Social Media for Youth Ministry (Youth Group Tips)

The time to grow a healthy, thriving youth ministry is NOW...let's work together! Make sure to check out GrowYourYouthMinistry.com *** New families & students decide in seconds whether your youth ministry feels clear, warm, and worth a visit and your Instagram is often the first viewpoint.  In this episode, we will be breaking down the best practices for creating social media accounts that bring students in.  From the cadence of your posting rhythms to what you should be posting, this episode will give you a clear path to audit your current accounts and to see where you can improve. These five practical tips can turn your youth group's social media accounts into an active front door for your student ministry.

If you want Instagram to grow attendance, build trust, and reflect your youth ministry’s real heartbeat, this conversation gives you the checklist and the why behind it. Subscribe, share this with your team, and leave a review ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ if you got value out of this episode!

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You may also enjoy these episodes:

(#239) Your Youth Ministry Website is ALL WRONG! (Here's How to Fix It)

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Transcript

The Instagram Bio Problem

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I think that is the number one biggest missed opportunity for youth groups who have an Instagram page. And I would go so far as to say 99% of youth group Instagram pages don't do that. Are we believer focused only? Are we trying to attract visitors? Are we looking to grow and have new students join our ministry? Well, then everything you do has to go through that lens. Today we're talking about five ways that you can use your youth group social media to your advantage.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

Welcome to the Ministry Coach Podcast, the number one podcast for helping you grow the size and health of your youth ministry. My name is Jeff Lascola, and this is Kristen Lascola.

Visitor Mindset And Clear Info

SPEAKER_01 0:53

And today we are talking about five ways to help you utilize your social media for your youth ministry. And I'll just put it out there when I say social media, I'm really only talking about Instagram. I don't think your students are on Facebook. They probably are sneaking and are on Snapchat. Uh, I don't really want to go there. And they might be on TikTok. So feel free to also go on TikTok. This is just Instagram only, but a lot of this I think could translate to TikTok because they're not all that different, especially now that Instagram is mostly reels and stuff like that. So it's not totally, you know, outside the realm of possibilities. So, but that will be uh the focus will be Instagram. So, number one, I think my number one pet pee when I look at youth group Instagram pages will be there is no information in their bio. It will simply say youth ministry of Rivers Church. Yeah. It's like, well, that's fine for an insider. Like, we talk about that a lot. Are we believer focused only? Are we trying to attract visitors? Are we looking to grow and have new students join our ministry? Well, then everything you do has to go through that lens. So if I just say youth ministry of Rivers Church and my bio, that doesn't help a window shopper at all. And so what you want to do is utilize that bio for like a quick little snapshot of your date, like day of the week. I mean, your time, your location. And I even have my weekend service times in there. So it'll be like Tuesdays, 6 30 to 8 30, Sundays this time, Saturdays this time, the address of the church so they know exactly where to go. And then even a link to the website underneath that so that they can get a bigger picture of who you are rather than just your Instagram. And you put them right in to a situation when they can find more information about you very, very easily.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Would you say if you have a youth ministry website to link that and not the church or the church or both? Can you do both? I think you can do more than one link, can't you?

Links That Drive Signups

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Probably. I right now just have my youth group website because that's gonna give them the information they're looking for. If they want to look at our church overall, you know, obviously they can just like Google that.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

But are the two linked? Your youth group website and the church website? Oh, answer that.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Yeah, I think so. I don't know. I never really I don't go there myself, but like I don't go to our website and then click and click, click, click to get to the youth group website. I just go to the youth group website, chaosj.com. Something to look into. Yeah, good question, Jeff. Thank you. Uh so it's just you want to give people the like easiest tool if they were to come to your youth group or be curious about it, that they wouldn't have to now dig further. Well, when do they meet? How do I get a hold of someone? Where, you know, it's just a little snapshot, all right there. I think that is that's why I wanted to start with this one because I think it's the number one biggest missed opportunity for youth groups who have an Instagram page. I see it all the time. And I would go so far as to say 99% of youth group Instagram pages don't do that.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Because a lot of them, I I think they're again just thinking of insiders or people who have, you know, but think of all like kids from a school and unchurched families, new to the area people, all kinds of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

So I'm always amazed at how many churches on their website don't even have their address. Wow. And I mean, I'm assuming that they probably think, well, if you went on our website, you must know where we are and who we are. But I'm just like, it'll say like uh service times and it'll show those. And that's like connect with us, and it'll have like email and phone number. I'm like, there's no address like anywhere, not on the bottom, nothing. And you're like, where are you?

SPEAKER_01 5:14

That's bizarre. Yeah, I mean, I just honestly think churches unintentionally are not putting themselves in the position of a visitor, a brand new person. And to be honest, I get those all the time. And with like, no matter how much information I put out there, I still get phone calls. Hi, I want to bring my child to your youth group for the first time. You know, like most the questions are like, what do I need to do? Do I need to register them ahead of time? Do I need to fill out something? Can I just drop them off? Like, what's the protocol? So we are reaching new people literally every week. And so we want to give as much information of who we are and how to get connected as possible. And there it's always a great idea, you know. I think Instagram kind of changed the way they do DMs, but have a way for people to get a hold of you. You know, if you want to direct them to your youth group website and then have your email on there or a phone number, some kind of way to like get a hold of a real person, not just like info at church.com, but like an that inbox usually probably will never get checked. You know, it's like where is the person? Send them there if it's you or somebody else.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Do you have a frequently asked questions section on your website?

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Jeff, stop asking me questions I don't know the answer to.

unknown 6:35

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Sounds like you got two things on your to-do list.

Promoting Events With Trends And Reels

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Wow. So do you have a frequently asked question? I no longer have a website. All right. Number two, another great way to use that bio would be to add a link for whatever upcoming event that year we're currently promoting. So for us, I think we just switched ours from winter camp to starving to serve, which is our event that we're promoting right now. So it's just a really easy way. Like I send out parent emails all the time of like, here's a link to sign up for this, here's a link to sign up for that. However, I miss a lot of people with that because there's new kids or people who somehow show up and aren't registered and aren't on my email list. So I always say, click the link in our bio. If you're looking for the latest event, the newest thing we're doing, go to our Instagram, click the link in our bio. So that is, I think, a super great tool right underneath the website to have the link tree in there to take people right where they need to go. I think we catch a lot of people that way. And it's a super simple, easy way to find it. Sometimes on church websites, you have to sort of go on a treasure hunt. So even if you direct them, well, go to our church website and then click on student ministries and then click on events and then click on winter camp and then click on this campus. And then, you know, it's like, or go to our Instagram page, click the link in the bio. That's signups. Okay, number three, uh, along with events, Instagram is such a great place to promote your upcoming events. And the other side of that coin is remind people about your upcoming events. So you can promote your weekly stuff, meaning your weekend services, remind people about those, your midweek program, like your youth group. Now, I this is where the creativity comes in is using trends, Instagram trends to do this. We have a whole folder on our back end of our Instagram that's trending ideas for our next video. So if you go on my Instagram handle is chaos jh, and if you look at that, you'll see we use specifically our student leadership team to film some of these trends. So you can go, I think we posted one uh a few days ago of like people chasing after one of this. Did you see that one? Okay. So that's one of the unintended benefits of having a student leadership team is at your meeting, before you get started, explain the trend, get people who want to do it, and then you film it, and now you have fodder for social media for a little while. We, I think this year, almost at every meeting, we have filmed social media stuff uh trends, or like our staff, like in the middle of the afternoon working, we'll do one of the social media trends to promote are you coming tonight? instead of just I think the the least effective method for uh youth group social medias is like text. So, like meaning you look at their page and like everything is just words. It's words, words, words, words, words. Very boring. And it doesn't highlight who you are at all. It doesn't give any clues to your culture, your team, what to expect for anyone to sort of get an impression of like what am I walking into? But when you always have faces, students, leaders, staff, student leadership, all of that, you know, when you look at it, it just gives you it's a very dynamic way to present yourself because it looks exciting, right? It's people smiling, it's students having fun, it's people dressed up fun for whatever particular event that we did. So feature as many students as possible. It's a great way to promote camp. So instead of just a text uh post that says winter camp February 20th through the 22nd, sign up.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

It we will post a recap of last year's camp. So now you have kids in costumes, playing Kajabi Can Can, zip lining, uh jumping up and down during worship. And that's a much more dynamic way to say winter camp is coming. Right. Because if they need just the nuts and bolts of the information, you can always put that in the caption, like very easy. Or, you know, you they go to the website as well for more information about everything. But stay away from text. Nobody like cares about your sermon series, right? So don't use it to promote, oh, this series. I think I've done that once or twice, like in our story. You know, I think it was an end time series that the kids were really excited about. And but it doesn't mean never ever do it. It's just not like the most exciting thing. It's could be sprinkled in, but if it's just a wall of text when people scroll down, it's just like okay, like what 13-year-old psyched about that, you know.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

And this is obviously just one of many ways you're communicating to parents and students. So obviously, you want as many eyeballs on it as possible, and reels just get more traction than just regular text posts. Absolutely. Um, you know, obviously there's interaction, comments, things like that, likes and all that is good. But if you're staying on a reel and watching it for the entirety, it triggers the algorithm to say, hey, this is something people want to see, so it goes to more people and more people. And yeah, those text posts tend at this point in social media culture, it that usually doesn't get much traction at all. Yeah. I think everybody probably knows that, but still.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

I think it's kind of tempting because it's a lot easier, actually, you know, like just posting something like don't forget youth group tonight with a with a cool background. Like it's sort of like that's not very exciting anymore.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

I think if you are gonna, like you're saying, doing doing it in a story would probably you know be a little bit better.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Yeah. And you know, reminding about the event. So first you promote the event, and then when you're getting closer or it's that day or whatever, you're now reminding, like, see you here at four o'clock, you know, whatever. And that could be you talking, that could be pictures of the event, whatever. But remember, as many faces as possible. Okay, number four, keep parents updated and informed when you're on a trip. This is one of my favorite ways to use the story feature of our social media. So, like when we go to Whitewater for the summer, every time, you know, we're in a caravan of like 12 vehicles. So I'm only in one of them. So every time we stop for lunch or a bathroom break or whatever, I try to get as many kids at in and out as possible and Chick-fil-A as possible. And then I run over here and hey, like, what did you order? Like asking them a question or uh would you rather, just so their parents can see you're alive, you're well, you're happy, you're smiling. Because, you know, when you leave for a trip or for camp or an event, parents are just kind of like, hope you're having a good time. I know a lot of kids have phones, but they're not posting the way that you would for the youth group. Also, with travel updates, you know, we always get stuck in traffic in LA on our way home from summer camp. So I can, you know, update the ETA for parents on our story, you know, weather conditions, highlights of the day. We're in a pretty remote area when we go on our summer camp. So kids can't even text their parents when we're actually on the river. So I'll post once a day like highlight of the day. We did this rapid. Everyone's alive, healthy, happy, and well. Uh, worship was amazing, you know, just give them a little flyby of the day. Yeah. And that's not something I do every week, but it's a special thing to be able to do for parents when you're out and about. And I've had parents send DMs like, I see all your reels and all your stories and all this, but I haven't seen Benny. Where is he? Can you make sure he gets in one of the photos?

SPEAKER_00 15:01

As soon as we find him, we will post a video. I'm sure he's doing great. That's my first question.

Ditching Text Walls For Faces

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Who dis wrong IG? So I and as a parent, I understand. Like I have the benefit. Like our daughters in my youth group. So I always, I'm like always looking around. Did she get back in the raft? Did she get back in, you know? But imagine you're just a parent at home, like, please take care of my child. Um, and I want to see a sign of life, please. So uh parents love that. And they will just say, you know, I always say at my parent meeting, like, hey, look, if you don't have an Instagram, just make a quick account so you can follow us for, you know, these events and stuff like that. And it's really helpful for them. Okay. And then number five, one way I personally love to use our social media is for leader birthday shout-outs. I love posting a picture of my leaders on their birthday and getting to just gush about them publicly. And I write a thing about why we appreciate them, their strengths, things that they're good at, why we love having them on the team. And it's number one, a great way for parents to get to know our leaders a little better if parents are following the account. And, you know, just platforming our leaders too. It's a great way to just be able to like praise them publicly. I don't do it for every student, obviously. For obvious reasons, that would just be way too much. But I love highlighting our leaders on there. So if you want to do more than just like birthdays, you know, you could just do special shout-outs for your leaders and staff, you know, um, you can get creative with that. But I think that's a really fun way to use Instagram. And here's just some bonus tips and advice is one great practice we have is we post a reel literally after every single youth group. So we do a little highlight reel of a little bit of the game, a little bit of worship, a little bit of the message, and then we post it the same night as our youth group. So if you missed it, you know what you missed out on. Our students love worship, so they love posting the set list for worship, like the songs that we did, because they have their preferences and they love to see like what we did. And then, you know, it gives people who didn't go that like, oh dang, that looked really fun. I hope I can go next week sort of thing. So yeah, it just brings relevancy in the sense of like we're here and we're doing cool things and you should be a part of it. Like it just creates like a buzz, like consistently of like this youth group is very active. Like they're always doing something, there's something going on. It's I want to be a part of it, you know. Like, I'm not great at posting on my own Instagram very often. Or sometimes I just am like, what is there exciting to post? You know, like I don't know. I I would like to get better at that, but on the youth group website or Instagram, I feel like frequent posts at least twice a week is seeming to be a good rhythm.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

That's your cadence, is usually twice a week.

Using Stories For Trip Updates

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Pretty much, because you know, we have weekend services and we have midweek program, and there's usually a post attached to both of those. I would say sometimes we're up to three if there's like an event, like winter camp is this week. So we'll probably post an extra thing like don't forget, meet us here at 4 15, blah, blah, blah, on Friday. So I would say between two and three posts a week. So you don't need to post every single day.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

But what about stories?

SPEAKER_01 18:41

What about them?

SPEAKER_00 18:42

I mean, how often like do you have a cadence? Like where some people say, don't let 24 hours go. We always have one.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Um, that's great advice. I don't think we're quite that disciplined, but we have a story going, yeah, probably more often than we don't. There's usually something on there. And the cool thing too is I, and the reason I'm vague on that is because I don't do all of our social media.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Yeah, so do you have like a social media manager?

SPEAKER_01 19:10

I do some of it, but uh out of everyone, I probably do the least right now. So I have a couple staff that have the login, and they Caleb, especially, he's like my guys' director. He does most of it. And so he has the ideas, he can kind of post. I don't approve everything, it just he knows the vision.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Like you don't approve it, or like you're saying you don't know.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Like he doesn't need to go through me and bottleneck it.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

He just like I don't approve.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

I don't love it, but he does what he wants.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Reject it.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

What what am I supposed to do? He has the login. I can't help it. No, it's just like he has the creativity, the time, the excellence, the editing, and he just goes for it. And but he knows my preferred rhythm, like make sure you're post them out weekend services, make sure you post them out Tuesday, and then he'll catch things that need to be posted about camps or events or whatever it might be. So if you have someone on your staff, your team, volunteer who is really good at social media, and you want to give them the login and sort of give them a vision of what you're looking for, let them take it and run with it. And the cool thing about Caleb is he's then recruited students to help with it. So it's not like he does all the filming and all the editing. Like he's teaching our daughter how to edit. He's developed one of our high school girls. Now she's one of our leaders. She does a lot of the filming and editing. We use our student leadership kids to get footage and photos. And some of them don't have a phone, so they'll just use his phone, which is great because it's already on there. And so then they just edit it that night, you know. Someone's usually like sitting in the cafe editing really quick so we can post it. So it does take a team. If this sounds kind of daunting, yeah, think about who do I have that is interested in this, good at this, has a pulse on this. And just even searching those social media trends, like they're a lot of fun to include students in on. You know, if you're a young youth pastor, you probably know all about it. If you're not a young youth pastor, find young people who are really into that and they usually do a great job. So, bottom line, we kind of already talked about this, but remember, ministry is people. So show people, show relationships, show the warmth, let that come through.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

That's what I was gonna ask. Like when you when someone looks at your Instagram page, what should they m mostly see?

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Faces, people, smiles, leaders, students, leaders, students, all the things, videos, just like make it like really try to. Capture what an experience that your youth group is like. But yeah, faces. I was looking at ours today in preparation for this episode, and there's not one text box. Like there's nothing. It's all like video, photo, like, and it's all they all are like action. Like, yeah, they look everything looks exciting and fun. And that's not like a dupe. Like, we we really are extremely. Pretend you're smiling. But it that is who we are. And so I think Caleb and Scout, she's the girl that he has trained up to help him. You know, they they're just so good at capturing who we are and putting that on social media. And yeah, like leaders, it's just it when I look at it, I am proud. Like that is us. That is what it's like to be here. So yeah. And remember, like social media, we've said this on an episode in the past a couple of years ago, it's not inherently bad. I think youth pastors sometimes stiff arm the whole social media idea a little bit because, well, we don't want kids on there, you know. And it's like, well, you don't have to agree that everything that happens on social media is wonderful in order to use it as a tool. I mentioned I'm not really gonna go like the Snapchat route and stuff like that. So I do have boundaries with it of just like, yeah, that just doesn't seem healthy or necessary. But, you know, YouTube and TikTok and Instagram, like there are really great accounts on there. And why not why not you be one of them?

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

That didn't sound right. Why not you be one of them?

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Uh it's also not a bad idea. It's actually a very good idea to have in like an email, either like a parent welcome email beginning of year of a class or um frequently through the emails you send out, and also signage up at youth group that just kind of states we will be taking photos and videos if for some reason, because some parents might just be like, I don't want my child, you know, featured or whatever, but to be kind of cognizant of that and say, Okay, this kid, we're not supposed to have them in any video or whatever. I don't feel like most parents would have a problem with it. I think it's a very small percentage that would. However, it's probably just a good idea just to let it be.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

Yeah, I think, yeah, and I think we do that. I think it kind of says on our website, like, hey, by being on campus, you know, you're it used to be a sign-up, I don't know if it's the live will be shown or is subject to photograph or whatever it might be. I think it's a slightly different wording you have to use for minors and stuff like that. But I've only had one parent in 23 years have a issue, and they weren't mad at me. The student was just really clear like my parents won't let my picture be taken. I was like, all right, right. And then I have one girl who just is like super shy, and she's like, Oh my gosh, please don't film me playing a game. Like, so I just tell our photographers, like from our student leadership team, see her, okay, do not film her. And they're like, okay.

Celebrating Leaders Publicly

SPEAKER_00 25:22

So go out of your way though to make it a point. No, not you in the turn away. Hey, uh, we did an episode all about your website and making sure it's optimized. Make sure you check that out because I feel like social media websites kind of go hand in hand. Um, so make sure you're hitting in all fronts. This is a community comment of the day. This comes from Daniel Sanborn who says, Thank you for your words of encouragement. I appreciated the sharing about the coffee mug slogan. That was the one from DYM that says senior pastor material. And the myth buster of expiring my call to youth ministry. I'm 66 years old. I'm the youth pastor at my church, and I still have a deep passion to minister to youth. The kids in my youth group are excited about our group, and the parents support me 100%. Wow. I will continue to work with the youth till God says stop.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Yes, yes, yes, Daniel. I love that. I wholeheartedly agree, and I'm so glad that was encouraging. You're an inspiration to all of us.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Yep, there is no expiration date on youth ministry. Thank you so much, Daniel, and thank you guys for watching and listening and we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

In this episode, we're getting a give you this. Out of like forky. You might be unintentionally you