The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 051 – The Nerdist's Guide to Awesome Social Media for Your Church or Organization—An Interview with NewSpring's Chris Dunagan
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change, and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before, in your church or in your business. And now your host, Carrie Newhoff. (upbeat music) - Well, hey everybody, and welcome to episode 51 of the podcast. My name is Carrie Newhoff, and I hope our time together today helps you lead like never before. Hey, my guest today is a guy that I didn't even know six months ago, but I was totally impressed with his work. I kept seeing it, but I didn't know who was behind it. Chris is in charge of all social media or just social, as he calls it, and I'm sure all the hip people do. I learned that in this podcast. He's in charge of all social for New Spring Church. And if you follow them on Instagram, on Twitter, on Periscope, on Facebook, I just thought they were killing it. I thought they were doing such a great job, like just to cut above the rest. And I drilled down to a little bit of homework and said, okay, who's in charge of all of this? Found out it was Chris done again and said, hey, would you be on the podcast? And he said, sure. So I think you're gonna really enjoy it. Whether you have never really done social media, and it's one of those things you think, you know, I really should for my church or your business or for yourself. I really should get involved, but I don't know how. Chris is gonna help you. And if you geek out on it, we had a really detailed conversation. What I love about this conversation is it goes from the intro level right through to the Nerdist level. And he gave me permission to call this the Nerdist guide to social media. So anyway, that's what we're gonna be doing. That's what we're gonna be talking about today. But in the meantime, I got a couple of really huge announcements to make. First of all, next week we hit the one year mark of the podcast. Can you believe that? One full year, man, we made it. We made it to one, isn't that awesome? And some of you were there from the very beginning, the audience has grown a ton, week by week. And I'm just so excited. We're gonna celebrate. We're gonna celebrate by doing some different things. We've got the usual episodes. In fact, next week's one year anniversary guest is Craig Grishell. And Craig was generous enough to give me a full hour. So if you haven't subscribed yet, make sure you subscribe. Craig is gonna talk all about his leadership, how he stayed fresh, his heart behind LifeChurch, his vision for the future, how he manages his family, all those things. It's a great interview. So that's gonna be our one year celebration interview. And then we've got for this month, Ravi Zacharias coming up. Judd Wilhite is gonna come up early in October. It's gonna be an incredible time together. So I think you're really gonna enjoy that. Also, we have, for the very first time, some bonus episodes. So if you're a subscriber and if not, I'd encourage you to be that. We are actually going to add some episodes on Thursdays in September, not every Thursday, but three Thursdays. We're gonna do the first time on September 10th, a bonus best of episode. Like here's the whole year in reviews, some highlights, it can sort of take you back and really be just a succinct leadership summary. So we're gonna do that on the 10th. And then the 17th and the 24th, for the very first time, we're gonna try and ask Carrie episodes. You guys ask me questions like almost every day on social media via email, on Periscope. And we just thought, well, let's put some of your best questions into an episode. So we're gonna do two bonus odes. I made that up. I think that's a word. On Thursday the 17th and the 24th. And to ask me a question, I would encourage you to go to my Facebook page right now. And just, you'll see a post there saying, "Hey, what are your questions?" And leave a comment, okay? Just leave a comment, ask your question there. We'll be pulling them off. Or you can go to my blog and you'll see a little voicemail recorder on the side that says, "Got a question?" You can leave a message there. Or just on social media, use the hashtag #AskCarrie. That's A-S-K-C-A-R-E-Y. And we'll respond to those questions in those two bonus odes. And again, if you subscribe, you won't miss a thing. So you can do that for free on iTunes, Stitcher, and Tune in radio. And then get this, get this. This is the month. In fact, today is the day where for the very first time you can pre-order my brand new book. Yes, it's finally coming out. So many of you have been asking, "Hey, when's your next book coming out? "When's your next book coming out?" It comes out, the official release date is Tuesday, October the 6th. That's gonna be a huge day. But until then, you can get some very special promotions that are gonna disappear after the book is released. Okay, if you pre-order starting today and you can do that at lastingimpactbook.com, you will get the ebook for free with some bonuses. I read the entire book. You're also going to get the ePub version. So if you get the hard copy, get the ePub version for free. And you're also gonna get just people who pre-order an exclusive webinar with me. Some of that will be Q&A. So I'm gonna take your questions. It's gonna be like an hour long, maybe longer. And we're gonna talk about how to have a difficult conversation with your team. Like, okay, the book is actually all about seven powerful conversations that will help your church grow. We talk about why churches aren't growing, why people are in attending church more often these days about team health, about burnout, about why kids are walking away from church. We're talking about volunteers. So it's seven hot topics in churches, but it's designed so that you can have that conversation with your team and in the webinar, that's only for people who pre-order the book. I'm gonna walk you through how I have conversations with my team. So if you pre-order today and you can do it today, just do it at lastingimpactbook.com. Keep your receipt and you can submit it according to the website instructions, the instructions we have on the website. And we'll make sure you get in on that webinar. We'll make sure that you get the ePub version, the electronic version for free and that you get the audio book with bonus content for free. So that's what happens. Why don't you pre-order your book today? Just go to lastingimpactbook.com. And all this month, we'll be telling you about some special exclusives for people who pre-order. And then the big celebration, the launch day is October six. Also, if you're on the orange tour, if you show up to one of our stops all month, whether I'm in that city or not, you can actually get your copy, your hands on a physical copy and buy them for you and your team. That's the only place they're available before October the six. We are gonna be in Atlanta. I'm gonna be in Irvine, California. You can get all the details there at orangetour.org. So that'll be available as well. So really fun month ahead. And just, I just wanna say thank you so much for making it awesome. You guys have been incredible. Probably the most favorite part of this podcast for me in the first year is interacting with you. So thanks for being so spectacular. And now here's another really great guy. I so enjoyed my interview with Chris Dunnegan from New Spring Church. Really excited to have Chris Dunnegan on the podcast today. Chris, really glad you're here. Thanks for joining us. Woo-hoo. Glad to be here. (laughing) So you're involved at New Spring Church. I don't know who's got like the most leaders on my podcast in the first year, whether that's New Spring or whether that's North Point. But there's been a good dose of several from your church on and it's just awesome to have you here. So tell us about your involvement with social media at New Spring Church and all of its locations really in South Carolina. Yeah, right now I'm the social media director and I just oversee vision and check out new platforms and try to help plan strategy for what we're doing and how we're gonna reach people far from God with our social platforms. How long have you been doing that for? Three and a half years. And was like media something you were always interested in or like when did it become social or online for you in terms of like your life story? Yeah, well media is not something that I've always been interested in. In fact, I'm a fine artist by training and trade and love and was a graphic designer at New Spring Church. When we just saw this bubbling up happening in the social media world and said, "Hey, we really need to put somebody there." And we looked outside to find somebody and finally they just said, "Hey, would you try it?" And I said, "Sure, I'm not really social, but I'll give it a shot." And when I did, something flipped for me where the Lord just showed me how the gospel was moving in social spaces in an amazing way. And then since then over the last three years, we've just been trying to figure out how that all works out. Wow, and you have a fierce beard. Man, I just say that. That is quite a beard. Hey, thanks, man. I don't know if you can see that on the podcast. No, with an audio podcast, not really, but that's like a serious beard. I haven't shaved in about three years, but nobody can tell. That's my story. So yeah, well, that's really cool. So a fine artist like graphic arts has been your background prior to that? Yes, sir. Oh, cool, cool. So you made the switch and was like New Spring doing social media prior to three and a half years ago, which if you're listening to this way out of sequence years down the road, that would be like 2012 or so that you took over. Yeah. 2012. Yeah, we were there in some measure a lot doing what other people were doing. We were making announcements and we were putting sermon clips on there. But in part, we were playing defense. We were trying to keep critics off the page. And we weren't really doing anything that was moving anything forward there. So after I got hired, there was a shift in strategy and what we were moving there. I feel like I'm rambling now. No, no, no, no, you're not rambling at all. So tell me about that shift in strategy and what you saw and how you got there. Because I take it, it's probably evolved over the last three years too. Oh, yeah. So right when they hired me as social media director, my first step was to figure out what are people doing on Facebook and right about the same time, we fired up a blog where we were writing seven days a week articles and devotional content. Wow. One of our big aims on our website is digital discipleship. And our mission right now as a church is to reach people far from God and teach them how to follow Jesus step by step. So everything we do, including social needs to fall under that category. Now the shift for us was we were answering questions that we wanted people to know about us. Right. The question then became what are people asking that we have the answer for? OK. Now, when we approach social and even the way we write our blog content from that perspective, we're able to help husbands be better husbands, dads be better dads. You know, somebody be a better worker at work with truth that we know is from the Bible, but presented and packaged in a way that feels like entertainment on Facebook, because people are going there to be entertained and find information in a way that they were consuming. And then in that helpful content that we were giving them, we were able to give them truth from the Bible. OK, so give me an example of how you used to do it and then the shift that you made if you can if you can talk about the distinction between the two. I think most people kind of intuitively get, you know, social media or social is church announcements, right, which is, hey, come to a new series. It's a poll, or push strategy or whatever. But like, tell us about the difference between writing content, trying to answer. I forget exactly how you phrased it, but answering questions about yourself rather than questions that the listener would be interested in or the reader. Yeah, so answering questions that people are asking, we just pushed an article this past week that was written by a lady who had had an abortion in her past and was asking the question, how do I move forward? I've had an abortion, can I be forgiven? What does the Lord say about me and who I am? So her story tells that story. And then when we put it on Facebook, we would bring people in to say, if you have something in your past that you don't think you can be forgiven of, here is a story of somebody that has been forgiven. And here are some more helpful next steps for you if you can relate to this and would like to learn more. Another real practical one is baptism, right? If you're a church, you're baptizing people, the tendency is to want to say, hey, we're baptizing people on October the 2nd. Everybody be there, it's going to be at 10 o'clock in the morning. That's really an announcement bulletin board. But if I want to pull more people into that conversation, because when you look at your church, how many people are asking, I wonder when the next baptism is. Right, nobody. Really, yeah. Except the senior pastor. Exactly. And how do I get that announcement out? Well, if we tell you six reasons why Christians are baptized, or write an article about the differences between the methods of baptism and how that fits in the Bible, and we pull you into a bigger pool of, hey, I've always wondered why Christians get dumped, or why do they slam them underwater versus getting sprinkled? Then if you'll read that article, then at the end, you'll see, and there's a baptism coming up, click here for more info. Right. OK, that's interesting. And by the way, just so listeners know, leaders know, obviously, Chris is at a church that has probably among some of the greatest resources in America today. And most of our listeners, some are definitely parts of mega churches and large churches that have thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend in that area. And most actually, it's like, whoa, one staff. Hey, we're good for $100,000 a year total for everything, including the building and salaries. So we'll get into practical application for all of us who have no team or don't have staff in this area. But I want to play with this, because I think what you're saying is really, really interesting. So to go back to the example of the woman who had an abortion, I think the way a lot of churches run their social media or even businesses or organizations. But you get to the point where, OK, we're doing a series on abortion, not that I would recommend that. So therefore, we'll have a story about that. But it doesn't sound like it's not necessarily that Perry or anybody else was addressing that subject on the weekend. You just thought, hey, this is something that's really interfacing people's lives? Like, is that it? Like, you sort of have a separate content channel with separate issues that you're engaging in social? Well, or how does that work? The way it ties in, one of our goals on social is to connect to people where they are with conversations that they're already having and to connect the Sundays. So when I actually meet before every series with our writing team, and right now we have a volunteer writing team led by two staff members and 50 volunteers. So this is writing for Sunday or writing for social? This is writing for our blog and devotional content. Gotcha, OK. And we will say, what is the series about? What are the topics we're going to address? And then we'll say, what are people talking about in society? So we are still working on being so nimble that we would have an article ready to answer a question about, what do we do now that gay marriage is legal? And I know you guys, they're 10 years ahead of us on that one. I know John and I are saying, hey, guys, guess what we've been here? And to that blog post in the show notes, that blog post went crazy about same sex marriage advice from a Canadian. Right. So some of that we do. We want to know what the world is talking about and what questions they're asking. And then either give them a piece of content that we have or write a new piece of content that addresses it in a relevant way. OK, so that's good. So it's not entirely disconnected from the weekend, but it might not just be one of those, hey, for more. Go to our blog. Well, and during this series, just to give you some more examples, we're in a series called America. So we're talking about freedom. We're talking about religious persecution. And are we really being persecuted? And we're recording this in July of 2015, if you're wondering if you want to locate it. OK, yeah, so you're writing, and I love that. That's typical Perry, America. There's no A in there. That's right. Mark it. Mark it. OK, and so go on. I was just trying to locate that for the listeners. So you're doing this series. Yeah, so we do a bit of content that would connect the Sundays. If we're going to be in a series with a certain theme, we want to have relevant social content on our blog that's going to answer questions that may take it a step further or from a different angle that Perry is talking about each Sunday. OK, all right, so that's good. And you have a team of writers. And it sounds like some user-generated content, too. Some stories that might not be featured on the weekend, but get featured on the blog, like the woman who had the abortion and talks about forgiveness and healing and all of that. Is that right? We do. We began actively collecting stories a couple of years ago, knowing that what it started out as, as a senior pastor, Perry would say, hey, do you know anybody that has a story that involves this? It would be a great way to time. I sermon together if I had that story. And you know, as a pastor, that stories really move the gospel and move people in ways that other content can't. So when we were just answering it one Sunday at a time, we just started-- we shifted to say, hey, let's actively collect stories all the time. Let's do what we can to build a database. Then when we need a specific illustration or to highlight what we're talking about in a real specific way, we can go to this database and say, oh, yeah, that's part of Jared's story, or that's a part of Chris's story. Let's get back in touch with them and help them tell that a little better. And then we would use content like that for the blog and services. See, that's a great idea because I think a lot of people have more stories than they could tell, so to speak. In other words, oh, we can't really use that one on the weekend. And then it's-- or maybe more than we have a video crew, you guys do video, more than the crew can shoot. I mean, you've got limited bandwidth, right? And that's a great idea. And when it's user-generated, all you need is a really good editor to make sure that it sort of fits your style guidelines or whatever. But that's a great way to get content out there. OK, so that's sort of your blog strategy. Let's talk about social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I don't know whether you guys do Snapchat yet. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Snapchat, Periscope. Oh, yeah, Periscope, too. I've been having a lot of fun with Periscope. I have a Snapchat account, but as of recording this, I have not activated it because I don't know. I just got to figure out what to do with it. But go ahead, tell us about what you're learning about social. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't have any dirty pictures to send anybody, but there's that stigma with Snapchat, right? And I know it's not that. I know it's not that. It's just I haven't gone there because I haven't been able to get over that stigma. Tell us stories. So since we're talking about Snapchat, we use it a lot for our student ministry to tell us stories on a Wednesday or around events. OK, Snapchat for dummies. That's me. OK, so just explain, because I think any parents listening would go, no, I don't want my teens on Snapchat. And yet, here we got you guys on it. So explain how you leverage it for good, because I think I've always said technology is neither good or evil. It just reveals and amplifies what's already there. That's right. Clearly, you can do great things through Snapchat. Well, and if you're worried about your kids being on Snapchat, you probably have some other parenting opportunities before that as well. And don't be worried about it because they're already there. So whether you know about it or not. Texting, if they have a phone, they can text what they can on Snapchat. Yeah, so tell us about Snapchat for dummies, like me. Well, we tell stories, so the way Snapchat works is it'll shoot up to a few seconds of moments. And then you can capture these moments and compile them very easily into a story. The story is only available for 24 to 48 hours, and then it disappears. So if you watch it, you watch it. If you don't, it's gone forever. And that's all that we use it for, primarily with students, but also on Sundays and other big church events is to tell the story of what's happening. It's real quick, it's real consumable. There's no metrics you can get. So I think a lot of social people don't use it because how can I measure its success? But we figure since students are there, we're gonna try to get them some content they can consume. With Facebook, you know, demographically, it's parents and some older folks. But students are also there on Facebook, but the only reason they go there is to find pictures of themself. Now we're getting ready to take a group of 5,000 students to the gauntlet. You better believe we're gonna put piles of pictures on Facebook that will be for their parents. But that next week, when they get back, we'll have 200 or 300,000 clicks on pictures that they'll take and put on Instagram. - Wow. So they'll take the picture off of Facebook and dump it on Instagram, which is where they and their friends are. - That's right. So let's just do a real quick, 'cause I wanna drill down into some detail, 'cause I think this is super helpful. And you guys, I just think the reason not one of the reasons I really wanted you as a guest is I just think you guys are crushing it with social media. I think you're doing a great job. But in terms of demographics, I mean, I think everybody kind of knows by this point, kids are not on Facebook or that's what people think. Is that true? - I would say it's not true. - Okay. - I would say they are there, but they're not active there. - Okay. - Just like I said, they will look at pictures that you post of them there, but they are leaving to go to Instagram because they think their parents are on Facebook watching everything that they do. - And grandparents, right? Yeah. - Right, they're lurking there. - So they're watching, but not engaging? - Oh yeah. If they visit, they're there to see pictures of themselves, but they're just not engaging on Facebook. - Okay, gotcha, gotcha. All right, and then so that demographic tends to be, who are in terms of what you know about your metrics? Who are you primarily connecting with on Facebook? Because I think that's the biggest, it's the biggest platform, right? And social these days. - It's the biggest for us, right now. - Yeah. - And so who are you actually connecting with? Is it women? Is it men? Is there a particular age demographic that you are connecting with on there? - Yep, we are about 70% women from 25 to 50. And then that's our biggest spike of people who like our page of people who actively engage in the conversation. And then, I mean, we're pretty solid 30% guys in that same age range. - So 70% women? - Yep. - Wow. - And is that higher? Does that skew higher than Facebook as a whole? Do you know that or that's just 'cause? - I think it's a little bit higher than Facebook as a whole. So it kind of reflects the demographics of our church. - And what age group again for both men and women in Facebook? - It's about 25 to 50 for women. And then about the same, a little bit older for men. - Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And that probably to some extent reflects the demographic of your church, right? You have a pretty young church and a pretty young tribe. - We do. We have a young shifting toward older since we're 15 years old now. A lot of our 20-somethings are now 30 and 40-somethings. - Right on. - Yeah. - Yes, it does. - Okay. And then, so that's Facebook, Instagram. That's one of the reasons. I'm just like, man, I don't know hardly anybody who's doing a better job than New Spray on Instagram. I just love following you guys. It's so, your stuff's so good and it surprises me. And if you do a lot of social, it's hard to be surprised, but it surprises me in a good way. I just think you guys have some really creative stuff on Instagram. So who are you reaching on Instagram? - That's cool. Well, Kudos to, we have a volunteer running Instagram right now. - Seriously? - Yeah, how our stuff seemed to shift this year. And I really think she's a photographer. She loves Jesus. She's been around our church for a while. And giving her the keys to Instagram really took it to a next level. And she, you know, who are reaching there? It's teenagers and some college students. And I know there's some outliers, but that's primarily who is there engaging, reposting. Other churches are watching as well. But for the most part, we see people that we know that are at campuses that are hanging out in there and having a good time and seeing their buddies there. - So that's your college. It's really your college and your high school crowd. And you haven't got a whole lot of 40 year old professionals, you know, on Instagram right now. - Right. - Right. Okay, well, cool. Well, Kudos, yeah. And that was one of the questions that kind of breezed over. But like I saw a major shift in your Instagram approach, maybe six months ago. - Well, let me tell you one big shift there. Her name's Nikki. She's gonna be really embarrassed that I kick some shouts out to her. - Way to go, Nikki. - But she has taken it past the level of, how do I get compelling pictures up here? And she's really said, how do I care for people in this space? So when she asked for prayer or when she asked for any other care type opportunity there, she is praying with these people. Their DM and request that they didn't feel comfortable posting and she's responding to those and sharing resources from our side or an encouraging word and really is treating it like a ministry, you know, to reach people far from God and shepherd them along the way. So that really I think has been the main shift there. - And this is really cool. You've mentioned a couple of times now volunteers. So this isn't like a paid staff position. She's got a day job, I assume. - Yes, she works in anthropology and she is also a college student. So she works very hard and then she comes into the office and works very hard alongside us as well. - Wow, good for her. She's doing a great job. So that's Instagram. That's a demographic you're covering there. Talked a little bit about Snapchat. Let's talk about Twitter, which is another of the major players out there. - Twitter, so Twitter is mostly in and we have pretty standard demographics as other Twitter users. - Right. - A shift for us in focus is that we wanna be, I looked at other brands and what they were doing when I tweeted at them and then how remarkable that was. So if I tweet at Weber Grills, which I love. - Oh yeah, all for Weber and barbecue. - Ew, if it takes 48 hours to get a favorite, I think it's great that they favorited my tweet, but it's not remarkable to me. - Yeah. - It kind of feels like they weren't paying attention right when I was there. And because Twitter is designed to be an online chat room, we want it to be very responsive. So the more we're there answering people's questions or being generous with a favorite or amplifying vision with a retweet, it encourages people to engage more with our content and in those spaces with stuff as a pastor that you would wanna hear your people speak back to you. You know, your core values or bigger vision or points from your message that you're trying to teach to see that, oh, they got it. You know, they were listening. So we wanna say, hey, you were listening. Thank you for tweeting. We were listening too. Here's a favorite. - Cool. So Twitter is more male. - Yep. - Demographic, what, like 25 to 45 or? - The age range, you know, I'm not solid on that. - No, that's okay. That's all right. - Oh yeah, mostly guys. - And I find our local people, and again, this is Canadian, North of Toronto. I find that Facebook is the number one way people interact. Instagram is probably number two. And we try to get some traction on Twitter. I don't think we've done a great job of like leading on Twitter, but it tends to be church leaders who interact with us rather than actually people who are trying to reach in our community. - What type of stuff are you guys posting on those outposts on Twitter? - You know, we are not nearly as far advanced as you guys are, but you know, we'll do highlights from the weekend, pictures of people, we'll do a blog post from time to time that again are kind of like instead of, hey, we got a baptism, which we'll do from time to time, but like six reasons people get baptized, or you know, some stories about how to be that family in your community that has everyone at your house and you know, hanging out with your unchurched neighbors. We'll do stuff like that that just takes a little bit deeper. And then Instagram, sometimes some inspirational verses, that sort of thing. But you know, we're newbies in all this, and we're trying to figure it out as well. - Do you have a paid staff position for that? - We do not, which is one of the challenges. We have a team, and theoretically, I guess I actually lead that team, which probably means nobody leads that team. But my assistant and I, we work on it, and then we have a whole bunch of volunteers and some staff people. One of our guys, Shane, shout out to Shane Smith, who really has been, like he was totally unchurched two years ago and became a Christian, and then thought there's no way I can get involved in ministry, but he takes incredible pictures, and then we put out a shout out about a year ago to like, hey, anybody who can help us with social media, he's like, well, that's something I understand. And so he jumped in, and so he's done a lot of leadership there. We've had some other staff members, and then volunteers who have taken pictures for us. John does, and Linda does, and we got some other photographers that will bring in Kyle and Vanessa will help with that. So quite a few volunteers, but like we're trying to figure it out as we go along. And then we'll come to this at the end, but trying to then figure out how to do the social media of like the leader of the organization, who in your case is Perry Noble, versus the church itself. So we're trying to figure that out. AJ's helped us with Twitter as well, and so yeah, we're trying to figure that out, and I could probably spend more time doing that. (laughs) But tell us where, okay, I don't know whether you read, this isn't in the notes that I sent you, but Gary Vaynerchuk's book, Jab, jab, jab, right, you got it. So you know Gary makes the argument, and that book's almost three years old now, but he makes the argument or two, or whatever. He makes the argument that you should post content that's different on every channel. So your Instagram shouldn't just be a repost of what you put on Facebook. How are you finding that to be true? Do you find that, okay, we got a piece of content, and we can just maximize it for every channel, or every medium, or do you have to change it? Or are you trying to run different messages in different media? How is that working for you guys? - Yeah, so if right now, I do agree with him. You can't say the same things on all the channels and expect people not to tune out. - Right. - So one of the primary pieces of content, I think about it in terms of storytelling, is what story are we gonna tell in pictures on Instagram? And I would say on any given day, there are a number of threads rolling. One of them is what's happening with our worship team. Another one is, what points from Sunday's message can I carry throughout the week? And then also we've in stories there. For Facebook really, we're trying to create conversations around content, like I mentioned earlier, that is either related to Sunday's message, or related to a conversation that people are already having. And we treat it, if I'm gonna say the same thing, I'll probably say it in a different way with a different hook and a different picture at a different time, so I can reach a different audience. - Gotcha. - Because nobody uses social the same way, and your Monday morning at nine o'clock audience isn't gonna be your Tuesday morning at noon, audience isn't gonna be your Wednesday at three, and all the platforms are different. So if there is a message I want to tell to everybody, I will try to figure out a number of ways to say it for the platform so that it feels different, even if you see all three. - Gotcha. - I definitely agree with his philosophy on that. - Yeah, because otherwise what happens is, if you happen to track on, say, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, which would probably have the most universal appeal, you kinda see the same post three times over, and I'm super guilty of that. Like, I do that all the time. But people are like, oh, I've seen that already, I've seen that already, I've seen that already, right? So yeah, it probably decreases engagement. Any other profiles, I wanna drill down on how you organize all that. But any other social media channels you're using, like are on YouTube, LinkedIn, most people say if you wanna reach guys, it's Twitter or LinkedIn. Have you experimented with LinkedIn? Have you experimented? - We have tons of content on YouTube right now when we're trying to dial in a strategy for it. - Okay, yeah. - So we're there, but we're just treating it like a big bucket of videos. - Okay, so you have a channel and all that stuff, right? - Yeah, we're just getting ready to have a couple of channels, but yeah. It's, there's no real strategy other than put videos in the video bucket on YouTube. - So you just made everybody feel so much better when you said that? - No, we always think like-- - We don't have a strategy for everything. - And that's a reality, right? When you really sit down around the table, you kinda realize, yeah, we're kinda making this up as we go along, and we've had some success, and we haven't got all the answers, and that makes everybody feel better or so. - Well, I can tell you the, talking about same posting content, the two times I negatively grew our account by almost a thousand people each time, was early, early on, I was only reposting things that Perry was saying. - Oh. - Well, so what happened was people said, well, Perry's already saying this. Well, I'm not gonna follow Perry in New Spring, if New Spring's just gonna say that's what he said. So, they just started unfollowing us in mass, and I realized I definitely needed to change a strategy there. - There you go, that's awesome, that's awesome. So, that's YouTube, which, yeah, who knows what's going on. - Yeah, YouTube, LinkedIn, we're auto sending stuff to LinkedIn. So, it gets articles, and we have a brand page there, and we get people trying to connect, but we're not there actively participating on LinkedIn. - Yeah, sure, any other channels you're exploring, or that you're on that are worth mentioning? - You know, Periscope is one. - Oh, yeah, let's talk about Periscope. - Check it out. - That's so new, when did you guys go on? I think I got on in March or April. - Well, I had literally just downloaded Miracat, and Miracat just got shut, like right after it got shut down by Twitter, 'cause they said we're working on this deal, and then right when it popped up, I tried to go in and grab our username, and it just started using it. You know, what are people doing here? What's going on, and we're gonna experiment it with our youth trip coming up, the gauntlet, which will be in July, August, to supplement the live video, to give people a peek behind the scenes, or a short interview with somebody, just quick, disposable content, that's a little more public than Snapchat. And my opinion is more user-friendly, because it's easy to get to on Twitter. When Twitter gets their inline video cards figured out, it'll be right there. You won't have to download the app. - 'Cause Twitter bought Periscope, just so people are wondering. So it's pretty integrated, which makes it really easy. If you have followers on Twitter, you tend to start with a following on Periscope, is that right? - Yep, yes, that's my understanding. - Keep going, so you're gonna use it at the gauntlet, and what are some other things you've been using it for? - We've been doing it, you know, I've been doing the Ask Me Anything Periscopes, where I'll just fire it up in my office in the afternoon, and say, hey, ask me any questions about social media, what I do, and those people just ask me questions about my beard, and how long I've been growing it out. (laughing) We'll play music, the other day I've played, there's a guy, one of our worship leaders that used to be in a band called Overflow, so I just showed me singing his song. Just little fun, easy stuff that's gonna be feel-good content, that's easy to get out there, but it gives people a good experience with our brand, and the faces behind it. - Yeah, it's sort of a behind-the-scenes thing, at least in these early days for Periscope. I've done the Ask Me Anything stuff, which is fun, because- - How'd that go for you? - Really well, like I've done, I don't know, a couple dozen at this point, different Periscopes, and maybe a dozen Ask Me Anything's, and they tend to be sort of your committed followers, the people who read your stuff, or listen to your stuff, and I've found the conversation far better than blog comments, I know, the trolls tend to run life there sometimes, unfortunately, but the good people tend to show up, yeah, and they've got really great questions, and it's a way to interact in short windows, quickly with people that you share a passion with, so I'm really enjoying it. I've used it more just for, you know, the podcast and the blog that I write, and we've done a few tours through our new church building when we opened it up back in May, and some other things. I wanna start, like, try to convince our team, we're not quite there yet, but like, Periscoping, a service programming meeting, our creative meeting. - Oh, cool, yeah. We just have to stop being sarcastic, that's what we have to do. We should clean up our act a little bit before I cast it. So, I don't know, we're looking at stuff like that, and I just think it's really interesting, and you're right, it is kind of like a hybrid, between, I think of it as like a really easy webinar, but it's way more interactive, and Snapchat is not interactive at all. And for people who haven't experimented with Periscope, it's interactive because the people who are watching can actually like just text in, not text in, but they can, you know, just put messages right on the screen, it's like live texting, the person you're talking to, so they ask me anything thing really works. I've thought about adding Periscope to a sermon series, like at the very end. - Try it from the stage. - Try it from the stage, or have somebody off stage running the Periscope. - Yeah. - And then, you know, texting you the top questions you're supposed to answer. - That'd be cool. - Might experiment with that this summer, this fall, but. - Sweet. - Yeah, that's cool. So Periscope, yeah, and I think, you know, new platforms show up all the time, do you think Periscope is gonna be around for a while? - I think it'll be around for a while. Now, you had mentioned a brand new one. There's another one out now called Beam. - I haven't heard of that, okay. - I don't get it, well, I mean, it's brand new. I just downloaded it and got my unlock code. But yeah. - You don't know what it means yet. - Oh, it's hoping you could tell me what it is. - No. - No. - B-E-E-M or B-A-M-E. - B-E-M-E. - B-E-M-E. - B-E-E-M-E. - Beam never even heard of it. It's like a meme with a beep. That's all I know about it. - Right, okay. This is complex. How many people work on social media, like actually broadcasting, writing, that sort of thing, coordinating? How big's your team? - I like to say that my team is just over 400 people. - Okay, that's overwhelming 'cause most people don't have a church of 400 people. So tell us how that works. What do you mean? - Let me explain. Well, so now we're a staff of just over 400 and I think one of the reasons we are able to do well at social is that our whole staff participates. - Cool. - In a meaningful way. When you talk about how do you say the same thing in the channels and get the word out there? Well, really our social wins and the message goes further when our people say it in their language to their people. Not when we all say the same thing. So when I get our staff involved and understand that the gospel is moving in this space, then we definitely win. But like functionally, my team is, I think we have six people on our team right now that handle communications and different roles and marketing, but from the day-to-day operating, like who's tweeting, who's scheduling, that's me and a volunteer for a new spring church. - Okay, see, and everybody can relate to that, which is pretty awesome. What do you use like to use like a master Google Doc or spreadsheet or something to time it out or to use Hootsuite or like-- - I use Hootsuite primarily for Twitter and then I schedule natively in Facebook because it appears to like it better. - Yes, it does. Yeah, if you try to use Buffer or something for Facebook and it's an account, not a person, then they penalize you. - It just put breaks on it for you. - Yeah, it's like great, you can have 12,000 fans but you'll get like 14 views, right? - Yes, yes. - Okay, so that's what you do and do you worry about censorship at all? I know a lot of people are really worried about their content or you just kind of get people who know it. Well, like hey, there's a certain way to say this and here's five phrases we can use and don't say this or do you just kind of let people express it in their own language or how does that work? How tightly do you control the message? It's the question. - So the message what we want to do is set up the people that are actively there but they don't know what to say with some easy tweets or some easy posts on Facebook and then for the other people, we'll stoke their fire prime their pump with those same easy tweets and we'll give them some vision about, hey, this is what we're talking about. This is the theme, this is where we're going. Here's some images you can use. Here's some things that look great but just take that and run. We definitely don't mandate any, we don't have a Google Doc that we send out to all of our staff with all the approved tweets that they can use and please don't say anything else. Always use this link. I really spend more on my effort having conversations about how the gospel is moving and sharing stories that I hear in our social spaces to encourage staff participation and help them see why it matters. Like why are we even there? - That's a neat idea actually. So I mean, I've often got those from publishing companies or other writers or people who are like, hey, can you help me get the message out on this? And then they send you like tweets or Facebook posts that you can just copy and paste along with some images. So you just send that out and what like an email or something like that to people. - Yeah, we'll do an email to campus pastors. We've done a post on our news feed on our site. So we do that in a couple of different ways. - Okay. Wanna think for a moment just, and maybe this is not a great question but how you integrate what's on your website with what's happening in social. 'Cause you got a pretty cool website too. I mean, it's-- - Hey, thanks man. Shout out to our web team. We have a great web team that we work hand in hand. We're separate organizationally but we're all in the same building. So I hang out with them and they wanna make sure their site works and all the spaces and on devices and we wanna make sure it looks good on social and it's pulling images that make sense and the text is all in place. So your question was how do we-- - Yeah, how do you integrate the two? Like do you do your design hand in hand if there's a major, like I imagine, you're refreshing your web page in terms of even design every couple of years or year or so. - Yeah. - And how you get content from one to the other. Like do you post your messages to your Facebook page or also to your website or how does that work? - We, right now we don't. Perry will tweet at the message on a Tuesday but I generally don't post whole messages on Facebook. We'll tweet at them depending on the content and the message. It's not a, what I'll do on Facebook is I will take a moment from a service that moved me or I could tell was got a lot of response and I'll clip that and it's usually a song or some point or illustration and we'll put that natively on Facebook and then if we wanna tweet at it because a lot of people are watching it, we'll put it on YouTube and then we'll tweet some links to that as well. - Okay, so you just kinda see what's tracking and then you go from there. Now Perry's got a pretty big personal following as well. So people might follow Perry but they don't necessarily follow a new spring on any of the social channels. So how do you handle that with like some, I know one of the big discussions in leadership is are people following churches or are they following leaders or how do you tie Perry's messaging into new springs messaging or do you even have a strategy for that? Perry's just Perry and new spring does what new spring does. How are you guys handling that? - Well, we like to think we work hand in hand because new spring wouldn't be here if Perry hadn't followed the Lord to plan a church. - It's a good point. - We help get the message out there but what we have seen just from looking at data is that people connect with people more than they do with brands and you really have to go to that in your mind where you see that even though we are a church and as believers and church people, we want to think, well, we're a church, we have a higher message, we're not a brand but really to the world, we're just another brand online trying to sell them something that they don't know that they need, right? - Very true. - So when we looked at all the data to where people are getting their messaging from and noticed that it doesn't matter what we do, we can say the same exact thing at the best time ever. Perry will get double, triple quadruple, the engagement reach and everything else because he's a person. We want to get our information from people. We don't want brands getting that. So what we generally do is, Perry is himself on social. You know, he talks to people, he tweets to people. - It would be hard to make Perry not himself. Yeah, right? There he is so much himself. - Yeah, he totally is, totally. - But yeah, he's there. He tweets, he reads comments on Facebook and we are very much in dialogue with him about, this is our strategy for response. Do you want to respond to this? You know, do you want us to respond on your behalf? - Right. - And we do that often. We'll respond to staff members and, but as far as messaging goes, we do talk about, let's just say more specifically, when the Supreme Court in the United States made the decision to legalize gay marriage, we would have a conversation to say, where does this message or our response need to come from? Does that need to come from Perry? Does it need to come from New Spring on the blog? Does it need to be Perry on the New Spring blog? And really, you know, the most official way for a pastor to communicate is a pastor to his people. So I think that answers most of your question. - Yeah, so what do you do with that issue? Did Perry put it on his blog? I know he preached on it. - With that one, he chose to put it on his blog and to actually spend a message talking about, you know, how's Christians do we need to respond to this? - Gotcha. Okay, and we'll link to those posts in the show notes if people are curious and also Perry's blog and all of your channels on New Spring. - All right. - So in terms of overall social media, when you're looking outside of New Spring, what are some of the trends that you see that you think are great? Like you go, oh, wow, we need more of that on social media. What's given you a lot of excitement or encouragement these days as you watch others? - Pictures of monkeys riding pigs. We definitely need more baby monkey riding on the pig videos. - That stuff is so popular, is it not? - I never get tired of it. - I know. - Anything funny with animals, definitely need more of that. I love what, you know, Hillsong really blows me away in the way that they consistently post all these great pictures from all their events. - I know. - We need more of that, telling stories in a remarkable way that lets people into what's happening, but it looks like they have professional photographers all over the world shooting stuff. You know, another thing that I love to see is behind the curtains, what's really happening? You know, if you're a pastor, I see you on stage, you teach for an hour or two hours, however long it goes, and then I don't know what you do the rest of the week. And maybe you periscope or just like you mentioned, seeing inside meetings to answer people that don't go to church or don't have that in their vernacular wonder. What do you really do? - Yeah. - You know, are you really working? - Yeah, well, yeah, let's talk about that. (laughs) You know, that's really interesting because that, I was on social, probably what, six, seven years now, I was an early adopter with Facebook and Twitter, and all those things, late with Snapchat, but I thought about that early on, and I thought, you know, people don't think you're real if you're a pastor, you get paid to do this stuff. And so I happen like multiple times a week, I'll take a picture that's just out of my life. - Yeah, family and stuff. - You know, like last night my son, Sam, and I went golfing, and I took a picture and put it on Instagram and Facebook, and it's just like, you know, people kind of go, oh, you're a real person, and that's actually a real kid, and you actually play golf poorly, like some of us. But I think that humanizes you, and they don't just want to see, you know, 'cause at the end of the day, we're all just real people. And I think when you look at authenticity, which I think is a major value for millennials, they want to know what your real life is really like, and you may not broadcast on Periscope, you know, that fight with your wife on Tuesday night, but-- - Probably not a good idea. - Not a good idea, no. But you do want to be honest and authentic with who you are, and I think seeing behind the curtains is awesome. What are some terrible practices you've seen? Like, you're like, oh, we need less of that. - We need people to stop treating social like a bulletin board. That, I think, irks me. We also need less, I mean, just today I got a text that said, you need to go delete. There's a very inappropriate photo on your Facebook page. And it was just somebody trying to fish for dudes on our church Facebook page. Any number of those spam accounts that'll, I mean, you've seen them. It could be Nigerian people wanting money or go fund me this that you don't know is real. - Yeah, or the Raybans are on sale and you thought they were a real person, but it's just some spam marketer. - Any of that, we need less spam. I'll be good with less of that. - Yeah, any other practices you see, church leaders adopting that you're like, oh, yeah, no, no, don't go there. I would add ranting to the list. Just like we need less angry people on Facebook. - Well, here's a trend that we've seen a couple of times be at ranting. So they'll rant and then they'll apologize, but the rant is still there and nobody else knows they apologized. - Right. - So I don't know if we need a more formal way to undo or ask for forgiveness for the rant, but occasionally, in part of social community management is what do I do and all this stuff flares up? And then, well, so I get a private message that says, I'm sorry, Carrie, I spammed your page with all this hate because I was angry and realized I wasn't angry at you. I just, the Lord was dealing with me with something and I just felt like nobody was listening, but why, you know, I've already aired my dirty laundry all over your page, caused you and whoever else, a lot of work cleaning it up. And then I just have this little apology and I walk away. So I really wish people would have more, would put more thought in right before they post that this is public permanent record, probably for the rest of my life. I could probably go for all of us. - Yeah, and a thousand people read it before you apologized, you know, so that's a really good point. And I shouldn't say some rants can actually be good, but the anger, the anger and the bitterness and the polarization I don't like. All right, well, let's make this practical here in the home stretch. This is, well, it's been incredibly practical, but let's talk to leaders who are like, okay, I want to make some changes in my whole approach to social. What are two or three things or even one or two that you would recommend as a good place to start? - The first place that I always tell people to start when approaching social and asking the question, why does it matter? Is to look back in the book of Acts when the church absolutely blew up and to see what happened there. And if you look at the unified Roman culture, the technology at the time and the way that they use the technology and that connectedness to advance the gospel in a real meaningful way that obviously the Lord ordained, that is where we are right now. So if you can shift your view of social as a way to make announcements to a mission opportunity where you can reach people for Jesus, that is the beginning. And when you see like right now, Facebook is a nation of 1.4 billion people that log in every month, every day, 900 million people go to Facebook looking for something to move them, whether that's humor or a story to read or a current event article. And the way that the gospel can move in that way is unlike unprecedented in the history of the world. And we are here at this time to steward that. Now, it is brilliant. You can make your announcements there or you can spread the gospel there, but when you spread the gospel there and see that as a mission opportunity, all the benefits of that will happen. You'll have growth, you'll have engagement, you'll be leading people to Jesus, you'll be discipling people, you will be doing the things that we are called to do as believers. - That's so good. I so appreciate the fact that you said it. And actually, I think you write the parallels to the first century people you like. There's no parallels to the first century. A lot of Christian historians or historians of the biblical period actually look at the Roman road system as part of the reason for the spread of the gospel because you could actually go from Damascus to Turkey, to Ephesus to Rome. And travel was much more possible because of the Roman Empire than it would have been four or five centuries earlier where maybe you never really went anywhere. And you think about it, you could have an audience of thousands of people in your city who are never setting foot in a church. And this is a gospel opportunity. And it costs absolutely nothing to get on social media. - Right. Well, and you know, missions wise, we traditionally spend thousands of dollars to send a handful of people all the way around the world to reach a few. And you can spend a lot less money on Facebook in five minutes and what you say can reach the world in their own language right where they are, even on their device, you know? - So good. - That's why I do what I do. That really, that gets me fired up. - Preach it. - Man, you're speaking to the converted. I am totally there. And you know, it's just amazing to think about how this medium actually works. You know, a year ago, and recording this, I didn't have a podcast. And now, man, there are thousands, tens of thousands who listen every month to the podcast. And again, for next to nothing, it costs a little bit of cost involved, but you get it going and all of a sudden, you're influencing thousands of leaders every week. And it's just crazy, crazy to see what can happen. So don't think it can happen to you or because you have no staff or you have no budget or, you know, you're in a small town. Man, those barriers have all been broken down. - That's right. - Love that. So one of them is a mind shift then. - Yes. - And how we see it. Okay, anything else you would say to people looking to start? - Yeah, I would say attentiveness. So if you've got to change your mind and understand that this is a mission opportunity, you have also got to see that you've got to be attentive to the people there. You're not just going to walk into a room and start talking to strangers and not listen to what they have to say. You've got to see that it's a conversation and it doesn't have to be a constant dialogue all day long. You know, sets some people free right there. You do not have to, even as a pastor or leader, sit on your phone and have all your notifications on and respond all day long. That is unrealistic to start the way the world works. But if you block off time, I know if you're a productive leader, you're going to calendar time for what's important. So hey, schedule 15 minutes to reply to tweets. Schedule 30 minutes to have some conversations on Facebook. So if you treat social like a front porch where you are hanging out with people that maybe you don't know, you can, as a pastor, participate in conversations with these people that will help them take next step in. A first step for a person that wants to check out a brand or something that they're unaware of right now is to go to the internet and search for it or to go to Facebook and ask Facebook, what is this? Who's this Carrie Newhoff guy? If I can spell his last name, maybe I'll get to his church. What does he have to say? Well, and then I'll check out your social, look at your Facebook page. And that may be my first impression that I have of who you are and what you're doing at your church. Now then I may go to your website or I may look at your church social and I may kick the tires there to say, well, what should I expect? And if I see that you're talking about relevant things, you're talking in a way that's loving, hey, this is a guy that I think I'd want to go listen to. Maybe you got some video clips on there. Then that breaks down that barrier and then I'm one step closer to coming in and actually sitting in your seats. Yeah, and it's just as real as like actually having a coffee with someone because I think most church leaders would say, oh yeah, I'll go have a coffee or lunch with somebody who wants to talk about ministry. But we somehow still think of social as not real. It's very, very real. Let me tell you a story about that. Sure. One thing that we encourage our campus pastors to do is to search for topics related to church in their city. And one real specific example is somebody, a lady, tweeted, hey, I'm new to the Spartanburg area and I'm looking for a great church. The first reply was from our campus pastor, David Hall. And he said, hey, welcome to Spartanburg. We would love to have you at New Spring. Here's a link to our website. She said, wow, thank you, I'll be there. And so she was blown away by his attentiveness, but because he was paying attention on that front porch, he was able to say, hey, I hear you talking about church. And it was just as real as you and me sitting down having a cup of coffee. He invited her to church and she came and had a great experience. That's such a great example. Is there an easy way? And I don't know if there's a clear answer to this to figure out how to search locally for that stuff? On Hootsuite and Twitter, you can search by geo code. If you're using Hootsuite, we use the pro version, which is very similar to the free version if they still have it. But you can say, search within a radius of this city for these keywords. Brilliant. So you search church in the city of barrier, really where I am or Spartanburg or Anderson. And then voila, the tweets come up. Yep, that's right. That's really, really good to know. Favorite, you know, if on Sundays somebody's near our church and is tweeting about going to church, we'll give them a favorite, you know, shoot them at a little invite, tweet, and more often than not, we at least get a follow. And more often times we get a visit from that. So very practical, very easy. What I love about that, it's budget independent and staff independent. Anybody can do it. And even if you honestly only spend an hour a week at it, you would get exponential results and figure at it. Cool. Last question for you, where do you see social media going? It's gonna be around for a while. Yeah, it's not a trend, is it? I really see more people telling better stories. 'Cause I think we're at a point where none of us wants to be marketed to. And when marketing made a big shift to start telling stories that were totally unrelated to anything they were doing as a brand, and they moved people in a real meaningful way, and then they flashed their logo, do, you know, Toyota, or whatever it is, that moves people. And when people have a great experience with who you are, they want more of that. And the more, not just us as a church, but the more people do that on social, the more we connect, and the more that we see it as less of a bucket to make announcements or a bulletin board to put things on, but more of a meaningful way to have interaction. What other time in history can I tweet at a famous person and have a dialogue on Twitter? And I don't even know them. But I've connected with them. And I, you know, I got to, I'm a bass player, my buddy Jared that's over here at the bass player. I tweeted at Doug Windish, who's a favorite bass player of mine. And we just chatted a little bit. We've got the same bass and that was cool. And he just shot me some pictures of a studio 'cause he was in there that day. - No way. - That little connection right there meant so much to me, but was so easy for each of us that it made, it kind of, it just made lives feel smaller. - That's awesome. You know, I had a similar experience a few months ago where I listened to Pat Flynn and Tim Ferriss and they did some kind of a live webinar or whatever. And I just sent in some questions and to actually hear Pat say to Tim, "Hey, we got a question from Carrie Newhoff." And Tim goes, "Oh yeah, that's a really interesting question." I'm kind of like, "Whoa." But that's like an emotional connection. I don't know why. - Yeah. - That's awesome. - Well, Chris, this is super. We will link to all of your personal social accounts and new springs in the show notes, but where's the easiest place for people to find you? - I am at the Dunnegan's in all the places. - Okay. So at the Dunnegan's one N, one G. - That's right. - In two A's, and a U. - In two A's, and a U, and a D, and an N. Okay, Dunnegan. Great. Again, it'll all be in the show notes. You've helped a lot of people. Thank you so much. - You're welcome. Glad to meet Carrie. Enjoyed it. - Well, that was just an awesome conversation, wasn't it? I think there really was something for everybody. Kind of like episode 34 when Wayne Cordova was my guest and he kind of went through different levels of geek to make you more productive. I just love episodes like that because they're so practical. You can get some of the takeaways in the show notes. Just go to karaenuhoff.com/episode51 and everything we talked about in that interview, all the links will be there. It's just karaenuhoff.com/episode51. Hey, the next month is gonna be a riot. Thank you so much for all your support in year one. Can't wait for the one year anniversary. Craig Grishel is my guest. And remember, you can pre-order my book as of today and there's all kinds of bonuses. If you do that right now, they will go away once the book is released. But we would just love for you to do that. Be the very first. Go to lastingimpactbook.com and can't wait to see you next Tuesday. My guest is Craig Grishel and later in the month, we have Ravi Zacharias, Brad Lomannick, Judd Wilhite. It's gonna be an incredible month ahead as we kind of celebrate together 'cause that's how we've done this, right? We've done this together and I do really hope that this has helped you lead like never before. Thank you so much, you guys. Our awesome. (upbeat music) - You've been listening to the karaenuhoff leadership podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)