It is discouraging to work hard on a post and see barely any interaction on it.
We’ve been there as church media folks and as Digivangelism.
Honestly, it happens even to the biggest and best influencers online.
Yes, they may have a huge following, but they still have good posts with lots of engagement and posts that just don’t see a lot of traction.
Some of that may be the pesky algorithm that we all fight against, but some of that can be improved with an improved social media strategy.
So what does that look like in 2021?
Let’s dive in.
Click here for the video version of this post!
Balance Your Ratio
Have you heard of the 20/80 rule?
Not necessarily Pareto’s Principle, but kind of.
We teach that 20/80 is a solid ratio of posts that announce your community events for your people vs. posts that are your community interacting online.
Yes, that might be a hard balance to attain.
But if your posts aren’t seeing much engagement, it might be because you are spending too much of the time advertising at people and not enough time serving, celebrating, and connecting them online.
People get marketed to a lot these days on the internet.
We know posting about your cool upcoming event might not feel like marketing. But it may come across that way.
If that’s the only type of post you are making online, you are asking people to give give give, without giving them much back in return.
Be Consistent
Your social media strategy must include consistency.
This will look different for everyone.
Some communities may be able to post a few times a day. For others, a few times a week will be a difficult pace to maintain.
Try to keep up whatever you commit to. At least for a few months until you can get a true feel for how it is working for you.
Pro Tip: Plan to be discouraged a bit!
If you are just getting started online, your videos may receive next-to-no views. Your posts may lack likes. Your jokes and efforts may fall short.
Plan to be at least a little (if not more!) frustrated about that from time to time, but keep moving forward anyway.
Too many people give up on social before they can even see any traction from their efforts.
Celebrate the wins as they come. Maybe even in a little notebook or sticky note by your computer.
Mix Up Your Content
If you make the same type of post over and over and over, people are going to get bored quickly. It’s almost like they develop the super power of not even seeing these repeated posts.
Their lack of interaction with your content is going to have the social media algorithm spitting it out to less and less people.
To combat this, try to mix up your content constantly.
We have a whole list of posts in our 7 Day Blah Blah thing or you can check out these 7 ideas from 6 faith communities who shared photos of their people through different types of posts.
Try TikTok/Reels
We can’t talk about social media strategy in 2021 without discussing TikTok and Reels.
The algorithm on these platforms is like nothing we’ve seen before and if you haven’t started creating content on either of them, the time is now.
Know that your content will likely can even more easily reach the masses on these platforms, so consider targeting people beyond your local faith community.
Consider your mission and purpose as a community and share that message knowing that it will likely reach beyond the people who will ever walk into your building.
For more ways to Be Church Online and improve your digital ministry presence in 2021, check out our ebook: Be Church Online: How Progressive Leaders Can Embrace Digital Ministry