Building Trust in Digital Ministry
“It’s a little bit like dating.” - Jon Ralls
Our job is hard. In digital ministry, we’re not selling a product like soda or clothes! It’s complicated: Finding people far from God, and encouraging them to change their deepest belief system by making the life-changing decision to follow Jesus. Face it, this is not easy in any space, whether in-person or digitally. Even with the power of the Holy Spirit to move digitally, you will need more than just TikTok to move people toward life-change.
In a recent MII & FaithTech webinar, Jon Ralls cited the three parts of the Digital Ministry Marketing funnel.
First, our audience needs to KNOW who we are. They need to discover us.
Second, our audience needs to LIKE who we are. They need to engage with us, dialogue with us.
Third, our audience needs to TRUST who we are and what we say. This takes time.
Recognize that TikTok, Reels, and Shorts are great for people to discover us. The odds of a life-changing decision based on a single 60-second video is possible, but not probable. That video opens the door, but what does that handoff to? What do our next steps look like? Video views are not the same as lives changed.
This begs the question: How do we move past the “KNOW WHO WE ARE” phase and get that person to LIKE and TRUST us?
Always have a CTA (call to action) that drives your audience deeper. Typically, CTAs drive to a landing page or an online community where we can build on the “LIKE” concept through a deeper relationship.
The quickest way to build TRUST is 1:1 conversations with your audience. A good Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) can effectively track each communication.
Moving people all the way to TRUST can be a slow process. Remember, DMs are your friend! Create handles to make it easy for people to build trust in us and then measure results to see if our strategy is working. Be prepared with an armory of online videos, articles, digital Bibles, and the Great Commission – present the Gospel. Measure, and celebrate, beyond the vanity metric of reach, and see how God moves through your ministry digitally.
If we want to be effective in KNOW, LIKE and TRUST, remember that we have an asset that few social media campaigns have – the power of the Holy Spirit.
