The Breakdown of an Effective Social Media Post

[Tom Pounder] What does it look like for a social media post to effectively reach your community and engage people in your community? What's the breakdown of it? That's what we're going to talk about today. Are you ready? Because it's time. [Announcer/Intro Voice] You're listening to the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast, part of the TCD Podcast Network. [Tom Pounder] Hey heroes, my name is Tom Pounder and you are listening to the Church Digital Sidekick Podcast. We're so excited that you're here today. This is the podcast where we bring in ministry leaders to talk about tools or trends that are happening in the online world and apply it into our ministry context and figure out how we can best do ministry in this very digital world we're living in today. today I have my friend Adam McLaughlin on and Adam and I are going to talk about breaking down a social media post what how do you make an effective social media post so you're reaching the people in your community that you really want to be reaching what's the breakdown of it because in reality as Adam will share is I think we put a lot of sometimes non effort into our social media posts and just throw out things and say oh this will be good I'll ask this question or we'll get some engagement that's good yada yada yada but in reality when we make those generic posts and we don't attach it into our church and our church culture, we run the risk of being ineffective in our social media posting. So what's the proper breakdown of a social media post and how can it effectively reach the people in your community? That's what we're talking about today. So without any further ado, let's get in our conversation right now with Adam McLaughlin. All right, with me right now is my friend Adam McLaughlin. Adam, how are you, man? Tom, thank you so much for hanging out. Okay, so because you're a traveling man, I have to find out where you're at currently. So where are you today? [Adam McLaughlin] Today, I am in Ontario, Canada, in the hometown where I grew up. And we are, I'm not sure when this airs, but we are anxiously awaiting the border opening so we can escape to God's holy land, the United States of America. And I hope I just haven't offended any Canadian listeners. But the reality is it's getting cold here and it's hard to live in an RV in November in Canada. [Tom Pounder] Okay, so, okay, well, we'll get into this because you've been on the podcast numerous times. And so people who've been following along with the podcast should know that your story, but tell everyone who may not know what you're currently doing. [Adam McLaughlin] So since 2018, my wife and I have been full-time RVers. And we have been traveling Canada and the US. And typically, we spend about six months in the States, six months in Canada. And we travel. We visit all different churches while we're traveling. And we see all different things. We've been to 42 states since summer of 2018. And we've been across Canada three times. So that's kind of my life in a nutshell. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, I love following along with your stuff, the RVers. And so that's been really cool. So you don't like spending winters up in Canada. [Adam McLaughlin] Well for obvious reasons our walls are about an inch and a half thick and you know there's maybe there's maybe some insulation in some of them I suppose technically speaking but surviving winter in Canada in an RV is not a thing so we're looking forward to being able to hang out in some warmer weather this winter. [Tom Pounder] Well, I know people have been interested in buying RVs and buying smaller homes and all that kind of stuff, but all with good stuff. So if you've ever wondered what that's like, you should follow Adam and his family. And I'll include the links on the show notes so you can follow along with their adventures. Where are you right now? Are you guys filming right now or are you not filming right now? [Adam McLaughlin] no we're not filming right now uh filming's gonna happen a little bit later this year once we're able to uh go south and uh this year specifically it'll probably happen a little bit more into january february as well so nice that's kind of the the time when all the rvers find somewhere to congregate together whether that's florida or arizona so it's that's kind of the time for us to do our filming [Tom Pounder] so so warmer weather that is definitely good okay and so for anybody who may not know uh adam has a background in church communications he is uh an expert on web stuff so talk to us a little bit real quick about your background before we get into the subject matter about church communications [Adam McLaughlin] yeah so uh 2011 i started my own digital agency and in 2015 i was offered an opportunity uh marketing and communications position at a church in florida and we were there for three years and uh it was some of our our favorite memories are from our time working at that church in florida And in 2018, when my three year contract was up, that's when we hit the road and started traveling because one of the things I really wanted to do is see how all different churches worked and what they, you know, what the first time guest experience was like at all different churches. Unfortunately, COVID put a bit of a kibosh onto that plan in early 2020, but between summer of 2018. And when we had to, you know, stop visiting churches for a little while, we were able to visit 42 churches for the first time. And that's really exciting for me, you know, to be a first-time guest at that many churches. We're looking forward to continuing. Our goal is to be first-time guests at 100 churches in the next couple of years. So that's something on our to-do list. [Tom Pounder] That's great. That is fantastic. And you've been very active on social media. You're asking a lot of great questions on social media and encouraging a lot of people. And so, again, I'll include all his links in the show notes that you can find afterwards. But you definitely need to be following Adam if you're into the church communications and website stuff. He's got a lot of great insights and a lot of great encouragement. All right, so let's get into our conversation today, because I think this is going to shock people at first, but I think they just need to hear you out afterwards. And this is part of the reason why I wanted to talk about this subject. You have a very strong opinion about something on social media and with church accounts. Why don't you share that and let's then debrief it a little bit. [Adam McLaughlin] Well, I have a very strong opinion about a lot of things on a lot of things. However, I know what you're hinting at, and that is engagement posts simply for the purpose of an engagement. And I have a real concern with this because I think the strategy is misplaced. And I don't think the strategy actually creates the results that people think it's intended to create or people are hoping to create. and so the strategy is let's post something on social media that creates engagement and it doesn't really matter what it is as long as it gets a lot of likes comments and shares and then we can follow that up once the algorithm sees people are engaging with our content we can follow that up with something we actually want them to hear And the problem with this, the classic example, at least for me in my world, the classic example is what's your favorite flavor of ice cream? And on a lot of accounts, that gets some decent answers, right? But the problem is it really has nothing to do with your church. It doesn't show off your church culture. You could be posting the same what's your favorite flavor of ice cream as the restaurant down the road could be posting that. And the car dealership down the road could be posting that. and you know the daycare on the other side of the road could be posting that and there's no distinction between them posting that image and your church posting that image and that's where i have a real concern is because the goal isn't to just simply create engagement the goal is to uh create a consistent amount of engagement ongoing engagement that the algorithm favors and the reason is because if you just simply create a whole bunch of engagement on what's your favorite flavor of ice cream post then the next time your church posts you know a bible verse all the people who engaged or you know made a comment about their favorite flavor of ice cream because it was something interesting that a bunch of their other friends were posting about those same people probably have no connection to you posting a bible verse and so what happens is on the next post you'd now tank your engagement and so instead of consistent engagement across your content Um, your, the algorithms now see spikes and valleys, which is really terrible. It's really detrimental because soon you're going to stop seeing the spikes at all, because there's so many valleys that those. The algorithm is not going to push your content very far. And I know we're going to dig into this, but the good news is there's a way to hack this. So you still get engagement, but I'm sure we'll jump into that also. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, let's talk about it a little bit because I think, again, just to backtrack a little bit, I think a lot of times we're taught, hey, just throw up stuff on there you want to engage. Like, for instance, my strategy with social media at my church is I want to engage people, I want to inspire people, and I want to inform people. And so I just think, whatever, go out there. I'm just going to throw a bunch of stuff out there. And you see different organizations are offering you different things, and they're really silly and stuff like that. But let's go why, again, you hit on it. You talk about the culture. Again, it's okay to post things, engaging images and engaging content, but you want it to tie to culture, right? [Adam McLaughlin] yeah absolutely so in every piece of content you produce in this case we'll stick to focusing on a social media post but in every so in every social media post there are three things going on there's your topic there's your theme and there is your format so let's tackle format first format's easy to understand it's your image or your video it's you know you took a picture and you overlaid text or you created a graphic or used a motion background or something like that right so that's your that's your format and you know it's important to understand the format for each different social media channel for instance you can't just post text on instagram Right. You have to post some kind of visual content, whether that's video or an image. OK, so that's your format. So we'll take that out of the way because that happens in every post is your format. And let's talk about the theme and the topic. So in this case, the topic would be ice cream. But your theme, this is where a lot of churches miss it, is your theme is what you're trying to drive home consistently across your organization. What are you trying to communicate in an overarching perspective? And your theme is typically what I would boil down to your core values. so you know your your topic is ice cream your format is you're going to post a picture that says what's your favorite of ice cream but now you have a theme now you have an opportunity to drive home your core values of your organization you're you're able to let people who see the post understand what is it about your church that they should want to connect to so now let's talk about your theme well if your theme is that we love our community then maybe it's what's your favorite flavor of ice cream from and then you tag a local ice cream shop and then you say we'll pick a random winner and give them a 10 gift card to that ice cream shop Okay, so now what are you saying? You're saying as a church, we're not just trying to get something from you. We're not trying to get engagement from you. We're not trying to game the system in order to create, you know, more engagement for future posts. We're not aiming to get something from you. We're trying to get something to you. We're trying to endorse a local company. We're trying to endorse a local business. And we're trying to be part of the community. And if you want to engage, you can win it. You can win a gift card. We're trying to give you something. So now that's the theme. [Tom Pounder] Dude, that's awesome. I love how you actually talked about the ice cream, but then you talked about how you could tag a local community. I think that really gives you a lot of opportunities to build relationships with other companies and people that are local. Can you give me another idea? Give me another example of that. [Adam McLaughlin] yeah so here's one of my favorite pet peeves so get me up on a soapbox is when churches post about daylight saving time daylight savings time i can never remember if it has the s or it doesn't have the s but we're coming up to it in the fall and we're gonna hear about this i know listen people at your church don't need you know they only need a reminder from your church's social media account if they don't have a phone that automatically sets itself they don't listen to the news they you know all these other aspects of where they can get the reminder for daylight saving But unfortunately, churches post that content because they're checking a box to say, I need something to go on Instagram today or Facebook today or Twitter today or whatever. I'm going to check the box. It's mailing it in. It's a cop out. However, there are opportunities where you could take the topic of daylight saving, but use the theme and really drive home your church's culture. And this is one of my favorite things to talk about, Tom, is a post that you put together at your church a little while ago. I say a little while, it was probably seven or eight years or something. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, it was a bit ago. [Adam McLaughlin] so i'm sure you'll link to that somewhere but it's a it's a a joke or a you know a quick video talking about don't forget to fall back and that takes the topic of daylight savings but doesn't just check a box and say you know dumb reminder change your clock it actually enforces to people who watch that video what it's like to be part of your church what it's like to be part of your community you know you guys have a sense of humor you guys uh our teamwork you guys are thinking outside the box you guys are doing something different than just you know a canva graphic with a clock in the background a little bit blurry a logo and don't forget to set your clock you know don't forget to fall back you know to me that's a cop-out and somebody might say well it's kind of neutral right it's we post it doesn't hurt anything well it actually does hurt something because you are not you're you're taking the engagement or you're taking the attention that a social media network is giving you for whatever percentage of people are going to look at that post and you're basically throwing it out the window you know you're lighting that attention on fire because nobody really needs that reminder and uh you know i've got a blog post about this too that always spikes in the fall and creates controversy and people get on my case and i don't really understand what the controversy is about i try and pay attention to the comments they just don't make any sense but i i like i i'm not anti any specific excuse me i'm not anti any specific topic go ahead and post about daylight saving but don't just throw out the attention that those algorithms are giving you for that post make it intentional and theme that post so that it drives home your church's culture [Tom Pounder] Yeah, I love that because again, if you look back at that video that we actually copied off of another church that we saw that we thought was really funny. But the reason why we chose to do that video was because it embraced our culture in a sense. Like we are a fun church. It's one of our core values. Fun is a core value of ours. And so that communicated fun because it was a funny thing that I did. They wanted me to fall back. It was a trust fall and I fell forward. and so and i you know again you didn't see the mat that i fell into but again everyone laughs at it we do post it i think almost every year it's a fun video that we um we have but again it embraces our culture we took it we didn't just show the clock like you said um and we do it i i like how you said it like this actually provides us like you're not telling people to not post these kind of content you're telling them to don't just check off the box do a little bit more put a little bit of the extra effort put a little bit of the extra mile into it and let it go forward a little bit like that [Adam McLaughlin] Right. And in order to be able to do that, you have to know your core values are right. So many churches that I have spoken with or talked with or worked with, they have, you know, they have, you know, 17 core values, which basically make an interesting decal in their foyer. But, you know, it stops at being wall art and nobody's actually living those things out. They're not part of regular conversation. There are too many things for people to remember at once. You know, you need to have three, four, maybe five core values that people can name off at any given moment and make decisions with. And that makes it really easy to create a theme around the topic for your social media content. you know it is a real challenge if you're in a social media position and your leadership hasn't yet articulated those core values i would really encourage you to use whatever pull you have to try and help your leadership bring somebody in to discover core values or or have conversations about that or find a book about core values but until you know that it's really hard to choose the theme to communicate your topic [Tom Pounder] Yeah, I mean, the reality is, I mean, it's hard enough to get noticed on, especially if you go to Facebook and you have a Facebook page. It's hard enough to get noticed as it is. And if you're just putting out the same kind of content that everybody else is putting out, it's going to get blurred out anyways. That's why you have to be a little bit more creative. And I understand, too, that a lot of church communicators, a lot of social media managers and online pastors. We are overworked right now. We are overwhelmed on a lot of things. It hasn't gotten any better. And we've been in COVID for almost two years now. I mean, so the reality is it's not getting any better, but that doesn't mean that we just got to throw up just random stuff. It really, the more work we can put into it, the better results we're going to get. [Adam McLaughlin] Well, it makes it even more important to use the time that you have in order to gain as much exposure to your church's culture as possible. Nobody's going to come to your church on Sunday because they saw a social media post that said, what's your favorite flavor of ice cream? Like 0%. Like the number is smaller than the number of people in the 80s who showed up because they received a tract and a cassette tape on the street corner. That the number of people who are showing up to your church because of your what flavor of ice cream do you like is even lower than the other number. But what happens is that you have some attention every time you post something on social media. There are very few social media posts that get zero views, right? So make the most of that attention. So it might look like we're going to, not do 13 social media channels. We're going to focus on one social media channel that we know our followers are at and really, really focus there. So maybe it's instead of posting five things, one on each social media channel a day, we're going to take our five posts a day and focus on one or two posts a day on the channel where we know people are following. And so I would say it's important to be consistent. Posting once a week is not going to help get any engagement. It's also important to post really good quality posts. Posting three times a day, what's your favorite flavor of ice cream or quote unquote engagement posts is also not going to get you any traction. So there's a ditch on both sides of that road. You need to be consistent, but you also need to create content that matters. And so maybe that looks like scaling back for some people, but you need to find that balance. [Tom Pounder] yeah i love how you just threw out the the cassette tape i mean that just that warmed my heart on a lot of levels that you because i remember those days uh and so i it was just that was great cassette tapes are wonderful um okay what so i want to just ask you just kind of one thing as you kind of we kind of wrap up here this has been awesome But earlier, you broke down kind of the breakdown of the social media post. You talked about the theme and whatnot. Can you rehash that real quick again? And just as people are processing the importance of a social media post, it's not just throwing something up there. You highlighted three specific things on every social post. What were they again? [Adam McLaughlin] Yeah, so every piece of social content is made up of three things. And it doesn't matter if it's if you tweeted one word, every social media post is made up of three things. It's your topic, your theme, and your format. So again, your format is, you know, what is the thing? How are you communicating a message? This is A picture on Instagram. It's a video on Facebook. It's a tweet, you know, and format does matter on each channel. Like we use the example of Instagram. You can't just post text on Instagram. So that format on Instagram has to be photo or video. So your format matters. And we all know that video, I shouldn't assume we all know. I'm hoping that most of us are in the loop, but if not, this is some helpful information. I hope video is the most engaging content on social media right now. So if you can, video is really helpful. That's your format. And then the other two options are your topic and your theme. So your topic is what are you actually talking about? And your theme is how are you talking about that? So, you know, let's say your topic is small groups. Well, your theme for your topic could be join a small group today, click this link. Or your theme for your topic could be, are you looking to build new friendships? Join a small group. Or your theme for your topic could be, have you moved to our city recently? We'd love for you to meet some new friends. Join a small group. or it could be are you looking to go deeper in your understanding of the bible join a small group okay so your topic is small group your theme is how are you going to talk about your small group and then your format so the reality is and this this could be a whole other podcast episode tom maybe we need to schedule another one but you could actually talk about small groups as your topic for 30 days straight without annoying people without seeming redundant because you could change your theme the entire time and then you could change your format so if you take your topic times all the different themes you can think of times all the different formats you can think of you can come up with you know 20 or 30 posts and so what i would recommend is getting a tool you know the one that i use is called coschedule.com and get a tool that allows you to create content and schedule it all out And then it allows you to designate certain pieces of content as evergreen content. So you can say, listen, I want something to go on my Facebook page once a day, and I'm going to schedule something every single day on Facebook. But if I miss a day, then you could pull from this evergreen content and post something that we've designated can be posted anytime. and so you know to take a tool like that now you you know your first month you have to create 30 pieces of unique content but your second month maybe you're creating 20 pieces of unique content and there's 10 pieces that are being filled in by your evergreen library you know by the time you get four or five months into this process not recommended, but you could take a month off and there would still be something showing up on your channel every single day. And this kind of takes the pressure off of like, if you have a sick day, if you have a vacation day, if you're just really, really busy or your brain is not processing a new idea for social media, then it kind of takes that pressure off your shoulder. So I would really recommend finding a tool that will do that. [Tom Pounder] Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I use Hootsuite and I've found that to be very good, but there's tons of tons of other options out there. And so I'll probably even include a link on the different options you can do for scheduling because that is important. You want to tweet things or post things in the moment at times. That's a definite, but it's time effective to have a scheduler like Hootsuite or other ones as well. So that's great. [Adam McLaughlin] Yeah, and if you can't think of what to schedule or you can't think like you're run out of ideas in your mind, again, separate into topics. So topics could be an upcoming event. It could be small groups. It could be your podcast. It could be rewatch Sunday's service on YouTube. It could be rewatch the live broadcast. It could be a snip from pastor's sermon. It could be join our kids ministry. It could be come hang out at youth. Okay, those are all topics. and then you multiply those by themes right so for just about every topic i just said you could do something like are you looking to meet new friends you know join kids ministry come to youth join a small group you know join a bible study Or the theme could be, are you looking to reach your neighbors? You know, invite them to youth, invite them to a small group, invite them to a Bible study, you know, invite them to our upcoming event. And then, so that's, you know, maybe I've just come up with a hundred different posts right there. Right. And then your format. So you're going to do a quote graphic. You're going to do a video. You're going to do a selfie video. You're going to do a video overlay on an abstract background. You're going to do a video interviewing people who are participating in those events. You're going to do a still graphic of those people with a quote overlaid. Okay, now we've just come up with 10 new formats. So I just gave you a thousand social media posts. Yeah. Like 30 seconds. Now you have to go out and build them, obviously. But you really don't need to be at a position with this framework where you think there's no more ideas. You've run out of what to post on social media. [Tom Pounder] Well, and one of the most effective ways that you could do that is just have a planning time, you know, just set aside an hour a week and say, let's just break out some piece of paper or on your computer and just plan out a bunch of different things. And then you can, as you need to, you can fill in the content again with things that match your culture. And that would be most engaging long-term and not just get that hit, like you said, because again, you're going to bottom down. You're going to hit that valley as well. If you're throwing up random stuff, this gets you a little bit more organized in that way. So I love that. It's a great breakdown of just an effective social media post. [Adam McLaughlin] Right. [Tom Pounder] All right. Well, Adam, this was awesome. This was fantastic. I appreciate you coming on and sharing with me about this kind of stuff. As we wrap up, any final thoughts? [Adam McLaughlin] Well, I would just say that sometimes I start my soap boxes with saying something that I think is really terrible and really wrong. And if you've listened to this point in the podcast, I hope you're not discouraged. I hope you are encouraged. I hope you're not thinking you can never post what's my favorite flavor of ice cream. But I just want you to be intentional with your social media content. And I want you to realize that there are so many options if you break down topic times theme times format and i'm hoping this encourages you to start brainstorming some ideas so you're not feeling like you're running out of social media ideas and now you don't have a choice but the only thing you can think of is your favorite flavor of ice cream [Tom Pounder] yes that is good again i purposely wanted you to come on because when you threw out this topic to me i'm like whoa wait a second we have to talk about this because we we we post content like that all the time and you again you what you're talking about is you can post it just be a little bit more strategic about it and embrace your culture in it and you know so i love the little breakdown that you just gave us there and that's really really helpful and effective so i appreciate it so All right, well, Adam, I will include all your links in the show notes and include your website as well, adammclaughlin.net and the RVers, stuff about the RVers. Thanks so much for being with me today. [Adam McLaughlin] Thanks for having me, Tom. [Tom Pounder] Okay, so when Adam and I talked about this initially, I was like, we can't post this. We can't talk about this because you need to be making those kind of posts. But as you heard him break it down, is that it more ties into your culture and how you as a church are radiating a certain culture to the people in your community that you make those social media posts. You don't just whimsically throw out random posts. There has to be some intentionality into it. So it was great to have him on the podcast to talk about that. So, but I'm curious, like what stood out to you? What encouraged you? What challenged you? What questions do you have? If you've got comments, thoughts, or questions, I would love to hear those. You can either post them in the comment section or you can hit me up on Twitter. At TAPounder is my Twitter handle and I would love to have this conversation continue on because we want to be more effective in our social media postings. And so we have to discover really, what that looks like for us and for our church. Because what it looks like for my church, it's going to look like different for your church because our cultures are different. So what does it look like? Let's continue this conversation on. Hit me up on Twitter or post it in the comments section. All right, heroes. Well, thanks so much for being with me today. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, go and subscribe to it. It's on Spotify or iTunes or on any other podcasting network. All right, heroes, well, that wraps it up for another episode of the Church Digital Podcast. Thanks so much for being with me. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, go to iTunes or Spotify and subscribe to it, or you can go to the church.digital website and subscribe to it as well. I hope you all have a great rest of your day, a great rest of your week, and until next time, have a great one.