And I've never really thought about it, right? Because one is like pop culture and one is like faith. And those are two categorically different things. I get it. However, there are some similarities to it, like in this, like we are following like the same people over here in faith, we're following the same people, right? We're following Jesus of Nazareth, the guy who was discipled, uh, discipled people and then murdered for who he claimed to be, but then rose again three days later. And so I wonder like, is is faith, is Christianity not niche enough? Like is it too mainstream? Is it too much in the public eye? Uh, or is there too much diversity of opinion? Or is is it like you find someone but you don't like, I mean, I'll, I'll give you an example. Nick Clason (17:20): I'm kind of just workshopping this in my brain, but like I will find people who say they're Christians and I'm just immediately kinda like, I, I take a step back as opposed to a step in. And maybe it's because there's some spiritual element going on. Satan doesn't want me to connect or whatever. Or maybe I, I like personally I'm leery because I just don't know where they're coming from. And so instead of like assuming things or whatever, I just kind of like nod and smile and keep going. Maybe that's just what's baked into our culture, right? You don't talk about finances, you don't talk about religion and you don't talk about politics. And maybe because religion finds itself in that category of taboo and things you don't talk about, maybe that's why I don't talk about it. Maybe it's because I'm already a pastor and I'm deeper in it than most people who are just, uh, churchgoers. Nick Clason (18:12): I don't know what the reason is, but as I'm like just thinking these things out and teasing these things out, there should be a connection. I mean, that's literally one of the things that we talk about as followers of crisis, that we have this connection that despite any of our other differences, that unifies us and brings us together because we identify with the work and person of Jesus. And so therefore that should be what drives us, and that should also be an area that can connect us one another. So, um, an example of that actually of areas that I may connect with people around faith are, or maybe other people who listen to other things or connected to other organizations that I too am connected with. I think about like theology in the Raw Podcast done by Preston Sprinkle. And I think about people who listen to that. Nick Clason (19:03): If I found out a Christian listen to that, I would immediately have a different type of connection than just a casual, I'm a Christian, um, or someone who's connected to a ministry organization that I have grown up being connected to called Sun Life. If I knew that, I'd be like, oh, you're a Sun Life person. That makes sense. In fact, that's one of the major reasons in which I took the job I took here in Texas. I found out that a lot of the leadership had been, uh, trained in the Sun Life way of doing things, which sounds like a cult, but really it's just they're trying to model after the, the work of Jesus and what he did in his life, not just his death on the cross, but his life that he modeled and, you know, inviting people to, to come and see he'd follow me, that he'd make them fishes of men and then challenging them to go on and and bear much fruit. Nick Clason (19:49): So there are opportunities for that, but I just think like for some reason there's not that connection. And I want to figure out how we can do that and what that might look like. And it, I don't know that that's necessarily only conforming to the ways of this world. However, I do think there are some things that we can learn from the, the ways of the world, the pop culture, the super fan ideas that can help us in creating some of those moments, um, in, in faith, in cul in, in faith, and in our, um, followership of Jesus. So let's, let's dive a little bit deeper. Um, and let's, let's talk a little bit more about the actual discipline of learning some of these skills, um, and how that can be translated from not just like niche pop culture things, but how can we actually do that as faith communities. Nick Clason (20:40): So one of my learnings, and this might terrify you, so don't call me a heretic and turn this off when I say this, but you can learn a skill without a relationship with the other person. Now, I think a lot of times we learn from other people, but I think that you can learn a skill devoid of relationships with other people. I just evidenced four examples for real life examples. And there are more. I mean, I talked about like theology in the raw, sun life, thunder, basketball, marvel cinematic universe. I mean, another one that's just coming to my brain right now is finances through Dave Ramsey. I've met the man one time when I went, went down and did my debt-free scream. But after and beyond that, I've learned all I've learned about him through digital means and digital mediums. I also think, and sometimes churches find themselves falling prey to this, that you can exclusively meet in person with no digital or hybridization options on Sunday mornings and on Wednesday nights. Nick Clason (21:44): And you can say we don't do any of those other things because that's not how you learn. That's not how you become a disciple. And so you meet on Sundays and you meet on Wednesdays, but you never actually experience any life transformation because you haven't really done anything other than quote unquote meeting together in person you've met in person. But that is all that there is in their relationship. There's nothing more beyond that. There's no actual relationship that happens Monday through Friday. It only happens on Sunday morning in the allocated space. And I think that that is really my biggest argument for hybrid just because you meet in person once a week and you're like, we're all about this. Where else are you leaning into these things? Because if you're not creating more moments for people to connect to those relationships, cuz mind you, I have said you can learn disciplines and things in other areas without a relationship. Nick Clason (22:49): However, the church does often start with a relationship. So I'm not saying to take that and throw that baby out with the bathwater, but what I am saying is that you can have those relationships and offer more growth, offer more opportunities for people to attach to this faith community here in the other days throughout the week. Let's talk about some of the biblical basis for relationships. I'm gonna read for you several verses here, and then at the end I'm gonna, uh, give you a couple of observations. So probably the, the most famous meeting together verse comes from the book of Hebrews chapter 10 verses 24 and 25. All of these come out of the ESV that says, and let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as as the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day of the Lord drawing near Colossians chapter three 16 says, let the word of Christ dwell richly in you teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your heart to God. Nick Clason (24:03): First Corinthians 1426 says, what then, brothers, when you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. Matthew chapter 12, verse 30 says, whoever is not with me is against me. And whoever does not gather with me scatters First Thessalonians five 11 says, therefore encourage one another and build one another up. Just as you are doing, let's look also to the life of Christ, his life with his disciples. His invitation, like I said, was, uh, to invite them to just come and see, to explore. Then ultimately he gave them a challenge, Hey, come follow me, drop your nets and come follow me. And then he gives him a further command. And this is where the sacrifice and servanthood often comes in of following Jesus is not just to follow me, but he's going to change you, transform you and make them into fishers of men. Nick Clason (24:56): And then finally in John chapter 15, we see the verse about the vine and the branches and abiding. And he says, you, I want you now to be called friends and I want you to bear much fruit. So I want you to do what I just did. If you walk with Christ and first John, it says, if you walk with, uh, if you want to follow Christ, you must walk as he walked and live as he lived. So what are the ways in which he lived? He invited people to come and see, uh, earth first. He, yeah, yeah, he invited 'em to come and see, then he invited them to follow him. Then he was gonna change them, transform them, make them into fishes of men until finally then he would, uh, send them out to bear much fruit and repeat and replicate that process of multiplication. Nick Clason (25:42): So in all those verses and in the method of Jesus, all of those things are done in person and can be done in person. Yes. And also they can be done in hybrid spaces as well. And I don't just mean like zoom small groups and online church streaming. What I mean is I have a lot of relationships with people across the country in Facebook groups. I have relationships with people that on regular, ongoing basis, I have a once a week phone call with a friend of mine from college where we do accountability and talk through each other's lives. I have a once a month coaching call with people that I do do on Zoom, uh, or that I do do just through a regular old phone call. Like there are other channels and places to enhance relationships that aren't just Sunday morning at 10 30. Nick Clason (26:34): You see what I'm saying? Like that's what I'm trying to say. Like it doesn't have to only fit into that mold and that hurts our brain. And that freaks some of us out, especially some of us who adhere to a more traditional stance on gathering together in church. But what I'm saying is not that we should forsake that, but what I am saying is that you can't, someone who's truly interested in something, some sort of discipline can be challenged to learn more through some other additional methods and means. And if you're really into it, like I was about thunder basketball or my wife was about nutrition, they will eat those things up. However, what we've done is we've reduced commitment down to one single metric in the church. And that's church attendance. And here's the thing, that's not an indication of a disciple, but because we've reduced it down to church attendance, what we do is we've actually dumbed down the commitment to the point where we say, Hey, let's get the most amount of attendance here. Nick Clason (27:32): And so let's reduce the level of commitment to as low the lowest common denominator as possible. Get the most amount of people here. Oh look, now we have the most amount of butts in seats. Look at our church growth. And the reality is, is that you can offer more, but you're afraid to because the metrics may not make it seem worth it. And you though you can be offering something actually useful and actually beneficial to people to help them grow in their faith, to make spiritual decisions, to foster spiritual life transformation. We don't, we hold back because it doesn't offer the same return that Sunday morning at 10 30 offers. And that's a tough pill to swallow. Nick Clason (28:14): So let's round this thing out. Like I said at the top, here are three in live time unchallenged things that could be done, but I don't have exact frameworks for that. You could maybe begin to start thinking through in churches. The first is podcasts more than just your Sunday sermon from your lead pastor, but podcasts in certain areas, certain disciplines, certain classes, maybe like through the Old Testament, new Testament letters of Paul. I mean, think, think, go to like maybe a seminary catalog. What are things that they're offering students in seminary? And what are things that you have the bandwidth or maybe should make the bandwidth to create, to help encourage and equip your people to become more well versed in their knowledge of scripture? See, our our normal response to that is, oh, let's host a class. And, uh, there's nothing wrong with hosting a class, but what if someone's not available when you decide to host a class, but they still want to engage in it? Nick Clason (29:14): Is there a way to do both? Or instead of hosting the class, realizing that for you as a pastor, hosting a class often requires an evening time commitment from say, seven o'clock until eight 30. Or if you sit down and record a podcast, you can do that during your normal office nine to five office time. You see what I'm saying? There might be a greater return on that. And then you can offer that class for something different, better, more robust that you're hoping to do. Similarly, you could do either YouTube or, or not hosting on YouTube, but some other platform, video based type classes. You can do like a six week class on navigating grief. You can do an eight week class on lust and purity. You can do a seven week class on, um, the, the methodology of following Jesus. You can do a 10 week class on spiritual gifts. Nick Clason (30:09): See, there's all kinds of different ways out there, and I hear the rebuttals right now, and I hear them even in my own brain. Yeah, but I don't wanna put something out there that someone could take and misconstrue. And that might be true. However, if you're not doing it that way, where are you doing it? People do need to know these things. They need to know how to navigate grief and they need to know about lust and period. And they need to know about the ways of follow Jesus. And they need to know about their spiritual gifts. And you probably don't have the bandwidth in your current schedule to offer all those at the same time. Maybe you're the only pastor or you only have one pastor, and so he has to host one class and then move to the next class and then move to the next class. Nick Clason (30:44): Or he could offer them all by shooting them on a video, on a phone or whatever the case might be. And offering them, offering them through YouTube via playlist, offering them on some video course thing that's a little bit more, got a little bit more accountability built into it or whatever. The final idea is just ongoing devotionals and or reading plans that you can offer. You can, uh, curate or create you version reading bible plans. You can, um, write your own, you can get your whole church reading through a certain thing if you're in like a sermon series. And John, for example, you can, while you're in the Book of John, you can have people reading through the book of John together in their daily quiet time, giving them something to do, something to turn to in their, uh, daily quiet time discipline. So those are just three kind of ideas, like I said, un unchallenged, un uh, not not seeing a lot of people doing them, but just ideas to continue to lean into some of those hybrid moments. Nick Clason (31:46): Well, once again, everyone's so glad you're here. Thank you for sticking to the end. I hope I didn't step on toes too hard, but I do want to get us thinking more and more in this way. I know for me, I experience as a pastor a lot of in-person moments and I get frustrated when I see the church not thinking through some of these other avenues that are available to them that they're just not really doing anything with. And so I hope that this is helpful to you. I hope you see it as an encouragement. If you're listening to this podcast, you probably already think this way. And so share it with someone who might be helpful for them to think in a new way. As always, a rating, a review, a subscribe, all those things are incredibly helpful. You can follow me on my YouTube channel link in the show notes or my TikTok account, which I do post two of these for every single episode, uh, throughout the week. So go grab those along with some other, um, church communications, church social media and church marketing tips type thoughts. Those all on my social media, both on TikTok and also on YouTube in the shorts category. But hey, until next time, and as always, stay hybrid.

In this episode Nick explores and examines how Starbucks advertises and markets. As well as what we can learn from Target and Walmart and how every touch point is an opportunity to market yourself and convey who you are, and how the church can do that more effectively! Join the Email List, Get FREE Stuff: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook Complete Transcripts Available: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/041 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g Come Follow Nick on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick SHOWNOTES 6 PART CHURCH SOCIAL MEDIA FRAMEWORK: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLngXlSr64YaIbzg_DNJrTrCtBHQnxcOVo Episode Referenced: https://careynieuwhof.com/episode549/ TIMECODES 00:00-02:24 Intro 02:24-05:15 Everything you do is Marketing 05:15-08:03 Every Touch Point Matters - Church Marketing from Street to Seat 08:03-11:51 The Reality of Hybrid - Beyond Street to Seat 11:51-15:40 What "est" is your church? 15:40-1643 Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:01): Well, hello there everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast. We are now officially finished with the six part church social media framework. Be sure to head to the link in the show notes, either http://www.hybridministry.xyz/041 for this episode of the Hybrid Ministry Podcast. Or if you're watching on YouTube, be sure to check out the link in a description where we have linked the full and complete hybrid ministry church, social media, six part framework, four churches in 2023. We walk through setting up a platform all the way at YouTube through TikTok, through Instagram, through Facebook, linking all of your accounts, how to use email, text, messaging, website, and then finally, how to put all those together for a completely full free and flushed out church social media framework. We hope that you find that helpful, advantageous, beneficial. Just wanna say thank you for watching. Nick Clason (01:02): Thank you for sharing. Uh, the month of February and March have been our two highest downloaded months in the entire history of the podcast. We could not do what we are doing without you, so, so thankful that you are along for the ride and for the journey. One major piece of the church social media framework is short form video content. That's the beautiful thing with YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. All four of them right now are focusing on short form video content. And so I wanna encourage you, if you have not hit the link in the show notes to check out our 100% completely free ebook, our ebook, which asks the question, have I already ruined my, ruined my church's TikTok account? The short answer to that is probably not, but we wanna help you walk through taking a step-by-step approach to filming, posting, editing, adding audio, all the things that you need to do for short form video content. Nick Clason (01:52): And you can do that right in the TikTok app. And then you can take that same video and you can disseminate it out to all the other social media platforms. Once again, so thrilled that you are here for this episode. In this episode, we are going to be looking at Starbucks. Does Starbucks actually market more on that in just a minute? Last thing I just wanna ask you for is if you are available, interested or willing to give us a five star review, that will be incredible. A subscribe, a rating or review. All of those things help get the word out about what we are doing here on this podcast to help you get out to the masses and the people who are along for this journey, and also trying to navigate this church communications, church social media landscape of 2023. Without any further ado, let's dive into this question. Nick Clason (02:39): Does Starbucks Market? Hey everyone. I was recently listening to a podcast the other week, um, and I'm gonna link it in the show notes. It was with Bill McKendry. He is the, um, the guy kind of behind the, um, Jesus ads that you might have seen in the Super Bowl, the ads. Um, he gets us and he was on with Carrie Newk, who is a prolific author, podcaster, blogger in the Christian kind of Roman space and in leadership. And they were talking about, um, marketing, the whole idea of marketing. And so there's just so many good things in that episode. If you haven't listened to it or list or heard it yet, check the link in the description. But one of the things he said really stood out to me, and I kind of want to, um, dive into that a little bit deeper, especially with a lens and an eye for and towards church, um, marketing and church spaces. Nick Clason (03:27): And so he said he had a conversation with Howard Schultz of Starbucks, and he said that, um, everybody, this is what Howard Schultz, the guy of Starbucks, I said, everybody assumes that branding and marketing is all about advertising. It's not right. And he goes on to say, if you think that branding and marketing are just about advertising, then you really don't understand branding at all. So you might be thinking like, what is he even talking about? And the the reality is, is that what McKenzie Cano is pointing out to to new H on the podcast is he says, you don't see a lot of Starbucks ads or commercials, do you and Kerry Newhouse's like, no, I guess you're right. I I don't really see a lot of those things. And McKendry goes, that's because of this guy Howard Schultz. He says, every single thing you do is branding. Nick Clason (04:10): Every single thing you do lends itself toward marketing. And so you might be thinking as a church like, well, that sounds great. That sounds amazing actually, cuz we don't have a giant budget. And you know what actually it is. But if you are a church with a small budget and you don't have someone with an eye for this or someone who has the intentionality towards what Howard Schultz of Starbucks is actually doing, it's going to be difficult for you in my personal opinion. And so, um, I wanted to think through what Starbucks actually does, like what they consider a successful, um, encounter, a successful opportunity. And so if every single thing you do is marketing, if every single thing you do is branding, that means that every single touchpoint matters. And so what McKendry was pointing out to New H in the podcast is he was saying, that's why Starbucks cups look so cool. Nick Clason (04:56): That's why there's such a particular way that every Starbucks is, uh, required by corporate to be laid out. That's why the music is a certain level. That's why the vibe looks a certain way. All of that stuff matters. And so I just wanna kind of pause and think through that, through the lens and through the eyes of the church. So if every single touchpoint matters, let's think about somebody visiting, coming to, um, exploring your church for the very first time. Um, let's think through they are going to be going from the street to the seat. So what are all of the touchpoints between the street and to the seat? So when they pull in the signage that they see the way your parking lot looks, how upkept is your, are your ground? Do you have a parking lot team? Do you have signage for visitors? Nick Clason (05:43): Flash your lights if you're a visitor, honk your horn If you're a visitor, do you have people with signs? Do you have greeters? Once they finally park their car and they get out, how are they greeted? Are your greeters just glorified door holders that a lump of, uh, block of wood could also accomplish their job? Or are your greeters actively looking for new guests, actively greeting people standing at the door, keeping the door propped open? You know, more than just standing there and saying, hello sir, hello ma'am. But like, are they using names? Are they trying to get to know people? Are they helping escort new people to the lobby? What does your lobby look like? What's your guest experience in the lobby look like? Do you have a newcomers welcome kit or anything like that? Are you just gonna give them a mug, which is what every single church in America does? Nick Clason (06:30): Or are you giving them some sort of tailor-made thing that's gonna be maybe a little bit more beneficial or advantageous to them as a family? Um, how is the kids' check-in process as a dad of young kids? The kids' check-in process when it's assumed that you know what's going on is an absolutely awful experience. So what does that experience look like for people who have no idea what they're doing? Is it clear where they're supposed to go? What do they do if they're new? How do they fill out the information needed to get a kid checked in? How long does that process actually take? Is it clear where they're supposed to go? Is your room, are your room layouts clear? Is your building clean? Does your kids' area seem safe? Do you have safety? Do you have security? Do you have people with branded t-shirts for your church and all the way through finally walking into the auditorium? Nick Clason (07:20): How does you know the, how does the bulletin look? How does the actual auditorium look? How do the screens look? How, like, think about the all of that and this like, this is leaning a little bit. Guest services, I get it right? And I'm, I'm doing that all with the, the purpose. But like, but I want you to think about this. When is the last time that you walked through your church building through looking through the lens and eyes of a first time guest, someone who has no idea, no context, no framework for what it's like being in your church? That's what I want to encourage you to do. I want you to encourage you to think about those things. And then the reality is this, is that if every single touchpoint matters, think about all the opportune touchpoints that we just walked through. So let's talk about the reality of hybrid. Nick Clason (08:07): This is the hybrid ministry podcast after all. And a lot of times we focus on digital because I think most churches do actually do a decent job at least having their, their mind or their eyes set on the physical or thinking about and thinking through what a physical experience is going to look like for somebody coming to your church newcomer or someone who's been going to your church for a hundred years. But what does your pre street to seat experience look like? See, the reality is most churches do have someone thinking street to seat. They have someone thinking guest services, they have someone thinking worship team, tech team, kids team. Like you have someone thinking about that, whether they're doing a good job or not. That may be a whole nother story. But what about before they ever even determine they're going to come to your church? Nick Clason (08:54): Because here's the god honest truth, most people are not just driving by at a Sunday morning at 8 45, 9 o'clock, whatever time they would need to be driving past your church and be like, you know what we should do? We should go to church. Like they're going to come to that decision over a, a sequence of weeks, months. Um, and maybe it's from driving by your church, maybe it's from seeing an ad. Maybe it's from seeing t-shirts that people are wearing of your church in and around the community. Maybe it's just a word of mouth recommendation, any sort of thing. But the, the fact is, once someone that has narrowed in their focus on your church, they have gotten to that conclusion and they have come to that place for one reason or another. What was that reason? And then, and then here's what they're gonna do. Nick Clason (09:44): If they're under the age of 35 or 40, probably they're more than likely going to check your church out online everywhere. Your website, your socials, your livestream, your kids' ministry page, all those types of things. I'll give you an example. A couple weeks ago it was March Madness and my wife, um, and I were watching March Madness. Let me be more clear. I was watching March Madness and I was trying to get her interested in March Madness. And there was a commercial about wings from Wingstop, which I'm not a big Wingstop guy, it's very, um, commercial. It's very chain. That's not my thing. I don't love Wingstop, don't love beat up. I love like a good kinda like dive bar wing place. That's, that's typically my preference when it comes to wings. And so my wife was like, you know, sounds good Wings. And I was like, I mean, yeah, wings always sound good to me, but for that night wings sounded good to her. Nick Clason (10:37): And so she started googling in our town Best Wings in our Town and started getting all these recommendations, Yelp, Google Maps, five stars, four stars, four and a half stars, whatever. And we found this little bar that served wings that were supposedly pretty good. And so we start researching that, researching the wings, and then we're like, okay, is this gonna be a place that like, is kid friendly? Like can we bring our kids to this bar? Is that gonna be okay? And so we start like researching that and reading through the reviews and reading through what people say. My point in saying all of that is that before we ever stepped foot in that restaurant, we did all kinds of different research. Not a ton, right? But like five to 10 minutes worth of research about wings, about the environment, about the prices, about the menu, all those things before we ever took our step into the, um, the bar. Nick Clason (11:31): And so I just wanna say that, and I just want to encourage you as a church to start thinking greater than street to seat. Every single touchpoint that you offer from your church matters. If that's what Starbucks does, which is the largest coffee chain in America, then your church can probably learn a couple of things from Starbucks. Another thing that was fascinating from the episode that I want to point out here before we wrap it up is that he went on to talk about this marketing and branding firm that works with all kinds of different competitors. And he used the example of Walmart and Target and he said, each and every competitor, each and every store, each and every entity, whatever it is, can only have one e s T. And when he said e s t, he said, for example, like Walmart is the cheapest and Target is the coolest. Nick Clason (12:20): But I just wanna ask you a question. Is Walmart always the cheapest? Sometimes Target is actually cheaper than Walmart, but you could, you, and he uses this example in the podcast. He says, there's a guy who's like, I, I would throw on slippers and a hoodie and not wash or wash my hair, brush my teeth, anything like that, just head into Walmart and grab something quick. But if I wanna go to Target, I gotta get myself ready, right? Why is that? He said, because each of those places have embraced what their e s t is Walmart being cheapest, target being coolest. So what is that for your church? You probably have something in mind, whether you've thought about it or not, um, spoken or unspoken, just about every place has an E s T that they want to be. What we often run into as agencies, churches, whatever, is that we want to be multiple of them. Nick Clason (13:09): Well, we wanna be the coolest and we wanna be the cheapest and we want, you just can't be that. You have to pick one of those things and really hone in on it. So is your church gonna be the church that's all about worship or is your church gonna be the church that's all about kids and student ministry? Or is your church gonna be the church that's all about ex expositional, expository preaching? Is your church gonna be the trendy church? Is your church gonna be the church with good coffee? Is your church? You see what I'm saying? And like, those things matter, but like one thing often rises above and rises to the top of what your church is. And and this is true of businesses and whatnot. And here's the thing. He used an example in the podcast. He says, Southwest Airlines always said, we love you, we love our customers. Nick Clason (13:52): And he said, that works until it doesn't. And when Southwest had their debacle around Christmas and they couldn't get people home for their Christmas and family gatherings, no amount of messaging, no amount of like, we love you, we are the airline oven for the people. None of that mattered. He said anymore why? He was like, because they failed. Like they dropped the ball big time and people didn't feel that love sitting in the airport for 24, 36, 48, 72 hours. That is not the messaging that Southwest was giving across during those times. And so you can say what you are, but then you also have to turn around and deliver it. And so everything you do about your church, every single touchpoint that you make, it matters. So what are you going to do? What is that, that key core marker that you're going to be with your church? Nick Clason (14:41): And listen, I would, I would recommend if you're a youth pastor, if you're a church communications person, a church social media person listening to this podcast, you're probably gonna wanna have to have a sit with some upper level leadership around this conversation. If you're not a person at the table to have that conversation, ask your direct report. Hey, what, like, how, how can we come up with this? And your church may already have had some of those things. So then go back through and grade those things. Hire a secret shopper, like all sorts of different things. But I like, I just, I wanna point out that I think most churches do a good job, a decent job, you know, with people like secret shoppers, first time guests, all those things. But what are you communicating beyond the doors, beyond the Sunday morning, beyond your primary meeting experience? Nick Clason (15:26): And what is your messaging to them? Because if, well he said the Starbucks guy, everything you do is branding, then have you taken enough time to distill that one to your primary core, what your messaging is going to be? Well, thanks everyone for hanging out again for another episode in the Books Hybrid Ministry episode 41. We are now only about 15. No, that's a less than that. We're like 11, 10, 11 episodes away from one year worth of podcasting. So we'll do something exciting on episode 52. I'll need to look, cuz I have a couple bonus episodes that have dropped that have, you know, kind of messed with our, our numbering there or whatever. But, but super excited to be with you, grateful that you're continuing to be along in the journey. Hey, if you have questions, if you wanna get in touch with me, follow me on YouTube, follow me on TikTok, hit me up in the dm, head to our website, hybridministry.xyz. We would love to hear from you. We would love to start answering some questions. So if you have those, send them our way. But once again, thrilled that you were here with us and we will talk to you next time. And don't forget, and as always, stay hybrid.

In this episode Nick unpacks the importance of Church wide email and text (sms) messaging. What is the role of these common marketing practices? Does it have a place in church? How should your church, in 2023, approach it? Along with what role does the church website play in all of this? All that and more in this episode! Follow Along on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick?lang=en Show Notes & Transcripts: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/039 TikTok E Book: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook SHOWNOTES Step 1: YouTube: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/035 Trailer: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/034 Planning Center People: https://www.planningcenter.com/people HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com/ SMS Marketing Rules and Regulations: https://act-on.com/blog/sms-marketing-regulations/#:~:text=The%20Telephone%20Consumer%20Protection%20Act%20(TCPA)%20is%20a%20United%20States,sending%20them%20marketing%20text%20messages TIMECODES 00:00-02:46 Intro 02:46-08:43 Email and Text Messaging's Place in Church Communications 08:43-15:19 What is Email Marketing for Churches? 15:19-17:57 What should you expect from Email Marketing? 17:57-22:05 What is SMS or Text Message Marketing's place in churches? 22:05-23:22 The Role of your Church Website 23:22-24:20 Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:00): Well, hey there everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Hybrid Minister Show. I am your host, as always, Nick Clason. So excited to be here with you. And in today's episode, we are going to be talking about email and text messaging. So you're like, wait a minute, hold on. I thought that this was the sixth part, church social media framework for churches in 2023. And yes, you would be correct. And then you're thinking, wait a minute, I email and text. That doesn't count. And actually I think it does. And so we're gonna dive into that why I think it matters, why I think you should be utilizing it for your church and why it can be beneficial. But before we do, if you don't know, we are on YouTube every single episode. So hey, to everyone watching on YouTube, it's good to see you over there on video. Nick Clason (00:54): If you're just listening to this in your ear holes, click the link in the show notes to head on over to YouTube to take a look, to watch, to even to subscribe. That'd be amazing. We'd love to have you over there. If you discovered us on YouTube or on shorts, we wanna let you know that we are also on website and we have a podcast. And so you can head to http://www.hybridministry.xyz. This is episode 39, so http://www.hybridministry.xyz/03. If you click that direct link, it will take you very specifically to this episode with transcripts for this episode, or if you just head to that website and head over to the blog section. There are two articles there, both with links to free, completely free resources to help you and your church navigate this social media landscape that we are in, including the ebook. Nick Clason (01:40): Have I already ruined my church's TikTok account by what I've done and what I've posted? No, you should download it so that you know exactly what to do from start to finish all the way through. Uh, and maybe you know what you're doing, but maybe you have some volunteers or some staff and you, uh, want to help them understand what they're doing. You can put that ebook in their hands and it will help take them from a complete novice to an expert on TikTok in just a few short steps. And so that is a resource that we hope that will be beneficial to you. And, uh, hopefully something that, you know, that you can use and utilize for years and years to come, or at least for this year probably, because TikTok will then make an update and we'll have to update the book along with it. Nick Clason (02:22): Um, if you find that helpful or if any of this helpful a share or a rating or a review would be incredible, it would just be your way of helping, uh, us get the word out, um, and letting your friends know that, hey, this is something that's useful, beneficial, and I am, uh, listening to it and you should as well. So without any further ado, let's dive into email and text messaging. Okay, so email, texting. I thought we were talking about social media. Well, if you go all the way back to the very first episode of this, and if you haven't had a chance to listen, um, you can go back. We dropped a trailers like a two-part trailer on kind of previewing this and then also the first episode, um, on YouTube where we sort of like laid the framework. But one of the things that we talked about was we talked about this idea of a funnel. Nick Clason (03:08): And so if you are watching, you'll see me try to create one with my hands, but a funnel kinda like a triangle, right? The top is wider. You're gonna catch more people and the bottom is more narrow. Uh, the thing that most churches don't understand is that they actually start probably, um, depending on your marketing strategy. And I know that churches probably bach at that term marketing in some cases, but, um, churches almost always start with people more mid to bottom of the funnel. And so what then becomes tricky is you already have a very committed group of people that are already very deeply invested in your organization. They're just not, um, you're just not getting people on the top of the funnel, especially if you're a church that's, that's dying or hasn't seen new, um, people, you know, come through your doors in a while. Nick Clason (03:55): And so social media might be one of your avenues to try and do that. And it very much can be YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, all four of those phenomenal platforms. But in order to, and also might I add before I continue on, they're great marketing platforms too. Like some of the best marketing that our world has ever seen, cheapest marketing that our world has ever seen. So you can utilize those two year advantage. However, email and texts, I think are ways to drive people down the funnel more. Um, once they've found you on Instagram, once they found you on YouTube, once they've found you on t TikTok to drive them down the funnel more, um, and then ultimately become more and more, um, super fans of you. And I know that's not what we're trying to do in church, uh, but before they become a committed Christian, cuz ultimately the goal is to drive them to become a deeper, more devoted disciple of Jesus. Nick Clason (04:51): But if they're just discovering you on social media for the first time as a church, uh, you just want them to like you, right? You just want them to trust you as a church. You just want them to think your content is useful, beneficial, um, and helpful to them in their life. And so you just wanna drive them deeper and deeper. And so maybe you offer them something free like an ebook or maybe you offer them something, um, you know, like a checklist that they can get, uh, on their own and they, they sign up for an email list or a text messaging list or something like that and you drive them deeper down the funnel, right? And so that you a little bit, you gotta think about it, you might have a couple different tracks kind of going on. And that's what like super next level marketers do is they have like this, this track of people that are already their contributors or people who've already bought things and they got people who are just like in an awareness sort of like track trying to like discover more about your company. Nick Clason (05:39): Okay? But here's the thing about email, and here's the thing about text is that they cost almost $0 to facilitate, uh, especially if you're like not looking to go full out, you know, become like a business on this. You're just trying to become a church to supplement what else you have going on on social media where some of these other platforms, yeah, you can do them all for free, but to really get some of that like, like legitimate organic, um, or I'm sorry, not organic, but some of that legitimate like far-reaching reach that people are often looking for. If you wanna like have an amazing Easter ad or something like that, you're probably gonna have to put some dollars behind it. And that's true just about everything in life. If you want something that is incredible and is gonna work for you to the best of its abilities, it's gonna probably be behind some sort of premium paywall, whether that be a tech service or an email service. Nick Clason (06:34): However, as a church, you probably already have some of these tools at your disposal that you may or may not be tapping into depending on how much know-how you have. Cuz just about every church in America, um, has or should have some sort of church management software people, uh, a people software, a data captures sort of thing, you know, church, community builder, the rock, whatever. All of those have email, um, woven into it as well as text messaging woven into it. However, are they the most useful and beneficial advantageous of, you know, taking those emails, creating a funnel type content, moving people through a pathway and a process just depends if you kind of know, if you know what you're doing on there. So let's dive in a little bit more on that before we do a couple of just quick hitter stats so that you're aware of why text messaging and email can be so effective in your church today in 2023. Nick Clason (07:31): First thing is this, 94% of people on the internet use email. 94%. That is crazy, right? That is more than TikTok. That is more than Facebook. That's like a wider adoption percentage of people. Almost everyone on the internet has an email account. Furthermore, 75% of adult users on the internet say that email marketing is their preferred form of marketing, which is fascinating because I don't think that we often think of email or texts as, as sexy as some of these other social media type platforms. But, uh, three, three quarters of people that use the, uh, internet so that they would just prefer email marketing to be done to them via email. The return on investment, the ROI is higher on these platforms, texting and email than they are on other social channels. And then finally, text message, open rates can go as high as get this, are you ready for it? Nick Clason (08:31): 98%. So let's dive in. Let's unpack what's going on here and why this can be so important and advantageous for your church. All right, so what is email marketing? If you were to just go on and you were to, to Google email marketing, there's a potential that you could get kind of lost in the weeds of, of terminology and words that are maybe not super familiar to you. But at its core, basically email marketing is an opportunity for an organization to connect regularly with its fans and at a church level, right? Like maybe they're not fans, but it's an opportunity for us to connect with members of our congregation. There's a lot of ways that churches actually believe it or not, have a upper hand on some companies with email marketing. And the reason of that is because they, like I said, they already have kind of a core base of people. Nick Clason (09:24): We already have a core base of people that we are pulling from, all right? And so it's not solely dependent upon us to craft and curate and build our own email list from zero. We already sort of have a base that we're starting with. And that's, that's an amazing place to be and that's an amazing advantage that we as a church, I I think sometimes we lament our, our position in the space. Like, oh, what was us? We're just a church, blah, blah, blah. Like, we have advantages that like other companies don't have. We're often handed email list with already done work for us. And so we just need to steward that well and continue to build upon that. And so I think that there's a, there's a space and a way to do that. Um, the church, like right, oftentimes we might have a hard time with social media or marketing or websites, but in this particular case and in this particular space, I think the church might actually have an upper hand. Nick Clason (10:15): So who is email marketing for you might be asking. It's for, honestly, it's for everybody. We said 94% of internet users say and claim that they have an internet account or an email account on the internet. So yeah, you should be using email in your church, you should be sending out regular updates. And here's the thing, um, and we're gonna talk about this a lot in the next episode, but if we have stuff on social media, we can use our email to supplement, to push, to promote people towards what we're already doing online so we can help connect our people, especially in our church, to what we're doing online. And then we can use online to help connect people to our email marketing list to help connect them to our church, our local body, our local assembly. Okay, so how do we start this? What do we do? Nick Clason (11:03): If you're like, okay, great, I'm in, I'm sold, what do I do? Well, first and foremost, if you're part of a church, you're probably watching this as a church, you know, social media manager, a youth pastor or a volunteer who's been handed the reigns of running social media on your church, what are you supposed to do? In most cases, like I said, I believe most churches, um, probably do, and if they don't, they probably should have some sort of church management database system. You know, I currently at the church, I'm at used church Community builder. In the past I've used Rock, I've used, um, uh, we've used ACS realm, we've used planning Center people. These are all different ones that I've used in different places. I've been in my, my ministry, my life. Uh, the reality is you probably want to at least start there because there's going to be the vast majority of your data, of your people, of your email addresses living and existing in there. Nick Clason (11:59): And depending on the, uh, decision making prowess of people, there are gonna be people who in your church, who've already invested in that, paid for that and want you to be using it. I think that that's a great place to start. Um, what if your church doesn't have a database? Well, I definitely would encourage you to do it, and I know that there are some free ones out there. I know that Planning Center people, I believe, at least when I looked at it, this is like five plus years ago, but they said that they would be forever and always free. Um, there are other modules, which is part of the, the downside is like you can get all your data in planning center people, but then to use it for giving or to use it for events or whatever, like those aren't free. And so for them to pair and work well with each other, uh, you have to start paying. Nick Clason (12:46): And so that's the downside. However, let me just say my favorite, the planning center you pay like individually, so like a giving is a, a different price and events is a different price and registration is a different price and services is a different price and all these things, it, it adds up quickly. However, let me just say it's, it was my favorite database I ever worked with, ever, ever, ever. Um, I currently, and most churches I feel like have adopted like c b Church community seems to be a really popular one. Um, very much not my favorite one. It's, it's good, it's sleek, it's got web interface, that's fine. But like on the email side, on the marketing side, and I know that, um, if you guys have been around from the very, very beginning listening to our podcast, if you go back and listen to episode one, the episode like seven or eight, I had a co-host, his name was Matt, he moved and his new job wouldn't really allow him to, to be on this podcast regularly. Nick Clason (13:39): So we've sorta, um, amicably parted ways. He's doing his thing, I'm doing my thing. But Matt was a marketing a marketer first that worked in a church. And I know that his big thing was that databases don't always give him what he wanted as a marketer. So as a marketer, like someone who works in the business space, what he recommended was HubSpot. Um, and that is, that's for making money for businesses and churches are built, uh, with a different, um, need on those church management softwares. And he thought that we could do everything we needed to do for churches in HubSpot. Now, um, to, uh, you know, to push back on that a little bit, he might not have known everything that we needed as churches, right? Like for example, HubSpot might not have a baptism date field in the church community in the like database thing, right? Nick Clason (14:33): But it is, it will give you everything that you need for email addresses, websites, you can create ClickFunnels, you can create, uh, all types of things where you can very easily capture someone's name and email address and then move them down a pathway or a process. And that's what Matt was trying to do at the church that we were both at in Chicago, at Parkview. Ultimately, that's part of the reason why he ended up stepping away. And myself as well. We just, we, he couldn't get people on board with the idea. All that being said, you, if you don't have something, you should have something and you should at least start with exploring some of these free ones. So I'll drop some of these links in the show notes, uh, HubSpot, I'll drop planning center people in the, in the show notes so that you have those things to check out. Nick Clason (15:16): Um, hopefully that's something that's useful and beneficial to you. What should you expect? The, the one main thing I want you to know is that you should not get discouraged by what seems to be low email open rates. So according to studies that have been done for years and years and years, the average email list open rate is 21.3%, which I get that seems crazy low, but when it pertains to email marketing, if you're anywhere in that range, you are succeeding. Surprisingly. I know it's crazy. Uh, this is why delivering things like valuable content with interesting subjects and things that are gonna actually cause people to actually click open the emails is so important. I mean, just think about it for yourself, right? You probably get inundated with emails and you probably just bulk delete them. You're not gonna open them. That's exactly why email openers are at 21.3%. Nick Clason (16:07): That's why it's important to be creative with your subjects. So a couple of things, send it from a person. I've found, uh, if you send it from such and such baptist church.com, uh, this week's announcements that is so easy to ignore, I'm sorry, no offense, no one cares about your announcements enough to open your email list because they're also swimming through their child's elementary school email list and they're Cole's coupons that they're getting. And like all these things, right? They don't care. But if you send it from Pastor Jim and he says, this one key thing helped me grow my faith, all of a sudden you're like, wait, what was that? I wanna know what Pastor Jim's, one key thing to growing in his faith was maybe I should click open that. And then what that is is that's a short little blurb and then boom it to link out to a YouTube short or a full YouTube message that you've done. Nick Clason (16:54): All of a sudden, wait a minute, now we're cooking with gas. See what I'm saying? And if you're not just always only capturing moments from your sermons, then when you send it to your church, people who have already maybe seen that because they've already attended your service. However, keep in mind, at least in most churches I've been to the average person attends 1.4 times per month. So that means they probably more than likely didn't see the sermon. So that is not a bad strategy. However, if you have the bandwidth in time to create something more like a podcast or something else or some other like, um, some other resource that explains more to them, that's gonna be even more valuable. Where your pastor's sitting down having a conversation with another person on staff or a host and he's talking through some of these things and it's maybe sermon related or sermon adjacent, but not just sermon. Nick Clason (17:43): So that's an example of how you can start to kind of bump your email open rates, think through sending it from an actual person and think through crafting sub uh, subjects that spark and evoke curiosity. So that's email marketing. What's text message marketing? So same thing, short message service or sms. You probably heard that before. Marketing is another word to just say text message marketing, but it's a form of marketing that businesses use to send promotions to customers via text message. There's three main benefits of SMS messaging as far as I can see. Number one, it's fast, okay? As opposed to waiting and hoping for people to discover your content and social media, you post it, you kinda wait, you see, does this thing hit the lottery tickets? Do the views go up? SMS messaging your fans, followers, people that likeactually post SMS hap uh, messaging happens almost instantaneously. Nick Clason (18:37): Secondly, the open rates are ridiculous. Open rates are an alarming 98%, which compared to email marketing seems like a messaging hack that is almost too good to be true and you might be right. And then finally, response rates are also good too. You can send a message and rates are are good. Around 45% of people say that they respond to text messaging, uh, messages compared to only about 7% of click rate through email marketing statistics. So those are some of the, um, upsides. Who is it for? Well definitely for, for I think younger people in your church, gen z, gen Alpha, who may only have like an email address to create an account. Um, and they don't, they only like nominally check it. Um, also for parents, um, for people in your church, people, almost everyone has a cell phone these days so you can use it. Nick Clason (19:27): The downfalls of it though can be tricky because you are gonna be navigating some red tape and I will drop a link in the show notes for more of that. Um, and kind of how to navigate that so that you don't get in trouble with like, um, the government and people who are trying to regulate text messaging and text messaging marketing. Um, but while that 98% open rate seems like something you may want to take advantage of it, you also want to be careful not to abuse it either. For example, um, I order my t-shirts from an, actually this is one of those t-shirts, um, from an online t-shirt company and I clicked up, I clicked on a text messaging thing, um, when I ordered to get like a discount and they text me every single day. I ignored them honestly, like I'm not, but the thing is, I'll probably go back and order from them. Nick Clason (20:12): And so when that time comes, I'll scroll back through my messages and see are they offering any sort of promo right now before I go back in order. However, you gotta be careful to not blur that line. So I would suggest probably somewhere between one and two times a week a absolute maximum, maybe even less. But you can, again, if you add value and you send something that's interesting, people are going to be much more inclined to open it. If you're just listen to me. If you're just sending announcement after announcement after announcement about in-person event, in-person event, in-person event, they're not interested in that. However, if you're like, Hey, have you seen this hilarious TikTok that we just posted? Check it out. People might be more inclined to click through some of those things that may seem unspiritual to you. You just have to weigh the benefit of it. Nick Clason (20:59): Cuz here's the thing, if you do send that a few times and that becomes something that people look forward to, then when you do send something meaningful and valuable, they're actually going to click on it and not ignore it because you've sent them things before that seem normal that aren't just invitations back to the church picnic. So the best way to start, I would say, is to build this through your database. Um, some databases require weird things like ours, church community builder, they require needing to know the carrier. So like Verizon at and t, um, others, you can, you can collect them through other text messaging services that you pay per text or whatever. Um, whatever the case may be. A great place to start is probably your church database cuz you've already gotten permission to collect some of that data and so thus to then start parcelling off and using some of that, uh, is not a bad place to start with already a base of people. Nick Clason (21:50): Just make sure that someone has a hook into being able to sign up for a text messaging service if that's something that, uh, they're gonna be able to want to do. Like I said, there are some rules for it. So make sure that you check those out. Link in the show notes. Last but not least, I would definitely be remiss to not mention website. You wanna have a website, um, not necessarily an app and um, our friend Brady Sheer talks about this all the time, so go search stuff on him about church apps. But you wanna have a good mobile friendly website that you can sort of operate as your central stop for everyone in your church and they can know that they can always go to that website and they can get the information that they need. So then your email and your text messaging things are not your primary vehicles and drivers of communication. Nick Clason (22:38): And so if someone's like, crap, where's that information? They're not having to dig back through emails and be like, is that the one? Is that the one? Is that the one? They can know that they're gonna go to your website and it's gonna be useful and reliable. And so I'm not gonna talk much on that cuz that's gonna sort of be the glue to everything in the next episode. But we can't, um, we cannot neglect and we cannot forget to talk about the importance of a good mobile friendly website that people can access on their phones at just about any given time in the world. That links and curates and pulls together all of these social media, email, tech, all these things and they all sort of swirl in and the website is your central spot where all of those are pointing back too. Well, hey everyone, thanks again so much for hanging out in this episode. Nick Clason (23:26): I hope you found this info about email and text messaging helpful. I know I didn't give a lot of like very like, Hey, go to this website and do it because a lot of it is gonna be dependent upon your church. So start exploring, start having those conversations and if they're not existing, hey, guess what? You are the pioneer of this. Don't let it die like it is your, uh, you. This is something that you can steward and that you can take to help spread the message of Jesus to both the people in your church. Drive them deeper down that funnel to be more devoted followers of Christ as well as helping people outside of your church connect more and more with your local church. You are doing an incredible work. Keep it up. Um, and don't forget as always to stay hybrid.

What do we do about Instagram? The app that most milennials use and find themselves on, do we have a need for Instagram in the local church in 2023? Why was it put in behind Facebook in Nick's 6-Step Framework? How should we use the feed? Stories? Reels? And what is the optimized Content Strategy for churches in 2023? Entire Show: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/038 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick FREE e-book: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook TIMECODES 00:00-01:55 Intro 01:55-06:25 The Instagram Usage Statistics of 2023 06:25-08:23 The Instagram Feed Grid for Churches in 2023 08:23-10:03 Instagram Stories in Churches in 2023 10:03-12:10 Instagram Reels for Churches in 2023 12:10-14:59 3 Things to do on Instagram in 2023 14:59-16:40 3 Things to avoid on Instagram in 2023 16:40-17:48 How to Utilize stories on Instagram in 2023 17:48-19:21 How to Utilize Instgram Reels in 2023 19:21-20:41 Instagram Content Strategy Idea for 2023 20:41-22:45 Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:01): Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I, as always am your host, Nick Clason. Thrilled and excited to be with you. We are going to be continuing on through our six part church social media framework and this is actually the very final piece, um, of actual social networks. The next episode we're gonna talk website, text groups, email list, um, which is a little cheating cuz it's more than six, I get it. But that's what we're gonna look and chat, look at, and chat through next week. We are gonna round it out with Instagram today. Excited to be with you Before we dive in, a, uh, would love to encourage you to hop into your podcast app hitter rating hitter review. That would be an incredible resource and an incredible gift to us. We will be thrilled if that's something that you will be willing to do. Nick Clason (00:56): So please take time to do that. Also, we are on YouTube, so hit the show notes for a link to YouTube. If you're watching on YouTube, we're a podcast. So hit the link in the show notes to check out our podcast episode, um, website hybridministry.xyz. And for each and every single episode, we provide for you 100% free of charge transcripts. So if you're on a run and you're hearing something and you're thinking, man, that was really good, I want to go back and look at that a little bit more. I want to extrapolate that out. You can head to the link in the show notes. We will link this exact episode to the link in the show notes hybridministry.xyz/038. Once again, thrilled to be with you. Glad that you guys are here. And without any further ado, let's dive in and start talking about Instagram as a part of your church's six step social media framework. Nick Clason (01:56): All right, let's talk Instagram. So, um, again, if you, uh, did not watch last episode, uh, or listened to it, I would definitely recommend going back and doing it because in our order we want YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram. And the primary reason for putting Facebook ahead of Instagram was, I personally have found it easier to start with Facebook link my two accounts, Instagram and Facebook. Um, on the Facebook side you can try and start linking 'em through Instagram side, but you're eventually gonna end up over needing to do your meta business suite. And that that's just the easiest place to start is Facebook. And so if you're starting from scratch, start with Facebook, but don't abandon or neglect Instagram because Instagram is actually an incredibly used and um, popular resource among Americans. So, uh, just a couple quick Instagram hit quick hitter stats before we dive into actual strategy around it. Nick Clason (02:52): In the US there are 127.2 million Instagram users, uh, in the United States in the year 2023 alone. Uh, Snapchat, conversely is at 89.5 and TikTok is at 89.7 according to stati statistica.com. I'll link some of the stuff in the show notes. Some other interesting, um, stats and statistics is the age breakdown is that male users are at 51.8%. Female users are at 48.2%. Um, the age breakdown on Instagram, 13 to 17 year olds are 8% of the usage. Um, where 18 to 24 year olds are at 30.8% of the usage. 25 to 34 year olds are at 30.3% of the usage. 35 to 44 year olds are at 15.7% of the usage. 45 to 55 year olds, 8.4% of the usage, 55 to 64 year olds, 4.3% of the usage and then 65 plus are at 2.6% of the usage of people on Instagram. Now that being said, you can see that the data skews young, but there's a giant, a giant spike between the ages of 18 and 35. Nick Clason (04:16): Again, my guess is as a church, uh, we did this, this thing with the unstuck organization a couple years ago with the church I worked at and uh, they said it well. They're like, you obviously wanna reach all people and be all things to all people. However, you probably also want to kind of hone in on a demographic and you don't wanna pick one over the other. But once you hone in on one, what you do notice a lot of times is that the other demographics are attracted to just you having some sort of vision. And so my guess is that the demographic, the target demographic that you're attempting to reach if you're a younger church or if you're going to at least try and reach the next generation with kids and students, is that you're gonna wanna squarely reach between 18 and 34. Like that is probably your prime shot and you're probably weak on that 18 to 25, 18 to 30 pre-k um, spot. Nick Clason (05:12): And the reason I know that is cuz just about every church in America is actually kinda weak at that. However, uh, I think that that is still squarely a good demographic to be, um, targeting and and trying to to go after. All right, some other quick Instagram stats, Instagram story, daily active users are at 50, uh, 500 million plus. Uh, the number of businesses on Instagram are 200 million plus. And um, there are 0.59% of Instagram accounts with over 1 million followers. So Instagram, as you can tell, are is still incredibly, um, active. It's still incredibly popular while is very much on the rise, um, and has been challenging Some of these legacy platforms like Instagram, like Facebook, Instagram still has a place, in fact, just like anecdotally, like I prefer TikTok, but my wife, she watches short form videos, but she chooses to do so in the Instagram reels section of Instagram. Nick Clason (06:16): Which leads us to our next section. Let's talk about some of the different features, um, that you can find and can use on Instagram. All right, the first feature is the Instagram feed. Now this is probably the thing that if you are just logging into Instagram for the first time, the first thing you're gonna see is the spot where people post pictures and you scroll. Instagram made the scroll endlessly. Like that was them. They made that, uh, popular and then they made all their social media sort of adapt to that. In fact, I remember the update when Facebook went from side swiping photos to you could click on a photo and you could swipe this way. They did that in response to Instagram. I don't know if that was before or after they acquired it, but nonetheless, like Instagram has been very popular and has made a lot of important headway in the world, um, of social media. Nick Clason (07:07): And so the feed is probably your legacy platform. It's also your social graph spot where you are following the people that you want to follow. Um, and so you get on there, you'd scroll and you'd see, oh, so and so just, you know, they just went on a trip to Brazil. I'm gonna check that out. I'm gonna like it, I'm gonna comment, I'm gonna share. That's what happens on the Instagram feed. I do also think that the Instagram feed was one of the first places where the highly curated look became popularized. And I do think that some of the platforms like TikTok, like Snapchat and even like be real, have um, swung the pendulum back is because they are pushing back against some of the highly curated social media, uh, places. And so they're looking to find a place where you can actually come in, be yourself, be real, show the unfiltered version of yourself. Nick Clason (08:00): And so the whole perfectly edited, perfectly airbrushed photos and curated. I think that that is starting to wane, especially with the newer and younger generation. And so while Instagram and its feed definitely has a position in this six step social media framework, I do think that it is probably one that has grown the most tired and people have grown the most weary of over the years. Let's talk about Instagram's stories. If you log into your Instagram app on your phone across the top, they're little circle icons of different accounts. Uh, and if you like navigate onto an account and there's like a little yellow, not yellow purple or like pink the Instagram gradient, uh, ring around it that indicates that they have a story. Well, when you log into your app immediately right across the top, if there are icons up there, almost inevitably that means that those people have used their stories. Nick Clason (08:53): So that was made popular by the social media Snapchat. It was an idea that you could post something that would last for 24 hours. And so a lot of video, a lot more unfiltered, a lot less curated, a lot more behind the scenes, a lot more just real life. And Instagram stories was an amazing platform and one that um, I think a lot of churches took advantage of and honestly can still take advantage of, like I think for example, really great strategies to just hand that over to someone on your staff once a week and have them do a day in the life. A takeover, a takeover Tuesday. Um, we do it at like on Wednesdays cuz that's our ministry night at our church. And so, um, someone is in charge of taking over the Instagram account either, you know, on a Wednesday all day during the day, uh, to lead into, you know, Wednesday night coming up for, for students or whatever. Nick Clason (09:44): So I think Instagram stories have grown in popularity. Uh, statistic I have here says that 86%, approximately 86% of Instagram users access their stories on a daily basis. So it's still a very popular feature and still one that's very much widely being used by Instagram users today. Let's talk about Instagram reels. The reason most of us are here, especially in 2022 with short form video content, Instagram also stole another feature. Just like they stole stories from Snapchat. They stole reels in that idea from the popular app. TikTok Instagram introduced reels into their platform in August of 2020. Um, it's the same basic premise of what you get on TikTok. Scroll endlessly use trending sounds, do silly dances. One thing that's interesting to note is about a year ago or six months ago or so, Instagram recently converted every single video on their platform from whatever it was over to a reel. Nick Clason (10:43): So for example, I don't know if you remember, there was this platform called I G T V Instagram tv. They're trying to kind of go after YouTube and the long form video pieces, however they went for vertical where YouTube was still focusing on horizontal. Every one of my and i I went in on I G T V when it was new. I used it a lot personally. I used it a lot in my ministry. They've converted all of those I gtv videos over to Rio so they don't sit under an I G T V tab anymore or over an I G T V app, which was its own thing. Which not sure why Instagram felt the need to add a whole nother app that you could still access through their normal app. Nonetheless, I digress. But now you can still find old legacy I G T V videos sitting under your Instagram reels tab. Nick Clason (11:28): That's where all of those have been converted and now that's where they sit. So, uh, Instagram reels, uh, has become very popularized and um, Instagram has gone in to say that we are, we are about reels now. This is our thing. They have recently come out with a little algorithm shift in saying that they do want to push, um, photos, again, not just reels. And so, uh, we'll dive into the Instagram algorithm change in a future episode, but for now, still know that in 2023 I think your strategy should be short form video content. And that does definitely and very much include Instagram real. Let's talk best and worst content strategies for Instagram. Here are three dues on Instagram. Do number one, do post pictures of people in your church congregation. A couple years ago, Brady Sheer went out and did this study. Uh, it was just an anecdotal study, but he took a, uh, cell phone and then you hired a, a photographer and they took pictures in the same day. Nick Clason (12:34): And, uh, the people could not really tell the difference between the cell phone photos and the actual like professionally graded photos. The point in the premise of that is that in your pocket you have the power of an incredibly strong camera that you can use to take photos of people in your church congregation. So take on a Sunday morning, on a Wednesday night, whenever your primary meeting time is, take those photos, post them and use them on the feed. That can almost be your entire content strategy for on the feed. Now there is a probably decent chance that you already have some sort of rhythm with a photographer, whether it be volunteers or whatever, who are regularly taking photos for you. Keep that going. I still think that pictures of people with smiling faces posted on your social media is still a relevant, meaningful, and purposeful content strategy in 2023. Nick Clason (13:28): Content strategy number two is repost your reels. So what I mean by that is, like we said, Instagram is all in on short form video content here in 2023. When you go to post a reel, you have an option to either add it to the feed or take or hide it from your profile grid most often, cuz I, you've heard me say in past episodes perhaps that I post three uh, TikTok slash reels a day. So I don't post all three of those to the feed, but I do choose one that I want to post to the feed. So for example, we will often have fun, silly, goofy content, um, but one of them is gonna be serious. And I often choose to post that one to the feed so that more of our church people are seeing it. So use the Instagram post to feed option as a way to supplement your Instagram strategy, especially on your Instagram feed. Nick Clason (14:20): Also use some funny content. We talked about this in the YouTube trends report, but essentially 63% of Gen Z followed a meme account in the last year. And, um, gen Z and and people on social media are looking for brands and people to repurpose and use funny meme based silly kind of content like that. So use that stuff. Use memes on in short form video, use static memes. Um, we do a meme Monday and I think that there's a market for that even if you're not youth ministry. So don't be afraid to be funny. Don't be afraid to lean in and try and create a laugh moment. Here's some things to avoid on Instagram. Avoid announcements and graphics. Okay? Those just simply don't perform very well and people do not get on social media to be announced at or have been told what's coming up next. Nick Clason (15:14): If all you're doing on your social media is announcing things and reminding people about events, change your strategy. There is a way to incorporate announcements but still use the medium of the day. So, for example, you can do trending meme sounds, dances, things like that, that are reals, that are tos. However you can do those that are funny about like the upcoming event. So for example, last summer or spring as we were leading into summer camp, there was a, a trending sound that I found that is something like, it smells like a public restroom in here. And I just created a thing with like a green screen background, like a cabin type vibe, right? And I said, P o v, which stands for point of view pov middle school boys cabin at camp. And then I posted it, right? That's a, that's a camp adjacent announcement. Nick Clason (16:03): It's different than just a graphic for hey Santa for summer camp, right? But, uh, it still gets to point across. So don't just post graphics and announcements. Also with whatever you do, avoid stock footage. You may now have photos of people send someone this week to take photos of people in your church and boom, you'll have photos of people. Please while you are getting things up and running on your website or your Instagram, avoid photos of people because it's disingenuine. It's not who your church is. It's not true representation of the people in your church. It is a paid version of the people in your church. So do not use stock footage, especially on the Instagram feed. What do we do about stories? I would still use stories. Um, and I used to be all in on a story strategy and try and posting something every single day. Nick Clason (16:50): Uh, you still can be, but with as many reels as I post now I can supplement kind of some of that content. We'll get that to that in a minute. Um, bond stories I would recommend using the just the Instagram stories editor. You can use things like the question sticker. You can use things like the poll sticker. The link sticker, which is an amazing resource to have. The emoji slider tool. Like how much do you like this? All the way up, all the way down countdowns. You can do takeovers, like I said. Uh, you can spam your stories during big events. Spam is just a turmoil, like you just overwhelm it and you have so many little dots across the top. Um, you can give it over to a friend, a volunteer, a student to, to post to, to make it feel like you are in the moment of the event. Nick Clason (17:34): You can also kind of create a little bit of FOMO with that. So I definitely recommend still using and utilizing your Instagram stories feature. It's a place where you can post content that doesn't have to go on your feet and kind of like live there forever. Finally, Instagram reels. You know that my preferred strategy personally is to post three Instagram reels a day. And when I say Instagram reels often I post it in TikTok first, then I copy the link, then I go to a browser that says download, um, download TikTok video without watermark, paste the link in there, download it, and then I go post it over to Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube shorts. Yes, there's a lot of manual work and very recently, and we're gonna do a review on this here soon, I've come across a, um, posting tool for you. And so right now I'm trying a third party service and I don't like it very much. Nick Clason (18:29): And I'll tell you why in a minute. In a future episode, I'm gonna also try posting some stuff through the native apps, um, of TikTok of the Meta Business suite, uh, to see if that does anything for me. However, I'm just gonna be honest with you, I like posting in live time. Yeah, sometimes it's annoying cuz it, you know, I'm reminded I have to do it and it pops up at a very inconvenient time, but I still like that idea and I can edit things right on my phone that way. Otherwise I have to do all of my editing, a hundred percent of my editing in like, uh, computer software and, and save it to a hard drive somewhere to access it later. And, and that's sometimes a little bit inconvenient, but you should be leaning into Instagram real content. You can use it to supplement what goes on your feet. Nick Clason (19:13): You can use it to supplement what goes in your stories and I would definitely recommend, um, going all in on it. So just a quick reminder and recap. What I do and what I use on my personal Instagram at our church is we do a me Monday, which are photos on the feed. We do a Tuesday message recap from the previous Wednesday. Remember, we're a student ministry. That's a reel. I also post that to my feed Wednesday night. I do a either a carousel post of 10 photos of students or a highlight video, um, of that night and post that to the feed. If I don't post a video to the feed, it's cuz I posted photos, but I'm still posting the reel. Uh, Thursday we do a recap video of the message from the night before. And then on Friday I like to do, um, a photo dump of the Wednesday. Nick Clason (20:00): So that's, if I, if I don't do it on Wednesday, I'll save it for Friday and do a photo dump there on Friday. Then I'll inter intermix, uh, different, uh, story stuff, like mostly just real, uh, stuff, things, honestly, I go to reels, things that don't perform super well, and I repost 'em to my story so that people still see them. Uh, and then I'll do a takeover once a week. And that's primarily our Instagram strategy for now. So most of it's kind of built out and happening over in Instagram reels, a few things on feed to make sure that we're still showing up and stories, but the most, most of it's all kind of happening reels. And you, you look here, like we do, uh, a photo dump and a meme post. And that's basically it for like static photo posts. Hey, well once again, thanks for sticking around to the end of the episode. Nick Clason (20:46): Hey, to all of you on YouTube, hello to all of you listening and your earbuds on a run. So glad that you joined us. We are done with social media. We have one final, uh, area. We're gonna focus on website and, uh, text messaging and email and how do those all work together with social media. And then we're gonna put it all together. So join us in the next episode. So we have done, uh, YouTube, we have done TikTok, we've done Facebook, we've done Instagram. We will do those other platforms, website, social media, uh, website, texting and email. And then finally, part six, we're gonna put it all together and say, Hey, here is your church content, social media strategy for 2023. So glad you joined us. Hey, if you have not grabbed your e-book, how to create a TikTok from start to finish. As you heard in this episode, it, Instagram is still very much in on reels. Nick Clason (21:37): So if you need to create some reels, uh, you can do that and learn how to do that through the TikTok editor and by posting a TikTok and do it all on TikTok, download it. Boom, go over post it on a reel. So there you go. There's your ebook. Go check that out at our website, link in the description below. Subscribe wherever you're listening, subscribe maybe wherever you're watching. So good that you joined us, we would love it if you could drop a five star rating or review just to help us get the word out. We want more people to become aware of the incredible message of Jesus, how important it is to be leaning into the hybrid hybridization of your church. I'll just add some friends over last night from our, from the church I work at, they're all a little bit younger and every single one of 'em was like, yeah, we want more hybrid. We're all trying to think and lean into that direction. So, uh, it is the wave of the future, so don't shy away from it. Try to lean into it. Try something new this week and don't forget, and as always, stay.

Does Gen Z even care about Facebook? The assumption of course is no, but is that accurate? And why does Nick recommend facebook ahead of Instagram? Finally, what are the 3 ways in which you should be utilizing facebook as a church in 2023? EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/037 YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick FREE EBOOK: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook SHOWNOTES How to Run a Successful Ad: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/009 TIMECODES 00:00-03:35 Introduction 03:35-09:00 Facebook.. Does Gen Z care about Facebook? 09:00-15:11 The History of Facebook and what it is today 15:11-18:36 Reason 1) Create a Facebook Page 18:36-20:59 Reason 2) Link your Facebook & Instagram Accounts 20:59-24:00 Reason 3) Create a Facebook Group 24:00-25:55 Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:02): Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode in addition of the hybrid ministry show. My name is Nick Clason. I, as always, I'm your host, excited to be with you. And in this episode, we are going to be diving into our third platform that you should be focused on as a church in building out the six step framework for social media or churches in 2023. Now, this one, um, is gonna be a little bit of a zig or a zag because my guess is if you, uh, know me, you know my story. I am a youth pastor and so I'm gonna be, I do this a lot from the realm of and um, position of being a youth pastor. And so this one you're gonna be like, wait a minute, what is he recommending before? What other one? Cuz you know, so far we've done YouTube and we've also done TikTok. Nick Clason (01:01): And so probably your assumption would be that we would be moving on to Instagram and if I were to rank platforms in the order of importance, it would go TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and then Facebook. But today we are going to talk about Facebook and there's a few reasons why and we're gonna get to that. So make sure you stick around to the very end of the episode cuz we're gonna talk about the three primary reasons why you should start with Facebook as opposed to Instagram, especially if you're starting from scratch. And those three reasons are also relevant and prevalent. If you are already on both of those platforms. There's just gonna be some things and, uh, some technical, uh, linking things that you're gonna need and want to do that are gonna help you optimize your performance on both of those platforms, Instagram and Facebook. Nick Clason (01:49): All right, um, real quick, let's talk about, uh, before we dive in, you know, too much. I want to remind you, you can head over to our YouTube channel. If you are listening on a podcast, hit the link in the show notes and give us a subscribe there that would help us out tremendously. If you're discovering us and watching us on YouTube, hit the link in the show notes over to hybrid ministry.xyz. That is the homepage and home base for our podcast. And every single episode, including this one, which will have a link to the show notes, has a fully flushed out transcript. So you can go and you can grab the fully flushed out transcript for this episode and any of our past episodes as well as that's where you can get the free download called, have I already Ruined my Church's TikTok account? Nick Clason (02:32): And that is your complete guide to handing your phone to someone and say, Hey, post me a TikTok. And if they have no idea what they're doing, that will walk them through step by step. All of that is available, um, in our show notes. That's also available on our website. So give us a subscribe, give us a rating or a review, we would love it. And follow us in all the places. I personally, uh, am on TikTok and I am on YouTube and I'm trying to grow on both of those places to just the word out to help more people like you, church content communicators, church social media managers, youth pastors, part-time college students who got handed a phone from your pastor and said, Hey, we should probably be on social media. Yes, I am here to help you. And that is my entire goal is to help show you one of the ways that you can approach this in your church, in your life and in your ministry. Nick Clason (03:24): So without any further ado, let's hop into this episode of Facebook, the platform that Gen Z doesn't care about or do this. All right, so Facebook, does Gen Z care about Facebook? So there was an article back in 2015, um, by Pew Research that found that 71% of teenagers from the age 13 to 17 say that they used Facebook. And at that time they easily beat out platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. That's an encouraging number. And so for a lot of youth pastors, a lot of people working with Next generation, a lot of people doing social media, um, it kept the impetus and the importance of making Facebook a priority, making it something that you continually should be investing in. All right? However, back in 2022, which is not that long ago, from the drop of this, uh, podcast or the drop of this videos only a year or so ago, it tells us a different story. Nick Clason (04:26): So that number in 2015 was at 71%, but it has now dropped to that same age demographic. 13 to 17 year olds is now dropped to 32%. Then you might be thinking then like, why in the world are we making this a priority? Obviously it's tapering off with younger people, it's really only relevant for older generations. And while our church may have a good crop of people in older generation who are still using and active on Facebook, the reality is like that is dropping more and more. And that is true, and I will a hundred percent affirm you. And if you do decide that you don't want to take on Facebook as a platform, I totally get that. Um, especially if you wanna trend younger and be more relevant. Because the reality is this is like even Gen Z, or I'm sorry, gen X, uh, millennials, boomers, they use some of the other platforms that we're talking about here. Nick Clason (05:16): They're active on YouTube, some of them probably do have a TikTok account. And so if you want to abandon Facebook altogether, you can. The thing is, reality is probably you as a church, you probably already have a Facebook account. It's already probably been established and it's probably been active for years. And so what do you do and how do in this, you know, ever shifting landscape, do you continue to even use and reinvest in Facebook? I do think that there's a spot for it. I do think that there are some pertinent things that are worth you understanding and noticing. Um, and I'm gonna talk about those and especially in the very final episode of this six step kind of framework, we're gonna, um, put all of these platforms back together, right? And we're gonna gonna say here with all these different platforms, all these different like things we talked about, what is a full fledged church social media framework and strategy, taking all these pieces and putting 'em together. Nick Clason (06:09): So you're gonna see where Facebook fits into that. Um, but the answer to this is why we think we should continue to, um, participate in Facebook. The answer is twofold. So part number one, like we said in the last episode about TikTok, if you only have time to invest in one, invest in TikTok, I say that primarily for younger ministries, youth pastors, but quite honestly, uh, I think I would still say that the purpose for that is, uh, true, uh, for even like a church, not just a youth ministry like church, trying to reach people for their, you know, their community, their town, whatever. Like nothing wrong with just investing in TikTok. Uh, and a lot of the things today that we're gonna talk about are gonna feel like a lot of groundwork. And so that might be boring and you might not yield as many returns on it. Nick Clason (06:52): And so you're probably gonna have to spend a day or a week slow out some of these things, figuring out some of the things. Um, however, if you do wanna build out a fully robust holistic social media strategy, like I said, we're gonna put that together in the final episode of this little mini-series that we're doing. Facebook needs to be a part of it, not necessarily for the reasons that you might think. However, I will caveat this and say in the ranking of importance for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, Facebook is very last on my list for the specific platforms to invest in, right? Like I've, I've said, okay, however, your usage on Facebook on meta is gonna be for three primary reasons. And starting with Facebook's GI gives you an easier road, uh, to launch some other social media or, and this part's important or marketing endeavors that you may be interested in or your church or your pastor or your executive pastor might be interested in you carrying out, overseeing and executing. Nick Clason (07:48): All right? And so we're gonna look at this as more of a, um, foundation building as opposed to like a v going viral and, and drumming up a lot of interest and reaching a lot of people. Okay? So be that as it may, Facebook still plays a pretty crucial and important role. Before we go too much further, I do wanna share one last stat with you. 32% of users on Facebook are teenagers. That isn't a lot, but that also isn't nothing. And those teenagers are still users of Facebook. They may not be contributors, but they are as some social media people have dubbed lurkers, which means they are viewing what's going on on Facebook, and they will grow up and they will become, um, the age of the, uh, adults in your church. And in addition to that, a lot of families have parents who spend a lot of their time on Facebook. Nick Clason (08:38): And so if you're a demographic, if you're a church reaching families, you may not be reaching their teenagers, but you may be catering to and reaching their parents and there's um, uh, there is a benefit to doing that. All right, so let's dive into Facebook before the history of it and what it is now. Okay, Facebook before and now let's go back to the beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. Okay, maybe not that far back. Let's go a little further. Okay, let's go to 2004. In 2004, you probably heard of a guy by the name of Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg launched and started Facebook as a social media platform. He launched it in 2004 on Harvard University's campus. He was a sophomore, and his primary purpose there was to connect Harvard students to other Harvard students. And so back in the very original OG Facebook days, it was built primarily for college campuses so that you could see the faces of other college students, know their names, get to know them, but by the end of the year, the almost unimaginable had happened for Zuckerberg and over 1 million users, 1 million users were on Facebook, and the reach had then expanded beyond just his simple campus. Nick Clason (09:55): And the spread was like wildfire. And Facebook changed the game forever. Facebook is often thought to be one of the major contributors of ushering in the, uh, the, the, what am I looking for? The setting or the, the, the, gosh, why is this word so hard for me? I don't know what I'm trying to say, but ushering in the idea of Web 2.0. So Web 1.0 was just basic HTML website's, text on a screen, web 2.0 allowed the users to actually be contributing, formatting, crafting what was being said. We are now, by the way, in a world of Web 3.0 where users can create their own reality. Right now it's primarily through things like vr, but the algorithms which are less social graph and now more discovery based are helping you sort of find and create your own reality, which by the way, I think is a little bit dangerous, especially if you are a pastor and you are anchored in the truth of God's word. Nick Clason (10:53): However, as opposed to bucking that and saying that you need to just ca cast your phone into like a fire, um, and not look at TikTok, I think you need to help people steward that, that they've been given because now honestly, the reality is social media is not very social like it was back in the day. Uh, we've seen that Gen Z has watched millennials and Gen Xers use and, and lean into their community being all digital, and it has honestly yielded not very good results. So I honestly see a good pendulum shift in some of our Gen Z students and people that I interact with because they lean into more real authentic community. So why are they spending so much time on platforms like TikTok and YouTube? They're, they're, they're honestly there for entertainment more than they are for like social connection. And that's the thing, Facebook was built as a platform of social connection. Nick Clason (11:43): And so now it is a legacy platform and it's been around forever and it is still a major player and a major contributor in the game. However, they are having to, having to adjust to TikTok and YouTube have been ushering in, in these last several years that they've seen the younger generations adapt. And because Facebook knows that great Aunt Betty is going to eventually no longer be a user at some point because she's not going to be living on this planet of earth, they need to start catering to the younger generations if they want anyone to even adopt their platform. The reality is a lot of people are not huge fans of Facebook altogether, but whether they know it or not, they're using platforms under the Facebook umbrella. So all that being said, Facebook still remains the number one social media platform to this day based on, uh, based on number of users according to an article, which we will link in the show notes of backlinko backlink.io, I always get that one messed up. Nick Clason (12:38): Backlink io Facebook presently has 1.9 billion daily users, which is 6.89% increased year over year. In addition to the massive usage that is found and seen by Facebook users and contributors. Uh, Facebook has been acquiring more and more products, uh, over their lifetime and life cycle. Here are some of the products that they've acquired. You may be have heard of them, Instagram, WhatsApp, gfi, Oculus, and many more. In fact, if my counting and calculations are correct, Facebook has a total acquisition of over 88 different products, um, or companies or tech like focused things, okay? And the total cost of those acquisitions is estimated to be north of 23 billion with a B dollars. So I will link that, that article as well because honestly, uh, I didn't read all of them to you because you get really bored. There's really only like four or five that you probably actually recognize by name, WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus gif, you the rest are like, what? Nick Clason (13:46): And they just absorbed these companies into them and, and stole their intellectual property, not stole, bought their intellectual property to use for their, their behalf and their betterment. Okay? And so as I was first, uh, sitting down to record this podcast and thinking about all this Facebook stuff, um, the reality is this, fast forward to October, 2021, Facebook announces this is the big shift here from Facebook back then to Facebook. Now, Facebook announces a change in their name from Facebook as the parent company to the name Meta. You probably know that if not, you've probably seen it and been unaware that that is, that is where that comes from. All right? And so the name reflects as the company says, um, the name reflects the company's growing ambitions to be relevant beyond just social media. They want to build technology that will help connect people. That's what they say their ultimate goal is. Nick Clason (14:38): Uh, I'll link that article in the show notes, but with the announcement of the name change from Facebook into Meta, this giant conglomerate of products that Meta has acquired over the years, it leads us specifically now to how you in your church can and probably should be using Facebook in your context here in 2023 as a part of the six step Church social medium framework. So without any further ado, let's hop in to reason number one, why you should be using Facebook. Reason number one, and the way in which you should be using Facebook in your church and in your ministry is to create a Facebook page. Now, Facebook page is the corporate side of Facebook. It is where businesses and corporations go to have their hours. It's where they link their website. It's, it's where they, at some point in time, we'll run ads and your church more than likely has a corporate company Facebook page. Nick Clason (15:37): I would recommend that you start with a Facebook page, not necessarily, because I think it's a great strategy for reaching people organically anymore in 2023. However, it is going to help sort of be the anchor for everything that you do on Facebook. And if you start there, especially if you don't have anything already launched right now, but if you start there, then sort of from there, the rest of everything else can kind of spread, which is one of the reasons why I have jumped Facebook over Instagram, for example, because Facebook is the owner of Instagram. And so if you start with that Facebook page, then you can sort of build things out from there. One of the things that you need to know about Facebook is it's not just a simple username and password sort of login. So if you're inheriting a Facebook page, what you need to do is you need to discover who the admin is on the Facebook page. Nick Clason (16:24): The person who has a personal specific profile, their first name and last name, they are an admin to an account. And that is who runs or who is kind of doing the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, um, managing of Facebook pages. That's how Facebook works. So for example, I just moved to a church about six months ago. They had a a Facebook page, and everyone that I asked, I kept asking to try and get login information for it. They're like, oh yeah, the username password should be on this password document sheet that we have. And, and I just was like, no, that's, that's not how it works. Like, it's not just like I log into Facebook, I have to log in as myself, Nick Clason on my Facebook page, and then I have to be made an administrator or an admin or an editor or a moderator or whatever the case might be, whatever the role is that is decided that has to happen to me, my account, not a login into a specific place. Nick Clason (17:20): Okay? So when you start on this place, everything else can sort of be driven from that. The other reason that you would wanna start with a Facebook page is that some point you may want to run ads on your Facebook page. Um, and you may, you can do that either on Facebook, you also can do that through Facebook to your Instagram count if you find Instagram more beneficial to your audience. But you do that through the business suite, the meta suite. And so, um, learning to run an ad is probably one of the most maddening processes, especially if you have no idea what you're doing, what some of the language means or whatever if you're a complete nbe. And so one time I interviewed my friend, former co-host of this podcast, Matt Johnson. He is a marketing freaking guru, uh, and he has done some incredible things, marketing, especially in the ministry space, if you are or have ever heard of or are familiar with the company, dare to share. Nick Clason (18:16): He was behind a lot of what they did and a lot of what got them out, uh, visible to a lot of people out in the world. And so, um, he walks us through in a former episode, not link that in the show notes of how to step, how to set up an ad, step by step, uh, running a Facebook ad. So that's there for you. Hopefully that's helpful to you. All right? Step number two is beyond the Facebook page. You should also link your Facebook and Instagram accounts. This is probably one of the most obvious or low hanging fruit reasons why you should start with Facebook, because once you link them, then it's really no extra work, especially if you start on the Instagram side, which we'll get to that in the next episode. But if you start on the Instagram side posting something, all you do is simply toggle on a switch that says also post to Facebook, and boom, you're posting the same content in two places. Nick Clason (19:08): That used to be a no-no. That used to be something that you shied away from. But now it's actually something that I and many other church social media marketing managers encourage, especially with the current thing that every social media is focusing on short form video content. It doesn't matter if it's also posted on Instagram, on Facebook, I did a thing the other day, we do this stupid game on our, uh, Instagram, on our TikTok, on our YouTube shorts called, um, , it's called ABC Cheese. So we have a little craft singles and we try to bite like just two of us and try to bite out a letter. And the other person was trying to guess what it's, and so I just was like curious and I was like, how many views did this video in total get? And so I, I looked on YouTube, I looked on TikTok, I looked on Instagram reels, and I looked on Facebook reels, and in total we had somewhere between seven and 800 views on just that one stupid video alone by posting it to all those different platforms. Nick Clason (20:05): You know, like one had 600, one had a hundred, one had 300, one had 200, you know what I mean? That kind of all adds up. And you start to think about it, you're like, dang, that's like seven, eight, 9,000 hun. You know, thou not a thousand hundred, 900, a thousand people reach. Like it's a lot, man. Like that's, that's, that's something that churches, youth ministries would've been begging for in years past and before with Facebook pages, primarily as the marketing tool and engine, you had to pay to do it. And you, I mean, you still do if you wanna market stuff, but you can kind of like punch your lottery ticket with any of these reels or short form video and just blow up, or not even blow up, but just get a hundred views across four platforms that adds up to north of 500, north of 700, north of 900 views on any single video. Nick Clason (20:56): I think most people would say that that's worth it. All right? The third and final way and, and um, path that I think you should take on Facebook is create a Facebook group. According to a 2021 study, there were approximately 233 million Facebook users in the US alone. 18.2 of those users belong to the 18 to 24 age group, while 18% of those users are 35 to 34 years old. So in total, you're looking at, almost 40% of your users are between the age of 18 and 44. So while your teenagers, your youth ministry might not be spending a lot of time on Facebook, other platforms, um, other people, older demographics definitely are. And I think that you, one of your largest wins as a church is to create a group because that is where you can make community on social media feel intimate and in, in fact, it's probably one of the only platforms that offers a close sort of intimate community style feel. Nick Clason (21:56): And so I do think of all of the features that Facebook does have to offer. You can have a group. And so again, if you start with a page, then out of that you can create a group that's connected to that page and you can post as the page admin or you can switch your profile and you can be interacting as yourself in the group, and you can make that that switch. And they've started to make that a lot easier. If you go onto the page on your phone or on your browser, it'll give you a little notification in one of the corners somewhere that says you're interacting as the, the brand, you're interacting as the page or you're interacting as yourself. And then it just gives you a button there. Do you wanna switch? And you click switch and it switches over between yours or your page. Nick Clason (22:37): And so you can make some of those things. You also have the opportunity to go to the business suite and schedule some stuff. You can also link and schedule that over to your Instagram. And they now offer scheduling for reels. They offer scheduling for stories, which were not things that they offered previously. All the schedule tools really only posted like static images to pages, um, and your Instagram grid feed. But now they're starting to offer more. Uh, they do, in my personal experience, I've really only been experimenting with schedulers for a little bit here now, but they do seem to choke down your organic reach all of those platforms like it, when you post live time, there really is no way around that. No matter how much you try, no matter how, how much these like schedulers promised you, you're gonna just have better performance on all of your stuff if you are posting it. Nick Clason (23:26): Um, and that, but that's a value proposition that you have to weigh through, especially if you have a million other responsibilities. Is it worth it to peace of mind, have it scheduled and you don't have to worry about it? Or is it something that you should, you know, wade into and navigate choice is yours? It's kind up to you. Um, so one of the best things that can do though as a church is to run a Facebook group. And over time you don't even have to be supplying that with a lot of content. The content hopefully will be generated by the users that are already a part of your Facebook group community. Well, everyone, once again, thank you so much for hanging out for this entire episode. I hope that you found this episode helpful. Like I said, the Facebook, uh, episode's a lot more focused on nitty gritty groundwork, building up some stuff so that you can build up a more robust and full social media strategy. Nick Clason (24:18): We are going to be diving into that in the future episodes. But coming up next, we are finally moving on to Instagram. We're gonna talk about some strategies and some reasons behind how you can be using Instagram effectively as a church in your 2023 social media framework. In addition to that, before we, we get to the very final piece where we put it all together, we are gonna talk email and texting and website. And so those three things are also critically important, I think to sort of serve as a backdrop and or as a lead generator for some of these other social media platforms to your already existing church audience that you have access to through a database and Excel spreadsheet or whatever the case might be in your particular context. Again, excited to be with you and excited to be right here now on the downhill slide of our six part church miniseries on church social media in 2023. Nick Clason (25:13): If you found this episode helpful, do me a favor and please send it to a friend, share it, rate it, review it, all those things are incredibly helpful to me, and they're a free for you to just give back in a very small way to our podcast and the work that we've been doing here at Hybrid Ministry. You can also check out free transcripts that we provide for you for every single episode, and that's over http://www.hybridministry.xyz. Hit the show notes for all the articles that we mentioned for all the other, uh, episodes that we reference for all the other social media places that you can follow me. And until next time, and as always, stay hybrid.

In this episode Nick talks about the social media platform that you should most be focusing on in 2023. If you don't have time to do any other social, you should be leaning into this social platform, TikTok. He lays out the current state of TikTok, why you should go in on it, how you should go in on it, and gives links and resources to other episodes or resources to help you flesh out your social media calendar for your church in 2023. Entire Episode with Complete Transcript: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/036 Watch this Podcast Episode: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g Follow Nick on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick SHOWNOTES Is Digital a Valid Method of Preaching? https://www.hybridministry.xyz/029 9 TikTok and Reels Videos to use at your church this week! https://www.hybridministry.xyz/023 The Ultimate 2023 Social Media Calendar, Strategy and Posting Guidelines https://www.hybridministry.xyz/025 TIMECODES 00:00-02:12 - Intro 02:12-08:40 The Current State of TikTok 08:40-13:35 What does all of this mean? 13:35-18:52 What content should my church post? 18:52-23:40 The Nitty Gritty of Posting to TikTok with Hooks, Captions and where to place your text on screen 23:40-24:59 Conclusion and Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:02): All right. 3, 2, 1. Well, hello there, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I, as always, am your host, Nick Clason. So thrilled to be here with you, uh, on this episode. And we are going to be continuing on in our journey of the sixth Step Church social media framework. But today, in this episode, I am gonna talk about a social media that if you don't have time to go in on any of the other things that we talk about, this is the one that I highly, highly recommend as a youth pastor myself. Um, I recommend this primarily for student ministries. Um, however, I wanna be very clear that, um, this is a, the number one, uh, social media for Generation Z. And you might think, oh, I'm exempt from that. I don't have to worry about Generation Z. And that's just simply not true. Nick Clason (00:58): You do. Um, and it will become more and more of a prevalent, uh, problem, so to speak. Not that Generation Z is a problem, but, uh, more and more of a prevalent, um, uh, demographic in your church congregation. More and more, they're graduating every single year, and then they're soon becoming a part of the church or not a part of a church. If we're not willing to speak their native language, and if we're not willing to, uh, reach them where they are soon as youth pastors, we are no longer going to have Generation Z even as a part of our ministry because Generation Alpha is right now sitting in our sixth grade, our fifth grade, our fourth grade, they are the soon to be new generation. And so Gen Z, this digital strategy matters for them. And yes, you guessed it. We are talking about TikTok. Nick Clason (01:44): So all that, and more on this episode, as always, show notes, hybridministry.xyz, subscribe on YouTube. Follow me personally on my TikTok, uh, give us a light, give us a subscribe. A subscribe. And please, we would love it if you would give us a rating, especially if you find this information helpful, share it with a friend. But without any further ado, let's dive into why TikTok matters. All right, well, let's talk about the current state of TikTok as it stands in 2023. So, uh, TikTok in just 11 years, so starting back in 2011, all the way now to, um, 2023, so I guess 12 years, uh, TikTok has grown from zero users all the way up to 1 billion estimated users ranking it fourth in social media usage and platforms. So it's only behind Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and then TikTok is fourth. Facebook is at 2.9 billion. Nick Clason (02:48): YouTube is at 2.2 billion. Instagram is at 1.4 billion, and TikTok is at 1 billion. Now, keep in mind that I think that, uh, Facebook and Instagram both play a role, but if you're going to go all in on one, I think you should go all in on TikTok. Facebook often is, uh, really popular with the generation of generation X. Instagram is much more popular with my generation, generation of millennials, and TikTok was made famous by our favorite, um, generation, generation Z and TikTok is driving what these other legacy platforms of Facebook, of Instagram, and even YouTube are doing. So all of the players ahead of TikTok in the, um, estimated users, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, all three of those, if you notice, have a TikTok feature, uh, element woven into 'em reels, Instagram reels, Facebook reels, and YouTube shorts, and they're all three trying to compete and catch up with the wild craze that is TikTok. Nick Clason (03:49): So what even was TikTok, you might remember that TikTok originally started as a brand called a musical dot l wire or Musical Lee, and it was branded and started much as a lip syncing app. I remember as a youth pastor, there were students that would just lip sync and do the musical Lee, uh, type of deals. And so, uh, it was rebranded as TikTok, and it has come around and it has shot up in a meteoric eyes of popularity to become the almost number one. Um, and not like number one downloads, like I just read through the stats, but like number one in, uh, just desirability, right? Of like entertainment apps and social media switched right from being like this social, legitimately social like connection of like human people. I'm friends with my grandma and I'm friends with my aunt to a, uh, platform of entertainment. Nick Clason (04:43): You get on there to watch, to be entertained, to be informed, to be inspired, to be encouraged, to learn something, to laugh, all right? That's what TikTok has kind of become. And so, TikTok, um, was historically thought to be adopted and used by teenagers primarily. And that's why, again, when we think of Generation Z, we think, oh, those are teenagers, right? But I wanna read for you something. Um, some of the most recent data says this, 10 year olds to 19 year olds make up 32.5% of the users on TikTok, where 20 to 29 year olds make up 29.5% of the users on TikTok. 30 to 39 year olds make up 16.4, 40 to 49 year olds make up 13.9 and 50 plus make up 7.1. So if you do some quick dirty math, you're looking at greater than 60% of your users are anywhere from the age of 10 to 30. Nick Clason (05:36): And if you do a little bit more math, 75% of the users on the TikTok app are under the age of 40. Now, let me ask you, is this something that youth pastors only need to be worried about? And I would contend that the answer is no. Yes, the greatest use is of the younger generations, but 10 to 19, that 19 year old's gonna be 20 pretty soon. And my guess is you wanna reach a 20 year old. Like, my guess is you wanna reach a 25, a 27, a 32 year old, and so start going where they are. So according to an article from, uh, September, 2022 in the New York Times, uh, this is what it has said. It said, TikTok is now becoming the new search engine for Generation Z. Here's what the quote says. This is a powerful tool for teenagers, for students, and for the people in your congregation. Nick Clason (06:30): So according to this Afor engine, New York Times article, more and more young people are using talk's powerful algorithm, which personalizes the videos that are shown to you and your for you page, which is based on your interactions with the content. And so to find, uh, information that UNC candidly caters to their tastes, the tailoring, that tailoring is then coupled with a sense that there are real people on the app and are synthesizing and delivering information rather than just simply faceless websites. So there, right there is where you find the social component, but greater than 80 to 90% of the content that most people interact with on TikTok comes from people that they have never met. So pair in mind that the, the usage is meteoric and it is rising faster and faster. And also that now Generation Z is going to TikTok as one of their pry Mary places for search. Nick Clason (07:31): And what did we talk about was the reason in the last episode that YouTube was such a crucial, uh, ground for you to be diving into as a church, as a church creator, is you could create very custom howto content. So that's also now the case with TikTok. One last thing that is, uh, important for you to know about TikTok, while the, while TikTok does, uh, have is only fourth, right? In the overall ranking of, um, social media apps, there was a term, um, coined as power users and 29% of TikTok users are considered power users, and they're the ones who will use the app every single day and further study on that TikTok users spend wait for it on average 95 minutes per day. That's over, that's an hour and a half of their day spent on the app, which does rank number one amongst all of the social media apps for most time used on the TikTok app. Nick Clason (08:34): So that is where we are. What does all of this mean? All right, so what does all of this mean? Like we said, TikTok is beginning to trend older, and even the users themselves are just simply getting older. And it is right now the leader, right? The leader for Generation Z, um, and I think probably soon to be millennials, and those, uh, people are soon to be square in the main demographic of people that your church is likely going to be focused on reaching. The other reason, like I said earlier, consider the fact that Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube have all recently adopted a TikTok algorithm, reels, shorts, right, to make as a cornerstone of their social media, um, strategy moving forward. And so they're, they are responding to this social media app over here, which is why I don't think it's it's necessarily worth, uh, your, I don't know that you need to be ignoring it or that you should be ignoring it, right? Nick Clason (09:34): These other social media platforms, I feel like, oh, we're gonna be all in over here on YouTube, on Instagram to perform well on YouTube and Instagram right now. You need to go all in on the TikTok feature that they have implemented. It's not called TikTok, it's called reels, it's called shorts. But you need to still be all in over on that. And so the legacy platform that made that famous, you should start there. Those are reasons why I think TikTok is currently the most important of all the things you might be wondering. Well then why we talk about YouTube last week, and we're gonna talk about this in the very final episode, but just as a sneak peek of this little, uh, series that we're doing, um, you always want to be able to take your short form content and point it back to something more longer form, and that's where that can live over there on YouTube. Nick Clason (10:16): That's the short answer to that. Okay? So I also want to consider some of the theological implications for this, okay? Acts chapter one, verse eight, very famously, the Great Commission, Jesus says, but you will receive the power of the Holy Spirit. He'll come upon you, and then you'll be my witnesses telling people about me in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and then ultimately to the utter most parts of the Earth. You might be thinking, well, yeah. So why does me posting a dancing video of my senior pastor on TikTok accomplish the mission of reaching people? Talk's? Algorithm is largely a mystery. People have been trying to crack that code. Obviously, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube are all studying it to try and create their own versions of it. However, there is one thing that we do know is that what, the way that TikTok spreads the message is very much in the same concentric circles that we see described by Jesus in Acts chapter one. Nick Clason (11:08): Verse eight starts by sharing it to your followers. And if they respond well to it, it'll share it to more of their followers. And it starts even geographical. It starts around where you are. You can geotag yourself in your TikTok when you post them. And so it, it does accomplish the mission of helping spread that message until you, more and more people, hundreds, thousands of people can get to hear the message of Jesus every day. Consider this. Let me just give you an anecdotal example. I have a, uh, I'm a youth pastor in an ministry where on average, on a given set, like Wednesday night, we probably average anywhere between a hundred and 150 students, okay? If I post a TikTok about, uh, just a clip from a message or a, a message on there that has something to do with God or theology, or I'm helping share and spread the good news, I'm helping teach people, encourage people, equip people an average video, that that does not perform very well to my standards on TikTok, we'll get somewhere between two and 300 views. Nick Clason (12:14): That is literally double the number of people that see that content then come to my, uh, regular in-person gathering. So why does this matter? I think it matters because we have an opportunity to reach far beyond just the people that have their butts in their seats in the ministry that I lead. And the same is true for you. You have the ability to help get the message out there. Now, you might be thinking, well, why don't, our church doesn't wanna do that? Every church has been tasked by Jesus Christ himself. Acts chapter one verse eight, Matthew 28 18 through 18 through 20, to help fulfill the great commission. And there's an element of discipleship in there where, yes, you have to teach them to obey everything that he has commanded us to do, but also there is a reach component. Get the message of Jesus out there. Nick Clason (13:04): Can that be done via digital means? I would contend that yes, it, it can, and we talked about that early on. Um, we talked about that, uh, actually a couple episodes ago in, uh, the can, can the, can the message of Jesus be done and shared digitally? And, uh, you can go back and listen to it. I'll link to it here in the show notes. But yes, I would contend that yes, it can be done that way. Uh, and you'll see why, and you'll be, you'll have an explanation of why that matters. All right? So this is the age old question, right? What do I post? You might be wondering that you might be asking that. Well, uh, I'll link to an episode that I did at the end of 2022 on this podcast, but it, it's titled, I think, nine TikTok and Short Form Video Ideas that you Can Post on your Church social Media this week. Nick Clason (13:58): I also, uh, laid out for you my complete weekly strategy in another episode. Um, I think it's episode 25, the Ultimate 2023, uh, social media calendar strategy and posting schedule. I'll post both of those if those are something that you find interesting, but they're just chock full of ideas, and honestly, they're very like boots on the ground for me, uh, and stuff that I post every single week. But real quick, uh, a high overview on some of those is, uh, there are really, they're like 3, 4, 5 different categories of things that you can post. The first one is trends. If you spend any time on TikTok, on TikTok app, just yourself personally, I use that save feature incredibly liberally. It's the little like bookmark looking thing on your app. And then I can go back to my personal profile and see things that I've saved. And, but you gotta jump on those trends fast. Nick Clason (14:51): So I always, on my, my posting calendar, um, I don't schedule myself out so much. I leave just some space to do some trends. And so two or three times a week I say post a trend and I go into my saved things, and I'm like, what is going on right now on TikTok? And if there's a certain song or a certain cap cut template or something like that, I just use it and I try to find a, think of a creative, fun, relatable way to use it, and I just use it. Another thing is, um, you can just, you can film like custom content, you know yourself. So like, uh, let me give you an example of, of just that thing I'm trying, um, and you can go check it out on our church, uh, TikTok right now. I I don't wanna, um, give you the link verbally here, so go to the show notes because I'm working on changing the name to it. Nick Clason (15:39): I don't know if, if by the time this post, uh, if the name will be changed or not. But anyway, um, I, I made this game. Um, I'm an author on download youth ministry.com. Um, so I made this game called gif flashback, where you watch a gif for like, uh, seven seconds, and then, um, immediately you're asked a question to just recall what you saw. And so I tried something where me and another, uh, member of my team are named Bailey. We went around all different places in the church, and that's intentional. Uh, as far as TikTok is concerned, we'd, we'd swap out like, uh, outfits and we'd go to different places in the church. And so we shot them all at the same time, but they're in all different pockets and corners at the church. Some are outside, some are inside, some are, you know, whatever. Nick Clason (16:20): At my desk, her desk in the, in the Gaga pit, whatever. And, uh, one of us would run in and be like, quick, Bailey, give flashback, and we'd watch the, the game, all right? And while we're watching it on one of our phones, I would then edit where I'd put the game in on top of the phone. And so I, or she would be playing it by answering the questions and giving the, the answers, but the user, while they're watching it can also, um, watch it and interact with it and play the game as well, right? And so that's a way to use a game that's made for social, um, but also like post it on your TikTok and just have some fun, right? Um, you can do like emoji bible guessing games, which by the way, go to my D ym, uh, link. Uh, I'll drop that in the show notes here as well. Nick Clason (17:04): And you can buy, I have all kinds of like, uh, a game called Emoji phraseology, and every single one of them has a vertically formatted video or, uh, wide screen, or, I'm sorry, uh, video or static, uh, slide that you can post as well as you, uh, interact with or as you, um, edit your video so you can play like emoji guessing games, get flashback, all those things. Um, but yeah, po uh, post some of those just different like fun game type things to do. I also like to do like a lot of minute to win it style games, right? And I just film those, and then I clip 'em up, I edit 'em, um, have fun with them. Other things I like to do post educational videos, like, not, not like, here's some math, right? But like theologically educational videos. So the entire month of January, I posted a, I talked a lot about habits. Nick Clason (17:51): We were in a series of habits, and so I talked about the psychology of building a good habit. And then the entire month of February, I answered some deep theological like questions or just some core tenets, like of the faith. And I walked through, you know, salvation and the Holy Spirit and sin and the problem of evil. And I just like, I, I posted those, you know, occasionally. Um, also, you can always post message clips. And this is why, if you go back to the last podcast that I posted, um, about YouTube as the first step of the strategy, if you're pre-filing or if you're live streaming, you can find two to three short message clips, and you can edit them with a good hook in where you resolve a good hook and you have some good music behind it. And you can post, uh, some of those message, uh, clips on your, on your TikTok, and then you can point those back to the longer form video or audio content for people to find and consume. Nick Clason (18:45): So speaking of hooks, speaking of archetypes, speaking of how to build it, let's dive into that. Next, let's do it. Let's get nitty gritty here. Posting best practices. Number one, you want to have a good hook. You can use the text on screen option, or you can use the text to speech option as the narrated, uh, the narrated, uh, AI sounding voice. But essentially, you need to tell your audience within the first three seconds what this video is going to be about. Because, you know, swiping habits, people are not hovering on videos for very long. If it's not interesting, boom, they're onto the next thing. Boom, they're onto the next thing. This often requires a mindset shift for pastors who hold their hook or who hold their, like, ace up their sleeve usually until the very end of a sermon. Get it out at the very beginning. Nick Clason (19:35): What are you talking about in this video? The other thing is use onscreen captions. They're not for just people who are hard of hearing at this point. Captions are useful because a lot of times people can't watch videos in public places with headphones in. So if your video has captions, they can still watch it, even if their phone is v is, uh, volume is turned all the way down. In fact, check this up. 69% of people say that they view video with their sound off in public places. 69% is almost 70% of users and 25% watch with sound off when they're even in private places. So if you have captions on your videos, people can still watch wherever they are. TikTok will has an auto trans transcribed feature. It works really well. Just pop that onto every single video that you use. All right? You need to make sure you have a call to action. Nick Clason (20:23): So as you're building your audience on TikTok, make sure that you give them a call to action. Tell them to follow for more, save or view this video for later, or head to the Lincoln bio to watch the full message. Again, this is why if you are using our six step framework and you have your YouTube channel linked in your bio, you can send people who are watching message clips to go on and watch the full message to link in bio. And just remember that more than just going viral and building an audience, um, is not just for vanity metrics, right? Is that if you have something significant and meaningful to say, people will want to dial in and listen to longer versions of what you have as they're in their discovery algorithms, finding things on their phone and online. Also, watch where you're placing your text in a TikTok video. Nick Clason (21:07): The top, the bottom and the right side are all off limits. So you really need to hit right in the middle and more, uh, left of center. Uh, I hate when I see people who post things and they, they post it behind the natural places that TikTok covers things. TikTok screen is incredibly busy. So, uh, just look and know where you can and cannot post your text on screen and make sure it doesn't get covered up. Uh, captions and hashtags, I recommend no more than a one sentence caption and no more than three to five hashtags. And if your caption, um, has a word in it, you do not need to hashtag that same word later, right? Like we said, gen Z is using, uh, TikTok, and TikTok is also building on the back end of more searchability. So, um, if, if one of your words is already in your caption, you do not need the hashtag to find it, it will, it will search all of the text on your screen, which again, use text on screen, use their text editor. Nick Clason (22:09): Um, I actually use TikTok. Um, if I'm, if I'm editing on my phone, I'd probably do 50% edit on my computer, 50% edit on my phone directly. Um, if I'm editing on my phone, I edit in the TikTok app, then I download that without the watermark and I post out to all my other content. But TikTok is the, the starting spot for me. And so, um, all the texts on screen, all the things I use natively, they will search my video and find those things and, and help index that in their search back out to other people. Um, and then finally, audio. If you are a business account, your audio options on TikTok are going to be far more limited, which is why if you can do an edit in a computer, it's gonna be better for you. Um, if you're not a business account, and I talk about this in my ebook, which will link to that in the show notes as well. Nick Clason (22:57): Um, there are pros and cons to whether or not you want to be a business account or not. I still, to this day, have not converted ourselves to a business account, but that, that day is probably coming to an end here soon. The biggest disadvantage is I can't just lazily use trending audio. Um, that almost always is, you know, you know, not royalty free and I, you have to pay royalties on it or whatever. There are workarounds to it where you just, you edit the video with that audio in a, like, Adobe Premiere Pro or something like that, and then it's like an original sound for you. It's, but it's not being indexed in search based on that audio. Um, less and less. I think that the quality of the content is gonna be more important than the actual, like, hacking of the system by finding the certain audio things. Nick Clason (23:42): All right. Well, thank you so much for hanging out this entire episode. Like I just said, if, uh, you have not yet grabbed our free e-book, this episode in particular on how to post a TikTok from scratch, the question that the, the title of the e-book is, have I already Ruined My Church TikTok account? And will help you answer that. So go grab your free e-book. Also a rating or review will be incredibly helpful to subscribe over, over on YouTube if you wanna watch this video. We got blower thirds, we got custom graphics flying in. Some of the things I talked about, uh, are gonna be visible on screen that you just have to listen to in your earbuds. And if you heard anything that you're like, that was interesting, I need to go, uh, unpack that a little bit more. We have three transcripts for you over at hybridministry.xyz head there, check it out. But we're so glad that you're on this journey with us. I hope that you are finding this six step social media framework helpful. This was just step number two. Next episode we're step three, which is Facebook. So excited for that. Join us. We'd love to have you there. And until next time, and as always, stay hybrid.

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START YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL WITH YOUR PHONE FOR LESS THAN $100 //Microphones For Android: USB-C BLUETOOTH WIRELESS 2 MICROPONES: https://amzn.to/43PSY4Z (SAMPLE OF THIS MIC BEING USED: https://www.tiktok.com/@crosscreekstudents/video/7262687279548747050) SHOTGUN MICROPHONE: https://amzn.to/3qqgEyW (SAMPLE OF THIS MIC BEING USED: https://www.tiktok.com/@crosscreekstudents/video/7257907545296162091) //Microphones For iPhones SHOTGUN MICROHPONE: https://amzn.to/44RNPKX BLUETOOTH WIRELESS 2 MICROPHONES: https://amzn.to/45dRFhf Tripods: TABLE TOP TRIPOD: https://amzn.to/455Cgzw FULL TRIPOD: https://amzn.to/3qfYVdy BASIC LIGHTING //Ring Light: https://amzn.to/3Krn2wF TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Watch this Episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g Full Transcript and Links at: http://www.hybridministry.xyz/033 FREE E-Book: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/articles/ebook TIMECODES 00:00-01:46 Intro 01:46-08:50 Don't Sleep on YouTube 08:50-12:26 Recommended YouTube Strategy in 2023 12:26-16:45 Editing your YouTube Video 16:45-18:04 2023 Church YouTube Channel Gear Starter Kit 18:04-21:00 Turning your long-form content into social clips 21:00- 22:18 Turning viewers of Shorts into Subscribers and viewers of longer form videos 22:18-24:45 Utilizing YouTube videos for Hybrid Ministry 24:45-26:05 The added benefit of Pre-Filming 26:05-27:53 Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:02): Well, what is up everybody? Welcome back to another episode and YouTube video of the Hybrid Minister Show. Hop in the show notes to subscribe or check out the other platform. If you're not on YouTube or if you're not listening on a podcast. Excited to be with you today. My name is Nick Clason, and I, as always am your host. You know what we are going to be talking about today? Do not sleep on YouTube. We're gonna dive into that in just a minute. But before we do, make sure you hit the show notes hybridministry.xyz, episode 33. So at http://www.hybridministry.xyz/033 for all the show notes, especially in this episode, I'm gonna share some actual product links to some things that we're using. I'm not an affiliate or anything like that, but just, this is what we've done. This is what we've used, so make sure you go check that out as well as if you have not head to the, have I already ruined my church's TikTok account, A complete guide to posting a TikTok from Scratch. Nick Clason (01:09): And the reason I made this is because I want this to be a guide for anybody who's never even opened the TikTok app to a first be able to shoot and edit a TikTok, but then be able to cross post it to all the different platforms. Um, so go and check that out. That's a free gift from us to you. Hit the link in the show notes for that. Alright, everyone, glad to have you. Thanks for being here. If you're on YouTube, hit that subscribe and bell button. If you're on podcast, I'd love, we'd love to also ask you to hit that subscribe button. But let's dive into, don't Sleep on YouTube, episode 33. Here we go. Well, hey there everybody, and, uh, in this episode, like I said, I want to talk about Don't sleep on YouTube. Now, what does that mean? I think, um, at least in my sphere or whatever, like I think YouTube is like a little bit the forgotten child of social media. Nick Clason (02:05): I was talking on the phone this week to my brother, um, who's just getting started at a church and just getting started on his social media accounts. And he's like, so should we do TikTok? And I was like, yeah, for sure, but he is a youth pastor. Should we do Instagram? Like, yeah, yeah, you can do Instagram. Um, anything else is like YouTube. And he's like, YouTube, really? And I was like, yeah, YouTube, uh, here's why. YouTube is the either second or third, depending on how you look at it. Largest search engine. So, I mean, if, if it's not second, uh, behind Google, the argument is that it is third behind Google, Google Images, and then, uh, YouTube is third. And so, um, also YouTube is owned by Google. And so, um, all three of those are owned, you know, by the same person people place. Nick Clason (02:53): And so the search engine is going to, um, be tied to a Google, uh, a strength of a Google type search engine. So it's, it's not going to be a small bananas like TikTok is trying to, uh, acutely turn themselves into more of a search engine type platform. And like, that's fine, but it's not powered by Google. You know what I mean? It's powered by by TikTok. And so TikTok was good at making vertical viral style videos. YouTube is owned by the largest, best and most powerful search engine in the entire world. So YouTube has some strength and some weight behind it. In addition to that, uh, YouTube has recently, um, burst onto the scene with shorts. I don't know the last time you logged into your mobile app on YouTube, but there'll be a couple of widescreen long form classic YouTube video recommendations, um, in one, two, or three of the first spots. Nick Clason (03:52): But then right beneath that is a list of shorts. It's similar to the Instagram app. Now if you're scrolling through all the square pictures, but then it'll suggest some reels. That's what YouTube is now doing with shorts. And about a year or so ago, I, um, I gave up on YouTube shorts cuz I posted a few and they got like one or two likes and or views, like just, it was useless. And, uh, it was the clunkiest between TikTok, Facebook and Instagram and YouTube. Of those four, it was the Clunkiest, uh, to post of all of them. And also it has the shortest window for shorts. So like TikTok now, um, will offer like an up to three minute video. And for some people creators or something, I'm not sure who gets this. Um, some people can post up to like 10 minute videos. So Rios has now got a longer length on Instagram. Nick Clason (04:44): However, on Facebook it's shorter, which doesn't make any sense why like those two who are both owned by Meta wouldn't communicate and talk to themselves. Uh, YouTube still only has a one minute, um, clip option. So anytime I'm making any sort of vertical video content, if I want to post it to YouTube, I need to ensure that it's a minute or less. Um, but that's usually not that hard. Um, and so like even yesterday I posted on our, um, TikTok, we did one of those blind rankings. I had, uh, a girl, um, who's one of our worship leaders at our church that leads a lot in our ministry. I had her do a blind ranking of NFL teams based only on the logo. Cause she doesn't know anything about sports. And, uh, I'm dating myself a little bit, but we posted that on Super Bowl Sunday thinking that'd be, you know, like a funny thing to kind of play off of like the Super Bowl thing, vibe or whatever. Nick Clason (05:35): Um, and when she recorded it on TikTok, she recorded it for like a minute and 30 seconds. So I had to go and I had to cut it and shave it down. I did that all in the TikTok app. Um, but then when I was able to then take that link and post it on YouTube, it was less than a minute. So I was able to go on YouTube shorts and I had a decision moment there. Do I just post this on, um, TikTok and Instagram reels or do I do the work, cut it, chop it down to be able to get it over to, to YouTube. Here's the interesting thing about that particular video, you never know because especially when you're posting the four platforms, one might like blow up on one and get like one view over on another platform, but in this case, that video performed best on YouTube, believe it or not. Nick Clason (06:20): And so from about a year ago when I first started, um, posting on YouTube, they are much more, uh, they've done a lot more work, I think, on their backend to make shorts a little bit more viable. When I first started posting shorts on our churches student ministry YouTube page, we didn't do that until the very first of this year. We were changing our name in 2023. And so I already had the YouTube channel for Cross Creek students. Um, and I didn't want to start a YouTube channel for first Colville students and switch them over. I just, I wanted to get a clean start from everything, logo, handle, the whole thing. Cuz YouTube's the one i, I know the the least, right? I didn't want any issues. And honestly, even like right now, our TikTok is still under at first Colville students because TikTok holds, um, those names longer, um, to let them become available. Nick Clason (07:14): I, I already had a Cross Creek students account on TikTok. I owned it. Um, and I deleted it hoping that within 30 days they would give it to me part, not hoping only for hop's sake, but also because that's what they said that they would do. But then when I did more research, if someone deletes their account, they hold it for four months until it becomes available again. Or at least that's what someone said on Reddit somewhere. So we're gonna see, um, one day we'll change that over. But nonetheless, I digress. I didn't start posting on YouTube until January 1st, 2023, uh, because of the name change thing. And it is now, again, dating myself when this was, uh, recorded versus when it's gonna be aired live. But it's February 13th and we have over 70 subscribers on YouTube. We post a once weekly long form video clip. Nick Clason (08:04): Um, and so we have maybe 10, I wanna say something like that. Um, long form longer than 10 minute video clips. Um, the rest we just post are normal three day, three a day, um, short form video content that we also posted, TikTok that we also posted to reels we posted over on YouTube. And we have over 70 subscribers that is easily the fastest growing social media platform of all the other platforms that we're using. Um, we are reaching new and different people on YouTube than we are on TikTok than we are on Instagram. TikTok is probably the second fastest growing. Um, and by far the slowest are Instagram and Facebook. They're just, they're not there yet. So what do we do on YouTube? What is my recommended YouTube strategy? Now and foremost, if you're a church and you're already using YouTube as a container or a holder or a storage platform for your live stream Sunday sermon, uh, Sunday services, uh, that's great. Nick Clason (09:07): I would recommend continuing to do that. If you're just getting started and you don't have the money or the gear or the infrastructure or the desire or the know-how, or whatever other myriad of reasons why it might be difficult for you to get your service up onto YouTube, then here's what I recommend. Pre film your messages sitting down in front of a camera, very similar to what I'm doing right here. For those of you who are not subscribed to our YouTube channel, we're watching it there. What I am doing now, sitting in front of a camera, talking directly into it, pre film your content, why I talked about this in previous episodes, and so I'll, I'll ensure that I go link to that. I think it was in like a three part episode, so it'll be behind some other stuff, but I'll link to it. Nick Clason (09:51): Um, YouTube indexes videos that, uh, and and videos that perform the best are those videos that are between, uh, 12 minutes and 17 minutes. Um, a Sunday sermon, typically 30 to 45 minutes, um, somewhere in that range. And if you're including the worship and the announcements and all the other stuff, you're church service is probably somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half. Um, and YouTube measures and tracks watch time and retention rates and drop off rates. And so the longer your video, that's, that's good. Okay? It's good to have a long video, but if people aren't staying for the whole video, it's gonna actually be a ding against you. The other thing that you get to do with, um, a pre-filed message, uh, is that you get to, you get to make it accustom and, and tailor the message for people online only you all know, and you've all been there, especially as we've moved from Covid d whereas like digital only into back to in person. Nick Clason (10:56): You've all probably noticed and known the hybrid struggle that there's been where you're talking to, you know, during Covid, you're talking directly to a camera that worked really well, but then you're talking to a room and also some people behind the camera, and now you're probably talking to a room and less people behind the camera. And so when you pre-filed, you're able to talk directly to the people that you know that are gonna be watching and consuming this on YouTube with your in-person sort of being the secondary or sitting in the back seat of the purpose of that, that video, right? And so, uh, YouTube, you guys know this. You've watched it before. They even like probably make fun of it or make memes out of it, right? But the whole thanks for being here, watch it like it subscribe, make sure you hit that bell. Nick Clason (11:40): You can do all of those things when you prefill the message. Why do we do those things? Why do YouTubers do those things? Because they actually work. Believe it or not. Uh, if you just watch a video or someone just as a video versus if you tell them to and subscribe, like comment below, you'll actually see a, a noticeable uptick in those things happening if you just ask them to do it. And so that's one of the advantages of sitting down pre-filing your message. You can make it shorter. Uh, you can make it fit into what's preferred for YouTube. You can speak directly to an online audience, someone that you know is going to be consuming your message in an online forum, an online first type forum. And you can, uh, tailor your message in that that way. All right, so let's get nitty gritty. Nick Clason (12:28): So what do I do? What do I use? Uh, so for phones, believe it or not, I'm an Android guy. Um, and so I am filming this video and, and, um, I film all of my other, uh, videos that I pre-filed people with on a Google Pixel Pro seven. That's the one that they, uh, you know, put on, you know, commercials and stuff where you can do the magic eraser, take people out of the background, stuff like that. I tried that last night actually for the very first time I was watching the Super Bowl and they're advertising for it. And I was like, oh yeah, I have that phone. Let me see if I can actually do that. And so I did. Um, but the camera is top of the line for cell phone cameras. Um, it's, it's not a camera camera, right? Um, and so it's, it's got its limitations for sure. Nick Clason (13:14): Uh, but it's the phone I also use for my personal use. And so because I use it for my personal use and I use it for my, uh, filming and stuff, I, I invested in it personally so that I can use it for things both at work and stuff like this I'm using for the podcast or whatever. So I just use my cell phone for church has, um, a budget and they're not willing or able or whatever to invest in livestream. Look no further than the camera in your pocket. It is probably better than most, uh, most like most cameras that we had access to even like five years ago. It's crazy. So what do I do after I film it? Well, I use the Adobe Suite Creative Cloud. My church, uh, pays for that. It's like $55 a month. Um, I think for a business license, and let me just say, I think it's worth it. Nick Clason (14:04): There are other free programs and you can nickel and dime your way away from those things, but for like editing purposes, it's really helpful and useful. Now, most computer softwares have a free video editing, um, service and you, you can get by with some stuff. Uh, but they're just like, all those free, all those free things are all those things that are not like a part of the, you know, like industry standard. They're just, they're gonna have shortcomings and they're gonna have things that you wish they had that they don't have, or services that they offer that they just aren't able to offer because they're not free. I always think about the time, one of the churches I worked at that I got, I got really into design, um, and like making graphics. That was like one of the things I, I kind of became the Sunday morning slide graphic maker. Nick Clason (14:50): Um, and I, I learned how to do all of that in PowerPoint, but then there were just shortcomings. Like I, for example, I couldn't make a round background with transparent outlines around it. Why? Because that's a Photoshop thing, right? And there's some free programs out there that do it. And now even with things like Canva and whatnot, um, that are even much more prominent than when I started doing it. But I remember asking my, my boss to ask the finance committee if we could please spring for the Adobe Creative Cloud, um, Adobe Creative Suite. Um, and he just, he was unwilling to pay the money at the time. And so I was doing a lot of things, but I just, I, there was always limits to what I could do in PowerPoint versus in Photoshop. And so that's what I'll say, yes, you can, Jimmy Rig and Jerry rigger way around a lot of things. Nick Clason (15:40): But, um, and sim this is the same conversation by the way we're just having with the camera. Like my cell phone does a fine job, but like, there are still limitations to it. And so there's always a, an upgrade that you can always make. So you just gotta figure out where and how you wanna spend the money. And so, um, we use Adobe Creative, the Adobe Creative Suite in many more facets and, and you know, places than just, uh, for YouTube videos. But I use Adobe Premiere Pro because it, it links really well with the Adobe Photoshop in Adobe After Effects. Um, and I don't use After Effects for every edit. I use it for like, some initial things for some lower thirds and some animated graphics and stuff like that, that I just store and have and put, you know, places when I'm editing. Nick Clason (16:27): Um, so I'll, I'll use it like for the first time or for the first few videos to get a a, a library of some things. But for the most part, when I'm editing, I'm just using Adobe Premier, um, pro and Adobe Photoshop. And they, they talk really well together cuz they're both in the same creative cloud. So what did I get? So in addition to my phone, I have like a ring light. Um, I, I bought a tripod, a desk tripod as well as a full standing tripod. Um, and I bought two style microphones. I bought two lapels that connect via Bluetooth. They just plug right into my phone. Um, and I bought a shotgun style microphone that plugs into like the charging port of my phone. And I'll tell you what, what I'll do is I will throw all of those links into the show notes. Nick Clason (17:16): Now, keep in mind they are for, um, like Android connections and so if, if you don't have one of those and you have an iPhone or whatever, there are all the same things for iPhones as well. So you can see what I got and you can then, uh, take that and, uh, adjust your recommendation toward, uh, an iPhone thing. And so that microphone, uh, is probably the best investment, I would say of all the things. It just, it has really good quality, it's really easy to use. Um, and it just makes the video sound just a little bit better and a little bit more professional using the microphone. That way it's, it's not a microphone like this, uh, like this podcast mic that I have for those of you watching, um, it plugs directly into my phone and I can shoot it right at whoever, um, is looking at my phone or at the camera. Nick Clason (18:05): All right, so then how do I use, uh, then how do I use that strategy for social? So when I'm editing in Adobe Premiere Pro, um, I find two spots to create just vertical video message clips. Um, I clip 'em out. I, I try to find a good hook. If the person, myself or any of our other, uh, people on our team don't have a good hook, I will have them talk for a little bit, pause and I'll fly in some text and I'll do an AI voiceover. Um, and the place that I've been using for that AI voiceover is, um, a place called V V E E V E E d.io, uh, v and also I'll drop that in the show notes as well. Um, and I, all those AI ones similar to what I was saying earlier, uh, they, they require a payment, right? Nick Clason (18:56): They require you, like you can get one, but then you gotta start paying if you want more than one per one per week or something like that. I can't remember. Uh, but v do IO so far has been working well, I'm gonna anticipate it one day, it's not gonna work, and I'm gonna have to pay for an AI voice generator. Um, and that's just that classic, like, that's really popular on TikTok right now. I don't know how long that will be, but for right now, that works well as a hook. So like, I might be talking pause, AI voice come in, and then it keeps, uh, and then it plays the rest of the thing and the AI voice works as a hook. And then the rest of the video in under 60 seconds hopefully delivers when you're editing an Adobe Premier Pro, you can create an in and an out by just clicking the I while you're in your sequence and an o for I in and o for out. Nick Clason (19:44): And then you can just render that out, um, just that little section. So in that little section, I'll chop it up real a lot. You know, like, I'll make it real quick. Jump cuts, I'll zoom in, zoom out, like for emphasis and whatnot, I'm able to add captions directly in Adobe Premier Pro, um, and, and use it that way. So, uh, that I will chop that up. I'll chop up two of those, and then I'll also do one of those videos I've talked about and, um, with just like stock motion video background in the background, um, motion video background thing with like a tweet tweet looking screenshot over top of it as, as like a quote from the message or a bottom line. And so I'll, I'll use three different sermon style clips, um, sprinkled in and woven in through our social media throughout the week. Nick Clason (20:32): So like, we meet on Wednesday nights. So I have one that goes live on Thursday morning from the pre-recorded YouTube video content. I have one that goes on Sunday morning. I usually do that as like the, the quote post. And then I have one that goes on Tuesday, uh, the day before next message would be preached, or our video goes live in the room on a Wednesday night. So that is my, that's how I use my social media strategy. Um, and how I weave that into our schedule. On the end of those social media videos, I use just a YouTube subscribe ender screen. And so this is probably my favorite part is because we pre-filed and have longer form, uh, YouTube messages, if someone does in a discoverability algorithm stumble across our message, it will then, uh, fade to a screen that says, watch the full message on YouTube. Nick Clason (21:24): I like that because I think that when there is an actual like strategy or place to push people to, if they do discover you, um, we talked about it in the vi in the u in the podcast last week that a lot of Gen Z more than more than 50% say they use short form platforms to find short form videos of things that they may want to watch longer form of later. And so, uh, I use that and say, Hey, go watch the full message over on YouTube, then go click the link link bio, you know, something like that, uh, to take them to the full message of the short clip that they just watched. And so that's one of the ways that it's not just about going viral, it's not just about vanity metrics. It's not just about getting a lot of views, but it's hopefully about taking people from an awareness of us to consuming some more messages of us or that we are able to produce. Nick Clason (22:19): Now, this is my favorite part because our podcast is called Hybrid Ministry, but what are ways that we use this in a hybrid style? So I say we pre-record, um, and so we do a message on Wednesday Night Live. We pre-record it, um, post it on YouTube when we meet on Sunday mornings, uh, well actually first when we meet on Wednesday nights, we provide a you version live events, uh, event on, on their phones so they can navigate and interact in you version that can take notes, they can read the, the scripture, they can follow along with the outline basically. But then at the end of it, you can push and produce some external links. So a lot of times I will link to a short, a YouTube short, um, or a long form YouTube video that relates to the topic that we're teaching with. Nick Clason (23:07): So that's a way that something that we're do, that someone's experiencing in the room, they can experience a hybrid relationship with us, with our social media, with our platforms, um, through that YouVersion events. The other thing that we do is on Sunday mornings, um, our students all come in for a big into the auditorium for a big look announcement time, real quick, five, 10 minutes, not, not much longer. And then we break them out into the small groups all throughout the building. Um, what we're able to do, because our Sunday morning small group ties to our Wednesday night message is now that we're pre-filing, I've been pulling a minute or two clip from the message, um, and playing it. And so like I've told you before, we have a team of three. And so oftentimes whoever is teaching on Wednesday is not the person doing announcements or, or hosting the room on Sunday morning. Nick Clason (24:01): Um, and so, and like yesterday, uh, my boss, he preached on Wednesday and we played his clip and he's on vacation, but he was still able to, you know, uh, tee up the morning and, and still give a moment of spiritual influence to the entire room because we're using this message, uh, that we've already, we already have in the can. We already pre-filed it, it already exists somewhere. So for those kids who don't get, don't come on Wednesday and don't get to hear him speak ever, um, it's an opportunity to to introduce them to him, to introduce him to, to introduce them to his style, for them to hear from him. Not just in giving announcements, but also in giving the actual message content. Finally, my favorite reason for not sleeping on YouTube and the added benefit of pre-filing is it gets you into your content sooner and it gives you, uh, just an opportunity to prep, um, before you're gonna take it live to your room before you're gonna stand up and preach it. Nick Clason (25:04): And so I think it's valuable that you're not flying in hot on a Wednesday, having, uh, just printed something from a pre-canned curriculum and then just grabbing the outline notes. I think it's good to have ingested it, digested it, um, wrestled with it, interacted with it, and so then by the time you get up there, you're more familiar with it, it's gonna probably be delivered much more naturally because you have a familiarity with your outline and with your message as opposed to just you seeing it now for the first time. And doing it this way, we've pre-filed our messages on the Thursday before they're preached. And so our people are interacting with the message, um, the whole week before they even get up and preach live. And so by the time they get up there, it's gonna be locked in, in their brains and their hearts, hopefully at a lot better level, uh, just by the forced nature of needing to be ready to pre film their YouTube content. Nick Clason (26:05): Well, hey everyone, I am thrilled that you stuck around to the end. Thanks so much for hanging out. Uh, if you found this helpful, please share it, rate it, drop a like, uh, all kinds of stuff. All those things help us do better indexing on YouTube in the podcast algorithms and whatever and whatnot. Uh, and so that would be greatly appreciated out of us as a token of our appreciation, we have created a couple of free resources for you. So if you head to the link in the show notes and go grab the, uh, TikTok, uh, have I ruined my TikTok account for doing that. We will also throw in our completely free social media checklist, what you need to be asking yourself every time you post to every platform. Um, but what we don't have on that one is YouTube. You know why? Because when I created it, I was sleeping on YouTube. Nick Clason (26:53): Don't sleep on YouTube. It's gonna be helpful, beneficial, it's the largest search engine of all the social medias that we have out there. And it is, it is worth investing in. So regardless of where your church is big, small, have a lot of money, have a lot of gear, don't like, there is a way to make it happen. So I would recommend getting in there, create it, make it hybrid. There are more ways to flush even that hybridization out. But for now, go back and listen to everything I just said for what we're doing to live and lean into a hybrid, digital, physical environment to help point our students closer to Jesus. Again, thanks so much for hanging out. Uh, follow me on, uh, TikTok, follow me on YouTube, uh, subscribe to this podcast and we will be sure to talk next time. Don't forget, stay hybrid.

In this episode, Nick combs through the 2022 YouTube Culture Trends report and dissects interesting things that YouTube discovered. To add onto that, we discuss what the digital and hybrid ministry implications should be for churches as they move deeper into 2023 and the future. How does the church shift the way it approaches ministry, not to diminsh or downplay the unchangable truths or things of Scripture, but to best set them up for relevance with Gen Z, Millenials and the next Generation of Church attenders? Listen or watch to find out! SHOWNOTES YouTube Trends Report: https://www.youtube.com/trends/report/ Nick on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g Nick on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Nick's Podcast: https://www.hybridministry.xyz Full Transcript of this Show: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/032 TIMECODES 00:00-00:54 Intro 00:54-03:27 2022 YouTube Trends Report 03:27-06:22 What does all of this mean? 06:22-11:35 The Pop Culture Formation Formula 11:35-18:07 Creating Community Creativity 18:07-23:11 Multi Format Creativity 23:11-25:18 Response Creativity 25:18-28:26 The Future Exists in Dialogue of Digital Communities 28:26-32:09 The Digital and Hybrid Implications for the church moving into 2023 32:09-34:18 Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:03): Well, what is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast, and now on YouTube. Excited to be with you all. We're gonna test out a couple of video options here. See how these go. I know it'll go fine. Mostly I'm testing to see how much extra work it's gonna be. But would love to have you join us over there if you want to check out for video stream as well. Something that is just another option. So we have audio, we have video, um, but everything, the home base for it is hybridministry.xyz of course, cuz hybridministry.com was taken. So I'm your host, Nick Clason, excited to be with you. And in today's episode, what I actually wanted to discuss was this idea of why should churches even care about digital and hybrid ministry? Like what is the purpose? Nick Clason (01:03): We all saw the pitfalls downfalls and the reasons why digital ministry was not a good example. Um, it was not a good thing, um, during Covid. And so we are now past Covid. We're able to live in a more semi-normal world. Why in the world should churches even care about digital? So let's go ahead and let's get this episode underway. So let's talk about some assumptions, right? Like, I think that there are some general social media specific assumptions that say that social media is void of relationship, right? Like, the point of it is, I, I I don't know, right? Like the point of it is maybe to to post, uh, post some announcements, um, and try and drum up some external, some marketing, um, marketing, so to speak, uh, examples of people who might not go to our church and we want to get them connected to our church. Nick Clason (02:08): But there's an assumption that like the real, the main thing that's gonna work is gonna be relationships of people to people inviting one another. Let me just say that, um, I've been doing student ministry social media now for 12 years, and never once has anyone of the accounts that I've ever run really gone viral, so to speak. Like we've never had more than like an inordinate amount of followers, never had more like a thousand followers. I have had a couple Instagram accounts with more than a thousand followers, but honestly like, that was not from anything that I, or we were doing. That was more an inherited thing where the Instagram account already had a high level of followers and we were just sort of like the beneficiaries of that account already having a lot of followers. So my point is nothing we did really drummed up a lot of outside interest. Nick Clason (03:03): Okay. And so this assumption that social media is not relationship based and you know, the purpose of it is to, you know, get people from the outside looking in. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that is, I think that's, I think that's a benefit. I think that, um, like we said in the last episode, the church is in a unique intersection where what you post can be both discovered by the people that go to your church, but also because of the new discovery algorithms, which this is probably why in my 12 years we haven't seen this, because these new algorithms that are being made famous by TikTok and then adopted by Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube on reels and shorts are, um, new. Like this is a new territory for churches because previously your people followed your pages and your accounts, and if you wanted more people to follow it, you had to pay for it. Nick Clason (03:52): And I've, I have never done that. And so my accounts never really did that, where there were like a lot of people coming to discover our accounts. And so now we are in a unique intersection where people might actually discover your church. And what's more interesting is that all of these algorithms, there's a uniqueness where they start out geographically local. So first the algorithm from what we've learned is they're pumped out to your followers, which are then pumped out to their followers, which are then pumped out to the, uh, like your geographical region, which is why a lot of times you can geotag your posts on Instagram, on TikTok, and so you can put your city, and so the people in your city might be exposed to your information first, and then beyond that it'll, you know, go to the state and viral and whatever the case might be. Nick Clason (04:44): But, but the reality is, the, the closer that you are, the more likely that the people around you are gonna find it. And so therefore, if people in your geographical region are discovering your videos, there is an actual chance that they might hear the message of Jesus from you and then take a step to become a visitor or a first timer at your church. I mean, wouldn't that be amazing? Wouldn't that, wouldn't that be one of the goals that we're looking for here? Um, and again, like I said, I haven't experienced that in a lot of cases, and I think that's because that really wasn't an option up here until very recently. Um, however, there's still the argument that like, no one's gonna come to our church based off of that. And that might be true. And I think that it depends on your style of church, if you're, um, a more of an outreach centric church that you want that. Nick Clason (05:34): And so you're gonna be more gung-ho about this idea. And if you're more of a discipleship centric church, which tends to be a little more inward facing, um, not because you believe that that's more valuable and more important, but that just tends to be the vibe, um, that comes with it, then you are gonna prioritize some of those relationships more over, um, like, like cold leads or, or, you know, top of a funnel marketing type of terminology to borrow from the secular world. So, um, all that to be said, there's this assumption, there's this notion that social media, um, and social ministry is void of real relationships. And I would just, I would debunk that and say that I think that that's not entirely true. Um, I agree to a point that it can be done that way and, um, that, that this ministry, that this focus in your church needs some very particular and very, um, deliberate attention. Nick Clason (06:34): Like it cannot just, in my personal opinion, it cannot be put on autopilot anymore. It cannot be put on the back burner. There needs to be a person more than a volunteer and more than someone's like, uh, section of their full-time hours devoted to social media. Like you probably need a full-on person, um, not someone to do double duty. Like, like even right now, um, I am a youth pastor, but I'm like on a team of three and of the three, I'm the one tasked with digital and video and social media, website, whatever, right? Like that in and of itself is a full-time job. And sometimes my youth ministry duties have actually, like, you know, this week I had to make calls to interview students about baptism, um, and we're onboarding a bunch of new students to volunteer. Like sometimes those things feel like they're in the way of my digital stuff and that, that's out of balance for me personally. Nick Clason (07:34): Um, but that's my point in saying that this digital of it's all consuming, it just takes up such a gigantic portion and it it is vast and it is huge. And, um, and there's a lot of opportunity and there's a lot of potential. And so to just dump it on someone as like a, hey, 10 hours of your week, like it's, that is so hard. It's gonna be very difficult for that person to be able to, you know, to make, to make, uh, that 10 hours work for them the way that you're probably hoping that it would work. So in Covid, right, we learned that we're not built to be completely isolated. And so just social, um, and that's, that's the whole, that's the whole origin of this podcast is I felt like we were debating, um, when I started this podcast in late 2022, I guess mid 2022, um, we were debating between in-person ministry and digital ministry, especially where I was, we had, we were still working and operating out of a lot of the rules that we had built for C O V with the show that we had made for C O V D. Nick Clason (08:38): Like, we hadn't let that go. We were still producing it weekly. Um, and we had found a way to pivot from strictly online to a more in-person model where groups watched it in host homes. Um, and then they discussed the, the message afterwards. And I thought it was incredibly ingenious and innovative. Um, but there were a lot of people in our church that that didn't, and they were ready to just quote unquote go back. And, you know, we had a, a marketing guy, and if you listen to some of our first, I think like seven episodes, um, Matt was actually the co-host of this podcast. Uh, we both made cross-country moves. And, um, I, I don't know what happened to him. I never got him back, really. I mean, we still talk, but he would keep saying like, yeah, yeah, I just gotta get my computer set up, gotta get my computer set up. Nick Clason (09:22): And eventually I was like, all right, Matt's not getting his computer set up. I'm just, I I got a produce weekly episode, so I can't wait on him anymore, right? So, uh, here we are and I'm just kinda doing this thing. Anyway, besides point Matt marketing, honestly, genius guru in my opinion. He said, the world we live in is now hybrid. In fact, Barna did a study, we did a couple episodes on it, I'll link to them in the show notes, um, did a couple episodes on the findings that we found from Barna study, and they, they titled it the, the state of hybrid church or something like that. And what it said, what it found was that especially the younger generations, the generations that are going to be filling our pews and churches here in the next couple years, gen Z and millennials said a hybrid, um, version of church is going to suit them very well. Nick Clason (10:11): What that often scares us with on two fronts is, number one, it feels like we're shifting away from in person. And I think a lot of times in person, and I've talked about this multiple times, I think a lot of times in person, room or moment or feeling is for the, the vanity of the pastor, and not even in like a sinful or bad way, but just like, man, getting up in front of a room full of people feels really good and you feel like you feel like you've done something and you've been somewhere and there's, there's a shot of like adrenaline into your like arm every time you get up there to preach. Even I, I find myself like finding more value from preaching to a live room of, of humans with interaction, um, like just, you know, face-to-face interaction. Um, then I, then I do from a, a TikTok video that goes viral wave over like 3000 something views. Nick Clason (11:02): Like, it just, it doesn't feel the same. And I get it. And you know what? I don't know that it is the same. I think you have a much more captive audience, even in a room of a few hundred than you do, um, with a, a short form under 62nd video that that has over a thousand something views, right? All that to be said, I'm not proposing that, that you throw one quote unquote baby out with a bathwater. We live in a hybrid world, right? So I found this stat incredibly fascinating. 76% of American surveyed ha uh, have a friend that they've met online only they've never met in person. Right? Now, you might be thinking, how is that possible? Again, if you're older, think younger generations gaming and, and you know, chat rooms and whatever and whatnot. Like of course in the nineties chat rooms were pedophiles want to hang out, and they probably still do, right? Nick Clason (11:55): But, but 76% of Americans have a friend in some way, shape or form gaming social media that they've never met in person. Like I have an anecdotal real example. I have a friend named Dan that, um, for the first three to six months of our life, or not life of our relationship life, , uh, it was strictly online. Uh, many of you know I've told this story, but I started at my last church on day one of Covid and went immediately into lockdown. So the number of real live human beings at my church that I met was very, very small. The number of real life human beings that I met on Zoom after that was very, very large. And, um, you know, I had met a decent number of the staff, at least from my interview or on my first day on the job, but then to meet other people. Nick Clason (12:49): And Dan was a, just a regular church attender volunteer who led a, a hybrid, not hybrid, actually strictly online small group. I had a relationship with Dan. Um, and, and he even said, he's like, you are like the poster child for me, or the poster example of what it looks like for somebody who, uh, says like, you can't make friends with someone online. He's like, we totally made friends, you know, with each other online. And so these are examples, both empirical data. 76% of Americans say, I have a friend with someone who's completely online. And even in my own life, like I would say I had a real relationship with him, um, it would've been great to be sitting in the same living room or whatever, but at the same time, you know what, every Tuesday night, I just got my laptop out in the comfort of my own home brew, a cup of my own coffee that I personally enjoyed more than like a cake cup that someone was gonna gimme at their house. Nick Clason (13:49): And we sat down for small group. And you know, what was funny was like our church would do this thing where like you'd watch the live stream on YouTube, and this was the archetype for our student ministry. The group's team of course, stole it, but we'd watch the video on YouTube, and then everyone would log in to their campus specific zooms via a link in the description, and then a moderator there would break everyone out into breakout rooms. So they would sort of have control over the entire call, and then they would give a warning after like an hour or so that all the groups would, uh, be, be closing down by the moderator who's just literally sitting there out in the waiting room, just kinda waiting for people to be kicked out of their breakout rooms and reassign them or whatever. Super boring job I've done a million times youth ministry. Nick Clason (14:33): Uh, so a couple times those ended and we, our entire small group just jumped off and got into our very own room, and had group until like 11 or 12. We weren't, you know, at that point we weren't talking about spiritual stuff. We were just joking around, goofing off, having fun, whatever, right? My point is, relationships can exist in an online space. You just have to be deliberate. You just have to be intentional, and you have to be able, willing, willing to massage those relationships. So let's talk about, um, some hybrid ways that relationships can exist. Nick Clason (15:14): So some of you might know this, um, but a couple weeks ago, my, my wife's mom, my mother-in-law, uh, passed away from a two plus year long battle with cancer. It was, it was rough, man, like, not gonna lie, but, um, the thing I wanna kind of extract or highlight is the moment that the day that she passed away and that it became more public because of social media. Again, another example, um, my phone was flooded with text messages. My wife's phone was flooded like threefold, tenfold with text messages. Um, every single one of those people were people that we had met in person at one moment in time or another, whether they be a family member, whether they'd be a friend, whether they'd be a former colleague or work associate from another job that we'd been at. They'd all been people we'd met in real life person before. Nick Clason (16:12): However, the relationship at that moment existed in a hybrid space. Very few people in that exact moment were with us. I mean, I, I had to drive from Texas all the way back to Ohio, so the only people with me were me and my two kids. Um, and her, she was with her sister and with some family friends, and then everybody else reached out and provided love and care and support via text message that that is an example of a hybrid relationship. You know what I mean? Um, and, and some people were people that I work with now at the church I'm at at now. Other people were people I worked, worked with in the past that reached out either way, right? Like they're all people I knew, but they're all showing up for me in a hybrid way. So, uh, I wanna talk about a few, uh, examples of like other businesses that we might interact with in the world in with hybrid sort of interactions. Nick Clason (17:22): Let's dive in examples of real life hybrid interactions. My favorite of this is Home Depot, right? I interact with Home Depot at the store level. I drive up, I go into the store, I grab 98 cents of plumbing tape, right? Uh, that's an example of me interacting with Home Depot at a physical level. Okay? All right. So another example of course is me interacting with Home Depot at an online level. I might go on the website and I might see how much of a certain item is in stock that, but I'm not in the store. I'm completely in my house. I'm looking at all my computer on the app, but the, the app actually is my favorite feature. When I'm in the store. I almost never, like, if I walk around in the store for like more than two minutes and I can't figure out where an item might be, I immediately pull up the app, which often I've uninstalled from my phone, so I reinstall it. Nick Clason (18:25): Then I like, almost, the first thing I do when I walk into Home Depot is begin to reinstall the Home Depot app, find my local Home Depot, the one I'm physically standing in, and then I look that item up, whatever it is, to try and find it, and then it'll tell me exactly where it is, what aisle, what bay, and how many more they have in stock. I love that feature. That's hybrid. I'm in person, I'm in the store, but I'm interacting with a digital piece of technology, uh, you know, for my relationship with Home Depot. Another o another example is a dentist office, right? You go to a physical visit. But I love when a service like this has a great website, especially for being able to book appointments or being able to reach out. This last week, I brought my car to an auto mechanic shop. Nick Clason (19:13): I called them, not there, called them, right? That's an example of me from my house calling them. That's old school technology. You get it right? Then I show up, I'm in their office. But then when I was done, you know what they did? They sent me a text message to let me know that my car was ready. You see all these things, and I, I think like in a lot of ways, like when we talk about digitization or hybridization of church and of ministry, we don't even know what that looks like. So right now, in a lot of ways that's social media, that's video content, but the reality is like, some of this is uncharted territory. So for 2023, for right now, for someone just starting out, what are some examples? What are some ways that your church can live and exist in hybrid ministry? Nick Clason (20:01): All right, so like I said, I think a little bit of this is like pioneering uncharted territory, pilgrim's progress. Like, we don't know some of these answers, but, um, what are some examples of ways that your church can, uh, live and and be hybrid? So the first one is probably the most obvious one, and probably the easiest one, I would say is your Sunday sermon. Okay? So what are ways that your Sunday sermon can exist in a hybrid space? Well, first and foremost, right? You can, while someone is sitting in the auditorium, they can interact with and engage with your sermon notes, or they can interact and engage with, um, some self-guided like outlines or ways for them to take notes. So, like in my church, my pastor puts his notes on our church app. Um, it's honestly, it's essentially probably the manuscript that he's up there preaching with as I've looked at it. Nick Clason (20:58): Like, it's very thorough. Um, and my guess is that that's like a, that's a workload decision, right? Like he already built this. So if he just copy, if, if they or someone just copy and paste and put this into the app, uh, that's not that much more work for him. My personal favorite example is the you version events feature. So in everyone's you version Bible app that most people have downloaded on their phones, if not, definitely recommend it. Cause again, it's another way to interact with people in a hybrid way. Um, there's an events tab that you can create, like a self-guided sort of outline, and then people can, can take and add notes to certain headers or certain bible verses, um, that, that are related to or interact with the passage. And then they can also link out to like videos or other, like further discussions. Nick Clason (21:51): One of the things I try to do is I try to challenge myself to add one option of a, a link out from a u version event for deeper study or for more information, or for a longer YouTube video that I didn't, you know, didn't have time to show or didn't have time to look like fully, you know, unpack. I try to challenge myself to do that every week. Again, to just think hybrid, right? Brady Shearer has made this phrase famous, but the other, the additional 167 hours of somebody's week. So then beyond that moment, beyond that Sunday service, um, you can of course rip out the audio. Um, if you're already live streaming, um, you can have live stream, you can post those videos to YouTube. You can, uh, long form podcast content on a podcast feed. That's a way for it to be hybrid. Nick Clason (22:45): And then finally, ways for that to live on and, and find its way into that, that intersection of your church, people being reminded of the message and people from outside your church may be discovering and stumbling upon your message are short form Instagram reels, TikTok videos, YouTube shorts. Um, if you're already live streaming your content, you're sitting on a goldmine of social media content. You don't have to, uh, come up with as much social media content as you did in the past. You already have it. You have the short, or you have the long form video. Clip it up into minute segments. Find a good hook, get a good editor. And, uh, hey, if you don't have a good editor, but you're interested in it, reach out. Um, I'm interested in, uh, starting something, you know, kind on the side for myself to be doing this and serving churches in that, that way. Nick Clason (23:38): Um, I don't exactly have a framework for that or what that looks like. Hit me up on dms, on TikTok, or, you know, reach out to me via YouTube, all those links in the show notes@hybridministry.xyz. What about groups? What about relationships? How do you hybridize relationships, right? Because that's sort of the basis for this whole thing, is that social isn't, isn't built on relationships. And I would agree with that in the nitty gritty. Like when, you know, when my mother-in-law passes away, I want someone to really show up for me or really call me or really, you know, text me, um, not just, you know, interact with them at a, at a digital or social social media type level, right? But for a lot of people, the discovering of groups or finding their place or finding their people, that's half of the battle. And so if your church does not have some sort of group finder, I, I would highly recommend doing that. Nick Clason (24:36): If your church is about groups in some way, shape, or form that are open that people opt themselves into, then get yourself a group finder, a catalog, if you will, of the options available at your church for people to find and discover real authentic community. Because you and I know that community is really what changes things. It's what takes a church from their church to my church. So get on a group finder of some way, shape, or form. And then once you're in those groups, here are other ways that, that those groups exist and live in a hybrid sort of sense. You might use a infrastructure like Facebook group, you might use a GroupMe, you might use a group chat, or you might use some other tool feature that someone's gonna develop down the road. Maybe I'll do it and get rich, I don't know. Nick Clason (25:23): But, um, for the groups to have some sort of calendar of events, a place for them to have message boards with announcements, um, text messages to interact back and forth, prayer requests, all kinds of different stuff, but a place for the group to live beyond when the group meets, right? Again, the other 167 hours of that group's relationship. When is that? Where is that? When does that take place? The last area, so we talked about sermons, we talked about relationships. Now let's talk about information. You know, uh, churches more than just information people are distilled down to more than just the information that they, uh, put into their brains, okay? But like another example of ways that, that things can exist in a hybrid sort of way is some classes. So you already have your Sunday morning service. You probably already have groups. People probably can't devote too many more hours to the church, but maybe they do want to grow. Nick Clason (26:24): Maybe they want to grow in their knowledge of theology, or maybe they want to grow in, in a specific topic. Um, a dating marriage, right? Whatever the case might be. Your church with the 40 hours a week in your office can film some content and, and put up a catalog or a library of courses, like on a website or on an app, six week course, eight week course, something like that. So again, if someone's really committed, they may not have the time to drive back over to your church and sit through a class, find childcare, all the things. But once the kids go to bed, if they wanna pull up in their laptop and learn more, grow more in the area of theology, love, dating, marriage, spiritual gifts, right? Like you name it, you can offer a library of some of those content. I mean, products already sort of exist for that right now for churches, right now. Nick Clason (27:14): Media is an example of it. Um, but again, I've found that to be more small groupy content. So you can create something, you, if there's a need, you can scratch that itch, a leadership type academy. And you might even have like a leadership academy for high level leaders in your, in your, um, organization in your church that come together every so often in person. But then after they come together, if the primary goal of it is, is information and knowledge, um, and then, and information transfer, you can accomplish that for sure. You can accomplish that in a hybrid sort of way. Um, more than just short form video sermon content. You can provide short form, social media, TikTok, YouTube type content. Um, like about any topic right now, I'm doing like a little bit of a theology 1 0 1, like a deep dive into like certain areas and elements. Nick Clason (28:06): Um, and I'm putting posting on TikTok two times a week. It's a little mini-series that people probably just like randomly scrolling through, aren't gonna notice that they're all like interwoven and connected together. But in my mind they are. And so anyone who sees it, they're, they're gonna learn something more about God or about Jesus, or about creation or about salvation, or about the Holy Spirit or whatever the case might be. Um, because I don't have time to always get into all that, right? Like whatever our series is that's sort of driving and dictating, um, what's, what's being taught from the platform. But there are other necessary things that I think people, my students need to know that I don't have time for it, but this is a way that I can create time for it in the other hours of the week. Um, there are also examples and ways to do longform, you know, uh, styles not just short form. Nick Clason (28:57): So audio podcasts are huge. A lot of adults, something like 80 something percent of adults listen to three hours of podcasts a week. So, um, I think, um, Mariners, like Eric Geiger out of Mariners is doing a phenomenal job because the thing I love about him is he's conservative theologically for sure. Um, and so he's not just like out there trying to like get vanity metrics or whatever, right? But the thing he's doing is he's, he's finding ways to use the technology to teach deeper, more robust, you know, truth. And so he's doing a thing like, uh, a podcast called like the, the things that didn't make it into the sermon. Basically, if you're a pastor and you've done this before, you know that you, you prepare a load of content, but then you have to start cutting to get it down to a certain minute mark, right? Nick Clason (29:46): So he's doing a podcast on all the things he had to cut from his sermon, um, once a week to just dive deeper into more information. Um, and I, I think that that's brilliant. You know, I think that's a brilliant way, uh, to just add more value to the, the people in your church's, you know, life. Um, and if they're interested in it, that's great. A couple years ago, we, back when Facebook Live was a really big thing, me and another pastor on my staff, we sat, sat down for a thing called Tuesdays at two, and we just, uh, unpacked the sermon from sort of our eyes and our, our vantage point, you know? Um, and we would just have a conversation, um, as sort of interview style. And I mean, he was a licensed biblical counselor, so, uh, he was just a wealth of knowledge. Nick Clason (30:31): And so I, I almost operated more like as the host, and I would just toss him questions and let him sort of like unpack and untangle, you know, take the, the theology or the, the preaching and, and bring it down to more of like a boots on the ground level. At least. At least that was the goal. So all kinds of like ideas out there of ways that you can service and serve your congregation in a hybrid sort of way that is not void of relationship, that is meaningful and that people in your church will take advantage of. You just have to think hybrid. So I'd encourage you lean into it. Like I said, we're on the, a little bit the pioneering front because we had solutions for digital pre covid. It was mostly live streaming your service. Then in C O V I D, we all went full bore into it, and it was uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Nick Clason (31:24): So once restrictions lifted, we went back to what was familiar. Many of us went back to what was familiar, and I'll just encourage you to not abandon some of those things, but, but listen for and look for ways that you can show up in the other hours of your church members weeks. Those are gonna be what's important and valuable to them. Well, hey everyone, if you found this, uh, podcast helpful, please share it with a friend. Help us get the word out, hybrid ministry.xyz. We provide complete full show transcripts for every single episode that we've ever produced. Also, head to the blog section of that and you can grab our free social media checklist, what to do every time you post a social media, and our free complete guide to posting a TikTok from scratch, from start to finish. That is on there. And again, we are on YouTube now at this episode being the first one. Hey, to everyone on YouTube, check that out if you will get a link for that as in the show notes. And until next time, talk to y'all later. Stay hybrid.

In this episode, Nick explores if there's value in digital ministry. What exactly is Hybrid Ministry? What are ways that the church can live out digital expressions that add value to in-person moments and in-person relationships? What are ways that the church can be more Hybrid? Everything you need at http://www.hybridministry.xyz Follow Along on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pjecCnd8FVFCenWharf2g Or on TikTok at: http://www.tiktok.com/@clasonnick Hybrid Ministry Discussion on the Barna E-Book Episode: https://www.hybridministry.xyz/006 TIMECODES 00:00-01:31 Intro 01:31-08:03 Assumption: Social Media isn't relational 08:03-15:13 Let's define Hybrid Ministry 15:13-17:24 How are real relationships hybrid? 17:24-20:00 The Best Hybrid versions in our culture 20:00-31:48 The Best Hybrid Ideas for Churches in 2023 31:48-33:00 Outro TRANSCRIPT Nick Clason (00:03): Well, what is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry podcast, and now on YouTube. Excited to be with you all. We're gonna test out a couple of video options here. See how these go. I know it'll go fine. Mostly I'm testing to see how much extra work it's gonna be. But, um, would love to have you join us over there if you want to check out for video stream as well. Something that is just another option. So we have audio, we have video but everything, the home base for it is http://hybridministry.xyz of course, cuz hybrid ministry.com was taken. So I'm your host, Nick Clason, excited to be with you. And in today's episode, what I actually wanted to discuss was this idea of why should churches even care about digital and hybrid ministry? Like what is the purpose? Nick Clason (01:03): We all saw the pitfalls downfalls and the reasons why digital ministry was not a good example. It was not a good thing during Covid. And so we are now past Covid. We're able to live in a more semi-normal world. Why in the world should churches even care about digital? So let's go ahead and let's get this episode underway. So let's talk about some assumptions, right? Like, I think that there are some general social media specific assumptions that say that social media is void of relationship, right? Like, the point of it is, I, I I don't know, right? Like the point of it is maybe to post some announcements and try and drum up some external, some marketing, so to speak, uh, examples of people who might not go to our church and we want to get them connected to our church. Nick Clason (02:08): But there's an assumption that like the real, the main thing that's gonna work is gonna be relationships of people to people inviting one another. Let me just say that, um, I've been doing student ministry social media now for 12 years, and never once has anyone of the accounts that I've ever run really gone viral, so to speak. Like we've never had more than like an inordinate amount of followers, never had more like a thousand followers. I have had a couple Instagram accounts with more than a thousand followers, but honestly like, that was not from anything that I, or we were doing. That was more an inherited thing where the Instagram account already had a high level of followers and we were just sort of like the beneficiaries of that account already having a lot of followers. So my point is nothing we did really drummed up a lot of outside interest. Nick Clason (03:03): Okay. And so this assumption that social media is not relationship based and you know, the purpose of it is to, you know, get people from the outside looking in. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that is, I think that's, I think that's a benefit. I think that, um, like we said in the last episode, the church is in a unique intersection where what you post can be both discovered by the people that go to your church, but also because of the new discovery algorithms, which this is probably why in my 12 years we haven't seen this, because these new algorithms that are being made famous by TikTok and then adopted by Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube on reels and shorts are, um, new. Like this is a new territory for churches because previously your people followed your pages and your accounts, and if you wanted more people to follow it, you had to pay for it. Nick Clason (03:52): And I've, I have never done that. And so my accounts never really did that, where there were like a lot of people coming to discover our accounts. And so now we are in a unique intersection where people might actually discover your church. And what's more interesting is that all of these algorithms, there's a uniqueness where they start out geographically local. So first the algorithm from what we've learned is they're pumped out to your followers, which are then pumped out to their followers, which are then pumped out to the, uh, like your geographical region, which is why a lot of times you can geotag your posts on Instagram, on TikTok, and so you can put your city, and so the people in your city might be exposed to your information first, and then beyond that it'll, you know, go to the state and viral and whatever the case might be. Nick Clason (04:44): But, but the reality is, the, the closer that you are, the more likely that the people around you are gonna find it. And so therefore, if people in your geographical region are discovering your videos, there is an actual chance that they might hear the message of Jesus from you and then take a step to become a visitor or a first timer at your church. I mean, wouldn't that be amazing? Wouldn't that, wouldn't that be one of the goals that we're looking for here? Um, and again, like I said, I haven't experienced that in a lot of cases, and I think that's because that really wasn't an option up here until very recently. Um, however, there's still the argument that like, no one's gonna come to our church based off of that. And that might be true. And I think that it depends on your style of church, if you're, um, a more of an outreach centric church that you want that. Nick Clason (05:34): And so you're gonna be more gung-ho about this idea. And if you're more of a discipleship centric church, which tends to be a little more inward facing, um, not because you believe that that's more valuable and more important, but that just tends to be the vibe, um, that comes with it, then you are gonna prioritize some of those relationships more over, um, like, like cold leads or, or, you know, top of a funnel marketing type of terminology to borrow from the secular world. So, um, all that to be said, there's this assumption, there's this notion that social media, um, and social ministry is void of real relationships. And I would just, I would debunk that and say that I think that that's not entirely true. Um, I agree to a point that it can be done that way and, um, that, that this ministry, that this focus in your church needs some very particular and very, um, deliberate attention. Nick Clason (06:34): Like it cannot just, in my personal opinion, it cannot be put on autopilot anymore. It cannot be put on the back burner. There needs to be a person more than a volunteer and more than someone's like, uh, section of their full-time hours devoted to social media. Like you probably need a full-on person, um, not someone to do double duty. Like, like even right now, um, I am a youth pastor, but I'm like on a team of three and of the three, I'm the one tasked with digital and video and social media, website, whatever, right? Like that in and of itself is a full-time job. And sometimes my youth ministry duties have actually, like, you know, this week I had to make calls to interview students about baptism, um, and we're onboarding a bunch of new students to volunteer. Like sometimes those things feel like they're in the way of my digital stuff and that, that's out of balance for me personally. Nick Clason (07:34): Um, but that's my point in saying that this digital of it's all consuming, it just takes up such a gigantic portion and it it is vast and it is huge. And, um, and there's a lot of opportunity and there's a lot of potential. And so to just dump it on someone as like a, hey, 10 hours of your week, like it's, that is so hard. It's gonna be very difficult for that person to be able to, you know, to make, to make, uh, that 10 hours work for them the way that you're probably hoping that it would work. So in Covid, right, we learned that we're not built to be completely isolated. And so just social, um, and that's, that's the whole, that's the whole origin of this podcast is I felt like we were debating, um, when I started this podcast in late 2022, I guess mid 2022, um, we were debating between in-person ministry and digital ministry, especially where I was, we had, we were still working and operating out of a lot of the rules that we had built for C O V with the show that we had made for C O V D. Nick Clason (08:38): Like, we hadn't let that go. We were still producing it weekly. Um, and we had found a way to pivot from strictly online to a more in-person model where groups watched it in host homes. Um, and then they discussed the, the message afterwards. And I thought it was incredibly ingenious and innovative. Um, but there were a lot of people in our church that that didn't, and they were ready to just quote unquote go back. And, you know, we had a, a marketing guy, and if you listen to some of our first, I think like seven episodes, um, Matt was actually the co-host of this podcast. Uh, we both made cross-country moves. And, um, I, I don't know what happened to him. I never got him back, really. I mean, we still talk, but he would keep saying like, yeah, yeah, I just gotta get my computer set up, gotta get my computer set up. Nick Clason (09:22): And eventually I was like, all right, Matt's not getting his computer set up. I'm just, I I got a produce weekly episode, so I can't wait on him anymore, right? So, uh, here we are and I'm just kinda doing this thing. Anyway, besides point Matt marketing, honestly, genius guru in my opinion. He said, the world we live in is now hybrid. In fact, Barna did a study, we did a couple episodes on it, I'll link to them in the show notes, um, did a couple episodes on the findings that we found from Barna study, and they, they titled it the, the state of hybrid church or something like that. And what it said, what it found was that especially the younger generations, the generations that are going to be filling our pews and churches here in the next couple years, gen Z and millennials said a hybrid, um, version of church is going to suit them very well. Nick Clason (10:11): What that often scares us with on two fronts is, number one, it feels like we're shifting away from in person. And I think a lot of times in person, and I've talked about this multiple times, I think a lot of times in person, room or moment or feeling is for the, the vanity of the pastor, and not even in like a sinful or bad way, but just like, man, getting up in front of a room full of people feels really good and you feel like you feel like you've done something and you've been somewhere and there's, there's a shot of like adrenaline into your like arm every time you get up there to preach. Even I, I find myself like finding more value from preaching to a live room of, of humans with interaction, um, like just, you know, face-to-face interaction. Um, then I, then I do from a, a TikTok video that goes viral wave over like 3000 something views. Nick Clason (11:02): Like, it just, it doesn't feel the same. And I get it. And you know what? I don't know that it is the same. I think you have a much more captive audience, even in a room of a few hundred than you do, um, with a, a short form under 62nd video that that has over a thousand something views, right? All that to be said, I'm not proposing that, that you throw one quote unquote baby out with a bathwater. We live in a hybrid world, right? So I found this stat incredibly fascinating. 76% of American surveyed ha uh, have a friend that they've met online only they've never met in person. Right? Now, you might be thinking, how is that possible? Again, if you're older, think younger generations gaming and, and you know, chat rooms and whatever and whatnot. Like of course in the nineties chat rooms were pedophiles want to hang out, and they probably still do, right? Nick Clason (11:55): But, but 76% of Americans have a friend in some way, shape or form gaming social media that they've never met in person. Like I have an anecdotal real example. I have a friend named Dan that, um, for the first three to six months of our life, or not life of our relationship life, , uh, it was strictly online. Uh, many of you know I've told this story, but I started at my last church on day one of Covid and went immediately into lockdown. So the number of real live human beings at my church that I met was very, very small. The number of real life human beings that I met on Zoom after that was very, very large. And, um, you know, I had met a decent number of the staff, at least from my interview or on my first day on the job, but then to meet other people. Nick Clason (12:49): And Dan was a, just a regular church attender volunteer who led a, a hybrid, not hybrid, actually strictly online small group. I had a relationship with Dan. Um, and, and he even said, he's like, you are like the poster child for me, or the poster example of what it looks like for somebody who, uh, says like, you can't make friends with someone online. He's like, we totally made friends, you know, with each other online. And so these are examples, both empirical data. 76% of Americans say, I have a friend with someone who's completely online. And even in my own life, like I would say I had a real relationship with him, um, it would've been great to be sitting in the same living room or whatever, but at the same time, you know what, every Tuesday night, I just got my laptop out in the comfort of my own home brew, a cup of my own coffee that I personally enjoyed more than like a cake cup that someone was gonna gimme at their house. Nick Clason (13:49): And we sat down for small group. And you know, what was funny was like our church would do this thing where like you'd watch the live stream on YouTube, and this was the archetype for our student ministry. The group's team of course, stole it, but we'd watch the video on YouTube, and then everyone would log in to their campus specific zooms via a link in the description, and then a moderator there would break everyone out into breakout rooms. So they would sort of have control over the entire call, and then they would give a warning after like an hour or so that all the groups would, uh, be, be closing down by the moderator who's just literally sitting there out in the waiting room, just kinda waiting for people to be kicked out of their breakout rooms and reassign them or whatever. Super boring job I've done a million times youth ministry. Nick Clason (14:33): Uh, so a couple times those ended and we, our entire small group just jumped off and got into our very own room, and had group until like 11 or 12. We weren't, you know, at that point we weren't talking about spiritual stuff. We were just joking around, goofing off, having fun, whatever, right? My point is, relationships can exist in an online space. You just have to be deliberate. You just have to be intentional, and you have to be able, willing, willing to massage those relationships. So let's talk about, um, some hybrid ways that relationships can exist. Nick Clason (15:14): So some of you might know this, um, but a couple weeks ago, my, my wife's mom, my mother-in-law, uh, passed away from a two plus year long battle with cancer. It was, it was rough, man, like, not gonna lie, but, um, the thing I wanna kind of extract or highlight is the moment that the day that she passed away and that it became more public because of social media. Again, another example, um, my phone was flooded with text messages. My wife's phone was flooded like threefold, tenfold with text messages. Um, every single one of those people were people that we had met in person at one moment in time or another, whether they be a family member, whether they'd be a friend, whether they'd be a former colleague or work associate from another job that we'd been at. They'd all been people we'd met in real life person before. Nick Clason (16:12): However, the relationship at that moment existed in a hybrid space. Very few people in that exact moment were with us. I mean, I, I had to drive from Texas all the way back to Ohio, so the only people with me were me and my two kids. Um, and her, she was with her sister and with some family friends, and then everybody else reached out and provided love and care and support via text message that that is an example of a hybrid relationship. You know what I mean? Um, and, and some people were people that I work with now at the church I'm at at now. Other people were people I worked, worked with in the past that reached out either way, right? Like they're all people I knew, but they're all showing up for me in a hybrid way. So, uh, I wanna talk about a few, uh, examples of like other businesses that we might interact with in the world in with hybrid sort of interactions. Nick Clason (17:22): Let's dive in examples of real life hybrid interactions. My favorite of this is Home Depot, right? I interact with Home Depot at the store level. I drive up, I go into the store, I grab 98 cents of plumbing tape, right? Uh, that's an example of me interacting with Home Depot at a physical level. Okay? All right. So another example of course is me interacting with Home Depot at an online level. I might go on the website and I might see how much of a certain item is in stock that, but I'm not in the store. I'm completely in my house. I'm looking at all my computer on the app, but the, the app actually is my favorite feature. When I'm in the store. I almost never, like, if I walk around in the store for like more than two minutes and I can't figure out where an item might be, I immediately pull up the app, which often I've uninstalled from my phone, so I reinstall it. Nick Clason (18:25): Then I like, almost, the first thing I do when I walk into Home Depot is begin to reinstall the Home Depot app, find my local Home Depot, the one I'm physically standing in, and then I look that item up, whatever it is, to try and find it, and then it'll tell me exactly where it is, what aisle, what bay, and how many more they have in stock. I love that feature. That's hybrid. I'm in person, I'm in the store, but I'm interacting with a digital piece of technology, uh, you know, for my relationship with Home Depot. Another o another example is a dentist office, right? You go to a physical visit. But I love when a service like this has a great website, especially for being able to book appointments or being able to reach out. This last week, I brought my car to an auto mechanic shop. Nick Clason (19:13): I called them, not there, called them, right? That's an example of me from my house calling them. That's old school technology. You get it right? Then I show up, I'm in their office. But then when I was done, you know what they did? They sent me a text message to let me know that my car was ready. You see all these things, and I, I think like in a lot of ways, like when we talk about digitization or hybridization of church and of ministry, we don't even know what that looks like. So right now, in a lot of ways that's social media, that's video content, but the reality is like, some of this is uncharted territory. So for 2023, for right now, for someone just starting out, what are some examples? What are some ways that your church can live and exist in hybrid ministry? Nick Clason (20:01): All right, so like I said, I think a little bit of this is like pioneering uncharted territory, pilgrim's progress. Like, we don't know some of these answers, but, um, what are some examples of ways that your church can, uh, live and and be hybrid? So the first one is probably the most obvious one, and probably the easiest one, I would say is your Sunday sermon. Okay? So what are ways that your Sunday sermon can exist in a hybrid space? Well, first and foremost, right? You can, while someone is sitting in the auditorium, they can interact with and engage with your sermon notes, or they can interact and engage with, um, some self-guided like outlines or ways for them to take notes. So, like in my church, my pastor puts his notes on our church app. Um, it's honestly, it's essentially probably the manuscript that he's up there preaching with as I've looked at it. Nick Clason (20:58): Like, it's very thorough. Um, and my guess is that that's like a, that's a workload decision, right? Like he already built this. So if he just copy, if, if they or someone just copy and paste and put this into the app, uh, that's not that much more work for him. My personal favorite example is the you version events feature. So in everyone's you version Bible app that most people have downloaded on their phones, if not, definitely recommend it. Cause again, it's another way to interact with people in a hybrid way. Um, there's an events tab that you can create, like a self-guided sort of outline, and then people can, can take and add notes to certain headers or certain bible verses, um, that, that are related to or interact with the passage. And then they can also link out to like videos or other, like further discussions. Nick Clason (21:51): One of the things I try to do is I try to challenge myself to add one option of a, a link out from a u version event for deeper study or for more information, or for a longer YouTube video that I didn't, you know, didn't have time to show or didn't have time to look like fully, you know, unpack. I try to challenge myself to do that every week. Again, to just think hybrid, right? Brady Shearer has made this phrase famous, but the other, the additional 167 hours of somebody's week. So then beyond that moment, beyond that Sunday service, um, you can of course rip out the audio. Um, if you're already live streaming, um, you can have live stream, you can post those videos to YouTube. You can, uh, long form podcast content on a podcast feed. That's a way for it to be hybrid. Nick Clason (22:45): And then finally, ways for that to live on and, and find its way into that, that intersection of your church, people being reminded of the message and people from outside your church may be discovering and stumbling upon your message are short form Instagram reels, TikTok videos, YouTube shorts. Um, if you're already live streaming your content, you're sitting on a goldmine of social media content. You don't have to, uh, come up with as much social media content as you did in the past. You already have it. You have the short, or you have the long form video. Clip it up into minute segments. Find a good hook, get a good editor. And, uh, hey, if you don't have a good editor, but you're interested in it, reach out. Um, I'm interested in, uh, starting something, you know, kind on the side for myself to be doing this and serving churches in that, that way. Nick Clason (23:38): Um, I don't exactly have a framework for that or what that looks like. Hit me up on dms, on TikTok, or, you know, reach out to me via YouTube, all those links in the show notes@hybridministry.xyz. What about groups? What about relationships? How do you hybridize relationships, right? Because that's sort of the basis for this whole thing, is that social isn't, isn't built on relationships. And I would agree with that in the nitty gritty. Like when, you know, when my mother-in-law passes away, I want someone to really show up for me or really call me or really, you know, text me, um, not just, you know, interact with them at a, at a digital or social social media type level, right? But for a lot of people, the discovering of groups or finding their place or finding their people, that's half of the battle. And so if your church does not have some sort of group finder, I, I would highly recommend doing that. Nick Clason (24:36): If your church is about groups in some way, shape, or form that are open that people opt themselves into, then get yourself a group finder, a catalog, if you will, of the options available at your church for people to find and discover real authentic community. Because you and I know that community is really what changes things. It's what takes a church from their church to my church. So get on a group finder of some way, shape, or form. And then once you're in those groups, here are other ways that, that those groups exist and live in a hybrid sort of sense. You might use a infrastructure like Facebook group, you might use a GroupMe, you might use a group chat, or you might use some other tool feature that someone's gonna develop down the road. Maybe I'll do it and get rich, I don't know. Nick Clason (25:23): But, um, for the groups to have some sort of calendar of events, a place for them to have message boards with announcements, um, text messages to interact back and forth, prayer requests, all kinds of different stuff, but a place for the group to live beyond when the group meets, right? Again, the other 167 hours of that group's relationship. When is that? Where is that? When does that take place? The last area, so we talked about sermons, we talked about relationships. Now let's talk about information. You know, uh, churches more than just information people are distilled down to more than just the information that they, uh, put into their brains, okay? But like another example of ways that, that things can exist in a hybrid sort of way is some classes. So you already have your Sunday morning service. You probably already have groups. People probably can't devote too many more hours to the church, but maybe they do want to grow. Nick Clason (26:24): Maybe they want to grow in their knowledge of theology, or maybe they want to grow in, in a specific topic. Um, a dating marriage, right? Whatever the case might be. Your church with the 40 hours a week in your office can film some content and, and put up a catalog or a library of courses, like on a website or on an app, six week course, eight week course, something like that. So again, if someone's really committed, they may not have the time to drive back over to your church and sit through a class, find childcare, all the things. But once the kids go to bed, if they wanna pull up in their laptop and learn more, grow more in the area of theology, love, dating, marriage, spiritual gifts, right? Like you name it, you can offer a library of some of those content. I mean, products already sort of exist for that right now for churches, right now. Nick Clason (27:14): Media is an example of it. Um, but again, I've found that to be more small groupy content. So you can create something, you, if there's a need, you can scratch that itch, a leadership type academy. And you might even have like a leadership academy for high level leaders in your, in your, um, organization in your church that come together every so often in person. But then after they come together, if the primary goal of it is, is information and knowledge, um, and then, and information transfer, you can accomplish that for sure. You can accomplish that in a hybrid sort of way. Um, more than just short form video sermon content. You can provide short form, social media, TikTok, YouTube type content. Um, like about any topic right now, I'm doing like a little bit of a theology 1 0 1, like a deep dive into like certain areas and elements. Nick Clason (28:06): Um, and I'm putting posting on TikTok two times a week. It's a little mini-series that people probably just like randomly scrolling through, aren't gonna notice that they're all like interwoven and connected together. But in my mind they are. And so anyone who sees it, they're, they're gonna learn something more about God or about Jesus, or about creation or about salvation, or about the Holy Spirit or whatever the case might be. Um, because I don't have time to always get into all that, right? Like whatever our series is that's sort of driving and dictating, um, what's, what's being taught from the platform. But there are other necessary things that I think people, my students need to know that I don't have time for it, but this is a way that I can create time for it in the other hours of the week. Um, there are also examples and ways to do longform, you know, uh, styles not just short form. Nick Clason (28:57): So audio podcasts are huge. A lot of adults, something like 80 something percent of adults listen to three hours of podcasts a week. So, um, I think, um, Mariners, like Eric Geiger out of Mariners is doing a phenomenal job because the thing I love about him is he's conservative theologically for sure. Um, and so he's not just like out there trying to like get vanity metrics or whatever, right? But the thing he's doing is he's, he's finding ways to use the technology to teach deeper, more robust, you know, truth. And so he's doing a thing like, uh, a podcast called like the, the things that didn't make it into the sermon. Basically, if you're a pastor and you've done this before, you know that you, you prepare a load of content, but then you have to start cutting to get it down to a certain minute mark, right? Nick Clason (29:46): So he's doing a podcast on all the things he had to cut from his sermon, um, once a week to just dive deeper into more information. Um, and I, I think that that's brilliant. You know, I think that's a brilliant way, uh, to just add more value to the, the people in your church's, you know, life. Um, and if they're interested in it, that's great. A couple years ago, we, back when Facebook Live was a really big thing, me and another pastor on my staff, we sat, sat down for a thing called Tuesdays at two, and we just, uh, unpacked the sermon from sort of our eyes and our, our vantage point, you know? Um, and we would just have a conversation, um, as sort of interview style. And I mean, he was a licensed biblical counselor, so, uh, he was just a wealth of knowledge. Nick Clason (30:31): And so I, I almost operated more like as the host, and I would just toss him questions and let him sort of like unpack and untangle, you know, take the, the theology or the, the preaching and, and bring it down to more of like a boots on the ground level. At least. At least that was the goal. So all kinds of like ideas out there of ways that you can service and serve your congregation in a hybrid sort of way that is not void of relationship, that is meaningful and that people in your church will take advantage of. You just have to think hybrid. So I'd encourage you lean into it. Like I said, we're on the, a little bit the pioneering front because we had solutions for digital pre covid. It was mostly live streaming your service. Then in C O V I D, we all went full bore into it, and it was uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Nick Clason (31:24): Um, and so once restrictions lifted, we went back to what was familiar. Many of us went back to what was familiar, and I'll just encourage you to not abandon some of those things, but, but listen for and look for ways that you can show up in the other hours of your church members weeks. Those are gonna be what's important and valuable to them. Well, hey everyone, if you found this, uh, podcast helpful, please share it with a friend. Help us get the word out, http://hybridministry.xyz. We provide complete full show transcripts for every single episode that we've ever produced. Also, head to the blog section of that and you can grab our free social media checklist, what to do every time you post a social media, and our free complete guide to posting a TikTok from scratch, from start to finish. That is on there. And again, we are on YouTube now at this episode being the first one. Hey, to everyone on YouTube, check that out if you will get a link for that as in the show notes. And until next time, talk to y'all later. Stay hybrid.