Don’t be Afraid to Pay for Social Media Ads

Let’s recap the economics of how social media companies work. Your church gives the social media companies free content (video, photos, etc…). In exchange they provide a free service that will connect your church with social media users. 

Of course, somewhere in this exchange, the social media companies need to make money, so they sell ads to companies who can then target users based on what their users display an interest in. Therefore the more users that join their social media platform and use it, the more money the social media platform can make.  

Social media platforms have one goal: keeping users engaged. Whether that’s watching videos, interacting with comments, or just scrolling through articles, they want to keep the users on their platform for as long as possible. By keeping users engaged on their platforms, they can charge companies to show ads to their users. 

However, social media platforms’ goals often do not align with most churches. For most churches, the goal of social media is getting the word out about their events and programs with the hope that the viewer will click on the social media and leave the platform to view the content on the church website.

So how do we solve this problem?

Most churches’ first reaction is to see if they can create more engaging content that will organically reach people.  And while that should be a consistent strategy with creating content, it doesn’t always solve the problem. 

So eventually at some point we will need to…