When nobody clicks: How to consistently create digital ministry content

The web can be a harsh place for content creators, even more so for churches trying to get in the habit of creating digital content. But the harshest reaction isn't an expressly negative one. Rather, the harshest reaction is often no reaction at all.

According to Podcast.co, 50% of podcasts have been downloaded less than 100 times. Meanwhile, Hubspot tells us that 40% of internet users have never read a blog post. And that Tweet you just posted? It's competing with 5,787 Tweets that were also posted at that exact same second.

As it turns out, the typical experience for today's digital content creator is not one of "going viral" or gaining influence. The typical experience is creating a post, video, blog, or podcast that is never viewed or heard by anyone. Digital content creators are constantly playing to an empty room.

This can be discouraging to congregations who want to get the word, and The Word, out. So you come up with a plan, create a team, maybe invest in some new cameras, microphones, and lighting equipment. You brainstorm, create, and publish, and nothing happens. In this moment, we tend to check-out from the act of content creation. What use is it to work so hard to generate so little in views, clicks, likes, and retweets?

But in a church landscape where digital church-hopping is common, where a congregation's online presence is its new front door, calling it quits on content is similar to locking your front door. The podcast you publish on a Tuesday could find its way to someone who worships with you on Sunday. Or in a more likely scenario, the blog you publish in February 2023 may be the conversation starter that opens the door to a visitor in January 2025.

We create content not because it generates clicks and influence, but because it creates a consistent presence. We write, record, and publish not to achieve fame, but because its a consistent form of witness for the 21st century church.

So here are three encouragements to remember the next time your episode isn't downloaded and your post isn't commented on:

Relevant, original content determines your ministry's visibility. Search engines reward relevant, original content that matches a user's search. When you post or podcast, you are engaging the questions that those looking for a church home are also asking. If and when you don't see any clicks after you post to the web, keep in mind that online searchers will be able to return to this content at any time, so long as it pertains to their interests.

Digital content can be re-packaged. When you create something new, you're not creating a one-off project that will never be used again. You're building source material that can be repurposed for future digital content, even for sermons, prayers, and liturgies. This is the foundation of curation, the process of finding exactly the right resource for precise moments in your ministry. You are adding a new set of legos to the toybox with each piece of content you create. Just because it's not viewed today does not mean it won't find an audience tomorrow.

Original content functions as an invitation to a conversation. Physical signage and billboards tend not to get a lot of buzz, but we in the church keep putting up new signs, because eventually they will help someone connect with the church. While it was once sufficient to view a static webpage or social media profile as an invitation to the life of a congregation, today that invitation is extended through stories and narratives shared in digital content. Our digital content is our digital signage. Everything that we create or curate provides an invitation to continue a dialogue.

At times, it seems like digital content is just one more item on a ministry's already overwhelmed to-do list. So let us resolve to think of content creation as a new form of presence. If we remain persistent, if we become more practiced in curating source material like prayers and sermon texts, we might just find that content becomes more and more of a habit. And as content becomes a habit, we increase our witness in this digital age.

Five resources for congregations looking to establish content creation habits:

• Jim Keat: 5 New Year's Resolutions for Digital Ministry

• Tithely: Create a church social media strategy

• UMC: Become a Curator of Cool (Pinterest specific, but the logic works across multiple platforms)

• SundayToSaturday: Why curation is needed in the church

• HootSuite Guide to Content Curation

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Join @ryanpanzer and Luther Seminary Faith Lead for a live workshop on digital visibility. More information here.

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What good is digital ministry if nobody shows up for the livestream?

The trajectory of digital ministry has looked something like this:

According to Google Trends, a handy barometer of cultural trends, there was a meteoric increase in church online searches during the early stages of the pandemic.

Then there was a similarly steep drop-off in searches for church online.

And today, there's almost as much interest in church online as there was before Covid-19 - which is to say, not much interest at all.

If online search data is a leading indicator of cultural trends, online church attendance is a lagging indicator. Some congregations continued to see strong online attendance and participation throughout 2021 and into 2022 as the Delta and Omicron variants spread. It was only in the second half of 2022 that online church viewership for these parishes moved from stable to shrinking.

One of the churches whose churches I occasionally watch saw their online participation drop from hundreds each week (in 2021) to dozens (in early 2022) to low single digits (late 2022).

And as congregations struggled to staff digital production roles for livestreams viewed by few if any people, a question emerged. What good is digital ministry if nobody shows up for the livestream?

In the "Holy and the Hybrid," I argue that hybrid ministry is less about livestreams than it is about inclusion. Combining the online with the offline is not the point. Instead, the goal of hybrid ministry is extending a wide-reaching invitation to life in a Christian community while forming individuals for lives of discipleship and service. We do effective hybrid ministry not when we livestream everything, but when we discern the ideal methods for inviting and equipping using the digital and personal tools available to our community.

If we understand digital ministry in this way, then our attendance metrics are irrelevant. The question we should ask ourselves is not whether we should cancel the livestream moving forward. Instead, the question is how we should best utilize digital tools to be inviting and inclusive.

This might mean pivoting away from streamed services and moving towards more content creation and curation. It might involve developing a set of KPIs that is less focused on viewership and more focused on hospitality.

2022 Barna Group data indicates that Millennials, and particularly non-white Millennials, are more involved with church communities than they were in 2019. 22% of Millennials have even started attending multiple churches, in a pattern of digital church-hopping. As congregations become more fluent in digital content and online forms of hospitality, people are becoming more connected to the church, and to the Gospel message.

And so, as we start a new year of digital ministry, perhaps it is time to discard the 3-year-old playbooks we started to write in March 2020. Maybe it is time to focus less on how many are watching, and focus more on digital ministry practices that are consistently available, original, and hospitable.

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Join Faith+Lead and I for a morning of digital learning focused on online visibility! Registration is now open for this January 26th, 2023 workshop!

Digital Church Hospitality: Getting to Know Your Online Neighbor

How do you build relationships with those you never see?

It's a question that's key to navigating the Digital Reformation. With worship becoming a hybrid event, pastors and church leaders see and hear those attending in person. But unless the congregation gathers for online worship via Zoom (perhaps the ideal platform for small churches), the names, faces, and even the needs of those online remain unheard. This creates two tiers of church attendance: those who leaders and members know and recognize, and those who are yet unknown.

If we are to get to know our online neighbors, it's helpful to consider some broader worship attendance trends.

Christianity Today notes that regular church attendance in the United States has dropped from 34% of Americans to 28% of Americans. This decline in worship attendance paralleled a drop in religious affiliation. For the first time in our nation's history, the percentage of Christians has fallen below 50%.

There are far fewer church members and worship attendees today than there were at the start of the pandemic. In a related finding, Pew Research data tells us that just 10% of active church-goers plan to continue regular online church attendance. Thus, many of the faces we were accustomed to seeing before March 2020 haven't shifted to worshipping online, as some would expect. Rather, they've stopped attending altogether.

Amidst this decline in worship attendance, active members have started "church-hopping" online. According to a 2020 Pew Research Study, 59% of church-goers have attended worship at a congregation other than the one they attend most often. These figures suggest a continuation of a pre-pandemic trend first noted by the Barna Group: that many practicing Christians regularly attend two or more different congregations. Since the start of the pandemic, attendance at second or third congregations has typically been virtual.

These data suggest that many of those attending worship are not active or regular members of that congregation. They are church-hopping neighbors and guests, new faces whose identities are obscured behind the anonymity of YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook Live.

This may surprise some who imagined that online worship attendees are usually active church members. This may even frustrate those who imagined that lower in-person worship is explained by more frequent online attendance. The stark reality is that fewer people are coming to church. Those who are coming to church are less committed to a single congregation. And those who are resolutely committed to a single congregation are seldom worshipping online.

This reality calls us to consider how we might get to know our online neighbor. While there are few easy answers in digital spaces where we cannot see names and faces, there are a few hospitality practices that merit further experimentation. Specifically, we might:

• Create accessibility across platforms. Everything a church does online should be seamless to access, easy to connect to, and consistently inclusive. For starters, church leaders should work to help guests access worship on the platform of their choice. Plug-ins and integrations (such as the Zoom Livestream for Facebook feature) make it easy to broadcast the same service or event on YouTube, Facebook, Zoom as well as your app and website. But it's not just about the platforms. It's also about inclusivity. Content should be accessible within one click of the church home page. Perhaps more importantly, live events should be captioned.

• Strengthen words of welcome. Liturgy begins with a gathering, often in the form of words of welcome. Most congregations use these words of welcome specifically to greet guests in attendance. But too many congregations fail to greet guests who are gathered online. As the guest experience moves online, it is critical to specifically name, greet, and welcome online guests, those who are encountering the congregation for the first time.

• Extend a specific invitation to connect. At some point in the welcome or the announcements, guests should be invited to connect with a pastor or church leader. Too often, this invitation is ambiguous, as in if you are new, fill out this form."Getting to know the online neighbor involves greater specificity. Why should visitors fill out the form? For prayer requests? To schedule a call with a pastor or join a mailing list? To request a new visitor kit? Having provided some specific reason to submit a visitor form, we must work to ensure the forms are easy to find. Utilize QR codes, link shorteners, or video overlays to connect visitors to a contact form as easily as possible.

The church visitor experience has gone online. We must now learn to welcome our online neighbors, recognizing that digital hospitality is now synonymous with hospitality itself. We will turn to these ideas, and more, in subsequent posts.

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Ryan Panzer is the author of "The Holy and the Hybrid," available now for pre-order wherever books are sold.

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