IG Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts: How to Leverage Social Media For Your Church in 2024

The landscape of social media is constantly changing, especially for content creators and end users alike. Every day we see different trending videos or viral posts on social media. According to research conducted by Global WebIndex, people spend 2 hours and 29 minutes every day scrolling through social media. 

Americans have become thorough in choosing their church. They choose a place where they like the preaching and the tone set by the congregation’s leaders. They want to feel welcomed by the church leaders. They look for the quality of sermons and the style of service.

Most of them are deciding online. Instead of visiting several churches, they search for it on social media. And whatever they see online will be the deciding factor between joining the church or finding another one.

How churches should leverage short-form video content on Social Media

Live streaming and posting your full sermon on social media are not enough. The way of the future is maximizing the power of short-form video posts. More than half of the viewers online watch a full video if it’s under 60 seconds. 

Short clips also serve as an invitation for people to attend the live sermon or even watch the full service later. Vertical short-form videos can make sermons go viral.

Those formats will be the hook to growing your church both in person and online. All you have to do is to select 30, 60, and 90 seconds from your sermon that are inspiring, engaging, and entertaining. 

Using social media is the most effective way of growing your church nowadays. And the algorithm of those social media platforms is always in your favor if you know how to play it right.

Non-Contributing Factors to Short-Form Social Media Video Algorithm

Before diving into how beneficial social media algorithms are for churches, let’s debunk one misconception first. The number of followers of your social media pages and sites DOES NOT affect or influence your content’s ranks.

Many people think the measure of success in social media is the follower count, that the more people follow you the more likely your posts will be successful. It’s just not true with the new video format.

For example, on TikTok when you post a new video the algorithm will show it to a mixture of 30% of your followers, 30% of users in your local area, and 30% of users that TikTok thinks would enjoy your content even though they are not in your local area. 

That gets your church in front of everyone regardless of where they are. So there is really a higher chance that every time you post short-form content, it is being shown to new users.

Contributing Factors to Short-Form Social Media Video Algorithm

There are several ways video algorithms can be used to benefit your church:

Video likes and shares

Likes and shares contribute a lot to the algorithm. If many people like and share your short-form video content because they are easy to digest, quick to watch, catchy, and very inspiring, the algorithm will keep on showing your succeeding content to those people and to their friends and followers as well.

Engagement

Having short-form vertical video content makes it easier to keep your followers engaged. It’s faster for them to break down your content because it’s only 30-90 seconds long. They will still have enough time to type in their comments. Most people on social media like it fast. They get easily bored when they see that they need to spend more time on just one piece of content. They tend to skip it if that’s the case.

Videos completed

When a social media user finishes a whole video, the algorithm pushes them to more videos from the same creator. The algorithm knows that if a user finishes the whole video it means they want to see more videos like it.

Favorited videos

When users favorite your short-form video content because they liked what they watched and they want to rewatch it again to use as a motivational video, the algorithm will keep on sending them your content.

Device and account settings

The algorithm detects the device and account settings too. For example, if a user sets his location as Atlanta, he is more likely to see content from people in the Atlanta area. 

This is a major boost for your church because it’s essentially free advertising to the people most likely to visit your church in person.

How to Create Short-form Social Media Videos from Your Sermons

Church leaders are tasked to minister the word of God and influence people, and where are most people? Social media.

Sermon Shots helps churches create professional-looking, short-form video content from your sermons in as little as 5 minutes.

This allows you and your church to focus on the most important thing: your people. And not to spend hours trying to create social media posts but instead to do it in minutes and have it ready to share with everyone. See how easy it is.

You can try Sermon Shots for free and see for yourself how this will be a huge help in growing your church both locally and globally.