EP113: Justin Nava & Modern Evangelism by Pastor Google

Hey, welcome to the Church Digital Podcast, powered by Stadia Church Planning.

Jeff here. We've got a great podcast set up for you today.

We've talked about this on the show quite a bit.

Barna released a digital evangelism report.

Basically, Barna got in touch with people who are cold to Christ,

who are not Christians, and had some very frank conversations

about what sharing faith looks like,

about where they go if they have spiritual questions.

And some of their answers might be surprising.

By the way, this is December 2020.

When this came out, go to barna.com slash Stadia

to access this digital evangelism report.

Here are the findings.

80% of people who are cold to Christ,

who are unsaved, who do not have a relationship with Christ,

80% of those people don't care about your church service,

physical or digital.

They're not interested in those things.

We probably already knew that.

We talk about it a lot.

We theorized about it.

But this may be one of the first digital reports,

at least in the modern post-COVID era that we're in,

the first time that it was said.

And so it's a fact.

Now we can bank on it.

80% of people cold to Christ don't care about our services.

And so we're having to redefine evangelism.

Now, we've talked about it on the show quite a bit,

that relational evangelism is the win.

And we find that with this report, 40% of those that are cold to Christ,

that aren't interested in the church service,

are interested in a conversation with someone if they have spiritual questions.

So they're going to go to someone if they see that faith is important to that person.

And so that's, hey, church, let's talk about equipping people.

And we talk about that all the time here at the podcast.

The other 40%, 40% of people cold to Christ are going to hit the search engine

before they end up talking to the friend.

So they're going to go to Google to find out questions,

to find out answers to the spiritual questions that they have.

And this is beautiful.

But sadly, I don't know that we churches are taking advantage of this opportunity.

As we're talking about here, even in this podcast,

what does it look like to develop content?

Maybe do the stuff that we're already doing

and phrase it and shape it and utilize it in such a way

to make it more effective when people are searching for answers.

When these people who are cold to Christ dig into Google,

dig into YouTube, dig into these search engines

to try to find answers to their spiritual questions.

And so for the conversation here, I wanted to bring in Justin Nava.

Now, Justin's a friend on Twitter, great follow,

and we talk about it on the show.

But Mr. Church Marketer is the company that he works for,

and he helps churches develop a digital marketing strategy.

So things like SEO, search engine optimization,

utilizing YouTube content,

like this is not a foreign concept to him.

And so it's a great conversation between Justin and myself,

Jeff with the Church Digital, and Stadia Church Planning,

and a conversation that I'm calling Modern Evangelism by Pastor Google.

Okay, everybody, here you go.

So I started Church Marketing School,

and then I merged that with Church Training Academy.

And Church Training Academy deals more with the media stuff,

the live streaming, the podcasting, the audio mixing,

and all that good stuff.

But really, I enjoy the marketing stuff.

So I transitioned over to Mr. Church Marketer,

founded by Rock Davis in 2018.

They really kill it with the merchandise, the t-shirts, the mugs,

the hats, the logo design, banners, all that good stuff,

the physical stuff.

And that's the stuff that I don't know well about.

And he really wants to take the digital to the next level.

So we kind of joined our ventures there together, the agency.

So now we're full service doing print, signage, merch,

and now digital offering, social media, SEO, websites,

all that good stuff.

So it's been a lot.

It's been really cool to kind of go a little bit away from that,

doing the work to now working straight with pastors

and finding out what solution do we need?

How can we get you the best value

so you can reach more people with the budget that you have?

It's the best thing ever.

It's one of those things where maybe, you know,

February 2020, probably people weren't calling that much.

But now, you know, mid, post pandemic,

the phone's ringing a lot more.

It's just the digital value.

It's like I was talking to a pastor a couple weeks ago.

You know, we were talking about,

okay, well, we have the funds for either website overhaul

or t-shirts and connect cards.

And I basically had to be frank with him.

I'm an artist guy, Jeff.

I mean, I don't, I don't, I take sugar in my coffee,

not my conversations.

I told him, I said, you can,

I know you want to get the t-shirts and the connect cards

and all that good stuff.

But if you don't have a good website,

if you don't have a good online presence,

you're going to be sitting on that inventory for a long time.

I said, I said, I would prioritize the website first.

And that's not just because I'm a digital guy.

It's because I'm a practical guy.

And having been in all parts of the church,

I can tell you that if you want to get those connect cards moving,

you got to get the website moving first.

I take sugar in my coffee, not in my conversations.

That's, that might be like the tweet of the week, right?

Right there.

And that was, I'm going to tweet that when we're done here.

I'm telling you that if that was on the fly, well done,

but I'm sure you've used that line before.

Hey, so here's what I want to talk about.

Like I'm really excited and passionate about this.

Excited might not be the right word,

but to me, this was like a revolutionary concept that we now have stats behind

where it's not waxing theoretic,

but this is like realistic what's happening in the world today.

So Barna is doing incredible research on digital church in this season,

partnered with Stadia on doing a hybrid church report,

probably October, September of 2020.

They partnered with Alpha to do one on digital evangelism that came out November,

December of 2020 that, that they started asking questions,

not only of church people, but lost people,

like people who are far from Christ.

What, what is your opinion?

What's your stance?

What are you open to, you know, even in this COVID season?

So this is not like old stats.

This is not like pre pandemic stats.

This is in the heat of it where Barna and Alpha are digging into it.

And, and, and one of the, for me,

one of the most telling stats that, that came out of the report,

we'll put the link in the show notes,

barna.com slash Stadia, get you right to the page to, to download it.

But this stat was, was, to me, it was like jaw dropping.

And it's the type of thing that I've said,

but I've never had stats to back it up.

80% of people called to Christ, according to Barna's research,

80% of people who are not Christians, who are distant,

who do not have a relationship with Christ,

who are not involved in the church in any way,

80% of people don't care about your physical service or your digital service.

If they have spiritual questions,

their first step is not to go to a church service.

40% of people, we talk a lot about this.

We do talk about a lot about equipping people to have conversations of faith

with their friends.

What's the role of evangelism?

And so like personal evangelism, relational evangelism, you know, we beat that drum a lot.

And so 40% of people called to Christ do that.

They will go talk to a friend who they think can answer some of those spiritual questions,

who they see the, the, the spirituality, the Christ in them,

where faith is important to them.

They'll go have that conversation.

That's only 40% of the people called to Christ.

The other 40%, I was a little surprised that the strength of this,

they're going to search engines.

They're going to Google.

They're, they're, they're going to YouTube to kind of search around to,

to find these answers.

And honestly, 40% of people called to Christ engaging with Google, Pastor Google in this

situation.

Honestly, it surprised me a little bit that, that it was that high, but it made me realize,

man, we as churches, we are horrible in SEO.

We're horrible in, in, in these things.

And if we are, it's more towards come visit our church campus, um, instead of maybe something

that that's more effective to get people engaged to answer some of these spiritual questions.

And so I'm like, who am I going to bring into this conversation?

Justin Nava, uh, my, my friend, my guy who's on, uh, the edge, who's helping churches on a

regular basis with digital strategy, with digital marketing, with SEO, with website, all of this.

And I'm like, Hey, Justin, I want to have a conversation here.

I want to talk about this idea of what, uh, how does a church embrace what they're doing?

How do we interface with these, uh, search engines?

Because we can equip people all day long and that's going to reach a percentage of people.

But Barna is evidently telling us there's a percentage of people on, on the search engine.

So first off, I just want to even ask the open up.

Were you surprised 40% to talking to people, 40% search engines?

Does, does anything in those stats like surprise you?

Does that take you back?

I am shocked, uh, Jeff, utterly, completely shocked that it's only 80%.

I thought I would have guessed 90, 95%.

I mean, even when I have a spiritual question, I don't text my pastor.

I go to Google.

Now, granted, I have like, I call it a mental whitelist.

Okay.

If you've been in it, you know, a whitelist means these are allowed to be on our network.

I have a mental whitelist where I Google something.

It's like, all right, John Piper's blog.

I'll check that out.

Something, uh, Rick Warren wrote.

I'll check that out.

Um, David Platt, anything he blogs about.

I'll, like, I have my trusted sources, I think is what we call them.

I call them my mental whitelist.

I will go Google that, that, that question, uh, rather than, um, text my pastor.

And I think, you know, that's part of where the, uh, it's really big now on Twitter, you

know, a church needs to train media education and train up our people and equip them to be

able to filter out the garbage online from the, from the truth that we might discover.

So I'm honestly surprised it's 80%.

I mean, I mean, you're, you're talking one out of five that are still talking to their friends.

That, that seems, that seems high to me, but Hey, I believe it.

And even 40% saying, I think I know someone who knows about this.

I guarantee you, if you're, if you're for some reason, a lost person, a cold to Christ,

I love that phrase, uh, watching or listening to the show and you ask someone like, Hey man,

what does the Bible say about punishing your kids?

I guarantee you they're Googling it.

Okay.

They don't have the answer at the ready.

Okay.

Sometimes I will Google stuff.

They're like, I know the answer, but I don't know how to say it.

So I'm going to go ahead and see if maybe John Piper or David Platt or Francis Chan,

maybe it knows a better way to say it.

Uh, and so you can really tell who's in my, my inner circle of trust here, Jeff.

Yeah.

Uh, so, uh, yeah.

So, uh, so I, I will like, you know, Google it to say like, is there a better way to say

this?

Is there a better way I can communicate this?

Or sometimes my daughter will ask a question of what she learned in Sunday school.

And I know the old school, maybe some of the fire and brimstone way to put it, but I want

to know what's, what's a nicer way to put it.

That's appropriate for a seven-year-old that maybe I know how to explain it to someone else

who has a Christian Bible college degree, but not a seven-year-old.

So I'm honestly surprised long walk to a short drink of water.

I'm surprised it's only 80%.

So as, as, as a church, it's, it's interesting, you know, different sides, sides of the coin,

but I mean, ultimately there's, there, there's an opportunity, right?

Where, uh, we're, we're wanting to reach people.

We're wanting to drive people to, to our buildings.

Buildings are questionable.

We're, we're, you know, people cold to Christ, people that aren't loyal to your church, maybe

not running back to these physical experiences, you know, movie theaters, we're even seeing

that.

So we've got to embrace a new model.

If, if even for the short season, I suggest it's probably long-term here with, with utilizing

Google algorithms and, and, and search engine optimization and a bunch of probably technological

concepts that they don't teach pastors in seminary.

Like, I don't, I don't think, or at least back in, in, in, in my time checking out seminaries

and, and as I was in school, like it was not, oh, let me go to seminary, learn about technical

stuff.

But all of a sudden, these are the tools that are going to be effectively helping churches

connect with people called to Christ.

So, um, you know, I mean, I would love to dig into some practical aspects here.

What, how can churches, you know, even start to really, or what does SEO mean?

And, and just let's start to scrape away at this thing of how can churches utilize Google,

a, a non-Christian entity that maybe their mantra mantra is do no harm.

And so we want to trust them in that for the most part, but how can we use that to help

them help ourselves get connected to people who are called to Christ?

Cool.

So, um, there's one mindset as a church leader that you have to wrap yourself around, uh,

wrap your mind around.

And unfortunately it's something that I believe that we aren't equipped with, uh, in our MDivs

and our Bible, uh, Christian education degrees, and even a lot of our mentorships from other

pastors, we get so wrapped up in our own lives.

We approach the situation in an entirely wrong way.

Uh, so really it needs to be almost like, uh, if I can put in another term, I like, I like

to use illusions and analogies.

So it's kind of like dieting.

A lot of people try diets and they say, well, what can I do?

What food can I eat?

What can I do to stay on this diet versus what can my food do for me?

So instead of me trying to restrict everything I'm eating, why don't I look at what kind

of energy am I getting from my food?

What kind of nutrition am I getting from my food?

And we kind of need to look at that.

We kind of need to change our perspective.

And instead of ask, where do people fit in with our church?

We need to ask ourselves, where does our church fit in with people's lives?

Now we're not manipulating the truth to fit into their lives.

We're manipulating the medium and how we get the truth into their lives.

And when you start to approach your ministry like this, and even discipleship like this,

you start to really challenge a lot of the things that we've traditionally done.

One example is, uh, uh, the, the way we're doing church now, the whole fidgetal thing.

It's no longer geo-located within these walls, meaning it's no longer at one location at one

time, and there is a limited quantity of seats.

Therefore, only so many ears can hear, Jeff.

Now we have technology that can get the gospel out to more people, but not only that, we have

it in such a way that the way we traditionally do church services is not directly translatable

onto these social platforms.

It's very hard to get people to sit down for 45 minutes for a worship set announcements

that you have the call to action.

Go talk to Janice at the connection table.

I'm at home.

I can't talk to Janice.

And then a 40 minute sermon or a 30 minute sermon.

And, you know, turn, turn, turn.

Uh, I love that some churches are trying, but they're like, Hey, turn to the church app

and write down these notes.

And I'm sitting here like, I'm watching on Facebook.

I can't go to the church app and take notes.

You know, it's, we, we have these things that we've traditionally thought of.

And we say, how can we duplicate this on new platforms?

But really the platforms, we need to figure out how can we not duplicate onto the platforms

like Google, but we need to figure out how we can meet people where they are to use a

traditional nomenclature and speak in the language that the platform best uses.

So here's an example.

Let's get practical.

So an example would be, we're talking about divorce this Sunday.

We want you to be here.

Come listen to it at church.

Okay.

That's a typical traditional call to action.

We're going to talk about divorce.

Uh, and you know, maybe what God has for marriage.

We're talking about that for four weeks, come on Sundays and, and you're going to consume

it for an hour.

Google, uh, pastor Google doesn't have office hours.

He works 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

While you're sleeping pastor, you could still be ministering to people by doing things.

Like I said, meeting people where they are.

Now you can do this through social media, but let's focus on Google.

So let's again, put ourselves in the guests shoes or the church member shoes or the cold

to Christ shoes, the CTC shoes.

Can I call them that?

Uh, that sounds like a great brand.

Well done.

So let's put ourselves in their shoes.

Um, they just had a fight with their wife.

They might've thrown some plates against the wall.

Uh, they're fuming.

She's in the bedroom.

He's in the truck.

He's like, like ready to go.

And then he's like, and he just turns on the radio.

He's got it on a country station talking about God.

So good on the country station.

And he's like, what the heck?

What?

Okay.

All right.

What does God have to say about divorce then?

And he's going to go to Google.

He's not going to go to his Google calendar and set an alarm for Saturday, Sunday at eight

o'clock to get dressed and go to church and hear about it.

He wants it right there.

Friday night at nine 30 after a fight with his wife.

So how, what is he looking for?

He's looking for answers and he's going to look for them on Google.

So what you want to do is you want to address his questions, his concerns through some medium

that he's going to find it on, which is probably going to be something like a blog post, which

doesn't even have to be written content.

It could just be a video of your sermon or a video of a clip of you talking specifically

about divorce.

But what you do is you, again, put yourself in the mind of this.

And this is very basic in the mind of this person and say, what would they Google?

What would they type into the search box?

What does the Bible say about divorce?

Christian divorce.

Can Christians get divorced?

All these questions are what they're searching.

And so real simply on a very practical standpoint, that's what you title your blog post.

And dare I say, that's what you title your sermon.

Okay.

Some of us have sermon engines, quote unquote, sermon archives, and they're dated.

Man, let's say chaos at home, a study in Genesis.

And it's like no one's searching for any of those terms if they're actually having marital

issues.

What they will search is, they might search something like leaving husband after abuse or

leaving wife after abuse or husband abusing children.

What do I do?

Christian divorce.

What does the Bible say about divorce?

And they might Google that stuff.

And then this, I'm not going to get too technical here, but we all know that Google knows where

you are.

They know that when you post on your church website, you're located at 123 Spring Street

in excellent city, New York.

Okay.

So if they are also in that area and they're searching for a term like that, there is a

chance that Google knows that you're in the area, they're in the area, you have in-person

services, and you're answering a question that they are asking.

You can pop up that way.

This is why when I type into Google, fresh baked cookies, I don't get cookies from New

York.

I don't get cookies from Florida.

I get cookies from Houston because Google knows I'm in Houston and it knows that TIFF's

cookies, our favorite place, is in Houston just a couple miles down the road from us.

They know where they are and they are prepared to serve up information locally.

Now, granted, that's what we call a local search term, but don't get too far tracked.

I'm mainly talking to myself here.

So when you write a blog post, an article, or when you upload a sermon that talks about

divorce, you want to appropriately title and put appropriate information in there.

Jeff, this is something called keywords.

Okay.

So when someone says keyword research, keyword metadata, all that good stuff, it's basically

what do people type into Google and the longer sentences, what does the Bible say about divorce?

That's what's called a long tail keyword.

Christian divorce is what we might call a short keyword, a short tail keyword.

So you want to optimize for kind of try for both, but you will probably find more success

with the longer ones.

So if you preach about divorce, all you have to do is upload your sermon to your website

and say, what does the Bible say about divorce?

And then when someone searches that search term, there is a chance that you will come up

and you will be able to serve your information, but it doesn't stop there.

That's part one.

Part two is you have to make it easily consumable again, in the mindset of what, what do they

want and how can we meet them there?

You cannot upload your 45 minute service with your worship and announcements and then sermon

starting 30 minutes in, in which case you do.

What's the opposite of a benediction?

When you start with a prayer, you read the scripture and then you pray for five minutes and

then you finally get to the content.

You need to cut your sermon into just the important parts.

Okay.

This may mean more work on you.

Ideally, it would mean more work for your team, pastor, but you need to say, what does

the Bible say about Christian divorce?

Or what does the Bible say about divorce?

Then you clip just the part where you talk about divorce.

You don't have to include the altar call.

You don't have to include the prep.

You can go right into, uh, Hey guys, here's, here's what the scripture says.

And then here's what it means for us today in 2020 or 2021, or just in the 21st century.

Okay.

And then again, you have that keyword.

What does the Bible say about divorce?

So that's the title.

You have the video and then you, and very simple description, uh, which is just text underneath

the video.

You could say in this video, pastor Bill talks about what the Bible says about divorce.

Boom.

You've said it again.

Okay.

Now you don't want to just put it all over the place.

That's called keyword stuffing, but you want to mention it a couple of times in the article,

maybe go ahead and transcribe it.

And then you have all that text because again, Google is smarter than we are most of the time.

So as people search for maybe not, what does the Bible say about divorce?

What does Jesus say about divorce?

If you have, again, that word Jesus and divorce together in your content, the Google can know

that you're talking about the same thing and it can still serve it up.

Okay.

So that's, that's kind of like a step one, step two, step three, uh, kind of thing.

And so basically you want to really think about what are people going to search for?

And then let me make some content about it.

And it doesn't have to, I use blog in this case.

It doesn't have to be a blog post.

It could be a sermon clip.

It could be YouTube because Google and YouTube are basically the same person.

Uh, it's, uh, two parts of the same alphabet Trinity, I like to say.

So you've got, uh, when someone searches in Google, you can have a YouTube video show up

at the top of the results.

And so if you do a YouTube video, that is something else that could pop up.

So I like to go ahead and just do like everything.

So try, I upload the sermon to YouTube.

I upload clips to social media.

So, cause they can sometimes show up in search results.

And then I go ahead and upload the clip along with the blog post as a sermon post basically.

So yeah, on the back end, it can look like a blog post, but on the front end, it looks

like a sermon archive.

So that's definitely a really simple, easy way.

Just low hanging fruit takes like 20 minutes a week to just get that up there.

Someone on your team can do it.

Uh, I've coached a lot of, uh, receptionists and assistants to do it.

Uh, it's not that difficult.

And that's just a, such low hanging fruit, uh, to get in front of people without relying

on too many algorithms.

Yeah.

Love, love that.

I had, had a, you know, and it's true pastor before I even get to that story.

Um, you spend so many hours, you know, like I've, I've known pastors, you know, that are

spending 20, 30 hours a week crafting and detailing this perfect message.

And, and honestly, without online pastor, your, your message dies Sunday morning, noon, like

it may affect people as they leave the building, but even, even to your point, Justin earlier,

where the reach of our buildings is, is limited by the number of chairs that we have and the

ability for that to affect people long-term is, is gone.

And so really by cutting up the messages, by, by creating social media posts, by getting

it, um, and, and crafting it in different ways and utilizing YouTube, this is where the

ministry potential exponentially grows because we're putting it in positions and places where

it can effectively go out.

Now, look, listen, like there's a, I had a, I had a pastor tell me, uh, actually the

communications director, creative director out of the church on the West coast.

He says every sermon, uh, we have a system at place at this point where we cut every

sermon that's preached into 18 social media posts.

They know, Hey, I'm going to cut 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, the opening illustration.

I'm going to do this.

It's going to do this.

I'm going to put this on different social media.

They've just, they've done it so much that they've gotten down to a rhythm.

And with that rhythm, it's effectively reaching people.

I, when I was digital pastor, online pastor, Christ fellowship, Miami in Miami, Florida,

there was actually a woman who credits Christ, a woman in Atlanta, Georgia, who credits the

lead pastor, Rick Blackwood, Christ fellowship, Miami in YouTube for saving her marriage because

she literally Googled my marriage is over and found the Christ fellowship, Miami sermon

series from years earlier, like three, four, five years earlier centered around marriage

and divorce and, and, and fighting for your marriage.

And as a result of listening to that sermon online, parts of that sermon, she reconciled

with her husband collectively.

They both started listening to some of the stuff online and became part of Christ fellowship,

Miami.

But then actually it was like, Hey, we want to go and get us, get us at an established physical

church in Austin.

So we actually helped them do that, get connected to a church.

So we were able to save a marriage, get people together, and then through the church help find

them another church that they could connect with physically in Atlanta, huge win, changing

a life because we utilize simple ways of SEO and keyword to get people connected to a message

that they needed to hear in these hard times.

So that, that's an excellent, excellent illustration right there, Justin.

Thanks.

Thanks for sharing.

What else you got?

You know, they, they, they say we look at it from a negative side.

Uh, you know, people pulling up tweets from five, 10 years ago and like, Oh, look at this

person.

Let's cancel them.

But you know what?

Our gospel message will live on as well.

10, five, any, what you preached five to 10 years ago, people can find, uh, because if

you properly SEO it, which perhaps I should take a step back.

And if you want to edit this first as SEO search engine optimization means that we're optimizing

our content for search engines.

Okay.

There are things that they want us to do and best practices again, that the user, the,

the Googler, uh, wants us to do.

And so when we do that, Google's happy because we're keeping people using Google, uh, and the

user is happy because we're providing them answers.

So when we talk about search engine optimization, we really, again, have to look at what does the

end user like, and then basically tailor content for them.

And just as our tweets live for five to 10 years or whatever, I mean, imagine, like I said,

pastor, while you're sleeping, someone could be searching for that, that sermon or that

information about what does God say about tattoos?

What does the Bible say about tattoos?

And that sermon you preached five years ago, no one is going to search.

No one is going to search, uh, January 15th, 2016 sermon.

No one's going to search that.

Okay.

That was, that was, yeah, just five years ago, man, that's crazy.

Uh, but they will also not search, uh, upside down living.

The sermon series, uh, because that's not what comes to mind when people want to say,

does, is God okay with me having a tattoo or I just came to Christ, but I have a tattoo.

Is that a problem?

Um, am I not going to be able to take this arm into heaven?

Please tell me.

Um, and so when you properly optimize your sermon, when you properly optimize it, and now

everyone's thinking about, can you take it?

Perfect bodies don't include tattoos, Jeff.

Evidently not.

I'm sure there's some people that maybe their grandma told them that.

Uh, so they want to Google it.

So you may have posted that sermon, but they're not going to find it under the date.

They're not going to find it under upside down living part two.

Uh, they are going to find it under, uh, uh, you know, can Christians get tattoos?

Or what if, can you go to heaven with tattoos?

And, uh, in case the pastor, my, my former pastor is listening, we did a sermon series

called upside down living, like in 2012, 2014.

So that was the first thing that came to mind.

That's very generic, but it's like your typical sermon title.

If you know what I'm talking about, Jeff.

Yeah.

Uh, so let's, let's get creative pastor.

Let's get creative churches.

Let's not do a sermon title, uh, called a study of John.

Okay.

Um, let's not do that.

Let's, let's, let's call it.

Was Jesus a person?

Was Jesus real?

And, and you can take some of the exegetical elements that you're going to be pulling out

of John.

Uh, but you're, you're, you're doing it in a way where people can find that.

And if you have your sermons listed as was Jesus real, let's talk about temptation and

let's talk about Jesus doing bad things.

And maybe the title is, did Jesus do bad things?

Okay.

The title could be, was Jesus a real person with real problems?

It could be something like that.

People might discuss, might look for that.

No one's going to search for, uh, my temptation issues with sexuality.

Like no one's searching for that.

You can, you can get tools that will show you search results and how many times people are

searching for whatever.

Okay.

No one's searching for that.

Uh, so just really think about what your end user, that is the people that you want to

reach.

How are they going to search for things?

And just pastor real simple, start titling your sermons like that.

Um, a lot of the pastors I've worked under, they're real traditional, real old school.

And that's how they think.

And I'm not going to get them out of that box.

It's not my goal to get them out of that box.

So I will just say, yeah, just, okay.

Sermon series.

This is your title.

I'm going to do the keyword research.

And when I post it online, they're not going to go ahead and SEO it.

You don't have to SEO it, pastor.

I'll do that for you.

And so we would have kind of like two different sermon titles, but pastor, pastor preached

upside down living part three, uh, to 80 people in the church, but can Christians get tattoos

is going to get 6,000 views on YouTube or the article is going to get 6,000 traffic over

the year.

You tell me which one works better.

Let me talk to you, Jeff, a little bit about this whole content creation business.

Is that okay?

Sure.

So a lot of pastors, when I get to this point in consulting that I, that I do, which now

I get to do all the time and I love it.

They say, um, this is a lot for me to handle.

And I say, yeah.

And if you were in charge of all discipleship in your church, that'd be a lot of handle too.

But the good thing is we are all equipped to be disciples.

We are all equipped to go out and fulfill the great commission.

Again, taking that, uh, whole, I'm going to preach from the pulpit.

And then maybe you'll go to a Sunday school class and someone else is going to preach from

a chair, uh, that works for in-person stuff as like kind of like a conference with breakout

sessions.

But when you're online, you can't do all that stuff.

You need a team to help you and not just help you edit and set up lights and publishing and

all that.

They can help you with the content creation as well.

So pastors don't be afraid if we're talking about written to have some of your church members

write articles for your church block.

Don't be afraid for your church members to shoot videos, answering common questions about

the Bible.

Uh, if you trust them to go out and disciple and preach to others, you can trust them with

creating content for your church.

Not only that, a lot of times people will give more credence for better or worse.

In this case, it's kind of better because of the worst.

But anyways, people will be more willing to listen to someone that's sitting in a chair like

you or I am and just talking about, Hey guys, I have a tattoo.

Let's talk about what that means.

Like being a Christian with a tattoo.

Cause I know I get weird looks.

I'm sure you've probably gotten weird looks, but let's talk about what the Bible really

says about tattoos and Christianity.

They will sit down and listen to that rather than a guy at a pulpit.

All right, everyone, let's open up your Bible to this and, uh, we're going to talk, who's

got tattoos here?

Raise them a, show up your tattoo.

Oh, that's a, Miss June's got a tattoo.

Like I'm already clicking away, man.

Jeff, you're, you're like glazing over right there.

Like, Oh man, that doesn't make for good videos all the time.

Do me a favor.

If you're watching this, I just did this.

I typed into Google, what are, excuse me, I typed into YouTube.

What does the Bible say about tattoos?

Okay.

I am on the first, I'm on the first page of results and I got to go almost all the way

down to finally get to a church.

Uh, I got to pass about 10 or 15 videos by individuals, uh, before I actually get to like

a church that is teaching, uh, uh, basically a, a, uh, what do you call it?

Sermon clip.

Okay.

Yeah.

By a pastor talking about tattoos.

So there are some ministries on here.

I know unlearned the lies as a ministry, but you've got, uh, individuals, Jeff and Alyssa,

Alan Farr, Justin, Chloe.

These are, these, these are individuals in the top five results of what does the Bible say

about tattoos?

And within this, uh, view counts 2.3 million, 60,000, 278,000.

These are, this is how many times people are watching these videos or at least clicking through

to these videos to see what the Bible has to say about tattoos and these individuals, I

believe, and, and, and your church might believe that as individuals, we can speak the same truth

as a pastor can, just as we disciple our friends and family.

We don't have to rely on the pastor to do all the discipleship.

Well, pastor, you don't have to do all the content creation.

Yes.

You can train up your volunteers and make sure they know what they're talking about.

You can give final approval on the video or the written article, uh, or you can even shoot

it alongside of them, but you don't have to do the whole thing.

If you see a need in your community, um, you know, I don't, I don't know if this is a real

thing, but what is, what does God say about drilling for oil?

You know, God said we are to work the land and be in charge and we're given authority over

it.

And does that mean we can do whatever we want?

Or do we have to actually be concerned with economical impact?

Not economical, environmental impact.

Uh, so that's, that could be something that would be huge for me here in Houston.

I would have to do the keyword research, but it could be something that's important to

some people.

Uh, what does God have to say about environmental impact?

Is God green?

Uh, is, does global warming match up with the Bible?

What does the Bible say about global warming or global cooling or invite environmental change?

What does the Bible say about have having more hurricanes and more, whatever, uh, more

earthquakes?

You know, that could be something as well.

And I'll tell you this pastor.

And I guess Jeff, cause technically I'm just talking to you right now.

Um, it works.

I'll tell you this, uh, we preach to our people, a unique sermon.

There's a reason why we don't all just simulcast David Platt every Sunday, or we don't all simulcast

Joel Osteen or Rick Warren or whoever you like.

Okay.

Uh, there's a reason why we preach a unique message to our people because they are dealing

with unique situations.

Uh, and sometimes, uh, our people can be led astray, whether intentionally maliciously

or not by wrong answers on Google and YouTube.

And the best way to get the truth out there is no longer don't listen to them.

Come listen to me.

Now you need to be in the fray.

Okay.

And it's not like a fight.

Like I got to try to outperform these guys and get more views and rank higher.

It's not about that.

It's just about being present because I'll tell you this right now.

When, when you, when I Google or when I YouTube searched, what does the Bible say about tattoos?

One video has 2.3 million views.

The two videos that are above it have less views.

Okay.

So Google has taken something it knows about me and the video with the most views that obviously

like most people like, that's also older.

It's not number one for me.

It's these other videos.

So, so YouTube has said, or YouTube has said, there's something about Justin.

We don't want to show them the most viewed one.

There's something about unlearn the lies and grunge that might resonate with Justin better.

Either these guys are more local or I've watched videos that, uh, or excuse me, my friends

have watched their videos.

And so it knows that, you know, because my friends watched and like it, maybe I'll watch

it and like it.

Google knows so much about us.

And I know this is going to make a lot of people nervous, but we can leverage that to

our advantage church.

We need to use that.

We can't say, stop listening to them and come listen to me this Sunday.

We need to be in the fray.

We need to be in the results.

And we have to kind of, you know, honestly take some time to learn that stuff or get a team

member to invest and learn in that stuff, get consulting, get continuing education, buy

some courses, go to conferences, because just as pastors need to do continuing education

on counseling and, uh, you know, new forms of psychology that we can use in ministry to

help diagnose issues, or, you know, even I'm working with a potential client that's, you

know, looking, looking to train up church leaders, uh, and, and working with mental illness within

their congregation.

I think that's great.

I think we need more of that.

And she's doing that.

She's, she's going to make video.

We're going to work with her on making videos, uh, because that's how the training needs to

be done nowadays.

And it's much more affordable.

You don't have to go to conferences.

You don't have to live in the same area as your mentor or your school.

You don't have to pack up and move like we had to do with my wife's grad school.

We can teach anyone anywhere, anytime, and we don't have to be there.

We just have to put in the work ahead of time.

I mean, imagine, uh, your best sermon.

Every pastor has a best sermon.

Okay.

Uh, imagine people could hear that anytime, anywhere, any place, not just in the CD that

you burned and put in the guest packet.

Cause it's the best sermon.

So that's the one we want them to go home with.

Uh, they can live online and anyone can find it and your, your church can share it.

And instead of saying, Oh, Jeff, I wish you were there last Sunday.

Oh man, it was a good sermon on bitterness.

I think the country needs to hear it right now.

Well, guess what?

You can just share it on Facebook.

I can share it on YouTube.

I can email it to my friends.

I can email it to my mom.

I can watch, I can bring my dad over and I can watch with them.

Cause I know he might have questions or my mom might have questions or my friends might

have questions.

And I know that Jeff, you don't really sit down for 40 minutes.

You got five kids.

I don't know anything about you, but, uh, you know, but I know you're not going to sit

down for 40 minutes.

But if I know there's a, there's a two minute clip that I was like, pastor tells a funny joke

about having kids and bitterness.

And I'm like, I'm going to send it to him because he might enjoy it.

If I can hook you for those two minutes, you might actually sit down and watch

the rest of the 40 minutes later in bed or something like that.

You have the link that is everlasting.

And I don't have to rely on my notebook and going back.

I mean, come on.

How many people take notes in church and ever go back to it?

I don't know a single one, even the most Christian-y girl I ever knew.

I took great notes, never opened that notebook ever again.

So, you know, we can go back and revisit this stuff.

It lives long-term.

So, um, you were talking a lot about YouTube and so YouTube, it's interesting.

The whole thing about, you know, YouTube's basing algorithms based off of your friends

and giving you information of what your friends are.

You mentioned this whole thing about, you know, sharing, uh, because, you know, putting

a video on Facebook, uh, or a link to a watch party or something in Facebook is one thing.

Hand-delivering it, texting it direct to a personal friend and saying, hey, I heard this message

and thought about you directly.

Would you watch that?

That personal invitation means a lot more.

There's a lot more invested into that.

But when it, when it comes to this, uh, search, uh, like the search engine, the YouTube angle

on this, I, I'm, some of the, uh, sermon archives, you know, the sermon engines, which you're

mentioning earlier, I've been seeing a lot of like, um, Vimeo and, and I don't want to

beat up platforms here, but a lot of people are utilizing Vimeo as the, as the player,

which, which to me was always weird because Vimeo doesn't give you the search, the SEO

value that YouTube does the views that, that, that, how it not only affects like YouTube,

the community, but it affects Google itself in context of search engine.

So like we're, we're driving a bunch of traffic on our websites to Vimeo, which yeah, the player

looks nice, but it does not have any of that search capacity and, and kind of that SEO value

to help our churches grow kind of like when the rest of us are asleep, when, when people

are looking for this stuff in Google, you want to maybe speak to that?

Or is that a new concept for you?

What, how do you advise churches that are building like these, these search, these, uh, sermon

engines?

Yeah.

So again, it all, I mean, really any, any consulting that I do always comes down to your goals.

Uh, some churches don't want to be on YouTube because they're afraid of, um, you know, uh,

that binging disorder where, all right, I watched a pastor's video.

Uh, oh, but in my recommended, um, schmoozy, the prankster just put out a new video.

So, so let me click on that and all already I'm lost.

I'm out.

Like, uh, you know, uh, I, I watched half the sermon got bored and went to go watch schmoozy

or, uh, you know, I'm reading the comments and people are scared of comments and that's

why they like Vimeo because you have a lot more control over it.

And, and there's an argument there, Jeff.

I mean, if I, if I can play both sides, I'll play devil's advocate.

You know, if, if it's YouTube's great because everyone's on it and everyone's searching on

it and it shows up on Google and you can get a lot of traffic to your stuff, but you could

also preach to more people.

If you go to the mall and stand on a box and just start shouting your message, uh, that

doesn't mean it's the most appropriate way for you to be preaching.

It's definitely an avenue you could take, uh, but people choose to rent out malls, rent

out school, uh, auditorium space and build a church because they want to have more control

over the environment in which they preach.

That doesn't negate one or the other.

It really depends on how you want to approach things.

So if you are, uh, strictly wanting to generate website traffic, which I prefer because again,

I have control over my website.

I don't have control over YouTube.

I can be present on YouTube, but, uh, if you, YouTube might say, Hey, we heard a worship

song.

So we're going to add, we're going to put ads on your track to pay for that license or

whatever.

I can't control what's in there recommended.

Uh, and, and I think we've all gotten that call at church.

I think, uh, where someone, Ms. June watches your sermon clip and then gets a twerking video

under the recommended to watch next.

And she's like, ah, there's a record.

There's a twerking video on, on our church video.

And it's like, no, Ms. June, that's just your grandson being at your house and YouTube making

a recommendation based on what he was watching.

So, uh, you know, you, you lose control of some of that stuff.

And so because of that, Vimeo looks appealing.

I can link straight to video Vimeo.

The only videos that are on the site are my videos.

I can embed it into my church website.

I can really lock it down and lock down that experience.

And that's, I understand that.

Um, if your goal is to get out to as many people as possible, YouTube's a great platform.

Uh, and, and, and I do that for some churches.

If your goal is to generate more website traffic, and this is really my goal when, when Mr. Church

Marketer, when we build you a website, we want to create what's called a bingeable website.

Meaning we give your, your, your potential guests a guide, meaning we guide them through the website

to what we, through what we call calls to action.

We want to make sure that there's always something new.

So you'll notice on some of our sites at, after they watch a sermon and they have the blog posts,

it's like the title, like what does God say about tattoos?

They can watch the sermon clip.

There's a, the scripture at the bottom, maybe a transcription.

And then underneath it says, continue watching and they can watch another, uh, myth buster

video or another video about what does Jesus say about blank or hard questions of the Bible

or science in the Bible.

They can continue binging.

And the same thing, if they look at the kids ministry, when they get down to the bottom of

the site, there's a, there's an explore more ministries and they can see the men's ministry

and the women's ministry.

If they click on to read the church history story at the bottom, it says, be a part of our

history, plan your next visit.

If you're on the staff page, there's, there's a connect with a pastor and they can submit

a form to have coffee with the pastor.

It's, there's always something for them to take a next step on.

And if you're, and if that's the goal of the website, then you putting up a YouTube video

that you don't have much control over might work against the goal of your website.

And so we might want Vimeo because it runs smoother.

It collapses easier.

I mean, they both do the same job well, but there's a couple of reasons why you might want

to lock that down on Vimeo.

And just the way Vimeo encodes videos, they just look better.

So if you're going to spend all this time and money on a nice camera with a nice backdrop,

let's have it look good, right?

Instead of YouTube, that's going to auto scale it down to 360, even though you've got gigabit

internet.

You know, it just depends on the goal of the site.

So if you're looking at Vimeo, if you're on Vimeo, there's nothing wrong with that.

But if your goal is really to be discovered by more people, Vimeo doesn't show up in church

search results.

YouTube will.

So you really need to focus on getting the proper keyword.

And you don't have to do keyword research.

Just again, think about what would someone Google to find this video?

That's the title of your video.

And then, you know, put it again in the description.

As a human would talk, don't try to just put tattoo, Christian, church, Bible.

Let's talk about it.

No, let's be conversational.

But I like to keep people on the website.

So if that's the goal, then we really want to funnel them.

We don't want YouTube results clogging that up.

So with a proper SEO strategy, we might use Vimeo.

And that's just kind of what it is.

They might already have a Vimeo account because of their live streaming, in which case we can

easily integrate that onto the website.

There's really no wrong answer.

It's just only wrong if it works against your goals for the church.

And this is where I really pride myself on being a consultant for churches and finding

solutions that are unique to your goals.

Where do you want to be in six months, one year, five years?

Rather than what I call like a vitamin salesman that's like, how much weight do you want to

lose?

Here's a couple of supplements.

Which one do you want to buy?

And it's like, you don't know which one's going to work for you.

You don't know which one's going to do you harm, which one's going to blow your budget

and give you no results.

Let's diagnose the issue and where you want to go and let's do something prescriptive.

And that's really where SEO kind of shines is because you're really doing everything for

the good of the end user, the person that's going to be consuming your content.

And that's really the end goal of all of this is to make it better for them so they can hear

you easier.

Hey, let me ask this because we've got these 40-minute sermons, 30-minute sermons.

Nobody's sitting down to watch a 30, 40-minute, a CTC, somebody called the Christ.

They're probably not going to process that sermon.

And so we're using language like cut it down shorter, cut it down smaller, clips of it.

From a pure beginner standpoint, just even analyzing the content.

Or is it like the opening analogy, the points?

Is the goal like a 10-minute sermonette, a shorter version, 0.1, 0.3?

Like, how are some ways that we can cut this down to make it more effective to reach out

to connect to the CTCs?

Sure.

So it really comes down to some trial and error because, again, there is no one-size-fits-all.

I think we've all had that syndrome where we see the church down the street or Elevation,

North Point, Saddleback.

We see something that they do on social media, and it's like, let's do that.

And we make our own pastoral quote clip, and it doesn't get any likes or shares and maybe

one comment from you, okay?

You commented on your own post you did for the church.

And you sit there and you wonder, why didn't this work?

It worked so well for this church across the street, but it didn't work well for us.

You really do have to do some trial and error because I like to say you're a unique church.

You're a unique body with unique gifts equipped to reach a unique people.

And so we do have to do some experimentation to see what kind of clips work for our audience.

And you can find a formula, but what works for one church is not going to work for your

church.

So what I like to do personally, I don't like to stick to a formula where, I mean, when

you say, I got to pull 18 clips from this one sermon, I'm not going to do that, okay?

Because I'm going to get a bunch of useless clips and a couple of them that I know are going

to be nice.

What I like to do is really just use what resonates with me as a starting point.

I'm going to clip that.

I always keep a notepad in my phone.

And when I'm watching the sermon, I'll say, oh, he said this around this time and this around

this time.

And I know kind of what points to jump to.

And I'll just start by clipping those.

I don't have a formula that says it has to be three minutes.

It has to be five minutes.

However long the story is, okay?

I've watched plenty of seven-minute videos on Facebook, even though they say a minute

and a half is best.

Why?

Because the story was captivating.

It really intrigued me.

I skipped a lot of minute and a half videos because the story was boring.

The look was boring.

The speaker was not interactive at all.

The sound was bad.

So just because it's one and a half minutes or three minutes does not magically mean more

people are going to see it.

It all comes down to the presentation, the content itself.

So I start with something myself and pastor, I know when you walk off that stage, no pastor

is humble enough to say, that was a good sermon.

Let's never think about it again.

No, when you walk off the stage and you go back into your car and you're like, man, that

story was awesome.

Everyone laughed at it.

It was so great.

Or, oh man, the emotion that the spirit was working when I told this one story or when I

delivered that call at the end, God was moving.

That was great.

Whatever gets you excited or whatever resonates with you, if you're a team member and you're

watching the sermon, write down the stories that resonate with you and then clip those

stories.

I'll be honest, Jeff.

Some weeks I get three clips.

Some weeks I get like eight and I'm good for like two weeks of social posts.

Some weeks are really, really theologically heavy.

And I know it's not going to talk at all to those CTC people.

So I might only get one clip, which just happens to be an amusing story about the pastor's

shoes.

Doesn't really have a gospel presentation or connection to it, but it's a funny story.

People will watch it.

It humanizes the pastor.

It humanizes the church, which we need more of today.

So I'll still share that.

But I got one clip that week and I'm okay with that.

Once you get those clips, then you go back into your analytics.

Okay.

This is your insights, whatever you want to call it, your clips on YouTube.

And you look back and you say, man, people really want to really love pastor's jokes.

Okay.

My church, we are blessed with a funny pastor and we are blessed in that he really does recognize

God's hand in humor and the sense of humor.

I mean, it's a sense.

It's our sixth sense is humor.

So our Facebook page, as weird as it was for me when I joined the team, it's mostly jokes.

And a lot of pastors would be like, all you're doing is telling jokes and you're not really

sharing the gospel.

But those jokes get people intrigued.

So when we do call them to watch a service or download our app or take some action, they

trust us because we've made them laugh.

We form that connection.

That's what works for us.

The deep theological, like God said this and this and that, the picture quote posts don't

work for us.

Even a lot of the, what's your favorite sci-fi movie posts that everyone loves says, oh, get

50 engagements.

Those don't work for us.

Jokes do.

And especially corny jokes.

We got a really, we got a huge dad joke audience.

So we do a lot of that in our church and it works really well to connect with people and

people will reach out and say, hey, your pastor, he's hilarious and I can relate to him.

He's got some really funny stories.

How can I talk?

Cause I need to talk to someone and I trust him.

You know, that's what works for us.

Another church, it was actually those deeper spiritual truths because again, it was a Catholic

heavy place.

They grew up in the Bible, but they didn't really, God was a mystery.

And so when we unraveled that mystery as a Baptist church, people will kind of felt closer

to God.

And so those kinds of stories worked and those kinds of revelatory preaching moments worked

for us.

And again, it wasn't a three minute, five minute secret sauce.

It was just what impacted us.

And then over a few weeks, a few months of posting, I went back and saw, man, these deeper

scriptural truths, these really resonated with people.

And so, uh, you know, we, we, I looked for those and I posted those and then I would even

put some money behind those because I knew it wouldn't be wasted.

It would speak to more people.

Um, and then funny enough, my pastor made, uh, it was during the 2016 election.

He made, uh, uh, uh, uh, I mean, it was like 45 seconds, but basically the idea was the flag

doesn't get you into heaven.

The American flag doesn't get you into heaven.

And it was very controversial in our church.

And I was like, all right, can we post this?

It's a really great thing, but man, like it might rile some people up.

Not a single negative comments, negative thought, even people that were like, like, oh, I can't

I be, he went there the next week.

They were like, you know what?

That was actually really good.

I shared that.

That was one of our best performing videos.

Pastor knew that this is an issue that it doesn't end on Sunday.

It goes throughout the week.

And so he did a few more, not intentionally like, let's just do some videos, but he kind

of, it kind of came to mind when he was preaching and we would clip those.

And those did really well.

People really felt like this is an issue that's important to our community and our culture.

And we need to share this stuff.

Uh, and, and it's really big on Twitter right now.

And some pastors are addressing it.

Some pastors are ignoring it, like it or hate it.

Uh, but that's what works.

And so you just have to go into your analytics.

I don't like to follow a formula because then what that does is it gets you a bunch of mediocre

posts that your good posts can get lost in.

So just if a story hits you, or if you're like, man, people really enjoyed that.

That's what you clip.

Start with that.

And then in your analytics, you'll kind of figure out what people really care about.

And you can just start to duplicate that and scale that up, uh, instead of continuing

to test over time.

Talk to me about this.

So like experimenting, we got to find that, that balance.

How long do we stick with the experiment?

Like, is it, uh, man, I should see instantaneous results like week to week, or man, I really

got to see three months, four months, six months, uh, of doing something before I can evaluate

what's, what's like the, and I get it.

Everything's different, but give me a range, a date.

I'm a newbie.

I'm testing this out.

How long do I look at something not working to realize that it's not really working and

I need to do something different?

That's a great question.

Uh, as with any project you undertake, you want to give it a timeframe, a window.

Uh, you don't want to have a men's group book study and two people show up and you cancel

it after the second week.

You, you, you keep going with that men's book group.

And if it's only two, it's only two, but if it's really good, they invite their friends

and they start having snacks and that thing can really bloom.

Uh, and so we want to make sure that we set a timeframe for, uh, the experiments that

we set out.

So I might say, I'm going to post one video a week and I'm going to do that for, uh, one

month.

Or I might say, I'm just going to do stories for a month and see how people resound to that.

Uh, since we're kind of, we were supposed to really originally be talking about SEO, any

proper SEO work, uh, takes about three months to start to see the fruits develop.

In fact, when we do an SEO project, uh, to really optimize someone's website, we take

no minimum than a three month commitment because there has to be a lot of legwork, uh, and a

lot of foundation.

And Google has to see a pattern of the optimization that we're doing, uh, to, to start seeing the

climb in the ranks that we expect to see or want to see.

So any experiment that you do with SEO or with contents, I mean, it's all search, search

engines have gotten so advanced, Jeff, that SEO really just comes down to making better

content.

There are some best practices you need to be mindful, but if you make great content,

Google will serve it up.

Um, so I, I recommend three months.

It is a bit long and, and you can kind of look at that and say, man, three months, like

that means I can only try four new things a year.

You can try them different things at the same time.

It's like that, that office joke where Toby's like, okay, well you should, uh, to prevent

eye strain, you should look away from the screen every five minutes and to prevent back

issues, you just stand up from your desk every five minutes.

And then you should make sure you drink water every five minutes.

And then Michael's like, well, now they're only working 40 minutes an hour.

Like they're getting it.

And Daryl's like, you'd take the breaks at the same time.

You know, you can experiment with different, you can do an experiment on Facebook, do an

experiment on YouTube, do an experiment on your website.

So you can do a lot of change.

The important thing is you can't go with your gut feeling.

You got to stick with it.

Someone's going to say, Hey, I saw you posted that story on Facebook instead of a scripture.

Uh, I don't like that pastor.

And you're like, all right, so let me just go back to Putin.

Like, no, stick with the stories because once you develop that culture, you can look back

and see what stories worked, uh, what length worked for your church and just double down

on your strengths and duplicate that again.

Uh, and if it works online, it'll probably work in person or you can create entirely separate

content that really leans into those strengths.

Uh, but it really comes down to the analytics.

And if you've been trying this for some time, a lot of churches, I can just look at their

social media page and look at the last 20 posts and I can see sermon title post gets three

likes, um, announcement post gets three likes, quote post gets three likes, it's the same

three people.

And then they show a picture of a missions project and it's got 40 likes and 10 shares

and 200 views.

And then they go right back to sermon title and then right back to quote post.

And there's a picture of youth camp, a hundred views, a hundred likes, shares, comments.

And it's like, stop doing the sermon.

No one comes to church based on a sermon graphic.

Your analytics, I can see on my side, show that do more pictures of people that that's,

that's a, that's a great thing that you can analyze as far as a social media optimization.

Look at your analytics and what's working and do more of that.

Hey, yes.

So this has been so good.

I, you know, it was funny.

The opening joke of, of pastor Google, um, we're, we're, we're going to come back.

We're going to do more on this.

I want, I want to pull the thread.

Uh, we didn't even get to the website stuff, which is really the stuff that I wanted to

talk about.

Uh, but the, the, the YouTube stuff is, is super vital, um, in, in the season.

And, you know, pastor, we spend so much time creating that sermon.

So much energy goes into that.

Not only in creating the words, lead pastor, uh, creating the, the environment on the production,

creating the graphics, uh, with, with the creative teams, figuring out, you know, how,

how to position that having it, that have legs beyond that one hour on Sunday is.

Well, Jeff, let me, let me, let me clarify something there too, because you said like,

I want to talk about website SEO.

Um, we actually won't take an SEO project if the website is terrible.

And, and a lot of times churches will come to us.

Pastors will come to us and say, Hey, we need SEO work, uh, because our website doesn't

rank high.

And I look at their website and say, your website doesn't rank high because it stinks.

Okay.

Uh, and that's censoring my language for it, for the podcast.

Yeah.

Maybe you're a little nicer.

I just want to, you know, uh, what I liken it to is, um, SEO is like location in real

estate.

Okay.

You want to have better location and rank higher in the search results.

But if your house is a mess, no one's going to buy it.

No one's going to want to rent from you.

Whereas the, as at the same time, you could have a really nice, lovely house, but if you

don't SEO it, it's out in the boondocks and you can have all the amenities.

You can have the vaulted ceilings and the crown molding, which I don't understand.

Uh, but if it's out in the boondocks, you're not going to be able to get a lot of money

for your real estate.

So there is a combination there.

But if you SEO a bad website, you're just going to be hurting yourself because you can

have the proper local keywords.

If there's no content there, if there's no meat, Google is going to forget everything and say,

Hey, well, he knows how to SEO, but you don't know how to make content.

Again, no one goes to a website.

No one goes to a video.

No one visits a church because they got the right keywords.

It's, it's a combination of the two.

And I'd rather you pastor have great content and still be lacking the SEO because the content

can get you there.

Uh, and when we talk about technical SEO on page, off page SEO, that's only 20% of the

entire SEO pie.

80% of it really is the content.

And with the way algorithms are going, um, they can figure out your content before you

can.

And so the content really is 80% of that pie.

And that's why it's such front of mind.

And if you want to talk about on page SEO directories, listing linkings, NAP schema markup, we can

do all that stuff.

But again, if you don't have the content, you're just inviting people to an empty house.

Awesome.

Well said.

Yeah, we'll come back.

I do want to revisit that conversation, but for, for a later day, this has been full.

We have to fully taken advantage of, uh, of, uh, on the YouTube conversation, uh, the balance

kind of working through some, some basics content strategies, turn it around the sermon.

So this is beautiful.

Hey, so, so Justin, tell me, Hey, if somebody's interested in following up with you, uh, they've

got questions, um, you know, tell, tell me a little bit and tell them how to get in touch

with you and, and, and what you're doing there with, um, uh, Mr. Church Marketer.

There you go.

That's the one.

Uh, yeah.

So you can, mrchurchmarketer.com.

You can see kind of at a glance, everything we do, you can find me just about anywhere at

Justin Nava.

I'm sure Jeff will put the link down there.

Um, I'm, I'm everywhere.

I try to post at least once every week, somewhere, Facebook links.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram.

I'm on Tik TOK too.

If you want to have some fun there with me, um, you know, it really is about just educating,

uh, you guys and, and helping you out in any way I can.

I know there's a lot of churches out there that need to do it themselves.

I'm not going to ask you to pay 10, $20,000.

Like I would ask a business.

I want to make sure you guys have the best information possible.

And if we got to sit down, we can do that.

Uh, mrchurchmarketer.com.

There's a less talk button that'll connect with me and we can do a session just to see what

your goals are.

What solutions are out there?

Uh, is SEO a proper thing you should undertake to reach more people or is it something else?

That's, that's what I love about my job, Jeff, is that, you know, we get to really talk

with pastors and see what their goals are.

And, um, you know, again, I'm not a vitamin salesman.

I don't sell packages.

Uh, I really want to craft something unique for your church.

That's going to get you to where you want to go and reach the people you want to reach.

So, Justin Nava on Twitter or mrchurchmarketer.com, you can find us there.

Yeah.

By, by the way, one of the better Twitter follows I have right now.

Aw, thank you.

Guys, guys, no, you're welcome.

You obviously didn't watch me today.

Justin, no.

I mean, I've, I honestly, we were filming this the day of the inauguration and, uh, no, I've,

I've been like socially absent.

I'm an independent, so I just made everyone mad today.

Just, just, you know, yelling at everybody.

I was going to actually give you praise for, for not getting into the mess of that, but

I guess I just, I wasn't paying attention, but, but honestly, for me, he's, he's one of

these guys that's, uh, restoring the network.

You know, there was a season where Twitter was kind of like the, at each other's throats

all day long.

And, and in this COVID season, I actually feel like Twitter has restored itself and being,

um, a valid, helpful, non-cessible, um, platform.

Uh, maybe that's.

I said that too.

And, and the answer, the overwhelming response is, I don't know what,

corner of Twitter you're on, but, uh, you know, that, that's really the idea.

I, I, I am such a quick thought guy.

I have ADD.

I've got a focus supplement here and I try to make sure that I, uh, stay on task.

And he probably got that from our conversation today.

Uh, and that's why Twitter just resonates with me because it's quick bites.

It's, you know, I have a meeting with a pastor.

I've got three things that I told him that you might need to hear about your website,

your social media.

So I love tweeting.

And then really all I do is I take my best performing tweets analytics guys.

Uh, and then I'd make that a Facebook post or a LinkedIn post or an Instagram post.

So follow me on Twitter.

You get all the best stuff.

Uh, and, uh, and yeah, so, you know, this, uh, I'm so glad that we connected too.

I don't remember how we first got connected, but yeah.

Love it.

Tom Pounder.

Tom Pounder is how I met everyone, but, but that's a, a later conversation.

He's on his podcast talking about SEO too.

Have you ever met Tom Pounder in real life?

That's a question.

Not in real life.

No.

Um, I, I, I, I, I think it's a deep Russian spam bot.

Oh, so you think he's a robot?

Oh.

Yeah.

I, I, I'm not officially saying on this podcast, but I've officially said it somewhere else.

So, hey, we're, we're, we're going to wrap, uh, for Justin, this is Jeff with the

Church Digital and Stadia Church Planning.

Thanks for joining us here at the pod and we'll see you next time on the show.

Y'all have a good day.