Why Churches Should Prioritize New Visitors Over Social Media Follower Count

In today's digital age, churches find themselves navigating constant changes on social media platforms. Our social media feeds are increasingly full of TikTok influencers, YouTube stars, and meme accounts with massive followings. It’s easy to fall for the temptation to prioritize accumulating large followings. This can sometimes overshadow the primary goal of fostering genuine connections and introducing people to Jesus. However, I believe it's time for a paradigm shift – one that focuses on local engagement and regular invitations to join a service rather than chasing after larger followings. With purposeful strategies, we can use social media to reach people in our local communities and grow the Church instead of our online followings.

Are You Chasing The Wrong Metrics?

Unlike celebrities or brands, most people don't follow multiple churches online. As pastors or church staff members, you might follow multiple churches for inspiration or professional curiosity. But ask your family members how many churches they follow online and I’ll bet the most common answer is 1. So if getting 100,000 followers on Instagram isn’t the right goal for your church's social media accounts, what is?

Understanding The Behavior of New Visitors

If you’re reading this, you’re likely a pastor, church staff member, or church volunteer. It might have been a while since you’ve searched for a new church to attend, so let’s change this analogy just slightly. Let’s say you’re trying to find a new barber or hairstylist. How would you go about doing that? You might ask people you know for recommendations. It’s likely that you’ll turn to Google and look for one that’s near your work or home. Even when you see a listing that’s close by, you’re likely to take several additional steps. You might check the Google review to see what others have said about him/her. You might go to their website if they have one. You also might check them out on social media to learn more about them. People in your local community are going through a very similar process when they’re looking for a church. What will they find when they check out your church on social media? Has the content there been specifically created with this process in mind?

Answering The Right Questions:

If you’re like most churches, a lot of the content on your social media accounts was created with your current church members in mind. It might be weekly announcements, promotions for upcoming events, or some bible verses that match up well with your sermon from last weekend. None of this is purposefully created with potential new visitors in mind. Someone looking for a new church has some pretty basic questions in mind as they are checking out your social accounts. It’s imperative that they find the answer to these questions while they’re looking or the chances of them attending a weekend service goes down dramatically.

Where is this church located?

What time are the services?

Are there activities for my kids?

What should I wear?

Will I fit in here?

What kind of music do they play?

Will this place accept me as I am?

Are these people crazy?

Consistency Is Key:

As we’re creating more content on our social account, our previous content gets pushed further down our feeds. That means it’s not good enough to post your service times on social media once and then be done. It’s not even enough to do so once a month. New visitors are looking for a church, not stalking an ex. They’re not deep-diving 100 posts down to find the information they’re after. This means we need to be posting this basic information every week if it’s going to stay at the top of our feeds and easily accessible to new visitors.

Local Targeting:

As our focus turns from amassing thousands of followers to reaching new visitors, we’re left with an interesting problem. How do we get our content in front of people who live near our church and not a thousand miles away? Creating regular posts on Facebook and Instagram doesn't give us the tools we need to specifically target people in our local community. For that privilege, we need to utilize paid ads. Even if you’re just planting your church, I would highly recommend that you allocate funds every month to running paid ads. Americans are using social media for an average of two and a half hours EVERY DAY. People are on these platforms and paid ads are the best way to get your content in front of them.

I’m Here To Help

If all of this sounds great but you simply don’t have enough hours in the week to accomplish it, I’m here to help. I’d love to book a call with you and discuss how I can help accomplish this and help your church grow 1 visitor at a time.

My Name is John Mann. I started Axio Social to help churches utilize social media to grow their congregations 1 visitor at a time.