[Product Update] Skyrocket Your Church App Engagement With Your Newsfeed and Instagram Integration

Getting the attention of your church during the week isn’t easy.

Like everyone (including yourself), they’re pulled in a thousand directions:

• Work
• Church activities
• School
• Kids
• School events
• Entertainment
• Social media
• Family and friends
  

Trying to engage with your church during the week can feel like hitting a moving target.

Regardless of the distractions everyone faces, there’s one important thing to keep in mind:

77 percent of Americans own a smartphone.

Know what else?

More than 91 percent of people between the ages of 18-49 own a smartphone.

I understand smartphones can be a source of distraction.

But here’s the deal:

People who own smartphones use their phones to connect with people—including their church. They’re logging into Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms to share their life and see what their social network is getting into.

In short, they’re accessing your community’s watercooler (social media) with their phone.
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Don’t believe me?
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Check out these stats from the Pew Research Center:

• 74% of Facebook users visit the site daily
• 73% of U.S. adults use YouTube on their smartphone
• 60% of Instagram users visit the site daily
• 81% of Instagram users ages 18 to 24 visit the site multiple times per day
  

The use of social media isn't confined to teens and young adults, either.

The vast majority of people in your community use social media:

• 7 out of 10 adults spend time on social media
• Two-thirds (68%) of U.S. adults use Facebook
• 96 million people in the U.S. use Instagram
• 24 percent of online U.S. adults use Twitter
  

For you, this means that social media is the new watercooler in town. It’s where people in your church and the people you want to reach with the gospel are spending time.

To engage your church and community online, not only do you need a social media presence —you need to adapt to the way people use social media.

Don’t be discouraged if this feels like a daunting task.

We just rolled out some sweet updates to our church app that will skyrocket your church’s engagement.

Let’s just say you’ll give us a big thumbs up after you see what I’m talking about.

Are you ready for generation thumb?

Connecting with people online is easier said than done.

They’re bombarded with a slew of messages, images, and videos every day on social media.

To work through this deluge of content, people—especially younger generations—scroll their newsfeeds with their … thumbs. Not only are people fast-scrolling with their thumbs, but they’re also using their thumbs to text, email, and for entertainment instead of their fingers on a keyboard.

This isn’t some sort of silly trend to overlook.

As more and more people continue to use smartphones to access the Internet and social media, this trend will continue to influence how we interact online.

Think about it.

According to ComScore, 87% of smartphone owners use mobile apps to access the Internet. From social media, entertainment, and finances, smartphone users overwhelmingly prefer to use an app to access the Internet.

Here’s why this is important for you:

People prefer to use their thumb to scroll the Internet on their smartphone.

If you adapt your church app to meet this scrolling preference, then you can significantly boost your church’s engagement.  

This is something Life.Church and Newspring Church understood when they built their apps.

Let me show.

Thumb through Life.Church and Newspring Church

The single best way to boost your church app’s engagement is to tap into the power of the scroll to make it natural for people to engage with what you’re sharing.  

To do this, Life.Church has their church app open up automatically to their newsfeed:

By opening their app to the newsfeed, Life.Church makes it simple and easy for people to see what’s going on and engage with their latest updates.

Newspring Church uses a similar approach, but with a twist:

In both of these examples, Life.Church and Newspring Church boost their church’s app engagement by creating an experience people normally have online with their mobile phone.

We want to help your church create a similar user experience with your app.

We would love for nothing more than to see people engage with your church app and better connect with the life of your church.

To do this, we wanted to make this church app format available to every church—regardless if you have the budget to create a custom app or not.

Not sure if you want to consider this an early Christmas gift, but check out these slick new updates the team made to our church app to give you this option.

Boost your church app engagement with your newsfeed

To help people engage with your church app, we made it super easy to share whatever content you want in a single location.

Check it out:

In your newsfeed, you can add:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Blog posts
• Sermons
• Events
• Prayer requests
  

That’s not all.

You can now integrate Instagram with your church app!

We’re pumped about this addition, and we want you to know this:

Our team is dedicated to consistently making improvements to save you time, reach more people, and build community with your church.

By sharing content from all of these platforms in a single location, you’ll make it easy for your church to interact with you on their social media platform of choice. In fact, they won’t even need a social media account to see what your church is sharing because they can see it all in your app.

Think about this:

Your church members won’t have to visit every social media site to engage with yours. They can access your church app newsfeed in one location, and connect with you wherever they like.

This update will naturally increase the amount of time people spend in your app since they don’t have to go to a ton of different places to see what’s going on.

Here’s another cool feature:

Most of the items in your app newsfeed give your church a unique way to interact.

For example, blog posts and audio sermons can be shared with a click of a button on the newsfeed (take another look at the gif above).

Your church can also easily add events to their calendar:

We like that these updates will create a new, slick look for your church.

But we’re most excited about helping you to boost engagement on your app, which means people will become more connected to your church.

Launch a new church app today

Or contact a giving specialist today.

If you already have an app with Tithe.ly, then send an email to our implementation team who will walk you through setting it up.