Nick Clason (00:00): One. Well, hello there, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show. I, as always, am your host, Nick Clason, thrilled and excited to be with you wherever you are consuming this. Whether you are over on YouTube or whether you have found this via your podcast catcher, know that we do offer the other. So if you are on YouTube, you wanna check it out on podcasts, you can head to http://www.hybridministry.xyz If you're just listening to this. And today in particular, I am gonna drop some like visual aid representation stuff on screen as we're chatting through what we're chatting through. You can head over to YouTube today. We are going to talk about a scheduling service. Yes, I have been against this for years and years, and if you have been listening to this podcast, do you know that it has taken a minute for me to ever convert our TikTok account over from a personal to a business? Nick Clason (00:56): I've finally made that shift. I will tell you why, and make sure you stick around to the very end of the video for me to give you my final conclusion on whether or not you should be using a scheduling service for your social media. Before we dive in though, let me let you know that we have created a 100% completely free e-book and checklist, and for signing up for our email newsletter, you will get a copy of both of those immediately sent to your inbox. So go ahead, head to the link in the show notes for that. And without any further ado, let's dive in and let's start talking about scheduling services on social media. Here we go. All right, let's talk about scheduling services. Now, if you've listened to this podcast any length of time, you know that I have not really been much of a scheduling service person. Nick Clason (01:51): And so let me give you just a little brief history on all of that for me. So, uh, I started really getting into social media and social media scheduling and planning. Every church I've been in, I've had that to some level, some degree, but I've gotten mu I've really honed that in, I would say within the last three ish years. Um, and it dated back a couple churches. I'm trying to think like I really got into trying and experimenting with some stuff. Um, when I was at church in Cincinnati, I was there for a couple of years. Um, and then when I moved to Parkview, which is the church I was at before here, uh, in, in the South Chicago suburbs, I had nothing to do with social media. But then I offered to have something to do with it. Like I took on a portion of it. Nick Clason (02:46): And, uh, there is when I really started to hone in on more of what I'm focusing on now, TikTok and reels and stuff like that. And then that's when I met Matt, if you've been around since the beginning, you know, Matt was my co-host, the first, you know, 10 or so episodes. And so, uh, he worked at Parkview with me. Anyway, all that to be said, one of the things I discovered, cuz I had used both at my church in Cincinnati, and at the start of my time at Parkview, I used Hootsuite as a scheduler. And I think Hootsuite is fine as a scheduler, uh, for anything like Instagram feed posts or Facebook posts. Those are fine. The issue was, and I, and it may have changed, and so I may be eating my words a little bit on this. It may have changed since I most recently used it, but it could, when I started really, really taking over social media at my last church, I went to Matt, um, and I said, Hey, is there any way for me to schedule stories and, and reels or tos? Nick Clason (03:44): And he said, not really. And then I think within about a month of that conversation, a both of us started our exit strategies out of there, A and b, TikTok, A and Instagram all came out with, uh, schedulers. Okay? And so, uh, about a week or month ago, actually, about a month ago, I had a conversation with another youth pastor friend of mine from Indiana, and he's like, do you know that you can schedule your TikTok? And I was like, what? And so I did dive into it and yes, in fact you can, if you are a business account, you can, uh, schedule TikTok through the TikTok website. And so I was like, okay, interesting. So I started to play around with all these different things and I was like, this might be a game changer. Now let me explain to you what happened and what my journey was to end up where I ended up. Nick Clason (04:37): So, uh, you can natively schedule through all four of the core platforms. We're talking about Facebook, uh, which Facebook and Instagram are linked together through the Meta Business Suite, TikTok, and then YouTube. Of course you can schedule on YouTube. Um, but, but none of them, in my personal opinion, are, are optimal. And I'll give you some reasons why. Uh, when I was trying to schedule through the Facebook Business Suite, I personally, our account for whatever reason, wouldn't allow me to schedule Instagram reels. I could schedule Facebook reels, but I couldn't schedule Instagram reels. And so then that sent me on a search and I could do the other ones. I could do TikTok and I could do YouTube. However, I will say YouTube, it's just like you're uploading a regular video. And when I, when I upload on YouTube shorts on my app, it's a completely different interface. Nick Clason (05:33): And so, honestly, half the time I wasn't sure if I was doing it right because I'm like, is this where I put the caption? Is this where I put the title? And YouTube shorts are still a little weird and they're, I think they're still trying to figure out what they're doing over there. Um, they have put a lot more time and effort and energy into it. And so it's getting better for sure. Um, but YouTube has actually been my number one, uh, culprit, uh, downfall in all this. Anyway, I'll get to all that in a second. Uh, so I went, I searched through all these things, discovered and landed on a platform called Metro. Cool. I'll drop the link in the show notes. It might be helpful, it might be useful for you. Check it out. I can't make a blanket statement and say like, you should do this, you should do that. Nick Clason (06:13): I'm just gonna give you my experience and then what I would recommend if you were consulting or asking me. Um, but you might not be. And so you might be like, oh yeah, that totally works for me. Uh, but I landed on this thing called Metric Cool. I could link all four of those services, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube shorts. I could link all four of those and I could post auto post to all of those. I could schedule it ahead of time and then it would post on its own when I, I said to post it. Okay? And so I was like, this is going to change my life. And so let me tell you the results, the stats and how it all went down, uh, on metric. I used it for two and a half weeks. I posted a total of 18 videos on that time. Nick Clason (07:00): And, uh, the reason I didn't use, you know, post every single piece of content that I was planning to post is cause I had some TikTok sitting in my TikTok drafts. I had some that had, I had, uh, like recaps that I hadn't even filmed yet that I couldn't like preschedule. And I was like, I'll just take care of these live. Also, metrical is free for up to, um, what was it I I calculated that was free for up to like 30, uh, days. Um, not like a trial, but like 30 days worth of posts. Um, but however, it's like if I posted Instagram reels and Facebook and TikTok a and YouTube, that counts as four. So it was like, it was more than 30, it was like 120 I think. Um, but if I post on four of those four 30 days, then I'm going to use them all up, right? Nick Clason (07:49): And so that was another reason I didn't schedule everything. Cause I was like, I can leave some gaps in here, uh, to save back some of their, their free, you know, posting stuff, whatever. Anyway, I digress. So I used it. Um, and the reason I used it right was because I couldn't figure out a way to do Instagram and, uh, real scheduling and all these things. The other thing is I liked it cuz it's all in one, right? If I was gonna do all the native schedulers, I'd have to have like three tabs open and do TikTok and then go over to YouTube and then go over to the meta business suite. Possible doable and definitely worth my time if that takes away from me having to schedule live, you know, live posting. And so, um, finding this was, I was really exciting moment for me. Nick Clason (08:35): And so I, like I said, I went all in. I was like, let me try this thing and see what happens. So I'm gonna give you the results here. Let's dive in and look at the actual nitty gritty stats. And this is where, if you're listening, you may wanna switch over to YouTube, um, and see some of these things cuz I'm just gonna, um, screenshot my spreadsheet and put it on the screen. So here we go. Okay. Like I said, I, uh, uploaded and used metrical for 18 different posts over the course of about two and a half to three weeks. Um, I posted on all four platforms, morning, evening, and night. And here were some of the results that I came up with. So, uh, let's just go, uh, one by one through each platform. So on TikTok, like I said, I posted 18, here were our watch results. Nick Clason (09:22): 1 63, 1 44, 141, 1 77, 1 52 91, 2 21, 1 49, 1 50, 1 28, 1 35, 1 40, 1 40, 1 48, 1 40, 1 53. Those are low for us. Um, we typically, um, and we don't go super viral on TikTok. I'll just be honest. I honestly, I think we started at a time where TikTok is kind of choking down the watches. And um, you know, like I mentioned Matt, he even said something to me interesting. He's like, I think TikTok might know you're church and if they know you're a church, he's like, I don't know that they're gonna give you a ton of organic reach, which was an interesting thing. Um, so he was saying that even back when I was at Parkview that it might not be, you know, that might be some of the case. So anyway, um, we, you know, we typically live in the two 300 s and then we'll pop, you know, for some over a thousand or whatever here and there. Uh, so the average TikTok wa uh, watch analytics of my metrical posts were an average of 122. Nick Clason (10:24): The highest I got was 2 21 and I had two tied for the lowest at 41. So not great. Okay? Um, Instagram reels, this is what we did on Instagram reels 2 51 8 5 19 3 18, 1 38, 1 46, uh, 2 53, 2 1 45. There was one that didn't post cuz there was an error that happened actually a couple different times. I had to go in and manually redo it. That's another story for another day. 2 2 3 2 0 2 180 6, 1 34, 3 94 for an average, uh, view of 1 68. And so our highest was that one of five 19, which was the third one that we posted. And then we had three that were tied with only two views. So again, not great, we did have some perform better. And I will say this, um, between TikTok and Instagram reels, we go, we have much higher views on Instagram reels than we do on TikTok, but I think we have less engagement on Instagram than we do on TikTok. Nick Clason (11:27): And so it's, it's, you know, watch isn't isn't equal to engagement and engagement is a loose term, I get it. But that's comments, that's shares, that's likes those types of things. Uh, Facebook reels. Interestingly, and this was really helpful for me, and I'll share some of this in a minute with some of my takeaways, but Facebook was actually quite a beneficial, uh, it was quite beneficial for me to go back and look on Facebook. Honestly, I had it and just let it do its thing. Um, and I never really go back to Facebook to engage much, but we had some decent traction on Facebook, surprisingly, and as a youth pastor, not necessarily my goal, right? Uh, we're probably catering to and reaching parents over there. Um, which might be a good thing, might be a bad thing. I don't know. Like, I don't have like a stance on whether or not, you know, I'm happy with that or whatever. Nick Clason (12:15): But we did quite well on Facebook. So here's what we had on Facebook. 1 92, 62 18, 3 38, 98 4 19, 2 24, 2 57, 2 62, 1 98 42, 2 0 6, 1 93, 3 78 39, 180 9, 2 0 3. Average view of two 18 with our highest being four 19, our lowest being 39. And then finally on shorts, this is where it got bad. 4 0 7 7 4 15, 2 3 17, 6, 6, 8, 6, 3, 2, 2, 1 for an average view of 5.4 highest 17 lowest zero. So let's extrapolate and look at some of the takeaways from all of this. What does this mean? All right, so what does all of this mean? Should you schedule? Should you not, should you use metric? Cool. Here's, here are my personal takeaways. So you need to know this. I'm not using it anymore. Like what it did to us on YouTube was, was horrific. Um, and I'm not blaming metrical necessarily, right? But I I, after a couple of days I started screenshotting some of these things to my, um, free under the table consultant, Matt, Matt Johnson, former co-host of the podcast. Nick Clason (13:36): May he rest in peace. Uh, but anyway, I was like, bro, what's going on here? And he's like, yeah. He's like, I was worried about that for you. Cuz they, those platforms, they, they don't typically like you using third party services. So these third party services, they may be able to tap into the api, uh, and, and like allow you this, this may be a thing that they're able to actually allow happen. But basically what he was saying is he's like, I don't know that that is your optimal strategy moving forward. Kind of a bummer because it's easy for you or me as a social media manager, but it's more difficult. Um, you know, and your views might go down. And so you have to weigh out like what's more valuable. And honestly, there is a moment where it being easier for you, especially if you're going to post at the volume that I have recommended you do. Nick Clason (14:26): Uh, that's a lot. And so sometimes you're like, I don't wanna have to always be thinking and remembering to like get on there and live post everything. I don't wanna have to input every single thing into to Google Calendar. You know, like I used to put every single thing into Google Calendar to remind myself to post, honestly. Now I just kind of know like, oh, I gotta post three. And so I, I go to just like a picture I took of like a calendar that I wrote it all out on and I just go off of that. I don't even have anything alerting me cuz it's so woven into my rhythm and habit of just posting. So anyway, here are some of my observations. First observation is this. Not one single video across all four of the platforms was like highest. Like, it's not like this video performed well and it performed well across all four. Nick Clason (15:15): Like when I say the highest performing one, like the highest performing one overall, um, I think was the, the Instagram reels one. And that was one about Fruity Pebbles, right? Meanwhile on TikTok it was, it only got a hundred views on Facebook reel, it got 218 and on YouTube shorts I had four. Then my lowest overall video was the one that got zero plays on on YouTube shorts, but it got 260 on Facebook, eight on Instagram reels and 144 on TikTok. So it, it's a lottery ticket we've talked about, right? Like you punch it in all four places because it might perform well over here and not well over there. And so similarly, the highest on Instagram, I could read you those same like stats across the line. And, and the same thing, like it's not the best performing video overall, it's just simply the best performing video on that platform. Nick Clason (16:10): The other observation I had was that, uh, of my overall, um, analytics, Facebook had the best watches and YouTube had the worst watches, okay? In the midst of this, like I said, right, I used it for 18 posts. In the midst of this, I did have a video that had 300 or 3000, um, 556 views on TikTok. And that was posted in the middle of this run of me using Metrical for two and a half weeks. It wasn't one of the metrical videos, it was one that I posted live. Cuz it was one of those that is like, um, it splits the room in two and you got a bunch of people and you decide like, do you know this song? Do you not know this song? If you know it, go to this side of the room and sing it. If you don't walk over here in shame and then it'll change to another song. Nick Clason (16:54): And if you know that one, you can move over to the room, but if you did know this one before, you have to move back over here. It was one of those and it went well for us, and we're gonna do more of those and, and shoot more of those and post more of those because it worked for us. And who knows, it may be a thing that we can lean into more. Uh, or it was just a one-off. You never know how those, how those work, right? So we're just gonna try some stuff. Um, my Facebook views remained consistent. It, I saw no appreciable difference between before Metric Cool after metric, cool during metric, cool. Whether I posted it via Metric cool, or whether I posted it manually. My Facebook views pretty much remained the same. Um, this was the most disheartening one before I started using Metrical. Nick Clason (17:37): Like right before I had videos within a week or 10 days of posting on YouTube shorts that got 2,400 views, 1,400 views and 634 views. There were some other smaller ones in there, right? But I had some pretty hefty and big views on YouTube shorts since posting on metrical, like pulling the plug and being like, I'm not using this anymore. The highest I've gotten on YouTube shorts is 49. I've had the majority of my views in single digits and I've had several with just no views at all. And so that's disheartening. And I have to, I have to start back over basically on YouTube shorts and I may have dinged myself permanently, um, or at least for a really long time by using Metric. All right, so three takeaways. What does this mean? So three takeaways. As of right now, I'm back to posting everything manually. Nick Clason (18:37): I'm not using the service scheduling service anymore. Perhaps, uh, that's takeaway number one. Takeaway number two, perhaps the native schedulers would, would be more advantageous. You know, I'm assuming if TikTok has a scheduler built into their website that they're gonna, um, promote and prioritize that more than they would like just a third party service like Metrical. Um, but like I said, right now I need to focus on growing our YouTube engagement back. And so therefore it's for me, I'm an all or nothing kind of person, so I could, yes, I know you're think you're listening, watching, like why don't you just schedule on on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, again, remember Instagram, I couldn't figure out a way to schedule. So for that one it would be like, I can schedule for Facebook and TikTok, but then I need a live post for Instagram and YouTube. Nick Clason (19:29): It just, it, I I I would rather do it all at the same time, um, to just know, like I post all four, boom, boom, boom, boom, and I'm done. And when I say all four, I only need to post in three places. I need to do TikTok, I need to do Instagram and make sure Facebook is toggled on, and then that's taken care of. And then I need to go do YouTube. So when I say four, it's three. It's still a lot, but it's not, you know, as many as that sounds. Uh, the other thing, the other, the third takeaway for me is it's definitely tedious work, but a non bot scheduling still has proven to be the best for engagement for me, for us, and for our ministry. So, big picture, um, I have been for years, um, and on this podcast, if you go back and listen, I have been promoting two to three posts per day, five to seven days a week. Nick Clason (20:21): And that's a hefty content load. Uh, one, a couple things like, you know, just let you know, I, so for example, I have like a lot of games over on D y m. Um, I'll link some of those in the show notes if that's something you're interested in going, checking out. But like some of my favorites are like a gif flashback game. You watch a gif for five to seven seconds and then you're asked a question about it to immediately recall it. Another one, my all-time favorite is called emoji phraseology and it's like emoji phrases. And so I have these emojis come in animated. And so one of the things we've been doing is I've just been taking those games and we've been playing them. Um, they're 10 questions each, but I use them as one singular piece of content. And so I, I film someone playing the game or someone trying to guess the emoji phrase, but then that also like all the animations or all the like icons or whatever, all on the screen, all at that same time, so the viewer can also watch it. Nick Clason (21:18): And so those have really proven helpful. Those and other like I've, I've gone on D Y M and gotten other games and just had like, film students playing those games. Like those each usually come with 10 questions and I can edit those down to be like one TikTok with 10 questions each. But I've decided to extrapolate those out. We've done that with other things. Like we've used like an ABC cheese game where you bite cheese, you know, and then make a letter and the other person has to guess. And instead of, I originally shot that with the intent of it being like a one, a one hitter, but it took so long and I was like, there's a lot of like funny laugh moments and like silly things happening in between that. Like I didn't want to cut those all out and I could use, I could go from one to 10 and that can really help flesh out my calendar. Nick Clason (22:05): So I've done that. Um, and that's proven pretty helpful for me in helping fill out that calendar. But all that being said, I'm personally debating on scaling back a little bit after. Um, currently I'm in the month of April. This may drop in May, but I'm currently in the month of April planning out my TOS and Instagram reels and stuff like that. And I'm doing three a day and I'm personally thinking maybe I can scale this back a little bit. Um, and scaling it back will help me on the edit side not have to be so frantic and quick with everything. Um, and then I might be able to focus more on quality content instead of necessarily quantity. Um, I've been doing two to three for about six to eight months now at this point. And so our platforms are sort of leveled out, stabled out. Nick Clason (22:49): We've grown, we've reached the people we need to reach. Now that we're there, maybe we can focus more on bringing like some quality content. And again, I'm the editor and in a lot of cases I'm on this side of the camera too. Like I am the person doing the talking as well. And so, um, you know, I I focus a lot of timer energy on one side or the other. And so that might mean if I'm focusing more energy on the editing side, I'm not focusing as much effort on the content delivery side. And that also needs to be really good too. The editing needs to be good, the content needs to be good. And so you can't have all, you know, you can't have all those things if uh, all those things need to be good. You can't have so many and a great edit and great content. Nick Clason (23:29): Sometimes you just gotta throw out not so great stuff. So I'm wondering about scaling it back a little bit and I'll let you know right on here. Like, you guys will be the first to know. I will be honest with you all the way through. I'll take you with me on the journey. Like I want, if you guys have questions, like I want this to be a place where like I just workshop what I'm doing and you're hearing what I'm doing. Um, however, lemme say this, going back into the analytics, um, on all my platforms was actually encouraging and helpful to me because I thought that this third party service metric flopped and tanked me and on YouTube it for sure did. But I, like, I hadn't looked at a single one of those Facebook stats until last night when I was preparing for this episode. Nick Clason (24:12): And so it was helpful for me. And let me just say this as a guiding principle, not for social media only though it definitely count, but also for other areas. Go back and look at the stats. I mean that's honestly, that's one of the things about journaling, right? Is like if you journal, you can go back and you can see this is what I prayed about a year ago and here's where I am now. And it's a completely different moment than you were even a year ago, you know, but where you are right now feels overwhelming and crazy and whatever the case might be. And so go back and look and remind yourself. That's why the Israelites often built monuments. They could go back, they could look and they could be reminded of where they were and then they could see how God had been faithful to them, to his people and how they could continue to take steps forward closer to him. Nick Clason (25:02): So that's just what I wanna say is help, what was helpful for me, I need to do that more. I'm always looking ahead, rarely looking back. So I just wanna encourage you, if that's something that's helpful, try and find a way to bake that into your regular rhythm as a social media manager, as a youth pastor, as a pastor, whatever your role is as you navigate this. But I just wanna remind you that what you're doing matters. You are trying to reach the people of God, um, and the people who are maybe even far from God through the means and methods that God and, and the world has allowed us. We can use these things to help spread the good news of the gospel. So blessings on you, blessings on your ministry as you continue on this. And as always, don't forget, stay hybrid.