7 Thoughts on Developing an Influential Presence on Social Media
Pastor Jonathan Shuttlesworth
Social media is an amazing tool, when used correctly. No matter who you are, you should be interested in social media. When I first started out in the ministry, social media didn’t exist in the same capacity it does today. There was no Twitter or Instagram. Things moved a lot slower. In contrast, I recently had spontaneous meetings in Phoenix, AZ and Fort Worth, TX. There was no marketing plan, no promotion other than a few posts on social media alerting my followers of the date, time, and location of the meetings and hundreds of people showed up.
Whatever you do can be accelerated with the proper use of social media.
I’m well aware that there are people out there with millions of followers and subscribers. I am by no stretch of the imagination an expert, but I have experienced a level of success in using social media. I presently have about 35k followers on Instagram and 70k subscribers on YouTube. When I started out I had next to no one following me. If you’re just starting out with 72 followers, that’s where I started too. But I recognized the power of social media and I built it to the point where people attend my meetings from all over because of my social media. So here are a few things I’ve learned along the way that have led me to develop an influential social media presence.
Keep Your Account Public
I don’t understand the desire to have a private social media page, but I’ve begun to notice it more and more. If you’re not seeking to have a strong social media presence, this doesn’t apply to you. But then it begs the question, why aren’t you seeking a strong social media presence? If you’re striving to accomplish something in life, social media can elevate and accelerate your goals and timeline. Everyone living on earth should be building something.
I live a free life because I’ve built something, with the help of social media, that allows me to do what I want, when I want. It comes with risks, but the risks are accompanied by freedom. It’s a great feeling to not be tied down. You can use social media to build something too.
Why would a pastor or business owner set their social media accounts to private? Are you that sensitive to criticism? Even in March and April of 2020 I kept my accounts public and I received hundreds of death threats for continuing to preach and hold in-person meetings. Ministry is public life. If you’re in ministry you’re a leader.
2. Stay on Message
What is it that you do? This is an important question to figure out in life. It happens to be crucial to the growth of your social media as well. Answer this question and then stick to it when creating and posting content.
What is your message? If you’re following more people than are following you, don’t be afraid to ask yourself some tough questions like, ‘Why are people not interested?’
Accounts that don’t have a large following tend to be all over the place. Do people follow you because they want to hear your thoughts on sports or politics or are they following you for your business, brand, or ministry? Have a direction and don’t veer off.
As a caveat, this doesn’t mean don’t post about your family life. People actually appreciate getting to know you. Connect with people on a personal level. Go live, make your own reels, talk to people in your comment section. Tell a story and let people know you. Allow them to come on your journey with you.
Most of my followers have been impacted by my preaching, but they’re also invested in my life. They care about my daughter, Camilla, and wife, Adalis. Including a warm, human element into your social media presence actually helps build your audience.
3. Have A Goal Beyond Views, Comments, Subscribers & Followers
You should view follows and subscribers as the first in a two-step process. Building an account with a large audience shouldn’t be the main goal, rather a means to an end. My goal is to convert followers and subscribers into church attendees. Your social media account should do two things:
Translate into a real life goal.
Affect change in your life or in the lives of others
We convert followers and views into feeding children and packing out churches. What is your real life goal?
After I started ‘Check the News’, churches that usually had 40 people would host 250 people when I came to speak because of the following I grew. I did not do any other marketing.
If you don’t leverage your social media to accomplish a real life goal, you might as well not even have an account.
4. Ask Yourself ‘Why Would Someone Follow Me?’
What do you uniquely provide? If you want to stand out on social media you have to either offer something no one else can or provide something in a way no one else does.
There’s a woman from Las Vegas who reviews restaurants in short 1-minute reels. She provides followers information about the experience and details what menu items are best. I follow her because she’s the first person I’ve seen do this for Las Vegas restaurants and I like to go out to eat. I know what to expect when I follow her and I like her content.
Find something no one else is doing that you're interested in and passionate about and begin creating content.
The number one law of persuasion is this: Attention is influence. That’s the reason Donald Trump is a major persuader – he makes people pay attention to him. Even those who hate him pay attention to him. ‘Build a wall and make Mexico pay for it!’ It’s such a ridiculous statement, but the 14 other republicans running for nomination had no choice but to respond to him. A guy with a spray tan and a crazy hairdo, repeating the same wild statement stood out among the pack because he took attention away from the other candidates. He became president, largely in part, because no one cared about any of the other candidates.
I use that example to make this point: Don’t be afraid to draw attention to yourself. People think Christians are supposed to be boring. ‘Don’t be too loud, or too funny, or too bold.’ Be exactly who God made you to be. That’s not to say you should be some attention-seeking lunatic, but don’t be afraid to do things that attract attention. As always, with attention, comes some negative attention. Who cares? Get thick skin, and do it!
If Pastor Rodney Howard Browne wasn’t available and you wanted to get someone just like him, you couldn’t. There is no one like Rodney Howard Browne. Similarly, you can find bible teaching from plenty of preachers, but no one does it the way I do it.
God made you unique. Embrace it and you’ll be irreplaceable.
5. Monetization
Anything you spend a significant amount of time doing should generate money. As I mention this, it's dawned on me that I should probably begin streaming when I play video games so that even that hobby isn’t wasted time.
Your hobby should make you money. If you fish, acquire sponsors, film yourself doing what you already do, create a YouTube channel and generate revenue.
I know a pastor who has a daily podcast. He never mentions his church or where he’s going to preach. He never mentions service times, or references a website. It’s such a missed opportunity. If you’re going to provide a service that brightens people’s day you should also have a method to collect money. I’m not suggesting you pressure people into supporting what you do, but believe it or not there are people who want to give to you because you’ve been a blessing to them.
It’s foolish not to select and utilize a platform to collect money and make it available to people. There are many ways to do this, but fight the urge to think small. Set it up with an expectation that it will blow up. For example, I have a personal CashApp, and we have a ministry CashApp. If you’re making a few hundred dollars to start, it may not be necessary now, but you can only make so much before the IRS takes notice. Expect them to take notice and plan for it. You don’t grow big to manage well, you manage well to grow big.
6. Consistency
I recently had to call a preacher and ask him if he was still in the ministry.
Every link on his website was broken.
His blog page was empty.
His schedule was empty.
His last podcast was months ago.
There was basically no sign he was alive.
It’s exciting to start new things, but it takes consistency and belief in your end goal to set the systems in place and remain consistent.
If you set out to broadcast once a week at 10am, then do it. If you plan to go live every day, then do what you said you’re going to do. If it doesn’t blow up immediately, keep going. Don’t just keep going, remain passionately consistent. There are people who quit, and then there’s people who keep going but their passion is gone. If you’re not seeing the growth you desire, figure out the source of the problem and fix it.
When I’m not traveling to preach, I broadcast every Tuesday through Friday at 10am. I’ve been broadcasting consistently since 2015. It’s hard work, especially when you don’t have a large audience in the beginning. But because I put the work in early in my ministry, I have the luxury of going live on the road and still having hundreds of people tune in.
Make up your mind that you’re going to be consistent and then invest in your own consistency. When I first started ‘Check The News’ I spent $70,000 on an LED video wall. If I didn’t adopt a spirit of excellence when it came to the use of professional broadcasting equipment no one would have taken me seriously. Imagine watching some guy talk about things as serious as the infection/mortality rate of a global pandemic with my kitchen cupboard in the background. The investment I made provided credibility to what I was doing.
One of the reasons our ministry has experienced exponential growth is because I stayed consistent in both my message and my output. I’ve never taken a sabbatical. Even when my wife, Adalis was battling health issues, I remained constant.
I don’t care for cliches, but consistency truly is key.
7. Strive To Have Your Own Platforms
Once you’ve built an influential social media presence, strive to obtain full control over your content and monetization as soon as possible. YouTube will never pay me, regardless of how many subscribers I gain because of things that I said during the lockdown. Every statement I’ve been flagged for has been accepted by mainstream media as fact just a few years later, but that’s another topic entirely.
The takeaway here is, you don’t want to depend on platforms you don’t control. Funnel your audience to your website. Take things out of the hands of platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Paypal.
I understand not everyone has the means to do this, but as an example, at Revival Today we’re developing our own bank. It will allow us to have our own payment processing platforms. Take things out of the hands of big tech and give yourself as much control as possible as early as you possibly can.
I hope my thoughts on how to develop an influential social media presence have helped you. I also hope I was able to inspire some of you to begin building something. You weren’t created to exist and pay bills. Everything you do has the potential to grow and impact others.
