The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 018 - What Makes Content Go Viral and How You Can Make A Bigger Impact Online. An Interview with Brian Orme
Welcome to the Carey 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, Carey Newhoff. Well, hey everybody and welcome to episode 18 of the podcast. My name is Carey Newhoff and the goal here in this time together today is to help you lead like never before. My guess is one of your goals probably this year if you're listening early into 2015 when this is released or whenever you happen to be listening is that you want to get more traction online for your content. I don't know anybody who is online who doesn't want more clicks, more views, more engagement, more shares. And I mean, that's just kind of the world that we live in. But the question, the million dollar question is like, how do you get that? How do you get more people to engage with your content, with your product or even with your personal profile online? I mean, if you're online, basically most of us want people to share what we have online. So how do you do that? And that's why I'm super excited about today's guest, Brian Orm. Brian is the founding editor at FaithIt and at church leaders, both sites and also is involved at Outreach Magazine and at Sermon Central. So he's got a lot of experience online. In fact, how many people do you know? I think Brian's the only guy I know who has managed to get a hundred million people to visit his site in its first year. Yeah. And that isn't a misprint. A hundred million people were on FaithIt in its first year of operation. I mean, those are crazy numbers. That's like a big country kind of numbers. And Brian started FaithIt back in August of 2013. I recorded this interview, by the way, in 2014. So when you're listening, trying to put the timeline together, it was 2013 to 2014. FaithIt in its first year got a hundred million people to engage with it online. So I think Brian kind of knows what he's talking about. And I mean, whether you're trying to get a thousand people to engage or a hundred people or ten thousand, this is a really interesting problem to try to tackle. I mean, if you're a church leader or if you're a leader of an organization, you probably got a social media presence. Certainly for those of us who are preachers, we produce content every single week, 52 Sundays a year, wouldn't it be great if more people were able to engage that content, not just for the sake of watching your stats go up. But if you actually have a message you believe in, don't you want more people to hear it? And well, how does that happen? Like, can you make a product go viral? How do you get people to click on your content or to share it? It's just a fascinating question to ask. And so I'm super excited that Brian is part of the podcast today, actually he is the podcast today. So it's going to be a lot of fun. Also, you're probably going to want to have your pencils ready because there is a lot of content here. So what you can do, I'm just saying this is a super easy way to handle it, is just head on over to the show notes. You can even do that right now, open a tab on your phone on your browser and simply go to karaenuhoff.com/episode18 that's karaenuhoff.com/episode18. In fact, Brian was kind enough to put together a resource sheet with some tips on how to get more people to click on your content online. You will find the link to that in the show notes. Again, that's karaenuhoff, C-A-R-E-Y N-I-E-U-W-H-O-F.com/episode18. So without much further ado, let's jump right into the interview with Brian Orm. Hey, I'm just super excited to have Brian Orm on the podcast today. Brian, thanks so much for joining us. Gary, it's great to be here and great to reconnect with you and I really look forward to it. Yeah, we got to hang out. We went on a mission trip together with Compassion to Guatemala last year and it was a lot of fun. Yeah, totally. We'll never forget getting lost in the streets of Guatemala thinking, will we find our way back and or not? So it was a great, great experience for sure. You're in your house and I'm in my house, so obviously it worked out okay. Exactly. And we had Matt because, I mean, you work at Outreach Magazine, it's sort of a whole conglomeration of publishing houses with churchleaders.com, sermonscentral.com, and FaithIt. Tell us a little bit about your role there, what you do and how all those things are connected. Yeah, sure. I started with Outreach Inc about four, a little over four and a half years ago and I came on as the kind of founding editor of Church Leaders, so my job was to put that site together and get the strategy going and launch that site. And so I started out with Church Leaders, did that, and then it kind of moved around to different parts in the company, worked with the magazine, worked with Sermon Central, and now my role is kind of shifted to more of a kind of an entrepreneurial role where I'm helping us launch new sites and get the right strategy for running those, getting the right people and the right seats to keep them going, and then vision casting for growth and things like that too. Yeah, which is really timely because I think one of the things we're all trying to get our heads around as Church Leaders or just leaders, whether you're in a business and organization, is this whole business of reaching out online. I mean, whether you're trying to do what I'm doing in a local church, which is to impact people in your community or if you run an organization or business and you're trying to sell things or contact new customers, I mean, online's where it's at. And I think those brands that we've mentioned, I mean, Church Leaders, Outreach Magazine, SermonCentral.com, Faith It, have had some tremendous, tremendous success online. So tell us a little bit about that. The growth in the online ministry, in the outreach family of, or portfolio, I guess you could say, of websites, and what have been some of the key ingredients that have helped them grow? Yeah, it's really unique. I think each site is a little bit unique because the audience is different and the kind of our publishing goals have been different too. And Church Leaders, I would kind of compare that to say that was like a steady, slow growth where we spent years kind of building the brand, getting the right kind of content, the right kind of network and authors to really, you know, just to minister to leaders. Obviously, our goal at the very beginning of that was to have kind of a central hub where all the best content written by and for Church Leaders was in one spot so that people could kind of come there and really trust the resource, but also have kind of a bigger view of what's going on in the Church and have a pulse of what's happening on a daily basis with some of the best content. And so that was really kind of a slow build where we had to kind of build that brand up and we're still building it and still growing, which is great, it's heading in the right direction, but it wasn't kind of a real quick, it was really steady, hard grassroots growth in that one. Right. So that's like a content aggregator. If you've never been to Church Leaders dot com, I mean, I think that's how we first connected you asked if you could use some of my blog content a year or two ago and I'd seen Church Leaders dot com before that, but basically you go to trusted authors and you want to be a trusted voice that says, Hey, here's some of the best writing out there for surprise, surprise church leaders, right? Exactly. Yeah. And it's we came on the scene really right when the curation model was there. So obviously the web is just exploded with so much information, so much content and all of us are kind of media producers at this point. I mean, anybody can step into and create media on their own. And so there's a real big need for trusted providers that give the right content, feature the right stuff. And also we do a lot with content packaging, which I'll talk a lot more about later, probably too, that just deals with how do we get that content to have the best foot forward to really take off on social media and on web platforms. Right. And then serving central dot com, that's been around a lot longer and so is outreach magazine, right? So let's talk about those two. I mean, obviously very different constituency sermons, really, for people who preach and outreach magazine for people who like me are interested in evangelism. And I even got that when it was a magazine magazine, which it still is, right? Yeah, exactly. We are still imprint and going strong and it's we're fortunate to be there in that space and still growing and ministering and serving leaders. And I think it's, it's, you know, a great speaks greatly of the people who came before us, you know, to really build a strong brand and have a really big commitment to telling the right stories at the right time and moving forward with the church. But the magazine actually started as a catalog because outreach is a marketing company that started out that way. And it's one of those things where the catalog was meant to share those resources with church leaders and pastors and quickly it turned into like more people were telling the stories of how they were using these resources and these products to reach people for Christ, what they were seeing in their church. And there's these great inspirational stories that we moved to like, instead of just covering the products, let's move toward editorial magazine actually covers the stories and talks through what's coming up and helps leaders position their churches and their, you know, themselves as leaders as well to reach their audience, reach their community, reach their neighborhood. And yeah, so it's really an interesting dynamic because a lot of magazines don't start like that. No, they don't. And so, but at the same time I give great props to like our president Scott Evans and others who had the vision for it to switch from a product based catalog to an editorially driven magazine to really resource pastors. And I think that was a key thing because there's a huge difference obviously we all know between ads and between editorial and I think making that move there and being really having that integrity and authenticity to do that they've done it so well that's why it's stuck around for so long. Yeah. So you may or may not have the stats off the top of your head, but do you have any idea how much how many people still use the print version because I mean this is such a big issue for a lot of companies that started one way or are moving another way, but print versus digital. Do you know what that breakdown is offhand or? Yeah. You know what? I mean, just offhand we print the run right around 30,000 issues on every every issue which is a buy by monthly and then we have about I think about 70,000 page views a month on that. And I have to look at the unique users. Yeah. I'm not as connected to know that right at this moment. But yeah, right around there. So it's one of the things for us too is that we it's really interesting because I think the print readers are readership in our online readership. There's a lot of differences and diversity within those two and how they want to read. And so there's lots of things we talked about. We have also an iPad version we launched last year that's been really successful and a lot of fun to work with too. So it's you know, roughly 50 50 then digital versus print and certainly there's probably a shift moving toward the digital version over the print version. Yeah. Interesting. Let's see how that shift goes and we also have a newsletter list that goes out to well over 100,000 readers every day. And I think that's a great that's our kind of daily touch to connect them with outreach in as well. All right. And then there's sermon central.com. Just say a few things about that and then we'll jump to faith it which is probably one of the more interesting stories and you're developing new platforms. Yes. Yeah. And I'd love to share those. And yeah, sermon central is one it's a site that's built on sharpening pastors preparing them to preach. And so there's lots of resources and it's it's one of those things where it's a user based platform as well where you can upload your sermons and it's categorized by books of the Bible, topics, authors, it's who we have like even on the front page right now like sermons from Francis Chan and other pastors as well that you can read and check into. And so it's really about resourcing the pastor and his efforts of preaching. And we have a daily newsletter that goes out as well that's kind of like trying to build that tribe of preachers to kind of come around that art of preaching what it looks like so they continue to learn and preach better every week. Okay. And then faith it. I mean, that has just exploded over the last few months. Yeah. It's we launched that site last August and the goal behind that was to we do obviously a lot with leaders but it was to move into that space of the kind of the Christian consumer. How do we encourage them to share great content that would push forward great causes and really kind of put the stamp of the kingdom online. And so our goal was just to think through how can we really kind of position and package shareable content so that we infuse the internet with great kingdom driven stories. And so it was one of those things where as opposed to church leaders which was kind of a slow build this we kind of came on the scene at the right time and it exploded in the first couple months. And the first three months I mean we had just an unbelievable like nine million unique users in the first couple months and nine million unique users. Yeah. And the first year we've reached over 103 million unique visitors. And so it's one of those things like just looking back obviously we believe God's hand was in it. We've seen lots of great causes driven through we've started a lot of strong viral campaigns helped raise money for really important kingdom causes and we're still you mean moving forward growing with that but it's one of those things where we just see that as our great opportunity to really influence you mean the online atmosphere with really solid kingdom driven stories. Our whole goal is to produce to kind of grab stories that are super shareable and help kind of mobilize a movement behind those is to get those to take off on the web. Yeah which is really I think that drives us to the transferable principle. I mean in terms of getting a message out there. I mean this has been an incredible track record like just just unbelievable. I mean to reach literally over a hundred million unique visitors and if you know anything about online I mean that's that's a crazy amount of people that really is it's a super high traffic site. Yeah and we've learned a lot and we're still learning I mean we're not you know there it's like funny because we talk about viral content and writing and positioning and we're learning every day but it's still like nobody there's not one brain who can just pick out stories and make them go viral and I spoke at a conference a little while back with social media directors it was so interesting to kind of hear that direction and it's different for us because we're actually trying to create viral content but a lot of organizations are just trying to do really you know produce really great content and viral I mean isn't always healthy to chase after. Can you do that? I mean everyone says oh you know I want something to go viral I mean how does that happen? Yeah it's a great question and I think you know there's so many elements that go into it but but I'm more convinced than ever just because we've seen it happen multiple multiple times in fact I mean if I get specific down to the numbers we've even percentages here's kind of all honesty we've launched probably posted 700 stories in our first year right maybe a little bit more and this is on faith it this is on faith it yeah and we've seen about close to 50 of those with more than a million views okay so a lot more so two a day and less than 10% are the ones that really took off exactly so and actually it might even be more than I might be closer to a thousand stories I need to look at the stats and get it right but I think it's a thousand versus 50 and just obviously thinking through that even us as editors working through to curate this content I mean the percentages are pretty small but we can get there and there's a lot of factors that we use as a filter as to what gives you stories the best chance to actually get there. So a couple of things number one what are those filters and secondly like was there ever time because I'm surprised I mean I published content too and sometimes I think oh it's going to be like I'm so proud of this article and it goes nowhere just flops I did one of those today just like you know my mom didn't even like it that kind of thing and then there are others where you're like I'm just getting content out there and the next thing you know it's blown up like do you have the same experience or like are you a good predictor of those things or can they be predicted or what are the filters because I think that's and again the transferable principle here is for all of us who want to get a message out we would love more people to hear the message than otherwise so is it predictable. Yeah now that's a great question and I think first of all you wouldn't want to take me to the racetrack my percentages my percentages aren't that great but it is true that there is you know I mean it's it's possible and I think the key thing that I talk about with other content creators writers and authors and organizations is the fact that viral might not always be the thing that you go for but great content these principles that we're talking about about shareable high quality content are transferable for anything and hopefully we'll make anyone's writing and efforts in ministry stronger and better because of these as well. So is that one of those filters shareable high quality content what does that mean like break it down what are the ingredients you actually look for when you think okay this is a solid piece we're going to post it yeah and I will say like I'll give you just a couple of the filters to clear it up to is that we're looking for great storytelling first of all and that's one of the things that yeah we can innately look at something and know like when you read something online or you you know view something that there's something special about it you feel that there's an emotional drive to it there's a storytelling that's kind of it just is engaging and there's so much content online that has really weak storytelling it might have a really good story concept and we talk about this all the time I talked about this with our curators that they'll oftentimes find a really good story concept you know it's just a when you explain it it's a really touching story but the way that it's told through text or through video is really weak and and those just aren't shareable somebody might click on it but it's not a shareable story and so the shareable stories have great storytelling but they also have that human connection to it as well because we you know as well as I do too we talk through headlines and that higher arousal emotion through content is what people want to be engaged by and it's one of those things where we have to be careful that we're authentic when we use it but we know that positive emotional content is some of the best content on the web so give us an example what does that look like because I know when you and I've had this conversation in the past I'm like like I'm the list guy five things that will give you a better day and you're like yeah but emotional headlines the stuff that drives your emotion that really seems to catch so help me understand yeah um I would say it's it's dealing with like let me give this break it down a little bit too like it's not always in the headline but it's always you know it's definitely in the content so that human connection that emotional high I mean it's it's in the this content that you see like we ran a story just the other day on faith that that kind of was one of those wedding flash mob videos okay and it's and you see those all the time and we go through and we have so many people submit those to us there's they're out there a lot however this one was different because the way that it captured the emotion and the joy was just really special and so you can watch it and know that there's a special moment in that that you're kind of invited into that as well and so that it's easy to share because you want to pass that on the same concept would be why we pass things that are funny because they're higher arousal emotions we experience something and automatically there's a built-in shareability to that we want to tell somebody we want somebody else to experience it with us we don't want to just consume it alone and so we're looking for those stories that don't that shouldn't be consumed alone that are meant to be passed on and shared one of the stories we launched early on that they got featured on a couple of the morning shows at the day shows is a video that was created by elevation church and it was just a mom confession video and you've probably seen it and it was one of those where you mean the moms or the kids are asked actually the moms are asked first I think you know what kind of a mom they feel like to their kids and things like that and they're super hard on themselves and then they ask the kids and the kids are just saying these incredibly special beautiful things and then as the moms watch it each one of them are just like you mean move to tears and as you see that movement and you see that kind of turn of emotion in that connection especially you know us as parents we can kind of recognize that and it's like okay this is sure this is great this is meaningful and I want to pass it on and so it just it takes off and so I think obviously that's more on the video side of the storytelling but I think if we can get to those points where we're involved emotionally and it makes some kind of human connection with us whether it's text or whether it's video or there's even an image those are the kind of things that we can hold on to and pass and I think for me it's one of those things where I see across the internet is that there's so much content out there that's just making a statement and almost telling us what we already know or it's really boring and it's just so even though the person behind it might be incredibly interesting or even some of the concepts that are described are really interesting I feel like those are like they're they're great story concepts but horrible storytelling and we just don't get into that to share it what we'll do Brian is we'll link to that video in the show notes in fact everything you reference we're gonna link to in in the show notes and it's funny because when you were telling me that video and I remembered it I started to get goosebumps like it was such a great way of telling a story and we try to remember this on our team it's not what you do it's sometimes how you do it right like it's not in the stake it's in the sizzle at the end of the day totally and I think that's why it's one of those things where obviously you have to have great content but but you have to think about the the engagement so when we're thinking about content we're specifically thinking what's what's the share we'll take away for this sure because there's a much different side of just saying I'm writing something for people to consume versus I'm writing something for people or I'm doing and producing content for people to share they're very two distinct things so walk us through that what is shareable content if you're a church leader if you're you're a leader sort of on the ground you're trying to produce something that and I think we all are that people would be like oh I want to share that um great storytelling human emotion what else what else drive shareability yeah I think it's one of those things where it speaks to an underlying issue that we all kind of are aware of from a really fresh and unique angle because there's so much content out there that's just boring again like I kind of mentioned telling us what we already know I mean the headline is probably just a statement it's not anything that kind of drives a reaction or an interest and so for us shareable stories they tell something from a very unique and fresh angle for instance like on church leaders one of our strongest stories of all time was a very simple story or article it was called three common traits of youth who don't leave the church and and it was one of those things where the it's very simple but everybody else was talking about why youth leave and this article just talked about the simple human things that that helped them stay grounded in the church and because it was kind of that surprising angle was strong enough content behind it and on an issue that people deeply cared about and are still trying to solve and obviously as parents was we see youth in our church walk away from God and turn away from the church and those things have become very real and very heavy that this article was just passed around and passed around and what viral force actually a couple different times and still pops up on the radar just because it's speaks to such a strong issue and it's so shareable because it's kind of like it's it's for us and our social networks to share something that with that great of value they could actually do something really important is is an easy easy share well and what we're reminded of all the time I mean at the local church level is we sit on the best story ever told number one number two there's stories happening every week in our congregation and I remember sitting in a meeting about five years ago shortly after we had launched the church where I serve at now and one of the guys just looked at me and he was a veteran church leader he'd been around for a while and helped at the national level with some denominations was helping us plant and he just said carry just tell more stories tell more stories tell more stories and I've never forgotten that and I think the church has some amazing stories to tell and and often you know I'm the last guy to tell him yeah and and we see that I think like the more and more technology becomes usable cheaper more prevalent we have younger generations who are coming up to be able to use this technology and tell greater stories and so we have lots of you see yeah you're seeing more and more but I think it's one of those things it's still a little bit untapped is churches telling stories online and it's one of those things where I think we go through you go through the age of reasoning and you speak a lot of things of intellect and you share all the background of like why we should believe this and this and this and then you have something different like you said you share a story and I think it's something that you know church leaders is bloggers or even as pastors and church leaders it's one of those things that I still think that's like one of the biggest untapped resources and just grabbing on to the stories that are happening within our congregation or our communities or our tribes and just sharing those in a very well thought out form so it's not just letting it happen but very carefully told for the right ending and I think those kind of things are incredibly powerful and they're the outreach that those stories do I think we'll go beyond what we can even imagine most of the time yeah and I mean what is the bible but a collection of true stories in Jesus was a masterful story teller and the list guy and me always tries to reduce it to the principles but I hear what you're saying in terms of in terms of what you see church leaders doing well and leaders doing well and online what are some of the best practices you see out there outside of your little you know what you do but when you're watching other people online what do you see that you really like yeah I mean I see I mean there's a lot of things I think there's a lot of great voices out there but I really love the aspect of watching leaders who use social media well I think that we've all gone through all right not all but I mean there's definitely a phase of church leaders where we saw social media as just another realm to either evangelize or pitch content or pitch information about our church instead of really understanding for what it is it's this unique community of you know it's a conversation it's it's you know where you're developing relationships and I think we're seeing that more and more and I still am like a very like I feel like relationships are the best you know in human contact but I feel like the the social media aspect of that that you can develop incredible relationships and you can really work that angle of saying okay we're not just going to be a platform where people just come to find out what our what the time of our services are but they're gonna come and they're gonna find again stories real people that care about them that are sharing things and engaging them in a way that social media was meant to I love what one of the twitter co-founders said I think he said the canvas is the conversation I mean it just stuck with me like okay this that's exactly right we've got to use this canvas you mean to build that conversation and in a way it is like this is this incredible community hub that we've got to learn how to use in the right way instead of just kind of using it to transfer using it something for something very selfish or I think as churches we can easily do that and just forget oh yeah what so what does that look like like practically what I mean does that mean that you know you certainly your church is on or your organization is online and probably has a corporate account but does that mean leaders need to get online and actually start interacting with people like what what what do you what specifically does that look like yeah and I think I think the way that it works the way that I look at it is I don't think every single leader obviously needs to be on every platform every church doesn't need to be on every platform I think that they need to have a well thought out strategy and we're seeing lots of churches that are kind of revamping and doing things a little bit different because they're thinking more strategy and more authentically than they are just kind of moving forward and kind of shotgun approach but I think it's it's leaders deciding what their audience where their audience is and then you know how do they get there and how do they how do they to create a conversation that's real how do they engage them in a personal way and I think it's it's more because you look at these different platforms and like social media like Facebook for instance is really like a big party I mean people want to I mean share fun stuff they want to I mean talk it's like it's not the media news outlet of the 20 years ago which the the strong bold headlines it's the fun content that gets the engagement and the shareability and the fun and personal content at that so I think it's one of those things where having a leader decide where their audience is or even who they want to reach and speaking very personally and authentically with that so it's not just sharing content but it's engaging their audience it's it's sharing things of value from other places it's um asking the right questions it's taking the time to to engage users and even like is a simple thing of as this like when somebody comments on your Facebook thing and you like it like it you know I mean like on Twitter favorite reply retweet it's all these little things that are the social norms of this is how we do a low level of ministry it's the start I'm not saying that it does everything but to be known as a leader like that that cares about your your community and cares about the people that are involved in your space I think that says volumes for what you're going what you're going to do in your ministry that's right so it's it's replying it's engaging in the conversation it's liking back it's sharing other people's stuff one of the filters I've seen often is even being helpful like if you can just help people if you're sort of that person that people look at and go you know what I'm better off because I spent some time with Brian or I'm better off because I read that or or hey that was fun that really brightened my day I think it can and or it was meaningful or poignant uh that's good anything you see that makes you wince or scratch your head where you're kind of going oh what's that leader thinking or yeah you know I think I mean for me looking at it from an editorial perspective like on the sites I would say it's it's when people have really good content but poor packaging okay and and it's one of those things where I think it's just a little bit of an oversight where somebody spends all this time on their content and forgets the aspect that the headline is really what's going to draw the readers in and allow you know I mean the people to come in and enter that content and so again like if it's just uh I we see this tons of time this is one of one of our jobs we find great content and try to repackage it for the best foot forward and to to launch it in the community and engagement and increase engagement but a lot of times if it's just a statement or it's just something off-handed and it just it does not get engagement and less you know enough people really dig into it and it goes viral but I just think a simple thing is just creating great content packaging and working harder on the messaging and the position of the content so that people can read it and are invited into that content so I mean I understand what you're saying how do you even start in that like if you're like I don't even know how to package content where is there a good place to start are the resources out there yeah there's a lot of great ones and I would say you know I could even share you make kind of uh some resources that we use within our internal networks but there's lots but if you just search you mean better headline writing that's a start okay I mean and I think studying you know I mean where the trends are going and even in just the last couple years headline writing has really changed as we've seen social media grow and some other platforms and shareability grow but I just think it's it's probably spending 20 extra minutes to think through your audience when you're writing your headline I think it's never going to be um to me a waste of time after you're done writing your your your blog or done creating your media to sit down and go how are we going to position this for our audience what's the best way how do they want to consume this what is really the deeper idea that we want them just to wrestle or struggle with that will really be insightful to bring them into this content and I think again if you're looking if you're building that platform or if you're looking to get your your your your name out there or you're looking to write more content and minister to more people than spending that extra time on packaging again starting with the headline first and we could talk about image and positioning statements and shareability as well too along with that but I think that's that's the biggest start for sure okay well what we'll do is because I've got a couple of resources I can link to Brian maybe you and I can connect after this and before it airs and we'll embed some things in the show notes that'll help people figure out how to think through what you just talked about and write better headlines images they're important as well yeah it's one of those things where we have a manual that we share with our curators and we share some of the the images we use when we first launch faith that we're really pretty bad and then we kind of learned as we went along like okay wait these images are a good portion sometimes it's just the image that draws somebody in because it's the it's the emotion within the image it's the uniqueness of the image it's the human connection that we get so strongly within the image and I think it's trying to find that right you know in visual that will draw people directly into that that speaks of the deeper meaning and I think there's there's also the authenticity we're not trying to just get debate clicks with a crazy image we're trying to actually do something unique that's real within that that kind of represents it or if it's a video is actually a you know something actually happened in there and it was maybe the turning point that made you or made me really connect with it too but it's for us we've launched stories I just give you an example like our one of our early viral stories was on a korean pastor who was taken and disabled children in korea and it was the baby drop box and focus on the families now kind of behind that kind of promoting it I think it launches this fall but we launched the viral video for that and what was funny is we had launched at one time previous and nobody read it had kind of a weak headline and the image was which is kind of bland of a building it wasn't anything really strong and so we changed the packaging we made the the headline a lot more attention grabbing and we made this um this image of him placing this baby in the box connected to the to the headline of like see this box this is where they put the babies and it's the most incredible thing you'll see all week and it just sounded like what is that about and it drew and I think it's up to 12 million views at this point from last year but just it took off it's one of those you know stories it just took off and then it just steadily continued to rise because people resonated with the story they resonated with the image and wanted to find out what was going on and when they did find out they removed and wanted to get behind the campaign and I think that's it's just for us a great example to go back to about how important the connection of the image and the headline are together that is something you do on a regular basis like if if you think you have a good story but the content doesn't resonate you'll switch up the image or you'll even change the headline and try it again won't you yeah you know what we if we are probably um yeah we we rerun stuff a lot just because especially I talked to my curators and we look at stories I mean so many stories each week and and we're kind of trying to boil it down to the few stories we really think are important and so we'll say let's put the extra effort behind those and sometimes we will relaunch them three or four times over a week to see if we can really nail down that um you know that engagement aspect or what are readers really looking for to connect with this story and what's that really deep element and we do that also in church leaders we'll repack it's something that we think okay we ran this really believed in it but was it weren't sure and actually obviously a number of your articles I think one of your articles we've talked about before the you know how churches can break the 200 barrier um featured in a couple of different ways and I think it's just so strong because it resonates and it's so practical and helpful but it's a great example of kind of meeting that need of of where readers are in that interest level as well yeah and on viral that is absolutely hands down the top post I ever wrote on my own blog it was one of those that literally I didn't know what to write about that day I had an hour I had to run to a meeting I threw it together I put it up and the next thing I knew it blew up and so don't don't take me to the racetrack either because I know what's going on well both go there lose our money but we'll have exactly exactly not that we do that kind of thing hey I know we're coming close to the the end of our time today but I think one of the lessons for me Brian in this is you know a lot of us are content creators in ministry and we produce content every seven days often more frequently than that but kind of and good content is good content but if we stopped and we thought about okay how are we titling this what what emotion does this trigger what um what can we do to make sure this actually gets out there do you think it's kind of like I mean Gary Vaynerchuk and other people talk about that or Derek Halpern actually is who I'm thinking of okay where it's like you should spend 80 percent of your time marketing and 20 percent of your time producing content I'm not sure whether the thing it's that extreme but it really does make a difference to package it well today doesn't it it totally does and I think the same thing you should mention with sermon series and we see a lot of people who really resonate with that churches who are building those sermon series that become these huge outreach events because people are just really curious about it are they really resonate and want to find those answers I wouldn't say like obviously as far as sermon prep but I'm not yeah I know you prepare every week that it needs to be the 80/20 but I would wrestle with you know most pastors if they would just spend 20 percent of the time on the headline you know I mean that would be or 20 percent of the time on the packaging and and thinking through their people and how they're going to engage this and what are the high points and what are the really important aspects that will you know even psychologically allows them to kind of hang their hat on and say this is where I need to be um rather than just kind of taking for granted and running through and and telling their story without actually thinking and it's the same thing with authors you know thinking about your audience and where they're at and what their needs are what their concerns are and then using that kind of that time to package this stuff in the right way I think goes such a such a long way and one of the things we try to do with church leaders is we're trying to build a stronger internet of church leader content and so we love to work with bloggers and writers and and go through like what does it look like for you to really build that platform to do that and obviously we share content and try to build up um audiences for new writers or for old writers as well but I just think it's one of those things where our goal is not just that church leaders is the best content we're working hard to do our best but it's also how do we train a kind of a whole audience of great pastors and ministry leaders to do what they do online better and better that's a great great great word brian last question for you before you wrap up any final word a church that has like very limited resources it's like man we got 50 people we have a facebook page or you know I've got a personal social media account because I mean that stuff's free but where do you start out where do you begin in all this yeah you know what it's it's so interesting and you've probably heard this before too and I think it's it's pretty common out there that I would say like first of all every church is a little bit unique in their context in the culture that they're in sure I would say finding out where your audience is and that and are is your audience on twitter or they on facebook are they I mean um online or they on youtube I'm find out where they're at I would say and try to invest in a strategy to reach them and to do it simply with one thing at a time and to research and do it well and for me I know that it's like for all of us we have different gifting it's easy for us to jump into certain things and really difficult for us to learn others but I think it's finding that one person whether it's you or somebody in your church or in your ministry that can really develop one platform and one platform authentically to communicate and so what if you don't have a great website but maybe you're going to develop a great youtube following it's really going to connect and minister to your leadership maybe it's the main thing you're going to do it on facebook which most of us do but you're going to think of a way to do that consistently and use that and just take away your resources whether maybe you can't have a website but you're going to work on facebook and do that the best you can I think it's just one of those things where it's like so many times we have all these ideas of what we want to do and we even wrestle with it as an organization because there's so many opportunities and platforms to share content and to be involved in building a community but we're trying to focus on the few and do it well until we move on and I think that's so crucial and really right here I mean it's it's not difficult to do one it becomes difficult to do the many and so I think starting small but starting deep is a really important aspect of that that's a good word Brian we're going to link to all of the websites that we talked about but if somebody wants to connect with you you're on twitter and so on what's the easiest way to connect with you yeah you can hit me up on facebook it's brian.org one i couldn't get the brian arm he's out there somewhere and and that's a m e yeah o r m e and on twitter it is m brian with an i warm o r m e and that's my handle there as well too but yeah i'd say facebook or twitter the best way is to get a hold of me and if i can i would even say this if i can help or have just a short conversation there's lots of things i can learn too but if i can share some of the things that we've learned with publishing and content packaging i would love that you've been be of help to anybody for sure that's amazing and that's what you've been for me too and we got to have you back we really do because there's so much more we could talk about well we'll do a second episode down the road but that sounds yeah no that'd be awesome i just say i appreciate you carry and your perspective on ministry and friendship and it's just so cool to see how open and sharing and just the genuine you are with all that so it's totally a pleasure well and i gotta i gotta thank you to brian i mean churchleaders.com was something i read and then one day you guys came knocking and it's like hey can we scoop up this article and it's kind of like yeah sure and it's it's been great and you know i think i think the heart behind it all is we just want to help leaders lead better and and it's great to be in that together thanks so much brian totally thanks well talk about tips and tricks oh my goodness that's a lot of content kind of like content firehose but i hope that was helpful and you're probably going to want to follow up on the show notes if you're half serious about getting more traffic online brian knows what he's talking about and you can get some summaries and also he's put together a free pdf that you can get just by visiting the show notes with a case study on how they changed the headline on a story that they ran on faith it and he's also got some other tips and and links in the pdf and you can get that in the show notes just go to carry new hof.com slash episode 18 and you can download that for free so that's super cool thanks so much brian next week we're really excited we've got william van der bloomen on the show and william is gonna talk all about why pastors stay too long why they leave and the whole question of replacing yourself in leadership he's an expert on searches helps churches around the world and particularly in north america with their searches and probably the leading expert on it so william's going to be on the show for episode 19 next time super excited about that in the meantime the best way to never miss an episode is to subscribe so you can do that on iTunes on stitcher or on tune in radio and to everybody who continues to leave a rating just thank you so much and if you haven't done that yet could you take a moment jump on over to iTunes and just leave a rating and an honest review they're not all five stars and i read every one of them and i'm so grateful but for all of you i mean so many of you have left such encouraging reviews and it just sort of keeps us going here it's really you know fuel for the rocket so thank you so much for that if you could do that leave a rating and a review it also helps get the podcast in front of other leaders and consistently this podcast is in the top 50 on iTunes and in terms of christian podcasts i just want to thank you for that and i am so looking forward to connecting again next week and once again do not miss the valuable resource brines made available for free just carry newhoff.com/episode 18 and we will see you next week in the meantime really hope this helped you lead like never before you've been listening to the carry new hoff leadership podcast join us next time for more insights on leadership change and personal growth to help you lead like never before [BLANK_AUDIO]