With over 4 billion social media users and counting, which is roughly half of the world's population, social media platforms offer powerful opportunities to churches to make a kingdom impact. To get it right requires inspiration and education—so this article aims to show you why it's important to leverage videos on your social media platforms, and offers tips and video examples of how to step up your game.
WHY?
Videos are the Most Impactful
Videos are the most compact and impactful form of communication because they are editable, visual and musical. I know that is a bold statement but let me break it down. When you edit a video, it allows you to take out all the fluff and mistakes. In fact, there are services that remove dead air timeout of videos because we have been conditioned to become bored once there is a pause. When you add visual support to video it becomes more than a talking head and transforms into a show and tell. And when you add a music bed it creates an emotional foundation that steers and even manipulates the viewer - think political attack ad with ominous music.
We have the best message to communicate—that "we are unfathomably loved by God." So we should use the best tools we have—like video—to communicate that message.
The Best Message Requires The Best Tools
We have the best message to communicate. That we are unfathomably loved by God. Therefore, we should use the best tools we have to communicate that message. When we do that, we follow the example of Jesus. In Luke 5 Jesus was about to teach a large crowd by the Lake of Gennesaret. But before He did, He got into a boat and went out from shore. Why did Jesus move away from his audience? Most communicators want to move closer to be better heard. Because Jesus wanted to use the reflective surface of the water to amplify his voice so more could hear. He was using the natural PA system of his day. Jesus used the best communication tools He had to communicate the best message. We should as well.
HOW?
iPhone
Before you over invest in expensive gear, start with your iPhone. I have expensive gear but am continually blown away by the quality footage smartphones create. There is a budget saving benefit and an empowerment benefit of using smartphones to create content. Most of your volunteers will not have access to expensive gear, but they do have an iPhone. Also realize that if they are creating content for your story (temporary) instead of your feed (more permanent) then footage quality is not nearly as important as other factors such as storytelling, framing and pacing.
Invest In a Mic
Your eyes are forgiving but your ears are discerning. Your eyes will allow you to watch poor footage for an extended time. I can confirm this. The conspiracy theorist in me has watched the bigfoot footage from 1967 many times without any frustration over the quality. But your ears won’t allow you to listen to poor audio for an extended time. So invest in a mic for your smartphone.
Your eyes are forgiving but your ears are discerning. Your eyes will allow you to watch poor footage for an extended time. But your ears won’t allow you to listen to poor audio for an extended time. So invest in a mic for your smartphone.
Train Your Staff
Smaller- to medium-sized churches might have a creative Swiss army knife on staff—someone that is decent at a number of creative endeavors like videography. The tension becomes when they are expected to create every video for every ministry for every social platform. I’m exhausted just reading that last sentence. The best way to utilize these staff members is content creation and team training. They should use half their time making videos and the other half teaching others to make them as well.
EXAMPLES
Worship Context
There is often a lot of history and meaning to the songs we sing. The problem is that the worship leader doesn’t have time to explore that rich background during the 10-second instrumental lead into the song. They usually only have time to say, “let's stand to worship.” So have them record a video giving that context before the service. That type of video would create a sense of anticipation for singing on Sunday. And would create a much deeper experience for those who saw the video.
Bonus Message Content
Whenever teachers prepare a message, they always leave a lot of material on the cutting room floor. Instead of giving 50 minutes of good content, they edit it down to 40 minutes of great content. But that means there is still 10 minutes left of good content. Think through how you could repackage that content. It could be a live video of the teacher Sunday night sharing what couldn’t make it into the message. When I was at a church, we used this extra content to increase downloads of our new app. At the end of the message the teacher said I had four points today but only got through three of them. Download our app to access a video of the last point. Great use of video content and great marketing strategy.
BTS videos are great ways to pull back the curtain of what is going on at your church. People see plenty of what happened on the stage on your social platform. They craved more content from behind the scenes.
BTS
Behind the scenes videos are great ways to pull back the curtain of what is going on at your church. We created this video of what our lead pastors message prep looked like on Sunday. We wanted to show people the flow of his mornings. From the simple, like what he ate to ensure he had the energy to preach three messages and connect with hundreds of people, to the powerful like pausing to celebrate volunteers. This was one of our top viewed videos that year. Because of that high engagement we started doing a lot more BTS videos after this one. People see plenty of what happened on the stage on your social platform. They craved more content from behind the scenes. So give it to them.
Takeover
I served at a church where we frequently empowered staff and volunteers to do a social media takeover on a Sunday morning. We gave trusted potential content creators our IG login and then encouraged them to post a number of videos on our stories through the morning. Here is an example when they gave me the login info. This helped our followers see the church from a different view which was refreshing. It also released volunteers to a much greater level.
Highlighting Message Clips
Now I know a lot of churches do this already. But they usually do it after the fact with some poor soul having to rewatch a 45-minute message to find a 45-second clip. So challenge your teaching team to highlight what these clips will be before they speak. This does two things. It saves some volunteer looking for a post worthy clip. But more importantly it forces the communicator to envision how their soundbite is gonna land on social. When they apply that forethought, their performance becomes much stronger, at least for that section of the message. And if they can’t think of a portion of their message that is social worthy, then they might need a little more work on their message. Doh!
CONCLUSION
If you want additional help leveraging social media for your church then visit benstapley.com/coach to schedule a free consultation. I would love to help you win in this area.
Is your church's social media making a kingdom impact? Capture Summit '23 can help!
CaptureSummit 2023 - the 3-day conference for church creatives begins Aug. 7-9
Join Capture Summit dozens of expert presenters, along with hundreds of your fellow creatives for a deep-dive into everything from filmmaking, video editing, lighting, streaming, audio, IMAG, to leveraging social media, building an inspired team, and fueling the creative process—it's all happening at Capture Summit '23 - the 7th Annual Content Creation & Filmmaking Summit hosted at Cottonwood Creek Church in Allen, Texas.
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