Outreach Church Communications and Marketing

Is Your Church Facebook Page Performing Better Than Average

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You’ve made a Facebook page for your church or ministry – great! But now, you’re left wondering,“what now?” Navigating social media can sometimes feel like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be! Once you have a grasp of your page analytics, you will be well-equipped to manage your social media feeds!

Facebook offers a range of insights from followers, likes, shares, engagement and more. With these numbers, you can identify how your page has improved & how your page is falling behind. Make sure you are focusing on statistics as a whole- social media is not only a numbers game. Church pages with a large number of likes – say 10,000 – are usually looked at as the “goal” for church social media. But, that isn’t always the case. These churches may not be doing social media “better” than smaller churches. Don’t let a specific number of likes get in the way of your pursuit to share Jesus with your community.

Now, for the numbers – they will surprise you! Take a look at your church’s Facebook page and take note of the Fans (likes) and Followers your page currently has. Use those numbers to find where your church page falls in these statistics.

These statistics are taken from a study done by Quintly looking into the rate of engagement from pages with likes from 1,000 to 10 million.

How Evenly Spread are Your Likes, Comments & Shares?

This statistic takes a look at engagement.

  • 1-1k Fans: 100% Likes (zero comments & shares)
  • 1k-10k Fans: 82% Likes, 9% Comments, 9% Shares
  • 10k-100k Fans: 80% Likes, 7% Comments, 13% Shares

These statistics are discouraging when you are growing your church’s social media. But, knowing this can help lessen disappointment when likes outnumber comments and shares.

Quintly’s study also found that the larger the page, the less interaction the page receives. Followers and fans don’t feel as connected to large companies and corporations as they do with small or local businesses. 

Level of Interaction

When we post to social media, we do so with the hope that our followers care about our page and want to interact with our posts. That is, unfortunately, not true.

  • 1-1k Fans: 1.18%
  • 1k-10k Fans: .52%
  • 10k-100k Fans: .31%

If your page receives a higher interaction rate than this – congrats! You’re crushing it!

Interactions Per Post

An interaction is any action that the user performs in relation to your brand or content.

  • 1-1k Fans: 4
  • 1k-10k Fans: 22
  • 10k-100k Fans: 118

Once again, if you receive a higher rate of interaction than this, you are golden!

Because interaction,  likes, comments, and shares can go hand in had, here are some tips to increase your overall interaction on posts.

Tips to increase interaction on your posts:

– Do a small giveaway offering a free coffee or small gift card for a specific number of likes, comments, shares, or tags. (i.e. Tag someone who you invited to church this week!)

– Create question posts that encourage your followers to engage with the post. (i.e. “like this post if you think _ team will win, love this post if you think _ will win” or “What is your favorite _ restaurant in town?”)

Number of Posts Per Month

There is a lot of information out there on how often you should post to social media.

Here are the average posts per month:

  • 1-1k Fans: 8
  • 1k-10k Fans: 24
  • 10k-100k Fans: 52

8 posts per month is just 2 posts per week!

Posting with consistency each week is a sure-fire way to increase your engagement and reach!

Tips to increase the number of posts you share each week:

– Use an automated service to post to your site. Outreach Social is a great option that offers ministry-related posts that you can customize with your logo and schedule out so your Facebook page gets a daily update. 

– Share excerpts from your pastors sermons or a Bible Study that week. This is also a great way to increase interaction in your posts.

– Share a blog post (if your pastor blogs) with your thoughts or a prompt asking your follower’s input on the topic.

– Video performs higher than anything else on social media. Post a short excerpt from last week’s sermon – or a 60 second video with a call to prayer or a prayer prompt.

The Most Surprising Statistic

With all the statistics above, what statistic surprised you the most? Many churches find the most surprising statistic is the low rate of interaction on posts. While we would all love to have hundreds of likes, comments, and shares on a post, it just isn’t realistic. While a lot of these statistics are disappointing, we hope that they give you a new understanding of what a successful facebook page looks like.

Take this as an opportunity to redirect your social media goals. Maybe you need to increase your social media posts or redirect your focus from the number of followers to overall engagement.

Work Smarter, Not Harder.

Social Media is a big task to take on. From content creation to content planning, you can quickly become overwhelmed by all of the tasks at hand. If you don’t have a social media volunteer or graphic designer, don’t try to do everything yourself! There are a lot of tools out there to help you design eye-catching, engaging graphics. A couple favorites are:

Outreach Digital – Connect your church FB page, choose categories of posts you want to receive, and customize the posts by adding a logo and adding an engaging caption to your posts.

Canva – Canva is a great tool that allows you to design all types of content. You can create templates which can be easily edited and used for a range of social media posts.

Outreach

Outreach

With a mission to share God’s love and empower the Church to share the message of Jesus Christ, Outreach has quickly grown to become the largest provider of church outreach products and services in the world. Join the Outreach Weekly for the latest tips, tools, ideas, and deals to help you reach your community for Christ.

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