13 Powerful Church Instagram Tips To Grow Your Following [2024]

In today’s age, social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and church Instagram are one of the key ways to reach more people with the gospel. Not only can you reach people in your city but you can also reach people all over the world.

However, make no mistake, it can be a huge challenge if you don’t have a good social media strategy for your church, especially on your church Instagram. 

If you’re hoping to get a better Church Instagram strategy and increase engagement for your church’s Instagram then you’ve come to the right place! 

In this article, I’m going to give you the most powerful church Instagram tips that you can implement today to increase traffic on your church Instagram, and to your church website.

Let’s get right into it!

What Is Instagram? 

Instagram is a social media platform that uses short-form video content and photos to connect with other people. Instagram is not only a way to connect with friends and family but also with your local community and people around the world. 

This is why most churches use Instagram. It allows you to reach more people with the gospel and bring awareness about your ministry and your message to those around your church.  

Is Instagram Right For My Church?

The first thing you need to know to have a successful church Instagram account is to determine who your church audience is. If the audience you are targeting is between 18-34, then Instagram may be a great place for your church to have an account.  

According to Statista, there are over 1.35 billion active accounts on Instagram, and Hootsuite says that 61.6% of those 1.35 billion users are between 18 and 35 years old. Of these, the ratio of men to women is about 50-50.

If your attendance is over 35, consider another platform like Facebook. Most of the practices here will very easily transfer over to your church’s Facebook, so don’t worry! 

Church Instagram Tip #1: When To Post On Your Church Instagram

It’s important to know when your target audience is browsing their Instagram feed. I know this question can seem overwhelming at first. Most social media management tools like Hootsuite already have this information integrated into their app. We will touch more on that later. 

To simplify the issue, USAToday in their article titled, “when is the best time to post on Instagram and other platforms” says that the universal best time to post on Instagram is 2 p.m. ET on Wednesdays. Specifically, it goes on to say that according to Hootsuite, the following are the other best times to post on Instagram (all times ET):

● Monday 2 p.m., 3 p.m., 4 p.m. 

● Tuesday 11 a.m., 12 p.m., 1 p.m. 

● Wednesday 12 p.m., 1 p.m., 2 p.m. 

● Thursday 2 p.m., 3 p.m., 4 p.m. 

● Friday 5 p.m., 6 p.m., 7 p.m. 

● Saturday 11 a.m., 12 p.m., 1 p.m. 

● Sunday 9 p.m., 10 p.m., 11 p.m

While Hootsuite gives excellent times to begin posting on your church Instagram account, the best time to post will always be dependent on the needs of your specific audience. 

As you grow your church Instagram account, watch when your audience is most active on your Instagram. When you have a better idea of when this is the case, then you will be able to post your content at a time when it will get the highest interaction rates. 

Church Instagram Tip #2: How Frequently You Should Post

It’s important to post regularly. You don’t just want to post on Sunday, rather you should be posting and grabbing the attention of your followers throughout the week so that when Sunday comes along they will be thinking about your church and not someone else’s.

It is best to post 3 to 5 days out of the week, one of those days should be the day before your church service. Posting the day before church service will serve as a reminder to your audience that they should be planning on engaging with your ministry on Sunday. 

If you are enjoying this post – you will really love our ultimate guide to church marketing titled, Digital Marketing For Churches: #1 Church Marketing Guide.

Church Instagram Tip #3: Fill Out your Church Instagram Bio 

Now that we understand who our target audience is and what times are best for posting let’s jump into some more powerful church Instagram strategies like your Instagram page’s bio. 

Here you want to be clear on who you are and what you are about. You want to fill in your Bio with things like: 

– Church name 

– Church website 

– Church address 

– Church mission statement 

– Days and times of your services and events 

Adding these to your bio can help your target audience know who you are and what kind of content you post. This can also help you rank on Instagram search results when people are looking for Chrisitan content within the app. 

Take the photo above for an example; they have their name, their website, an address, and a statement about the church. They are missing an address but in this church’s case, they have multiple campuses so the website can double as a campus finder. 

Your church mission statement can be a great tool to help people know more about your church’s core values and a great way to learn who you are as a church.

To dive deeper into the topic of mission statements check out our article titled: Church Mission Statement: How To Find & Write A Divine Church Mission.

Church Instagram Tip #4: Recycle Your Church Content 

When expanding your church marketing to a new social media channel, there is always the risk of running into overwhelm and burnout when you discover the amount of content needed to operate an Instagram account worth following. 

The most important thing you can learn how to do is to recycle your church content into your Instagram account. 

Don’t worry about recreating the wheel. People on your Instagram are not watching your sermons, youtube videos, or reading your blogs, – they are on Instagram. You can take content from any of these places and reformat it to fit your Instagram account.

Doing only this will save you tons of time and effort. 

Many church leaders feel like they are breaking some unwritten ‘rules’ or are cheating in some way if they don’t make fresh content for every platform they show up on. This could not be further from the truth. 

Save yourself the stress, recycle, recycle, recycle.

If you want to learn more on how to streamline your content creation process by recycling your content, check out our video titled, Content Strategy For Church: Reduce Your Workload & Increase Results.

Church Instagram Tip #5: Use Short-Form Content 

One of the biggest things on social media right now is short-form content. These are short clips of sermon videos that you already have from your weekly Sunday service. 

Most churches have a massive catalog of sermon videos on their YouTube or website; you can take these videos and cut them into shorter, easily-consumable videos to watch on Instagram.

I cannot tell you how many hours I have spent just scrolling and watching short 45 seconds to a-minute-long church videos; it is a powerful way to reach people you otherwise would likely never reach. 

To do this, you do not have to be the world’s best video editor or watch hours of long youtube tutorials. Today, there are plenty of amazing church video editing tools to help you make your videos.

Sermon Shots: We have found that Sermon Shots is a great tool that will help you make short sermon clips in 5 minutes or less from your existing long-form sermons. With sermon Shots, they even transcribe the video to text on the screen, saving you time and headache.

Church Instagram Tip #6: Audio Clips 

Similar to short sermon clips you can do the same with audio. Whether that is from a church podcast or last Sunday’s sermon. You can take the audio from these and layer them over stock footage like waves or sunrises. 

To do this, pick some free stock video footage that can be found on websites like videvo.net and have the audio layered over it and transcribed using tools like sermon shots. 

An example of this should look like something like this: youtube.com/sermon. This is only an example; yours can be much shorter. 

Church Instagram Tip #7: Bible Verses 

Another great way to recycle content is to find hopeful and meaningful Bible verses from websites like Bible Gateway and put them over a beautiful backdrop. 

Websites like Canva can be a great resource for this. You can also utilize rememberable quotes from past sermons in this way. This saves you time from trying to find brand-new content to post regularly. 

Remember, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel here! There is plenty of reusable content that you already have access to. Do not pull your hair out trying to figure out new things to post every day.

Church Instagram Tip #8: Align Content with the Vision of your Church 

It’s important to keep your main church vision consistent with your posts. You do not want to post a funny meme on Monday and a sermon clip on Tuesday; it is inconsistencies like this that will stunt growth on social media platforms. 

I have unfollowed Christian accounts because of this very reason; one day it’s an uplifting sermon and the next day it’s a new age quote that has nothing to do with Jesus. Remember to keep the main focus on Jesus and your church’s main values. 

Church Instagram Tip #9: Social Media Management Tools 

There are great resources to help you manage your various social media platforms in one place. No need to jump from one platform to the next! All this can be done in just one place. With tools like buffer & Hootsuite, you can also plan to post your created content and schedule it to post on certain days and times. Some even have tools to write captions in the app itself.

Church Instagram Tip #10: Social Media Engagement 

Another great way to grow and reach more people with the gospel is by engaging with people on your Instagram. You should respond and engage with those who leave positive feedback and comments on your content. This will encourage future engagement and help the algorithm to suggest your posts to other people and followers! The more activity on your posts, the more it will show up on people’s feeds. 

Church Instagram Tip #11: Church Hashtags

Adding church hashtags can be a valuable tool in growing your Instagram following. At the same time, you don’t want to add too many and spam your followers. Keep it short and add just a few under your caption that are related to your content.

Also, be aware that if you are using church hashtags that are the same as every other #church, you probably won’t get the full benefit of church hashtags. Feel free to try something new here.    

Church Instagram Tip #12: Tag Locations

Tagging locations can help reach more people in your city. The Instagram algorithm will favor posts that tag locations near the user. If you tag the location of your event or service, your posts will have a higher likelihood of showing up in your follower’s feeds.

Church Instagram Tip #13: ALL Social Media Leads To Your Website

One of the biggest mistakes church marketers make is to leave their audiences on social media. 

DO NOT DO THIS. 

The day Facebook has a bug in their code, a server goes down, or they decide you should no longer have a voice is that day you will realize that any audience on a social media site is NOT YOUR AUDIENCE. 

The larger marketing strategy for church social media accounts and church Instagram accounts is to siphon off as much traffic to your church website. This means including links for users to follow everywhere it feels natural. 

You should then offer compelling reasons for your audience to give you their name, email, and phone number on your website. This allows you to build a lasting relationship with YOUR audience. 

**Speaking of which, you should totally download our 100+ page Digital Ministry Marketing Guide at the bottom of this page!

…see what I did there?

Use social media as a way to grow an audience list that your ministry has full control of. 

This is the most reliable way to grow an audience list you will have access to over the long haul. 

If you want to learn more about why ‘your’ social media audience isn’t really your audience, check out our video titled: Church Social Media Strategy: The #1 Most Dangerous Church Social Media Mistake.

That brings us to the end of this post on church Instagram tips.

Managing your social media accounts doesn’t have to be confusing! The main focus (besides Jesus of course) is that you want to post regularly. Post content that is easily consumable for your viewer.

What church Instagram tip did you find most helpful? Let us know in the comments!