Why Instagram is important for your church

By Ret David North

Instagram has a database of over 800 million users. More than half of those users are daily active users. Based on Instagram’s own algorithm-based projections, a safe estimate of at least half of your community uses Instagram or at least has an account, and 30% of your community, both in and around your church, not only uses Instagram but is active, either by posting or scrolling, on a daily basis.

It can be easy to feel numb to statistics like these, but many church communicators around the world are starting to see Instagram as the church’s new coffee hour.

Church communications adapt on a daily basis with new online mediums and platforms. Your church is probably on Facebook now, but even Facebook pages can range in usage and efficacy; but whether you are live-streaming services or posting service times once a week, it’s about time church communicators brought Instagram out to play.

We tend to ignore numbers in favor of the beauty, diversity, and depth of our endeavors in fellowship, it is important to recognize how many people you and your church can engage with over Instagram. Instagram has shown to be the most popular and actively used social media platform next to Facebook, used by 72% of teens, 71% of adults between the ages of 18-24, and 35% of adults with online and digital access.

98% of church-attendees say their places of worship use social media. Nearly half of churches surveyed claim that social media is now their most effective means of outreach. Instagram even offers the opportunity to connect your church’s website and Facebook page to your Instagram profile, which can boost your search engine statistics, putting you closer and closer to being the first result viewed by church visitors, travelers, and church-shoppers.

Many individual users, outside of businesses and influencers, spend an average of 30-40 minutes on a single personal post, and two hours a day scrolling through their personalized feed. No matter how much time you spend making posts for yourself or on your church’s behalf, adding Instagram as a communication platform consistent with your website, Facebook, and email communications can help to fully establish your church as a unique, welcoming, and interactive community.

Unlike Facebook, Instagram is a social network: rather than advertised posts (though these can also be helpful), what establishes an effective network is consistent communication and interaction with others on Instagram, and that’s what enables church communication to stand out! One of the best things you can do in form of church communication is interact with your followers, even those who are well-outside your physical, tangible community.

Instagram also allows you to communicate easily with your community while accounting for the ever-lowering human attention span (currently estimated at about eight seconds) by emphasizing visual content. With established communications via other platforms, you can spread the same consistent communications to Instagram with low-pressure maintenance while capturing a greater majority of people’s attention, from new visitors to faithful attendees.

To learn more about communication over Instagram and other social media platforms and how you can get started, view this resource on social media at https://caffeinatedchurch.org/social-media and visit the forum to discuss Instagram usage and strategies with other communicators (https://caffeinatedchurch.org/forum/).

Looking for examples? Here are a few churches whose strategies have proved effective:

Slate Church (@slatechurch)

1,813 posts | 2,937 followers

People Church Chicago (@peoplechurch)

1,342 posts | 16.9k followers

!Audacious Church Chester (@audaciouschurchchester)

778 posts | 1,142 followers