Quadruple Your Church’s Social Media Reach Without Doing Extra Work

TikTok. Facebook. LinkedIn. X. Pinterest. Instagram. YouTube. WhatsApp. Snapchat. BeReal. Reddit. Discord. Tumblr. Threads. Twitch. Medium.

There are a lot of social media platforms out there. When you’re running digital communications for your church, you’re faced with a dilemma—where do you post? What do you post?

On the one hand, you don’t want to limit your church’s reach to a single platform, which might only cover a portion of your audience demographically. On the other hand, creating bespoke content for multiple platforms can take hours out of your week that you don’t have.

You’ve likely noticed that the social media landscape of the last five years has homogenized across platforms to prioritize video content. We’ve all read opinion pieces about decreased attention spans and reading comprehension, but this trend also presents a unique opportunity to reach more people online with the Word of God.

Cross-Posting: Work Smarter, Not Harder

Running social media accounts across multiple platforms doesn’t have to be hard thanks to cross-posting.

When you cross-post, you post the same content on multiple platforms. There’s no need to create unique content for each platform.

With the rise of short-form video content across almost every social media platform, it’s easier than ever to post the exact same thing on multiple channels—less work, more reach.

Cross-posting saves you time you would have spent on content creation, expands your digital reach across platforms, and keeps your messaging consistent, even as you engage different demographics of your audience.

The Big 4 Platforms

While there are plenty of social media platforms out there, only a few of them are relevant for churches. We recommend actively posting on these 4: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

These platforms are key for 2 reasons:

1. They cover a wide age range, maximizing your reach demographically.
2. They all prioritize short-form video content, which you can easily create from sermon videos.

Each of these platforms is the preferred social media platform for a different generation. Gen Xers use Facebook, Millennials prefer Instagram, Gen Z likes TikTok, and Gen Alpha uses YouTube (Pew Research Center).

By posting the same content to all 4 of these platforms, you can reach across generations with the same messaging.

Make the Most of Your Sermon Videos

Churches have a rare advantage in the social media world—ready-made video content in the form of sermon clips.

There’s no need to write scripts, break the bank on a fancy camera and editing software, and spend time running multiple takes. In fact, you probably already film your sermon each week.

All that’s left is to edit your sermon video into easily digestible clips, add captions, and write a short hook to grab the viewer’s attention. Tools like CapCut or Sermon Shots are super helpful for turning sermon videos into snappy clips, no video editing experience necessary.

Finding the Optimal Sermon Clip Length

Though the Big 4 platforms all make it easy to share short-form video, they have different specifications for video length.

Facebook and Instagram Reels must be under 90 seconds long, but there is no maximum length for video posts either app.

TikTok videos can be as long as an hour, but most viewers expect videos between 30 seconds and 2 minutes long.

YouTube Shorts must be 3 minutes  or less. YouTube videos can be any length.

If you can edit your sermon clips to 90  seconds or less, you can cross-post the exact same video to all four platforms. If 90  seconds is too short, aim for 3 minutes , and cross-post to YouTube Shorts and TikTok. .

Tools for Maximizing Your Reach on Social Media

Cross-posting doesn’t just save you time in terms of content creation—you can use social media management tools to automatically cross-post on your accounts, too.

HootSuite is one of the most popular tools out there, but it’s also pricey, with plans starting at $149/month. That makes it prohibitively expensive for most churches and nonprofits.

The Meta Business Manager is free to use, but it only schedules posts on Facebook and Instagram. You still have to manage your TikTok and YouTube posts separately.

Buffer has a free plan, but it is limited to 3 social media accounts and 10 scheduled posts at a time. The more robust paid plans include perks like advanced analytics, a hashtag manager, unlimited scheduled posts.

GraceLed Connections… If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s our platform! Schedule posts, send emails, texts, phone calls, create registration forms, handle your contacts list, and build automations for things like first time guests flows and more all through one app? Interested in learning more? Click here to schedule a call!