After a long summer break, Jeanette Yates and Bryan Haley are back at-it with an all-new season for the podcast! Not wasting any time, we dive into a new way of thinking about engagement online: Stop waiting around for comments, likes, or retweets. In just 15 minutes a day, TDE, or target daily engagement, flips the idea of social media engagement on its head.
Targeted Daily Engagement: How To Use Social Media to Double Your Audience
Join the Church Juice community
Support the work of Church Juice
Jeanette:
As church communicators, we are always looking for tools that help us spend less time making graphics, posting on social media, making and editing videos. But why are we actually doing this? We are trying to spend less time doing these things, but why? It's because we want to spend more time ministering to and connecting with others. While all of the tools are very helpful, there's one thing that we can't automate, connecting with our online audiences. Today, we're talking about not getting engagement on our posts, but giving engagement.
Bryan:
Hey friends, welcome to another episode of the Church Juice's podcast. Whatever your title or role is at your church, this show is created as a way to help give you the communication and marketing tools, resources, and community that you need to be successful. I'm Bryan Haley and I'm joined by Jeanette Yates and we are here energizing church communications.
Jeanette:
Yes. It's like juice for communications. I love it.
Bryan:
Did you just figure that put?
Jeanette:
I love that. No, it did take me a while though. I did have to,
Bryan:
Oh yeah, me too.
Jeanette:
For those of you who are new with us, it took me a while to figure out why we were called Church Juice. But it's like that morning OJ, right?
Bryan:
Yeah.
Jeanette:
We're getting that orange juice in. We're getting those vitamins, those church communication vitamins, but speaking of getting excited and getting energized, we are actually going to be talking about something that gets me, this has gotten me pumped up Bryan you know for the past couple weeks. I've been,
Bryan:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Jeanette:
Talking about this with you. We are talking about social media engagement, but instead of focusing on how we can create better graphics, how we can write better copy to get more engagement on our posts, we're going to be talking about how we can be engaging with our communities online.
Bryan:
Yeah. We are coming back to a new season. Been off for a few months now, and I'm excited to dive in. We've got some exciting episodes planned. And I know that you, Jeanette are very passionate about online ministry, right? Social media, and all of that. We've talked about it all the time on here. But a few weeks ago, you and I were talking about this idea of target engagement. Right. It really got me thinking about what does that actually look like for churches?
So I think in what we see in a lot of churches, social media is so overwhelming because I don't know, I guess it seems like for the return on investment, isn't great. We get low engagement on our posts. Right. People aren't interacting with it. We stream our worship services or whatever, but it's kind of difficult to measure that engagement too. So what does quality engagement look like when we're talking about ministry? And I think a lot of churches are kind of navigating that. And so I'm really excited to talk about this a little bit today and kind of pick your brain a little bit, I guess, about what this idea is.
Jeanette:
Well, typically when we're talking about social media ministry or churches engaging or connecting with people on social media, we talk a lot about creating better graphics and being consistent online. And then I think as churches, sometimes churches are focused on trying to get the audience to do something.
Bryan:
Right.
Jeanette:
Come to church, watch church, sign up for our event, invite your friends to church. Or sometimes we're just, we're like, well, we want to get the gospel out there and the best way to do that is to share the Bible. So we make Bible graphics, which is, I'm not knocking that. I'm not saying don't do that. That is really just barely scratching the surface. And if we expect people to engage with us, we really need to initiate that engagement and engage with them. And that's where today's strategy comes in.
Bryan:
And it's really putting the idea of engagement, it's kind of flipping it on its head because everything that you look at in social media or whatever digital tool you're looking at, the engagement that you're getting, the analytics that you're looking at are all about who's interacting with your posts. So what you're posting works or doesn't work. This is why, but what we're talking about today is really flipping that on its head and interacting and engaging with other people. And so you kind of gave me this acronym or three letters, whatever that is.
Jeanette:
Initial. I don't know what it is.
Bryan:
Initials. Yeah. Of TDE. Right. So why don't you explain that a little bit? What are we talking about when you say TDE?
Jeanette:
Well, I love a good shortened phrase, acronym, whatever,
Bryan:
As most churches do too. Right.
Jeanette:
Yes. Yes. So I was actually reading a blog post the other day from podcaster blogger coach. His name is Kevin Schmidlyn and he was talking about TDE. I think he may have coined it. So I want to give him proper credit, but what TDE stands for, targeted daily engagement. So if we think about targeted daily engagement, not like what is my target goal for people engaging with my post every day. In the blog post I was reading, and I think we might be able to link it in the show notes, he's talking about this idea of, if you want people to listen to your podcast or let's say, come to your event or come to church or sign up for something. And you're constantly just posting like a headshot with a graphic and you're telling people to go do it. That's not really going to get you a lot of traffic to your event, to your church service, to your online service, to your podcast.
Right. But what he has found the most helpful is this targeted daily engagement, which is where a church leader would spend 15 minutes a day, specifically engaging with their audience online. This can come in the form of commenting, liking, connecting with church members. So people that you already are kind of connected with online, but then also connecting with the broader community around your church as well. And so when I heard him talking about this in his context, I immediately thought about, wow, that sounds a lot online ministry to me.
Bryan:
Absolutely. Right.
Jeanette:
And I thought it was something that I wanted to share with all of our Church Juice listeners. I was like, this is great. And he's got it to where this idea is not overwhelming. It's 15 minutes.
Bryan:
Right. We talk a lot about scheduling posts and we've even talked about how a church or a ministry shouldn't use their social media presence as a bulletin board, and to try to create more interactive type of post. But what we're talking about with your target daily engagement is really trying to be more proactive in that, trying to be more proactive in the way that we're engaging with people that we may or may not know in real life, but that we're interacting with in that digital space, because that's a ministry space as well. And I think that's an area that we haven't really done a whole lot with as most of the church and kind of taking hold of that as a mission field.
But really when you're engaging with other people, when you're taking the time to 15 minutes a day, like you said, when you're taking that time to, instead of look at the stats on your latest posts, go see what other people are posting or tweeting about or their reels or whatever, and engaging with them there, where they're at, over time, that's building community as you just kind of build those relationships. And that takes time. Right. So I think it's really a good idea for ministry leaders, volunteer, pastor, whatever, if you schedule 10, 15 minutes a day to go find people and interact with them. And even if you're DMing some people and just praying with them right there. There's so much opportunity there. And so I love this idea. So why don't we talk practically, because we've kind of laid out the foundation, I guess, of what target daily engagement looks like. So practically speaking, what are some ideas? How would a church or a communications leader, how would they implement this?
Jeanette:
So I think there's a few different ways and I kind of thought about, okay, really, how does this work practically? Right. There's a lot of great strategies out there, but then,
Bryan:
Of course.
Jeanette:
They sound fantastic. But then actually trying to implement them is really difficult or unsustainable, like it's easy, but you can't sustain it. There's a couple different things. So let's just start with the easiest thing to do, which is go to your posts that you're already posting and anybody who has commented on those, all we're talking about is comment back. So that's the basic commenting and some of you may be saying, well, if we had anybody commenting on our posts, that would be great, so but that's just a basic. You should be doing that anyway even if you're not, I mean that's 101. So I just wanted to get that out there. So that's one thing.
Bryan:
Yeah.
Jeanette:
Just make sure that you are actually engaging with the people who are engaging with you. But in addition to that, start with your church members, the people that are already following you and connected with you in some way, and every pastor children's director, youth director, ministry leader, doesn't just have to be the church communications director. And maybe sometimes shouldn't be, it depends on how in the background they are of the church.
Bryan:
For sure.
Jeanette:
So every church is different in that way. At my church, I was kind of out in the forefront. So people knew I was the one posting the how can we pray for you graphic.
Bryan:
Yeah.
Jeanette:
So when I prayed for them, it wasn't weird. But if that's not the way it works at your church, then it does need to be a pastor or a ministry leader or somebody, a ministry volunteer. And it can be all of those people or start with one. So that's one thing. And then the easiest thing to do, I don't know about you Bryan, but on my feed, there are people, my church friends, my non-church friends, they're like I'm stressed out. I need prayer or I need good vibes or I need, and they're asking for people to pray for them or to give them some sort of encouragement and hope. Right. I've got a job interview today. Give me all... Sometimes it's not even a prayer. Yes. If somebody asks for prayer, it's a great time to jump in there and offer just a one sentence prayer. And depending on how well you know them,
Bryan:
Right. For sure,
Jeanette:
Maybe you DM them. Now you don't, only you know how connected you are, right, with those people. But if somebody's saying, Hey, pray for me. You see everybody else praying in the comments. As the pastor, as the women's leader, as the men's director, get in there, get in there and pray for them, just be part of the community. Right. And then also sometimes this is amazing, but this happens to me all the time on Twitter. So we're kind of talking about Facebook and Instagram, usually more likely, but Twitter is my hangout spot. And a lot of times people are like, oh, today it's the Mondayest Friday ever or something. I need to see all the cute puppy GIFs I can see and people just start well, it's okay to say, well, they didn't ask for prayer. So I don't want to overstep my bounds here, but I can send them a puppy GIF.
Bryan:
For sure.
Jeanette:
It's okay to do that. You can do that. So engage with people. So that's one thing. It's just like that very simple engagement. Right. But then also another thing that is really important, especially when you're thinking about reaching out and connecting with people that aren't necessarily connected with you as the pastor or the ministry leader at your church, get into some community Facebook groups. I know in my town we have Jacksonville moms in Jacksonville, Florida. We have the Jack's moms group. There's that one big group.
But then we've got the Jack's moms on the south side and the Jack beach's moms and the Jack's elementary moms and that's just, there's kayaking and whatever, something you're interested in or something. Get into those groups and just be a part of that group. Just engage with people in that group, whatever they're talking about, that topic, and that goes a tremendous way into building trust. And of course, trust is going to be that ultimate community glue, right, the glue that holds that community together. And so I think those are just a couple of ways to practically do that. But again, like you could if you didn't have a schedule, this is what most people do that they get on Facebook and then three hours later, they're still scrolling.
Bryan:
I wanted to touch on that next.
Jeanette:
And that could happen.
Bryan:
Yeah. I think it's important to identify what we're talking about and what we're not talking about too.
Jeanette:
Right. Right.
Bryan:
So we're talking about a target being 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, where you are going onto Twitter or whatever platforms, and you are seeking out ways that you can engage with other people who you are connected with and you are building community that way. We're not talking about doom scrolling or just browsing Facebook for the heck of it. This is still a targeted time where you said, Hey, you know what? I have 15 minutes. I'm going to interact with, I'm going to comment on, I'm going to, I'm going to DM X amount of people in this 10 minutes and then I'm done.
Jeanette:
Right.
Bryan:
I'll turn it off, whatever, but find ways for you to be purposeful in that little set of time. And the other thing that I wanted to point out too, that you've talked about, but haven't directly addressed, I guess, is that we're talking about both the brand of your church and you as a person.
Jeanette:
Yes.
Bryan:
So both your,
Jeanette:
Right.
Bryan:
Profile as you as a person, but also the account, the business of the church and commenting and engaging both ways there too. So I just wanted to point both of those things out.
Jeanette:
Yes. Both of those are important and there's times when one or the other might be more important. Right.
Bryan:
Right. For sure.
Jeanette:
So if there's a post from your church brand account and someone comments on that, you want to comment back as the church or if you have a Facebook group that is about something, that's going to need to be you.
Bryan:
Yeah.
Jeanette:
And yes, it is important to also, especially if you're a person that either hates social media and doesn't like to go on it,
Bryan:
That's kind of me.
Jeanette:
Or somebody who is prone to wander.
Bryan:
That's probably you.
Jeanette:
You like how tie in those old hymns? Then setting a timer for 15 minutes, calendaring it. So putting it on your schedule right before lunch, right after lunch, whatever, setting a timer and doing the targeted engagement for 15 minutes. And hopefully you'll find the need to expand that time because people start engaging back with you.
Bryan:
Yeah. Right.
Jeanette:
Right. But you don't have to. So if you comment on someone's thing for prayer, that may be a kind of thing where you can just touch back on that later. Or if somebody replies back to your prayer, you do kind of have to keep an eye on it. But it's not something that you have to have hovering over your shoulders.
Bryan:
Yeah.
Jeanette:
But again, if you're not a person, like I don't need to set a timer. I'm there. I'm all the way there. I don't need push notifications.
Bryan:
Right.
Jeanette:
Because,
Bryan:
You already got it.
Jeanette:
It's always open. Yeah, it's fine. But for those of you who don't do that, then set a timer for 15 minutes for that targeted daily engagement and then maybe set a timer for five minutes later that day to just circle back and see if anybody reengage with you. Right. And then just have it, do it that way. I also would say too, that having multiple people, and there may be some people at your church, some ministry leaders at your church that are better at it than you. And it's okay too, to have them, if you're really like, you're like, I don't even have a Facebook.
Bryan:
Right.
Jeanette:
That's okay. Then maybe this is not the strategy for you, but maybe it's a strategy for somebody else on your team. One more thing I did want to say before we wrap up is when I used to speak with youth and parents, like once I started working in the church as a church communicator, everybody wanted to talk to me about, well, how do we keep our youth from getting poisoned by social media? Which that's a whole separate podcast.
But one of the things I said is like, let's show our kids how to behave just like we do in the real world. Let's show them how to behave on social media. And one of the things that we did talk about is instead of going online to see what you can get from other people or what I posted something, I want to go see how many likes I have. Right. I want to see how many people commented on my post. Instead of going into social media like that, let's open up social media saying to ourselves, who can I go love today? Who can I go comment, encourage today, compliment, all of that kind of stuff and have it be a positive, an intentional time.
Bryan:
Yeah. Which is awesome.
Jeanette:
So, yeah. And so I think that that's kind of what this is on a kind of church communications level. It's that same kind of idea of let's open up social media for 15 minutes a day and say, okay, who is God going to put here for me in my feed? Or who do I already know needs encouragement? I can go search their name, but let's just say, let's just open it up and see what happens for 15 minutes.
Bryan:
I love it.
Jeanette:
God can do a lot with 15 minutes, Bryan.
Bryan:
Of course.
Jeanette:
I mean, look what he did in seven days.
Bryan:
Oh boy. The church jokes. All right.
Jeanette:
I know.
Bryan:
Well, thank you for, I mean, thank for even mentioning this to me. When we first talked about it's been something that's been on my mind and something that I'm trying to be better at. I need to actually put it on my schedule every day or whatever, but I love the idea of just being purposeful and engaging with other people. So thanks for bringing this up and talking through with us. I really appreciate it. Thanks for listening to the Church Juice podcast. If you haven't already make sure you subscribe wherever you're listening today. It would mean a lot if you took the time to leave us a review too, that just helps other church leaders find the podcast so we can continue to serve and support churches by energizing communications. By the way, we'll continue today's discussion in our Facebook group. You can find the link to our group along with today's show notes when you go to churchjuice.com/podcast.
Jeanette:
The Church Juice podcast is a listener supported production of ReFrame Ministries, a family of programs to help you see your whole life reframed by God's gospel story. Church Juice is produced by Bryan Haley with post production by audio engineer, Nate Morris in Grand Rapids, Michigan. For more information about Church Juice visit churchjuice.com. For more information on ReFrame Ministries and our family of programs, visit reframeministries.org.