Discover practical strategies to boost your church’s social media engagement and breathe new life into stagnant platforms in this episode of the MyCom Church Marketing and Communications Podcast.
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In this episode
Struggling with stagnant social media engagement in your ministry? You’re not alone! In this episode of the MyCom Church Marketing & Communications Podcast, host Ryan Dunn unpacks practical strategies to breathe new life into your church’s social media presence. Whether you’re a church leader, communicator, or volunteer, you'll discover actionable insights to boost engagement, connect with your community more meaningfully, and expand your digital reach.
Learn why likes and reach might not be the best metrics, how to create content that platforms and people love, and why stories and DMs can become secret weapons for authentic connection. Plus, find out simple ways to make your church more visible and supportive in your digital neighborhood.
Key Insights:
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Rethink your metrics: Focus on shares and link clicks for real impact
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Make the most of Instagram Stories to engage your community (with or without sound!)
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Use direct messages strategically to deepen relationships
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Become an active digital neighbor to boost your church’s visibility
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction: Facing stagnant social media
01:23 – The truth about engagement & platform algorithms
03:21 – Rethinking success: Likes, reach, and real value
06:06 – Why "prayers get shares" and event promotion tips
10:00 – Maximizing Stories: Format, features, and engagement hacks
15:04 – Harnessing DMs for meaningful connection
17:49 – Be an active digital neighbor: Community engagement
18:42 – Recap: Takeaways for revitalizing your practice of ministry
Related episodes:
Episode transcript
Ryan Dunn [00:00:10]:
Welcome to the Micon Church Marketing and Communications Podcast, where we equip church leaders and communicators with tools, strategies and inspiration to tell your church's story and reach your community more effectively. I'm Ryan Dunn and I'm so glad you're joining me for today's episode, because I'm gonna share a situation that I think I am not alone in. Here's the situation. My church's social media engagement is totally stagnant. We've been doing the same thing for a while, and as you can expect, we're seeing some diminishing returns on our efforts. Does this sound familiar? Actually, it probably does because a recent study just showed that everybody's social media engagement is dropping off to a degree, at least where we from where we were a couple years ago. So if that sounds like the case for you and you're wondering how you might be able to kinda reinvigorate your social media presence, then this episode is for you. Today, we're talking about something that many of us have faced, are facing, and are gonna face a stagnant church social media presence.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:23]:
So you're posting regularly, maybe even faithfully, but nothing's clicking. Engagement is flat. The likes are few. Comments aren't coming. It's like crickets out there. That can be disheartening. Well, here's the good news. A plateau isn't the end of the road.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:40]:
It's an invitation to push, to pull, and to implement a few fresh strategies. And we can breathe new life into our social media outreach and start connecting more meaningful with the people who we're trying to reach. So let's dig into some practical, smart, and realistic steps that you can take to reinvigorate your church's social media presence. First things first. Remember this golden rule. Social media platforms do not exist to share your information, to share your feelings, to share your views, or to share your priorities. They exist to keep people on their platform. And so we need to be mindful of the platform's goals and not just our own goals.
Ryan Dunn [00:02:33]:
We have to subvert their goals a little bit. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, they're all about attention. So the algorithm rewards content that keeps people scrolling, swiping, watching, or engaging. If we want our content to be seen, we need to create things that serve the platform's goals, and that means rethinking our metrics for success. Many of us have been trained to obsess over reach and likes, but those numbers don't necessarily reflect impact or engagement. I think reach and likes are symptoms of something else. Like, we're not sick because we have a runny nose. Runny nose shows that we have a sickness that's affecting something else.
Ryan Dunn [00:03:21]:
Oh my gosh. The bad analogies have already started. And in fact, I think I'm about to make things worse because I have another bad analogy for this episode. And it goes like this. Measuring social media success is like measuring weight lifting success. Now, many people work out for the sake of improving physical appearance. Right? That's the truth of it. They wanna get big muscles or they want trim waistlines.
Ryan Dunn [00:03:46]:
But we know when we work out, we don't just get swole, we actually get stronger. So you lift weights, your muscles grow stronger, and because your muscles grow stronger, then you get bigger, you get swole. In my opinion, reach and likes are the big muscles of social metrics. I warned you that this would be a bad analogy. So they are flashy. They show up well, but they don't necessarily indicate how strong one is and how the content is growing in strength. I think that there's a different indication of the real strength of your content, and it's related to the actual value that people find in your content. If someone likes a post, that doesn't necessarily mean that they find value in the post.
Ryan Dunn [00:04:33]:
They might just want to let you know that they're there and that they see you. But if someone shares a post or if they click on a link in a post, that indicates that they have found value. So this becomes a measure of the real strength of our content. I wanna see growth in shares and link clicks. Shares show that the content was meaningful enough for someone to pass it along, and they want somebody else to see it. Link clicks indicate that someone wanted to go deeper or they wanted to learn more or to take some kinda action. Now if you've been paying attention, you might be saying right now, Ryan, wouldn't asking for link clicks be antithetical to what you suggest about aligning with the church's goals or the platform's goals, I'm sorry, of keeping people engaged on the platform. And yes, you're right.
Ryan Dunn [00:05:25]:
It is antithetical to that. So link clicks are not posts that we wanna utilize all the time. Instead, we want to maximize the few posts in which we do share a link to click. That means the value promise has to be pretty strong in the social media post. And, also, know that any post with a link is automatically gonna get limited in reach from the algorithm. I work with a budget for boosting posts, and generally, I'm gonna save that budget to boost linked posts. That's about the only way that that kind of post is gonna get any kind of substantial reach. As for shares, here's what I've noticed.
Ryan Dunn [00:06:06]:
We've had our bad analogy. Here's our bad rhyme. Prayers get shares. Yeah. So share how you're praying for a situation or how you're praying for a group of people or share some kind of historical prayer from your tradition. People like sharing those. Posting prayers, devotionals, or inspirational content, this is all great. These are all highly shareable.
Ryan Dunn [00:06:30]:
Now a lot of us like to promote events on social media. In fact, some of us, like, that's our whole social media strategy. Now there's no reason not to share events on social media. That's totally fine. But I do wanna warn that it's not all you should be using social media for. It's okay to kinda put up a billboard for your event from time to time, but, again, we wanna make sure that we have a broad array of social media posts available to our users. But if you are promoting an event, I wanna invite you to put the key details in the caption, not just in the image. The picture grabs attention, but the caption is what can really give the content.
Ryan Dunn [00:07:19]:
So think of an image like an old school movie poster. You know, it's intriguing, but it's not too crowded. So put up an image of your people engaged in a similar activity to your event or, a picture from the event the previous year. And then put that info about the where, the what, the when, the who, and the how. Put that into the post text, not into the image itself. The more your post looks like some organic person to person lifestyle share, the more likely the algorithm is to like it. Although I am gonna lift out this, there is a place where you can flip that paradigm around a bit. Oh, also in talking about putting things in the image, this is my little soapbox here, I don't think QR codes are very effective in social media.
Ryan Dunn [00:08:13]:
Most of us realize that people are generally looking at social media on their phones, so there's no way to read that QR code for them. It's just kinda taking up space. So I invite you to leave the QR code out of it, invite them to click to a page in a different way. I also suspect that the algorithm is getting smart enough to read those QR codes and avoiding those kinds of posts to share. So maybe pull that out of there. But in talking about the who, the where, the what, and the how, we can actually find a place to put all that text into our image, and we're gonna get to that in just a moment. Planning for ministry life can feel overwhelming. That's where the official United Methodist program calendar comes in handy.
Ryan Dunn [00:09:02]:
It's a complete guide to help organize your program ministries with ease. The calendar includes special Sundays approved by the general conference and the ecumenical agencies to which The United Methodist Church officially relates, along with days and seasons of the Christian year and more. Whether you prefer a desk calendar, a wall version, a desk blotter, or something digital, there's a perfect format for how you work. No matter if you're a volunteer, a church staffer, or leading program ministries, this is the tool to keep your plans on track for the year ahead. Visit cokesbury.com and order your copy of the official United Methodist program calendar today. Again, that's coaksbury.com, keyword program calendar 2026. Okay. So where can you actually pack an image with tons of text? We're gonna talk about stories, especially on Instagram.
Ryan Dunn [00:10:00]:
Now stories are not going to grow your follower count much, but they are fantastic for deepening engagement with your existing audience. Stories are only distributed to followers of your page or your account. So again, they're not an effective outreach tool, but a great way to get immediate information in front of the people who already follow your page. Now, here's a little bit of a catch when posting the stories. Don't just repost your normal feed. You can do that, but I don't think that's an effective strategy. And, again, I think the algorithm is smart enough to recognize when you're doing that a ton. Instead, I wanna invite you to create unique content tailored to the stories format.
Ryan Dunn [00:10:46]:
A few tips to share with you here, use interactive features like the poll sticker or the quiz sticker or the fill in the blank sticker. Avoid overusing the link sticker because remember platforms don't want people leaving. Instead, you might want to try this invite people to send you a direct message with a keyword, and then you reply with a link or more info. We're gonna have more on this, actually a whole lot more on this in just a little bit. But putting a lot of information into into a story keeps people on the platform longer, which Instagram loves and allows you to provide that real time value. Also, when making content for stories, keep in mind that 85% of Instagram users watch videos with the sound off. So don't stress too much about doing voiceovers or having some kind of clean audio in there. Instead, make sure your videos and stories have text on screen.
Ryan Dunn [00:11:44]:
Again, this is flipping what we're talking about with the normal feed right Now we wanna have text on feed. Packing that text, some readable text, I wanna make sure that we hear that. It's gotta be readable, can work in your favor. Because if people hold their finger down to read, it signals engagement to the algorithm. So that's a win win. Now, what kind of content works for stories? Well, again, try trivia or a quiz. You can use questions like, I don't know, how many miles did John Wesley travel by horseback? Or you can use a quick poll, maybe something like, what's the best potluck dessert, banana pudding, apple pie, or pineapple upside down cake. I've seen some creators that like to add maybe a fourth option to something like that, that allows people to see results in a poll without offering an answer.
Ryan Dunn [00:12:34]:
So you might say, I don't want to share, but show me what other people are saying. That's your fourth option. And again, that's fine for our purposes. We're not actually doing a scientific study. We are just seeking some kind of engagement. You can also post up a story with some kind of countdown reminder, like a reminder that registration for the youth lock in ends tomorrow. Stories are a really useful spot to do some timely updates without that awkwardness of saying, well, registration ends in two days. And it's four days later before it shows up in somebody's feed because stories disappear after twenty four hours.
Ryan Dunn [00:13:14]:
So noting that registration is going to close down on the youth lock in soon, totally acceptable, or that the church rummage sale is just two days away. Again, you don't have to fear that somebody is going to look at that, when you post that on a Tuesday, and they're not gonna see it till Thursday because it's gonna be gone by then. Stories is a good spot to drop in those quick updates. Now when posting the stories, I wanna invite you not to overdo it. Posting 10 stories in a row can feel pretty overwhelming for the user. So I recommend sticking to like one or two at a time. I've also read people that say, five to seven if you're spacing them out. But here's what I've noticed in my own behavior.
Ryan Dunn [00:13:55]:
Maybe you're different, but I think if an account has, like, 10 stories posted at once, I'm not likely to read it. Actually, I'm not likely to read any of them. I guess internally, I feel like they're being spammy or greedy. It's all just a little too much. So some recommendations say shoot for five to seven story posts at a time. Personally, I think even that's too many. I'm comfortable saying one or two story posts at a time is great. I'd like to just make sure that I'm covered for twenty four hours.
Ryan Dunn [00:14:24]:
So I'll post up a story. And my goal is within the next twenty four hours to post up another story just so I have something consistently up on that story feed. I guess the key is to just kind of keep it simple and reasonable and doable. Now I mentioned using stories to invite people to send a direct message. You can use this strategy in regular posts as well. And this is one of the most underused but powerful tools on social media right now. Instagram, Facebook, even TikTok, they all reward accounts that use DMs, direct messages, to build real relationships. So how we're gonna do this is we're gonna start simple.
Ryan Dunn [00:15:04]:
We're gonna invite people to message with a keyword like bible study or volunteer, and then we can use an automated response, either through Instagram's native tools or, the Meta Business Suite or third party tools if we're getting really advanced like ManyChat or MobileMonkey to send a link or message back to that user. This not only boosts engagement, but it helps you circumvent some of those challenges of sharing links directly in posts and in Instagram. It's cool because it gets around that whole like LinkedIn bio kind of thing, which let's face it. If you put up that kind of barrier for people engaging with your content, they're pretty unlikely to follow through on that. So So if you need a little help setting that up in Instagram, what you do is you go to settings and then click on business, and then there should be an option for saved replies or automated messages. And you can set it up there. Or you can use meta business suite for more advanced automations across Facebook and Instagram. I set up an automated response for our church through meta business suite, and I have it looking for certain keywords and then asking yes or no questions on top of that.
Ryan Dunn [00:16:16]:
It's fairly simple process. Didn't take me but more than like an hour. So if you ask someone to DM a keyword, then you can automate back response with something like a signup link. For example, you share a post inviting people to a new Wednesday night Bible study. Now, understandably, you like for people to register for the study, or maybe you're hosting the study on Zoom and you need to provide a link to that Zoom session. Well, you can ask people to put in the post that you put up, you can ask people to message you with the words bible study. Then you have an automated response that provides a link to your registration page or to your Zoom session. The key with this automated response is to make it feel somewhat personal, even if it is automated.
Ryan Dunn [00:17:07]:
Now we're not masking that something is automated. We're not trying to put something over on people. I think most of us realize that when we message a service and we get an immediate response, we're in some kind of automation sequence. But we just want to make it clear that there's some kind of human being behind the whole process. Like eventually human eyes are going to set on the response that people send to you. Now one more suggestion I have for reinvigorating a stagnant social media account is to engage through your institutional or branded accounts. This one is often overlooked. If your church wants more engagement, and you might have to give more engagement.
Ryan Dunn [00:17:49]:
So what you might wanna do is use your branded account, your institutional account, your church account, to comment on other posts that align with your values or to do something simple, like congratulate an organization or celebrate a community win, or maybe just wish somebody a happy birthday or happy retirement or to say thank you. The goal is to just be present. And as you're doing this, don't make it about your church, just make it about connection. So leave that word of happy birthday without any kind of call to action to like, hey, come check us out on Sunday or anything like that. Just be there. When people see that your church is active, supportive and responsive, then they're going to be more likely to interact with your posts. And the more you engage with others, the more likely your content will show up in their feeds. It's kind of simple, but it's actually really powerful and brings a lot of return.
Ryan Dunn [00:18:42]:
Social media doesn't have to be truly exhausting. Even in an age where we are right now where, well, we're just not seeing the returns that we did a few years ago. And it certainly doesn't have to be stagnant. By shifting your strategy from broadcasting to engaging and from really trying to shift a mindset from one way messaging to community building, your church can create a digital space that's not only seen, but one that's that's truly kinda felt. So here's your takeaways. First, reevaluate your metrics. Again, likes and reach are probably not the best measurements. We wanna look for shares and link clicks.
Ryan Dunn [00:19:27]:
Number two, we wanna make stories meaningful. Number three, use DMs strategically and invite people to hit you up on the DMs. And lastly, be active in your community's digital life. Even one or two of these changes can make a big difference in re energizing your church's presence online. So if you found today's episode helpful, would you take a moment and share it with someone in your ministry network? See how that works? We're going for the shares here. And don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes of my comm. Thanks for taking this journey with us on my comm. For more things about this podcast and for more resources and tips for your ministry, check check out resourceumc.org.
Ryan Dunn [00:20:11]:
MyCOM is a production of United Methodist communication. It comes out monthly. I wanna thank Renee McNeil and Patty Delabovi for production and marketing support. My name is Ryan Dunn. I'll talk to you in a month. Peace.