Best Practices for Church Social Media – Interview with Seth Muse

 

Bart Blair: Alright, well, I am with my friend Seth Muse. The “Seth Muse”. Seth, you doing alright today?

Seth Muse: I’m doing great, Bart. Thanks for having me.

Bart Blair: Hey, it’s my pleasure. Seth is known around the globe as the host of the “Seminary of Hard Knocks” podcast. How’d you like that?

Seth Muse: Yeah. Around the globe.

Bart Blair: Around the globe. Seminary of Hard Knocks podcast. Founder of 8bit Communication, where he does brand and marketing strategies for businesses, churches, you name it, I’m assuming. And then also is part of the church com team where they do marketing, branding, communications, consulting for churches, all kinds of different stuff. Seth has a long background in church communications and ministry. You’re a Dallas Theological Seminary grad, aren’t you?

Seth Muse: Yes.

Bart Blair: Yeah.

Seth Muse: Yes. And got my media and communications master. When was that, 2012?

Bart Blair: OK.

Seth Muse: 2012ish, around there.

Bart Blair: Alright. Yeah. So I mean, we’re living in the shadow of DTS. It’s good to see that you’re putting that DTS education to good use. It is a communications and media degree.

Seth Muse: It is. And it came along with the entire systematic theology, bible exposition, every book of the Bible thing that every THM gets as well, so that was really valuable to me. I was really thankful for that. I went there because I really wanted to do some apologetics training and I wanted to be able to engage the world in apologetics online. That’s kind of what brought me there.  When I came out, I went back into youth ministry and did all kinds of crazy things before I ended up in church communications, which I did not know I could do at the time. So, I’m happy doing what I’m doing right now. It’s been a wild ride, but really fun.

Bart Blair: Well, that’s really cool. Church communications is a whole space that really, for the last, probably 5 to 10 years has, that whole role has been on a journey of evolution. Right? Can we can we say that? We work in churches.

Bart Blair: We can say evolution, evolution of this particular role. Some churches have communications teams or communications people. Some churches don’t.

Bart Blair: Now that a lot of churches are moving online because of COVID-19 and the coronavirus stuff, they’re all wishing they did have a communications person. And that’s what I wanted to have some discussion with you about today, primarily is, communications as it relates to social media. You do a lot of coaching and a lot of consulting with churches and how they can how they can best utilize social media and the different platforms, what to communicate, how to communicate.

Bart Blair: And we’re at a very different, interesting season right now in the life of the church.

And so, I thought this would be an appropriate time to just pick your brain for a little bit and talk about what we can do to be better communicators online using social media.

You know, so the last few weeks, churches have been working really hard to ramp up streaming. They got their services online. They’re probably still tweaking and still trying to do that better.

But now that we’re kind of through that initial hump, what would you say are some effective ways that churches can use social media for building community and engaging with the people that they’re now streaming their services to?

Seth Muse: I think that it’s going to take, first of all, it’s just going to take a mind shift about social media and what it is to start to understand how to do that well. I think in the past, social media has has been viewed by pastors as a way to get information out to their congregation. A way to promote events and things of that nature or a way to share their vision, share their values even as a church. And, it’s a way to connect, to connect their people to a thing.

And the way it has shifted and I think, unfortunately, churches have not pivoted well to this yet and are being forced to now, is that social has morphed over the years into a very much social platform where you’re connecting people to people instead of people and of people to brands or people to things or products. And the way to connect them to those products, in the business world, is to connect to a relationship or conversation first, that feels more authentic, that feels more raw, more people-to-people. So, even if you’re trying to connect them to something intangible or even a product that is tangible, the way you have to do it now is more socially charged than it was in the past. And I would say even then in the past, it was that way.

It was just not, it was still kind of effective to just be informational. Now, it is not effective to be informational on social, it is only really effective to be inspirational, to connect the people and to be very personable. So that’s the mind shift that really has to change first in how churches approach it. And I think right now, we’re struggling to figure that out because that has not been the way we’ve looked at it. So, churches are, right now, going exactly what you just said. How do I connect with my people online? Because, for a long time, it has been you can’t do that. It’s not a place for ministry. It’s not a place for discipleship, not a place for evangelism. And now we’re like, well, that’s all we’ve got. So what do we do? And I think we’re going to find that there are some options there that really can be helpful. And I think this program that we’re on right now, Zoom, is an incredible tool for being able to connect. I think texting is a great way to connect. And, you know, I got a text from my pastor at my church. We go to a small church that meets in a school. Well, we meet in school, we’re not meeting right now. You know, there’s not even a chance. That thing is closed down until the government says we’re open. And so, we’re having church online and we’re having small groups online, and our pastor, we’re small enough. This is where the small church really has the advantage, right,

 is that they’ve been texting us all and calling us all just about once a week to say, hey, what’s going on? How are things going? What can we do for you? And that’s been a great personal touch that we really could have done that all along. But all of our time was going into all these other things. And now we don’t have those things to put our time into. It’s like, wow, we’re able to connect with our people 24/7, not really just on Sundays or on Wednesdays. You know, and wait for them to come to us. So it’s awakening time, you know, for social media where what can we do on social? I think the biggest thing is just being personal, being personable and shifting your mindset around. What can we do on this thing?

Bart Blair: I have a question for you. You said that the pastors and leaders at your church are calling you, like on a phone.

Seth Muse: Not necessarily me, but I know that.

Bart Blair: The reason I asked that is that my mind just got blown because I’ve had many conversations over the course of last few weeks about church online,and it had not occurred to me in one of the conversations that I’ve had, to pick up the phone and call someone. It’s like all the connection is Zoom, Facebook, you know, Google Me or whatever it’s called. Right? Skype, Facetime, whatever you’re using.

Seth Muse: Facetime, I think, is a great way to do it.

You know, and it’s weird because, you know, normally we would not call. Right? I mean, normally, like, don’t do that. But right now, there’s such a need for personal connection that it’s kind of welcome, if you know them. Like, if you know the person, if you have no idea who this person is. I mean, I still wouldn’t really call them. I would delegate that out to like staff that they interact with. Like, call your people.

Bart Blair: Yeah.

Seth Muse: Call people that you know. Divvy that out to volunteers. I mean, some might even, one of my friends, Jeanette Yates, who’s a communications person did all kinds of great stuff. She works for Text In Church and she’s like, their system’s really great. They have a lot of different things other than texting that they use e-mail, calling cards, all kinds of stuff. And she suggested, bring out the old school phone tree. You know, that thing where you record a message and then upload your list and it sends it out. I’m like, okay, well, maybe, you know, I don’t know how I feel about that. But, that’s you know, that’s still, if that’s your church, they’re not calling, our church is not calling. I’ve heard other churches calling. If you have an older congregation, that might be OK. You know, that might be a good option is just pick people up because they’re having to struggle through online. And, if you have an older organization, I would tell you right now, that your church phone number or your cell phone might need, or your church communications person’s phone number, you might make that available to the older people in your congregation to call you on Sundays and troubleshoot trying to get online church to work so that they can talk to a real person. That’s a real touch point of just, anything you can do to make it personal right now, and make it simple and easy for people. I know it’s difficult for pastors to figure some of this out but you’re still going to work on like making it easy for them to connect to you. And I think that’s a huge ministry point for right now.

Bart Blair: Well, let me ask you to expand on some of that a little bit, because you’ve, you know, you’ve mentioned things like social media, texting, phone calls. There’s other avenues of communication, like email. You know, how do I know, as a pastor or as a leader, when I’m communicating to the people in my church, how do I know which platform is the right platform to use in different situations, in different settings?

Seth Muse: Yeah, it’s going to take a little research on your part to figure out, like who is your primary demographic at your church? And, if you’re one of those people that says we everybody here. No, you really don’t. Look in your database, you can see your demographic. You can see, age groups and life groups and whatever you’ve got are. But, I think right now, to think about Facebook is still the biggest platform. So you really can’t go wrong on Facebook. I think that YouTube is a great option for, you know, especially your younger generation, people like that. I think Instagram has the most power to reach into your congregation organically. So it’s really good. And there’s a growing older senior group that’s starting to embrace Instagram. My mom’s on Instagram.

Bart Blair: You are a big fan of Instagram. Don’t you have a podcast that’s just on Instagram?

Seth Muse: No.  Well I have a show in the church communications Facebook group, called the Insta Good Show and that is all about Instagram. And we actually do a conference called The Insta Summit.

Bart Blair: OK.

Seth Muse: theinstasummit.com, if you want to learn how to master Instagram. It’s free and it’s online so it’s coronavirus free.

 I think Instagram is the next organic platform that people are going to have to engage in. And as the millennial group gets older, that’s where they’re going to be. It’s going to be the new Facebook. And I think Facebook is always gonna be huge. But the way we interact with Facebook, it’s different. So you ask the question like, how do you know which platform? You have to know where your audience, that you have, are. And for that thirty-five to forty, even twenty-five to forty-five group, Instagram is a great place, and Facebook groups are really, really great, if you’re going to use Facebook. And that’s something people don’t understand, is like, you’re, how the platform works. They’re all social platforms. Right? But Facebook pages, like your business page for your church, it is ridiculous how little that your page will show to your people who follow the page. Facebook has said that they care more about friends and family, personal profiles and groups than the page.

And we, as a church, are like, we have a Facebook page, let’s just post it on the Facebook page. You know, like less than 1 percent of your followers will see that post unless it goes crazy, unless people start liking it, sharing it, etc. And if you’re not posting content that gets shared, it’s kind of pointless, to be honest, to post on our Facebook page. Strike up a Facebook group strategy and get people into a group.

Even if it’s just one big group for your church, that is, functions more like a profile than a page. So when you post things in there, people will see it. They can interact and they can have conversation back without you posting something.

And that’s a huge difference for right now, is that people, as they crave conversations and interaction, your page is like fishing. You got to throw a lure out of content. You post for anyone to comment on it and have a conversation, whereas in a group, they can just do whatever they want. They can talk to you. They can talk to their friends. And it’s a community. And so I would seriously suggest Facebook groups as a community-building platform for you right now. If you haven’t started it, now is probably a good time.

Bart Blair: I think that is really, really excellent advice. You know, as communication professionals we’re always struggling with how to beat the Facebook algorithm with posts. The only way to beat it is cash, pay-to-play. As an organization, you pretty much have to pay-to-play. So, if you’re posting stuff on your Facebook page, the only way to ensure that people are going to see it in mass, is to put money behind it, which, that’s probably not the way we want to be engaging with people right now. So the Facebook group.

Resources are certainly limited and if they’re not limited, you know, now, they could be very soon in the future. So managing budgets is key. So Facebook group, I think that’s that’s a really excellent, that’s a really excellent idea.

So, you know, on a similar note, one of the things that I realize, I mean, I follow a lot of different churches and church leaders on social media, as I’m sure you do as well. And, as soon as we hit this little season, we’re going to assume it’s a little season, where the church has had to move pretty much a hundred percent online. My Facebook feed, my Instagram feed, my Twitter feed blew up with all this information, all this content about, you know, what churches are doing and what’s happening and how to engage and how to connect and lots of other stuff as well. I see a lot of churches using social media now, Monday to Friday. Monday to Saturday in completely different ways than they were prior to, you know, having to take their services online. So how do we ensure, as we’re posting things on social media, we’re making videos or or doing live videos.  How do we make sure that we’re actually creating content and distributing content that’s actually adding value rather than just making more noise in the digital world, because there is a whole lot of noise in the digital world right now.

Seth Muse: Yeah, and you’re right. I think I read something this morning that Instagram and Facebook both reported a 40 percent increase in traffic to their sites these past weeks.

Bart Blair: We’re all sitting around at home with nothing else to do.

Seth Muse: I mean, think about how many people that is. That’s insane. There’s already 500 million daily active viewers of Instagram stories. That’s not even like the most popular thing. So we’re talking about a lot of people are online. And so, how can you connect with them and bring value? I think the first thing you’ve got to do is you’ve really got to take a position of empathy and understand that it is about your audience, right now, it is not about your church. It is not about your services. It’s not about your programs. It is not about what you’ve got going on. It is about you being a help and a service and provider and encouragement, an anchor for your people. And the way you do that is through empathy. You have to put yourself in their shoes. And in marketing, this is like step number one. We we look at our audience and go, what’s their pain point? How are we going to address their needs? How are we going to help them out? It’s focusing on your client, focusing on your target audience. And you know, the struggle between communications and pastoral leadership, over the last few years, is doing that very thing. But now we’re seeing like, this is what it really looks like, is going, it’s not about our services. It is literally what communicators and marketers have been saying for a long time and probably in a way more extreme than we ever dreamed it would be. But it’s still like, we have to think about, they’re trapped in their home. They have their kids at home all day and they’re not used to it. They’re having to be a teacher all day for their kids or they’re having to make sure the kids get homework done while they themselves are working from home, which is new to them. And they’re struggling with technology just like you are.

Seth Muse: And they’re trying to figure out how to have church and how to have work and how to get dinner made and how to get the kids busy. And, you know, there’s all kinds of stuff that they’re dealing with. The last thing they need is somebody coming in and going, hey, did you sign up for this? Hey did you do this? How did you get this?  Give me, give me, give me. The last thing they need is somebody that needs something from them.

And so, for the church to come at it from that point of view is just another loud, annoying voice and it’s going to get drowned out.

And right now, we have an opportunity to really lead from empathy and go, how can we help these that are in our church, that are at home? Here’s a thing you can do at home. Here’s something you can have for your kids. And I think that’s the other thing, creating resources for them to do without you. You don’t have to measure, that you don’t have to watch them do it. You don’t have to be part of it, even. Here’s a video you can watch with your kids and some questions you can ask before you go to bed, for their church time. You know, changing the way that church looks in the home for them and helping them figure it out. Because, you gotta think about, let’s be honest, the spectator consumer type churchgoer is the norm. And when so many of our church people are used to coming and getting, at a service, and not really engaging. Now they’re the one that has to lead church at home? It’s like, how are they going to even begin to do that? It’s our job to really help them figure out how to be the, you know, literally the leader we’ve been trying to instill anyway. And not all of them are like that, but, you know, like there’s a there’s a large majority that are struggling with this because they’ve relied on the church to be the structure of their spiritual journey. And now, that’s not there. So how are you coming in digitally and saying we’re providing these resources? Maybe a Zoom account and our training videos or, you know, even for your staff, do the big, you know, buy the Zoom, you know, upgrade so we can all have one, you know, or something, you know, that you can do to to make this kind of work for people and let your staff be part of that mission.

And I think, just on social media, one of the best ways we communicate that we’re with you, is by, you know, dropping all the ads, dropping all the advertisments and promotions and saying, let’s turn the camera around on them, share what we call UGC, which is user generated content. So basically, you look and you’re listening to what they’re doing, sharing that, interacting with that, put them on your social. Share in stories you can share on Instagram. You can share people that tag you, if everything’s set up right. You can share there. Hey, so-and-so’s having a great time at home and we miss you guys. You know, things like that. You can post, that put them in the spotlight, that lets you know you see them.

 That’s empathy. And that’s what, right now you don’t need a bunch of incredibly designed graphics and awesome videos and polished this and polished that.  You need authentic, real, raw, sensitive, empathetic stuff that puts the highlight on, hey, we’re with you, and that’s what they need to know from you right now, on social media.

Bart Blair: Yeah, I think that’s really, really insightful, really helpful. Yeah. It doesn’t have to be, you know, it doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be pretty.

A lot of churches. One of the dangers, I think, as churches have shifted to putting their services online, is that the vast majority of people that are going to watch or listen to this are from what I would call normal sized churches. And every normal sized church has a megachurch in their neighborhood that has already been doing livestream. And they’ve got tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of production equipment. And we look down the street and we say, well, we can’t do that. We can’t make it look like that. And I don’t think they should try. I think they should do what they can do and do it to the best of their ability, right?

Seth Muse: I agree. And the same thing is true, I think, with the content that we’re creating for our social media space. Is that, you know, a lot of churches don’t have a graphic designer. They don’t have. They might not even have a social media manager. So here’s my next question for you, I’m a pastor of a normal sized church.

Bart Blair: I don’t have anybody on my staff who does social media. I don’t have anybody who does graphic design. I might, you know, I might be able to use Canva. I create, you know, I create my graphic designs in PowerPoint because that’s what I know how to do.

And I know how to look on Facebook and maybe message my friends. But I don’t really, I don’t really have a plan.

I don’t have a person. What should I do? How do I get started in being effective as a church leader in this communication space, especially at social media?

Seth Muse: Yeah, I think first, you said it.  There’s not a real need to be polished right now. So you kind of gotta let yourself off the hook for creating high quality, quote, high quality content. You just need to be out there and the people need you. You’re a pastor. You’re not a graphic designer. You’re not a videographer. And if you are a little bit, focus on like, let’s just be the pastor. And that’s what they need. And so really, they’re not looking for you to create incredible stuff, you know? And truth be told, they never really were. They’re looking for you to be an important part of their life that guides them spiritually.

And, you know, showing up online is just a huge part of that and that’s what they really need. They don’t need it to be perfect. So let yourself off the hook for that. The second thing I would say, and this is a little shameless promotion, a little bit but, I go to it all the time. I have a resource called 88 Ideas for Church Social Media Posts. It’s free. You can go to my website sethmuse.com/88ideas and get it for free. It literally has 88 different ideas that are engaging-type posts. So I go to that when I need something to post and it helps me kind of figure out what can I talk about here? So it’s a good starting point cause I know a lot of times I show up social and I’m like, I know I need to say something. I know I need to be there. And I don’t really know how to do this here. And, you know, you get in a rut, you get stuck.

And it’s just a good kind of a good resource to have to jump back on. But I know that a lot of the issue with pastors as well is that it’s not part of the regular routine, so you forget to do it. We forget that, oh, we haven’t been on Facebook today because it’s not part of the normal life. So, I would suggest, using your smartphone and setting some alarms and reminders that say, go interact.  And all you need to do, honestly, this is it. Whether you create another piece of content, really doesn’t matter if you do this. Set your alarms twice a day, to go 10 minutes, on the platforms where, you know, people are, Facebook, Instagram or whatever you’ve got. Set an alarm twice a day and spend ten minutes looking through your people’s stuff and liking and commenting on all of it, whatever you find. And even if it’s just an emoji or a hey, this looks great or miss you guys. Don’t be creepy. But just like, try to find some way to naturally engage, as the pastor, from your account. And your church account should be doing this as well. But, just finding time to do that. That is so big on making social media social that I can’t even explain to you that that’s probably the most important part of all this. Set alarms. Engage twice a day.

And if you know, you need something, a checkbox for some of this, is a, Like 10 posts and comments on 2. That’s what Jeff Henderson from Gwinnett Church has his staff do, every staff meeting. And they just go look through their stuff on Instagram. They Like 10 and comment on 2. Then they go to Facebook. They comment on a couple of people’s, who have been in their groups. And it’s just like scheduled engagement. And that’s OK. It’s not fake. That’s just a reminder for you to do the thing that you’re not used to thinking about right now. Just like you would any other task or good habit you’re trying to start. So I would suggest doing that. And, you know, like I said, just focus on your people. No content. Focus on being a pastor and just treat it like, you know, you would, it’s just people you know. You text them, you call them you, you send them stuff, send them gifs. I mean, not GIFTS. I mean, like G.I.Fs. You know, memes, you know, whatever you think you can do to help them through this situation.

Bart Blair: That’s excellent. I think that’s really, really good counsel. Now, I’m going to wrap things up here, but I’m gonna throw you a little bit of a curveball question.

So, I think you’re tough, you can handle it. I don’t mean to put you on spot, but, you know, you and I were having coffee a few months ago and we’re sitting in Starbucks and you were trying to convince me of the value of church online, which is kind of interesting because you have served in some very large churches.

The church that you’re part of now is what we would call a normal-sized church, probably, but not necessarily online churches. But you were talking about, you know, how much you like the idea of church online. Are you secretly, like pumping your fist now, because church is all gone online?

Seth Muse: Well, I’m not celebrating anyone’s demise. I’ll say that. I am looking at it and going, man, this situation is really hard. And, you know, trying to be sensitive, I don’t wish this is the way that we had gotten to this point in our ministry. But I am saying that, there is some incredible opportunities here. And I think that, you got to look at this and go, what is God trying to teach us right now? What have we put all of our time and money and staffing into? It’s been the weekend service. And, I think for years, people in the culture, as the attendance and frequency of attendance has declined, on the average. I think that the culture is shifting and the church has really worked hard to hold on to a model that is still valuable and it’s still what I think we should do. But we haven’t added the things to it that the culture has added to it.

Like the culture has gone online and the church is just dabbling in it. Some of my best friends are in other states. I mean, that’s just the nature of my job and there’s people that travel and they have friends that live across across the country and we interact through Zoom and and through Facebook and through other and we still consider those to be legitimate relationships. When I see them, I hug them. I hope the best for them. I want to know about their kids. You know, it’s there’s things I know about these people these relationships are not as hollow and shallow as we always said because we were afraid of Facebook. Like, oh, you got five thousand Facebook friends. How many of those are really friends? All of them. All of them are really my friends. I know them. I don’t friend people unless I do know them or have some kind interaction with them in real life. And I looked through that and go, it’s time now to kind of embrace this as part of what we do, not not as a replacement, but as part of what we are doing as ministry. This is a ministry position and the communications director needs to be sitting at the table with the lead pastor talking about strategy every time they meet. It is just that important right now. And especially right now it’s important. But even after this is over, your people are going to have seen what we can do online if we really tried. And they’re gonna wonder why we don’t keep doing that. And there’s going to be a struggle when you try to go back to the way things were.

People are not going to be as accepting of that anymore, I think. And I think that we’re going to have to understand how to integrate the digital space into our analog ministry world and figure out how those two coexist and how they actually help each other and and make our experience with our people, and more importantly, make our people’s experience with us, with our God so much more rich and accessible to where they constantly are being bombarded with, this is where I live. I live online. And whether or not you think that’s a good thing or not, I’m sure Paul thought that it’s not really good that these guys and Athens stand around all day and talk about, you know, their multiple  polytheistic, you know, religions and stuff. But he goes in and he goes, let me talk about the statue of the unknown God. He goes into their world. And I think that the digital space is the new frontier mission field that Paul would have gone right into. And I think that if we ignore that, we’re ignoring the call of God to go. In the great commission. And so I think putting that into our strategy has just got to be part of the future for us.

Bart Blair: Thanks, Seth. That’s really insightful and I understand a little bit more about your passion and your desire to see the church embrace online ministry, digital ministry, virtual ministry.It’s not virtual. It’s real ministry. It’s just done in a virtual world. Hey, so look, we’ll call this thing done.

This was some really, really great stuff. I appreciate you sharing your time and your insights and thoughts and wisdom, experience. If people want to get in touch with you, they want to find out more about the stuff that you’re doing, your podcasts and other stuff. How can they do that?

Seth Muse: It’s my pleasure, man. Thanks for having me. You can you go to SethMuse.com. I blog weekly there about church communications issues, leadership issues, things that we can do, a lot of “how to” and a lot of help.

And of course, you can find me on Instagram @SethMuse. And I’d love to catch up with you over there or in my Facebook group or something. But if you go to the website, you can find everything that I do. All the crazy shirts I sell and all the businesses I’m in. Everything that it is. SethMuse.com

Bart Blair: Excellent. I’ll make sure that everybody is able to find that stuff easily as well as the 88 ideas. PDF. Did I get the name right? That’s it. Awesome. Thanks again. S I appreciate your time today.

Seth Muse: Thank you, Bart, I appreciate it.