Have you been wondering what top strategies and trends on social media will help your church reach more people in 2024?

Some of these strategies may surprise you. Some will seem counter-intuitive. Some will make you breath easier when you open up your laptop to start planning out your church's social media for the week.

I chose 7 strategies that scream "work smarter not harder", apply to churches and are essential if you want to stay focused (no shiny object syndrome!).

Discuss these 7 strategies with your team and download the free customizable social media strategy template below to create your strategy for this year.

Free ‍Download: The Church Social Media Strategy Template for 2024

Table of Contents

1. Church Social Media Strategy #1: Post Consistently Instead of Daily
2. Church Social Media Strategy #2: Use Content Categories Instead of Posting Randomly
3. Church Social Media Strategy #3: Build a Community Instead of An Audience
4. Church Social Media Strategy #4: Share Stories Instead of a Bulletin
5. Church Social Media Strategy #5: Post Original Content Instead of Trending Content
6. Church Social Media Strategy #6: Repurpose Your Sunday Message On Reels and TikTok
7. Church Social Media Strategy #7: Build a Team Instead of Working Alone

Church Social Media Strategy #1: Post Consistently Instead of Daily  

Why: To reach more people on social media you need to provide opportunities to connect with people. Growth requires balancing the tension of quality and quantity.

Action Step: Decide how many posts you can stay consistent with each week and which platforms you will post on. Consistency is more important than quantity. If you are just starting out, shoot for 3-4 posts each week on Instagram. You don’t need to be on every platform. Pick 2 to focus on.

Later analyzed over 81 million feed posts (not including Reels) and found that the more you post on Instagram per week, the greater your overall reach will be if you have between 1k-250k followers.

In other words, the more posts you put out there into the world, the more times people will have an opportunity to see your post. 

Here’s what they found in the survey:

Both reach rates improve as posting frequency increases per week for accounts with less than 1k followers, with the average engagement rate climbing from 3.1% at one post per week, to 4.9% at 20 posts per week.

For accounts with 1k-250k followers your reach will increase as you post more and engagement will drop.

For accounts with 250k+ followers, posting less is better for reach and engagement. 

However, this data is without considering Reels. At this time, quality Reels will increase both reach and engagement more than any other post.

Posting daily is a great goal to shoot for in order to grow your reach but if it causes you to post very poor quality content that receives low engagement, posting more poor quality content may not be the best next step in your strategy. It may be time to tighten things up and post less in order to figure out what posts are meeting the pressing needs of your community and resonating with them.

Church Social Media Strategy #2: Use Content Categories Instead of Posting Randomly

Why: To help you create a versatile feed and to paint a full picture of your church for a person who stops by.

Action Step: Decide on 5-7 content categories to rotate through every week.

When someone lands on your profile they have about 10 seconds before they make a decision if they want to follow your church. This framework will enable you to create a connection right away. 

Choose 7 main categories that exemplify who you serve and how you serve the world. If you post daily, this will cover what to post each day of the week.

Rotate through these categories every 5-7 posts. 

There are always exceptions to the rule and you may need to post out of order depending on what your church has going on or if there are holidays coming up. Your categories can also be updated as needed.

Example categories are: Team Highlights, Sunday Messages, Quotes, Youth Ministry, etc.

The best part about creating content categories is that it takes away the guesswork of what in the world you should be posting each day. It gives you a framework to follow to accomplish your purposes.

Church Social Media Strategy #3: Build a Community Instead of an Audience

Why: Focus on getting to know the people in front of you, instead of trying to gain a big audience. This will help increase your engagement and help you to see actual results like people getting connected or visiting your church.

Action Step: Make a plan of what the next step will be in a visitor's journey after they land on your Instagram or other social media platforms. What is their next step? 

Here’s a few examples of what a next step could look like after someone lands on one of your social media platforms.

• Bring them to your youtube to watch messages
• Encourage them to tap the link in your bio to register for an event 
• Bring them to your website to learn more about visiting your church
• Ask them to DM you the word “Prayer” if they need prayer or “Visit” if they are interested in visiting, then follow up
• Build your email list by giving away a free PDF guide or resource that would be valuable to them
• Start a Facebook group about a specific topic

The way to build a community is to connect with people at a deeper level than just shouting out to the world on a social media post and hoping it sticks.

If you haven’t yet, download the free church social media strategy template here.

Church Social Media Strategy #4: Share Stories Instead of Your Bulletin 

Why: People will come to know, like and trust your church when they feel the personality of the people who make up your church versus feeling like your church social media is just an organization with no connection to people.

Action Step: Does your social media feel like an organization or can you feel the humans behind it? Does it give off the personality of the leaders and people in your church? To help improve this connection you can share more stories, behind the scenes content and original content.

People remember and connect with stories. Share a testimony of how someone was impacted through what you do or share the why behind what you do.

The church is full of stories, and we need to be putting those stories out for the world to hear as much as possible. This is the highest impact thing you can do for your Instagram and for your church to reach more people. 

Shift your messaging to sharing stories instead of making announcements and you will see that it will completely change how people respond to your posts because they will make a connection with your church as a personality and not just a business profile. 

Create a brand that people can get to know, versus creating a bulletin board where people find out about your doing. 

Church Social Media Strategy #5: Post Original Content Instead of Trending Content

Why: Trending audio and content can be a great way to increase your reach if done strategically, but original content is on the rise and here to stay. People want to see unique content.

Action Step: Discuss what types of original content your church could create consistently. For example: weekly sermon clips, quotes, sharing encouragement or education. You can pull all of this from your Sunday sermon.

Don’t be discouraged if you aren’t into recreating the funny trends on Instagram and TikTok. 

If that is your thing, go for it. But if not, original content is just as (or more!) important. Don’t worry about going viral but instead focus on answering these questions for your community through your posts:

• What keeps them up at night that we could help them resolve?
• What are their pain points or challenges right now? 
• What are their desires and how can we help them get there?

Think about meeting real needs through your posts, praying over what you should say and what people need, and sharing words of encouragement that you believe are for your community right now.

Get yourself out of “posting just to post” or being an announcement hub. Think about connecting on social media like you would in real life.

Trending audio can be a great part of your strategy if you use the audio’s early as they are getting popular and make sure it is relatable to your community. I want to give you official permission that you don’t have to use trending audio if it’s not your thing.

If you haven’t yet, download the free church social media strategy template here.

Church Social Media Strategy #6: Repurpose Your Sunday Message On Reels & TikTok

Why: Reels are still the only post type on Instagram that specifically are shown to new people. Reels can also be auto-shared with your Facebook page. Since you already made these videos, you may as well get the most out of them by putting them up on TikTok while your at it.

Action Step: Determine what type of Reels your church feels the most confident in creating (quotes with motion backgrounds, trending audio/lip syncing/humor, Sunday message clips, educational lists, photo/video montages etc.) Next, ask someone to repurpose every post for TikTok for you.

If you want to increase your reach on social media (specifically Instagram and Facebook), post mostly Reels.

You can even post a still image with music or other audio on Reels, it doesn’t even have to be a video. For example: You can post a written out prayer, with a voiceover of someone praying or you can post a quote with music in the background. 

There are many Reels that don’t require video, faces or tons of time. 

If you desire to get on TikTok, the best way is to post your Reels to TikTok. Make sure to save your Reels without the watermark by saving them to your camera roll before posting. 

On TikTok you only need a phrase for the caption. It is not too much more work to post it in both places, so you might as well start there until you develop a TikTok strategy. 

Church Social Media Strategy #7: Build a Team Instead of Working Alone

Why: Social media is only getting bigger and a team will strengthen your online presence and potential reach and bring new skill sets and personality to the table.

Action Step: Focus on building a team of 4-5 volunteers and give each of them a specific role. For example: each person could post one day a week or each person could have a different role based on skill set (copywriting, video, photo, design, project management).

Building a team will help you to stay consistent on your social media and set you up for the future. 

You can build a team of volunteers, staff or a mix of both! One of the most important aspects of building a great team is having clear expectations. 

First, create clear job descriptions that include: 

• how many hours a volunteer will put in per week
• how many posts, stories or reels they will create per week
• what the process will be to create and approve posts

Clear expectations allow church social media volunteers and managers to wrap their head around what they are doing and give them the confidence to get the job done. 

Your team will go through changes with new volunteers or staff overtime.

Conclusion

To wrap this up, here’s the church social media strategies you learned in this post:

1. Church Social Media Strategy #1: Post Consistently Instead of Daily
2. Church Social Media Strategy #2: Use Content Categories Instead of Posting Randomly
3. Church Social Media Strategy #3: Build a Community Instead of An Audience
4. Church Social Media Strategy #4: Share Stories Instead of a Bulletin
5. Church Social Media Strategy #5: Post Original Content Instead of Trending Content
6. Church Social Media Strategy #6: Repurpose Your Sunday Message On Reels and TikTok
7. Church Social Media Strategy #7: Build a Team Instead of Working Alone

Download the free church social media strategy template here.