How Your Church Can Dominate on Instagram

This is a 10 part teaching series that covers all of the chapters (all 10 secrets of extraordinary church growth) from the influential book, The Funnel, written by Ross Turner, CEO & Founder of Vibrant Agency. This book shows the proven methods for using digital marketing for churches. Using branding, team leadership, social media, website, and paid ads to help a church bring their message to their community.

If you would like to learn more about Ross, or to contact us, please do so using the following:

Ross Turner Instagram: @ross.turner.official

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Email: Questions@VibrantAgency.com

Balancing Your Church Social Media Content

What are the best images to use on Instagram?

There are two big questions that people ask me about their Instagram content. Are we posting the right images? And how often should we be posting? Let’s start with the question about how often. There isn’t a simple answer to this question, because each Instagram account and audience is unique. You need to pay attention to how your people respond. However, a good rule of thumb is to post high-quality content on your Instagram feed every other day. I have found this to be the sweet spot for maximum engagement for both your Instagram feed posts and your story posts. An IG story post only lasts for twenty-four hours (unless they have changed by the time you are reading this book), but every other day is still a good frequency for posting them. This means that you should do both a high-quality Instagram feed post, and a separate Instagram story post every other day.

Yes, this is double the work, but right now, church Instagram stories are getting sometimes as much as five times more engagement than traditional posts do. Therefore it is highly important to put an equal amount of effort into your Instagram stories as you do your traditional posts. 

The other big question I get is about images, so let’s talk about the type of media you are posting. You must find a balance with the types of content you post on your church’s Instagram—videos, photos, infographics, etc. The last thing you want to do with your Instagram grid is have a bunch of the exact same content. That’s boring. I have seen churches that have 90% of their entire Instagram grid be only infographics, or text on top of background photos. Don’t do that. 

When someone in the top of the funnel sees an Instagram ad from your church, and they want to know more, the first thing they will do is view your church Instagram profile. Not your website, not your latest message—your Instagram profile. This is why the collective view of your grid matters. You only have seconds to make a positive first impression and communicate who your church is. Make sure that you are switching up the type of content that you are posting. Find balance. Some posts should be still images with smiling faces. Some posts should be video clips. Some posts should be abstract images with creative captions, and some posts should be graphics. It is important to make sure that someone checking out your church sees a variety of different content types, which makes it feel real and organic. Never appear as predictable or robotic. 

While your feed needs variety, the type of content that gets the best engagement is pictures of smiling faces. The majority of your Instagram grid should be posts of people smiling, hugging, worshiping, or anything like that. Not only does it help to set a joyful impression of your church, but it also makes your content much more noticeable and effective. Over 50% of your church Instagram grid should be filled with smiling face photos at all times.

Beyond making sure that you balance out the visual content, it is also important to have balance with the captions on your posts. Yes your Instagram should promote and announce upcoming events, but you don’t want your profile to seem like a running bulletin board. Keep internally-focused announcements to a minimum. It is also good to do quotes and captions from the most recent message, but too much deep spiritual content will make you unrelatable to outsiders.

The Perfect Church Social Media Schedule

Here is a sample weekly Instagram content schedule for a church that we use for many churches. This outline can give you an idea of what content works best on various days of the week:

Sunday: Service reminder two hours before service with message series visual.

Sunday: IG stories throughout the service, including worship and message.

Monday: Creative way to share photos from Sunday’s gatherings. Story or post.

Tuesday: Short caption video from Sunday’s message. Story and post.

Wednesday: Day off. Internal announcement post if needed.

Thursday: Engagement or community-focused post. 

Friday: Creative sequence of stories about current sermon series.

Saturday: Reminder/teaser for Sunday service. Post and story.

Many churches use content scheduling software to help preschedule their posts throughout the week. This is highly recommended, because sometimes life happens, and you simply don’t have time to get the right content out. Sit down once per week for a few hours and batch create most of your weekly content. It will help! There are many options out there, and we have had the opportunity to test pretty much all of them. As of the writing of this article, the best one to use is Metricool. However, all of the social media content schedulers are limited by Instagram’s rules and regulations for third party integration, so there is no perfect solution. The main problem with using Metricool or any other content scheduler is that it does not have a 100% success rate. With software updates and occasional glitches, you can’t have true confidence that your posts will go live when you need them to. However, it is reliable enough that it is definitely worth using. One thing that is currently unavailable is true Instagram story prescheduling, which would be very helpful. But for now, prescheduling your grid posts using Metricool will make your life much easier. Using a program like Metricool also allows for team collaboration, so you can have multiple people on your team contribute to your church’s Instagram content schedule.

Just remember, keep it balanced, and don’t be boring.

Lead Pastor’s Instagram Strategy

Do we schedule the lead pastor’s social media too?

I have a surprising statistic for you. If you posted the same Instagram post on both the church’s account and the lead pastor’s personal account, the lead pastor’s post will usually get 30% more engagement. At least. Throughout my years of overseeing the social media content for churches, I have personally tested this out. The reason is simple: people are more interested in a person than a brand. Whether you like it or not, the lead pastor’s Instagram account is now a direct extension of your church.

Just like there are strategies and content schedules for the church’s Instagram account, there should be the same for the lead pastor account. However, the content you post on the pastor’s account should be different than what you post on the church’s account. It should seem a bit more personal, with a different voice. Generally, everyone who follows the church’s Instagram account will also follow the lead pastor’s account. Most times they will originally follow the lead pastor only, and then later also follow the church’s account. This makes the lead pastor’s social media a central part of the top of the funnel. The reason the lead pastor’s account is more effective in producing engagement is because it feels personal. People feel like they are getting to see a real-life look into the lead pastor’s personal life. Following the lead pastor’s account makes them feel like they are connected personally, and not just a consumer. This is a very important difference, and it has to be protected. If the content and voice of the lead pastor account is too similar to the church’s voice, then you will lose your connection with those followers.

Every post and image that is planned for the lead pastor account should sound like it is directly from the pastor. Instead of using pronouns like “we” and “us,” try to stick to using “I” and “me.” Whenever possible, try to not use canned graphics or photos that were already used on the church’s profile. If you are the lead pastor, and you don’t personally use Instagram in your life…this is going to be a challenge for you. You probably didn’t realize how important this is for your church. It is not about your desire or lack thereof to share your life on Instagram. In fact, this has nothing to do with your personal wants. The purpose of becoming active personally on Instagram is to build a deeper connection with the people in your influence. They are on social media, and you can reach them where they are at. People need to feel like they know you on a personal level before they will receive from you on a spiritual level. Don’t look at this as an added job or responsibility. That is the wrong way to think of it. What you should realize is that I just opened your eyes to a powerful tool to build connection, influence, and trust. Remember, this is about reaching people.

Recently we worked with a very large church to help increase their reach and presence on social media. They specifically wanted to gain more traction on Instagram. The lead pastor of this church, let’s call him Mike, was personally active on Facebook but did not have an Instagram account. After some guidance from us, the church set Mike up with his own Instagram account. Mike agreed to it, but he did not personally use it at all, even though we kept asking him to. Every post on his personal Instagram account became the same kind of content as on the main church profile, because it was only us posting. His Facebook, however, had a ton of great posts from him personally. As we tracked our engagement across both platforms, there was a huge discrepancy between the amount of engagement we got on Facebook and the amount we got on Instagram. Facebook totally dominated. Even though the content we were posting on Instagram was our best stuff each week, the Facebook content got way more likes, comments, and shares than anything on Instagram. Why is this? It is because Mike was using Facebook to share personal content. 

On Facebook he would post family pictures, and share his feelings on the recent football game…typical personal content. But here’s where the marketing comes in—we would add strategic content alongside his personal posts. Content about his upcoming message series and new church events. Because it was coming from his personal account, it really carried weight with his followers. With this combination, we were able to achieve huge increase in Mike’s Facebook influence. In sad contrast, after only five months of posting content on Mike’s Instagram, it had barely any traction, and we ended up shutting it down. It just didn’t stick. It wasn’t real or genuine, and people could tell it was not done with any personal involvement from Mike. This church knows that their target demographic is much more active on Instagram. They thought that publishing good content would make a following happen for Mike on Instagram, but without his personal connection, they couldn’t make it launch.

Pastors, you have to dive in to Instagram personally. You just have to. It is a simple sacrifice that you can make to add people to your funnel. 

So when you schedule for Instagram, remember to include great content into the lead pastor’s schedule. And if you are the lead pastor, consider it part of your ministry to share snippets of your personal life on Instagram. Make it daily. People want to know you. Once they know you, the doors will open for you to influence them for good. Having your team publish content on your behalf, without the equal input of your personal posts, will fail quickly. But combine the strategic posts with your personal content, and watch the numbers skyrocket.

First people want to know you, then they want to receive from you.

Local Wins as a Church on Instagram.

How do we engage with our locals on Instagram?

Most people are proud of their city. Otherwise they wouldn’t live there. Therefore using Instagram to celebrate and support your local community is an excellent way to build trust with your target audience. Be strategic by focusing some of your social content outward towards your city. When you intentionally take time to post content about your local community, people will start to embrace you. You want to be a church that is not just in your community, but a part of it. Be a church that loves your city, and your city will love you back. 

1 John 3:18 says, “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” So don’t just love your city in theory, love it with action. When there are big community events, show your pride by being there, and posting content on Instagram about it. Several options include local holiday celebrations, festivals, the opening of new businesses and restaurants, or even big high school or college sporting events. Be there. Show your excitement and support.

One church in California is in a city that has a big weekly farmers’ market. Thousands of people attend, so this church decided to get involved and rent out a booth each week. They have a big banner that says “Coffee + Jesus” behind them, and anyone who stops by the booth gets a coffee and bottled water. Totally for free, no gimmicks. They pass out church invite cards on the tables, and offer to pray for anyone who wants it. Every week they have Instagram stories and posts highlighting their farmers’ market and showing how fun it is. This has really helped this church become known and loved in the community. Instead of just doing posts about it, they put their love into action by being involved. 

You have to know your city and your community. There is no cookie-cutter formula with this one; it takes an actual understanding of what your city is all about. If you make this a priority for your church Instagram content, your community will see how you care, and they will respond to it.

While being involved in large events is great, that’s not the only way to show local support—just be a true local. A predominant church in Florida makes a big deal about small groups on their social media. They have content on their social media each week of families and friends gathering for things like dinner at a local restaurant or hanging out at the park. This allows them to celebrate that they are deeply rooted in the local culture, while at the same time promoting their small groups. Trust me, being authentic and local is a big deal.

Be about what your community is about. Important stuff, fun stuff, stuff that needs to change. All of it. Here is a great example of what I mean: a church that I work with is right in the heart of Alabama. Their town is pretty evenly split between their loyalties for the two rival college football teams. Half of the city is Alabama Crimson Tide fans, and the other half is Auburn Tigers fans. If you know football, then you know that the fans of those teams take it pretty seriously! One day before the first college football game of the season, we did a post on the church’s Instagram that had both teams’ logos on it. The caption said “Help us solve a debate, who’s gonna be the best this year?” The response was crazy. Over all of the years consulting for social media content, this single post got some of the most engagement out of all the other posts that we have ever done. Period. We got involved with what the community already loved. It was fun, lighthearted, and it worked.

Make an intentional practice with your church’s Instagram profile to include a healthy balance of community-focused content. Over time, people will be much more likely to trust you with spiritual advice if they already like what you stand for. 

Be strategic by being local.

Maximizing Social Stories

What are the best ways to use Instagram stories?

Let me start with the basics. Instagram stories are content that live on your profile for only twenty-four hours, unless you save them as a featured highlight story. The strategy and content for stories is completely different than for your grid. Instagram stories are for the rougher, less produced content that doesn’t live forever on your beautiful Instagram grid. Stories are much more related to what is happening that specific day. You can think of Instagram stories like you would a daily journal, where you jot down the fun, mundane, or routine parts of your day. This contrasts with your Instagram grid which acts more like your family photo album. The Instagram grid is made up of the pictures that should live on forever in your photo album of life, and your Instagram stories are just the highlights and content specific to that day.

Because Instagram stories are totally different from Instagram grid posts, the strategy in producing them needs to be different as well. As of today, the content you post on your church’s Instagram story will get more views than your traditional posts. Wait, say that again? Yes, your Instagram stories will get more views and responses than even your best posts. The concept of posting a traditional image and writing your caption is great, but people are most drawn to content that feels natural, raw, and fresh. When you view an Instagram story, you almost feel like you might get a glimpse of a candid moment, or a behind-the-scenes view that you wouldn’t normally get with a traditional post. With this understanding of the reason why people are drawn to stories as compared to posts, this poses a unique opportunity to give people what they want to see. Let them see the raw and real you.

A good start for Instagram stories is to document everything that happens during your Sunday service. Short video clips of people in worship practice, setting up the lobby, or walking through the doors, or even snippets of the message or candid worship moments—these are all great types of content to share on your Instagram story. You should give a volunteer or team member the responsibility of documenting the entire Sunday experience specifically on Instagram stories each weekend. Yes, you need to specifically choose someone on your team to capture the Sunday experience for your stories. If you don’t give someone that job, it simply won’t happen.

You can (and should) buy camera equipment that is designed to enhance your phone’s built-in camera. For less than $50 on Amazon, you can buy a handheld stabilizer with a clip-on shotgun mic that is built for a phone. This allows for you to shoot footage with smooth motion, and it allows for clearer audio. For less than $20, you can buy a clamp that will hold your phone on a mic stand so you can set it up to record media over an extended period of time or go hands free and interview someone. Experiment with the various add-on lenses and third-party video editing apps. It will really help take your social media story production to a new level. The key is to have one person, or a few people, take true responsibility for the Instagram story content each Sunday. If you make it a priority, then your team will start to understand how serious you are about reaching people through social media.

More About Church Instagram Marketing.

Crushing it on Sundays with your IG stories is a great start, but it is just that, a starting point. To do a truly excellent job on IG stories is to have creative content happening throughout the week. This takes on a whole new set of challenges. You don’t have a daily worship service to document, so you have to come up with the content ideas on your own. However, not all Instagram stories need to be video content, but instead, you can use your graphics team to create designs specifically made for Instagram stories. Or even better, you can use photography. Keep in mind that the ideal image size for Instagram stories is 1080 x 1920.

Please don’t be the one who posts square images in IG stories.

The challenge comes in when you don’t know what to post about. What if there is nothing noteworthy happening that day? This is the problem that everyone runs into, but this problem is easily overcome with a little bit of planning. Professional Instagram influencers, whose Instagram content is literally their entire livelihood, have a strategy for this exact situation. When they post a photo or a story on their account, it is rarely content that they created right on the spot. Or even that day. Or heck, even that month! When us common folk post a new Instagram story, we usually take the picture or video right there on the spot and then post it. Professionals do it quite differently. Instagram professionals have a huge bank of photos and graphics in various folders on their phone’s photo app. They have loads of content in their back pockets from events that happened in the past, ready to post at any time. So when it comes time to post a new Instagram story, they aren’t limited to where they are at that very moment. Instead they pull from their pre-created content folders. 

A friend of mine at our office is an Instagram influencer, and I started to see this pattern whenever we were together. We would have a normal and somewhat boring day at the office, but later they would post a photo of them on a vacation, or at the beach. And the caption would say something like “thinking of Maui today” or something that references the photo. They actually live a pretty normal life, but they keep their feed going from previous events. 

What does this mean for a church? This means that you can have banks of photos from your last baptism Sunday, worship night, serve day, or whatever other big events your church partakes in. Keep these events alive by using them on your stories as throwback posts. This keeps your content fresh without having to wait for the next big event. Have tons of photos and content taken each weekend of different ministries in your church. These don’t all have to be shared right on Sunday, but you can plan them out through the week. Another example would be to do a shot of someone worshiping in the crowd, and do a quote of some of the lyrics from the set list that Sunday. With a little bit of planning, you could easily fill an entire week of both regular posts and Instagram stories for your church from past events.

But what about the raw and candid nature of Instagram stories? Shouldn’t we be posting that kind of content throughout the week? The answer is yes, absolutely. The reason for keeping a bank of polished photos and clips for your Instagram stories is to fill the gaps when you don’t have candid moments to share. Post both the candid content, and the polished content. Make it a weekly responsibility for various members of your team to film a short, thirty-second encouraging video for Instagram stories. Just holding their phones and talking, nothing produced or overly edited. Some days it can be something spiritual and from the heart, or some days it can be a shout-out about an event or ministry happening that night. Don’t regulate it, but let it be organic. You have to make it a priority for there to be content up on your Instagram stories each week.

Your ministry does not happen just on Sundays anymore. Talk to people every day through stories.

Church Photography Done Right

How do we get more photos, and better photos, each week?

Nobody wants to see an Instagram grid filled with stock photos. The very essence of Instagram is based on photos of experiences and of people. If you have made up your mind that Instagram is about first impressions, then make it a priority to get good photos every week.

This poses a challenge. In fact, one of the biggest struggles that we hear from churches is that they don’t have enough photos to use each week on social media. You can’t just wish for photos, you have to prioritize it. Make photography the Sunday responsibility for someone on the serve team. It doesn’t have to be a paid staff member—someone can volunteer. You can even make an actual church ministry for the sole purpose of taking photos before, during, and after services on Sundays. In fact, I highly recommend it. If you list photography and videography as one of the ministry opportunities for a volunteer to sign up for, you will be surprised at the number of people who are interested in helping. However, keep in mind that it will be important to make a schedule if you have multiple team members, just like you would in the children’s ministry. If you only have one person who is responsible for taking photos, you will run into gap weeks when that individual can’t attend service for whatever reason, but if you have multiple photographers and a schedule, the volunteers can work together to cover each other when they can’t make a service.

Certainly your volunteers will have varying talent levels, and that’s ok. You can ask people to submit a portfolio of their photos before they volunteer, or just train them. You need training to be on the worship team, sound team, etc. Sometimes people have hidden talents that they weren’t even aware of! However, if your volunteer team members simply have no creative intuition for photography, just kindly point them to a different ministry. 

Make a system where you tell the media team exactly what kind of shots you are looking for each service. Give them examples of other churches who are capturing great photos every week, and have them seek to get shots with a similar feel at your church. Show them your mood board, which should include multiple photos that have the energy and vibe that your branding calls for. 

All team members should share a folder in your church’s Google Drive or Dropbox, and after each service they should place all of the photos they captured into that folder so the entire media team can have access to them. This is where your social media content will be pulled from each week.

But don’t just stop at still photos!

Your team should also capture short b-roll type clips each week. B-roll video clips are candid video clips that are raw and unscripted. Some of the best social media accounts will occasionally use a short compilation of b-roll video clips that document the whole Sunday experience. Sometimes b-roll video captures the energy of the message and worship even better than a photo can. This can be clips of worship, the message, and people in the foyer. Adding some music and text on top of this video is a relatively easy task and can get much more engagement than still images.

Sometimes you will have volunteers who already have a great camera and gear, but that shouldn’t be a requirement for being on the team. Your church should have your own DSLR camera for the media team to use. You can find decent used cameras on places like Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist for under $500. If that doesn’t fit in the budget, don’t overlook your trusty smartphone. You will be pleasantly surprised at how incredible the photos can look on some of the newest versions of smartphones. Using some of the affordable equipment that we discussed earlier can help add the professional look to a smartphone’s photos. Heck, you might even prefer it over a bulky camera!

Getting great photos in your feed is so much more than point and click, so let’s talk about editing. Our philosophy is that we make a big deal about small details. Why? Because greatness in church marketing is the sum of a billion tiny details. When pieced all together, these small details equal the overall excellence that you’re needing. And one of these small details is how you edit your photos before posting them. 

Your church’s branding

specifies a certain color guide and styling. Since every Instagram photo should fit in your mood board, that means editing the colors and tones are a must. You need to have a consistent color filtering that you do on your Instagram photos to make them fit your brand.  The best way to do this is to use the Adobe program called Lightroom. In this program you can have preset filters that slightly adjust the tones and colors of each photo. If you glance through a successful company’s Instagram grid, you will notice that most of the photos have a similar color tone to them, and usually that color tone will complement their overall branding. Although this is a very small detail, it will bring your professionalism to a new level. So much of branding and marketing revolves around feeling. Using specific filters will subtly evoke the right emotions as people scroll through Instagram. I know it takes extra time to add these filters. But anything you do with church marketing, you should do with excellence. 

Consistency with colors. Frequency with photos.