Greetings in Christ, Reader,

And welcome back to the marketing letter for those who burned up their other options to go into church work.

Of course, I wouldn't have it any other way. Burn, other options in life, burn. I'm sure you, dear reader, feel the same way.

But, there are other things church workers end up burning through that they shouldn't: their time and mental effort in posting on social media.

🛑 Your church needs to stop posting on social media! There's another way to use social media effectively for your church, and that's what this week's special edition of the Church SEO Shapeup Newsletter is about.

Here is what we're going to talk about:

• What an RV dealer taught me about bringing in new members to church
• Google is reshuffling, and other news from around the web
• Another guy who burned his other options (John the Baptist)
• How to effectively use social platforms for your church. (It's not through organic posting!)

🗞️Personal and Business News

A Friend Sold an RV Dealership (and What This Means for Churches)

A friend recently sold the RV dealership he had owned for decades.

"Why did you sell?" I asked him.

He told me that he found it hard to compete with the way RVs were bought and sold these days. "I don't like the way other RV dealerships do business, and I didn't want to sink to that."

I pushed him further on this, and he explained that dealerships will post extremely low prices on their websites. Naturally, customers flock to the dealerships with the lowest advertised price on the make and model they want.

But, that's not the final price they pay. The dealerships that practice this model always tack on thousands of dollars of fees after the customer has agreed to buy an RV while the customer is in the back with the finance person.

"I couldn't do that to people. I wanted to put an honest price up front."

Sadly, that meant he couldn't compete, because even though he usually offered the best final price, people would end up buying from the dealers that had the lowest advertised price.

What does this have to do with churches?

The RV dealers' business model, the one that drove my friend to sell, was entirely based around people making up their minds before even stepping in a dealership. They had made up their minds on:

• Make
• Model
• Accessories
• Price they (thought) that they wanted to pay
• Which dealership they were going to buy from

Going to the dealer was the last step in their buying process. Everything else up to that point? It was a buying journey conducted entirely online.

This reflects something that I (and other pastors and church workers) have noticed: A visitor at a church is usually on the last step in choosing a church. Visitors at churches often have made up their mind before stepping in the door. The visit is just a final check-in to make sure everything lines up with their expectations.

How did they make that decision? By checking out the church online.

That's one reason your church's online presence matters so much.

🌐 Around the Web

Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable reports that Google is currently rolling out a core update - a massive adjustment in their algorithm. Google rolls these out several times a year in order to surface the best content in its results, and they are marked by volatility in the search results. Keep an eye on how your church is doing in results. Two places to look? Google Search Console (workout-19-gsc.pdf) and the performance tab on the backend of your Google Business Profile:

Google is expanding its "Preferred Sources in Search" feature designed to show people more content from publishers they know and trust. If your church regularly publishes content on its site (sermons, event announcements, etc.), you may want to follow Lily Ray's advice and consider adding a CTA on your website to add it as a preferred source.

✝️ God Stuff

It's easy to forget what a pivotal and important figure John the Baptist was, and for liturgical churches, he looms large in the lectionary. Here are a few facts about him and his movement:

It was a movement of messianic expectation. John clearly saw his calling as preparatory for the one to come: "And he preached, saying, ‘After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie." (Mark 1:7)

His movement spanned cultures and social strata. This was unique in this time and place. Josephus mentions how various Jewish movements were typically confined to certain social strata. The Pharisees had greater traction with common people and the poor. The Essenes clearly were people of wealth (even if it was held in common.) The Sadducees were at the very highest echelon of society. All of these were confined to Jewish circles. John the Baptist, however? He drew both Jews and Romans (Luke 3:14), and he even gained a sympathetic ear from kings (Mark 6:20). John's ability to connect with higher echelons seems connected to the fact that,

He was from a prominent priestly family. On both sides, in fact. Both Zechariah and Elizabeth were from a priestly line, and Zechariah was well-regarded, as evidenced by the fact that he was allowed to serve in the highest roles in the Temple (Luke 1).

Pockets of disciples lived all over the Mediterranean. It seems that Apollos had been part of a cell of disciples in Alexandria, Egypt (Acts 18:24-25,) and Paul encountered disciples of John the Baptist at Ephesus in what we now call Turkey (Acts 19:1-7).

🛑 Stop posting on social media. Do this instead.

Most churches should stop posting on social media.

. . . At least the way you've probably been posting on social media.

Now, I'm not saying that posting is bad, and I'm not saying that you should delete your church's Facebook page or Instagram feed.

What I am saying is this: If your goal is to reach new people in your community, organic social media posting is one of the least effective ways to do it.

Let me explain.

Why most churches struggle on social media

Here's the hard truth: the deck is stacked against your church's social media posts. To get any meaningful reach on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, or TikTok, your church needs to do:

• Post multiple times per day. PER DAY! (Not per week.)
• Master tight verbal and visual composition, with hooks and attention-retaining features
• Identify and jump on trends
• Understand the ever-shifting algorithm.

That's how influencers do it.

But you and your staff and volunteers? You probably don't have 20 hours a week to become part-time videographers, trend analysts, and algorithm whisperers.

And, even if you did, many platforms suppress religious content anyway.

Churches have an uphill battle in organic social posting.

Instead of fighting that battle, churches need to work with social platforms' even more powerful force, far more powerful than their algorithms. What is that force? Profit motive.

If you want guaranteed local reach, stop posting. Start advertising.

Social platforms like Meta (Facebook & Instagram) want advertisers to win. They know that if their advertisers win, they win, because they get advertiser $$$.

When you give Meta even a small budget, they turn on all their powerful technology to help you accomplish your goals, including:

• 20 years of user data
• sophisticated behavioral tracking
• local targeting
• predictive delivery systems

Meta knows exactly who in your community is most likely to click through on an ad to explore your church.

And, unlike posting, you don't have to guess or "go viral." You just need a clear message with a simple setup.

Best of all? It's affordable. Your or your staff's time is extremely expensive. Compared to hours of social posting, advertising is a drop in the bucket. And, it's never been cheaper to advertise.

A quick story from early in my ministry.

When I was planting a church about 20 years ago, I used to pay $250 for a tiny newspaper ad that delivered almost nothing.

Since then, I've paid $1,500 for postcard mailers that landed in mailboxes only to go immediately in the trash.

Today? A $150-$250 Meta ad campaign will reach far more people, far more accurately, and with far better measurement.

That is why I know teach churches how to run Meta ads to a landing page for Christmas, Easter, VBS, Rally Day, and more.

It's simply the best bang for the buck in church communications today.

And, with it being Christmastime, right now is the perfect time to experiment with your first Meta ad campaign.

Here's the system I recommend:

I recently recorded a YouTube video on running an ad campaign in Meta:

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It takes you step by step through the process of setting up an ad campaign. (Click here for the show notes.)

1- Build a landing page.

A simple, distraction-free page with:

• The event details
• A clear call to action
• A registration form (name, email, phone)

Check out my previous email on building a Christmas landing page.

2- Create three ad creatives.

Make one in each format:

• Square (1:1)
• Vertical (4:5 or 9:16)
• Horizontal (16:9)

These don’t need to be fancy. A nativity image with a dark overlay and crisp white text works beautifully.

3- Write compelling but simple ad copy.

Examples: “Looking for a meaningful Christmas? Join us for candlelight carols and the hope only Christ can give.”

And try both versions:

• One with emojis
• One without

Let Meta test them automatically.

4- Set up a Traffic campaign in Ads Manager.

Use Recommended Settings so Meta optimizes delivery for you.

Then — and this is important — set your performance goal to: 👉 Maximize number of landing page views

Not just “link clicks.” We want people who will actually stick around long enough to load the page.

5- Narrow your location targeting.

Your church is not trying to reach the whole state. Dial it in to your real draw radius: often 5–25 miles.

6- Start with $10/day.

It’s enough data for Meta to learn, but inexpensive enough to adjust if needed.

7- Check your campaign daily.

Ads are not “set it and forget it.” They need small tweaks, especially in the first few days.

This strategy works for churches of any size.

Whether you’re a rural church, a suburban church, or a downtown urban congregation, the principles are the same:

• You create one or two great pieces of creative
• You build a simple landing page
• You let Meta do what it’s built to do
• You spend FAR less staff time than posting daily
• You reach FAR more people than relying on organic reach

This is how your church shows up in the “billboard everyone carries”: 📱 the smartphone in their pocket.

❓Poll

God's blessings, Pastor Chris Jackson "SEO Priest" ​[email protected]​ Subscribe Now for Free Not subscribed to the free Church SEO Shapeup Newsletter? Subscribe now. Get My Free Comprehensive Church SEO Checklist ​Get the checklist that will guide you to winning top search visibility. Completely free. Get All My Free Resources ​This Google Sheet has all my free resources. Inexpensive 1-Page Church Websites Designed to make it easy for your church to get on the web. Check it out. Need Help With Your Church's SEO? I aim to give away all my SEO knowledge for free. However, if you need muscle to accomplish your church's SEO goals, here are a few ways I can help: ​Stratospheric SEO Package. This is a baseline SEO package designed to give your church name, address, and phone number across the internet and to boost your church's SEO power. It helps you show up better in map results. Start with this package. ​Orbital SEO Package. The Orbital SEO Package does everything in the Stratospheric Package and also optimizes your church's homepage and boosts your church website's authority. It will help you show up better in both the map results and the link results. This package offers powerful optimizations.

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