Over the Lenten season the team at Here I Am was able directly observe the differences in engagement on a private social media app (Here I Am) vs a public one (Facebook).
A client church of ours posted daily Devotionals during the forty-day Lenten season on both their public Facebook page with 700+ followers and their Here I Am app with 120 users. The same posts were made in both locations, a picture combined with a short devotional and question to the reader.
While one would assume that the platform with more followers would generate a higher rate of reach and likes, the opposite was true. The daily devotional on Here I Am received an average of 5.91 likes while the Facebook devotionals only received 1.02. On top of that, 25 unique users liked at least one of the posts on Here I Am.
Why such a stark difference between these two platforms?
Facebook is a complex social media giant that factors in every data point they have to create a curated feed for their user. According to this article from The Guardian (March 18), Facebook holds nearly 600 mb of data on each user (or 400,000-word documents worth!). This massive amount of information is used to keep users engaged in a manner beneficial for Facebook.
Diving into the data even further, the average “reach” (number of people that scrolled past the post) of the daily devotionals was only 82. This daily reach actually declined over the forty days as opposed to building up towards Easter. While the Facebook algorithm remains an ever-changing mystery, we can conclude from the research that it does not favor templated daily posts.
On the other hand, in the dedicated app page for that same church, they were able to reach all 120 users via push notifications, with almost 6 people liking each one. The home feed for every user always included the devotional, and the reach remained at 100% of users.
During a special time like Lent, a church needs to be able to reach their congregation in an effective way. In the case of a daily posting, Facebook or other large social media apps is not the right way to do this. The algorithm causes posts to be quickly drowned out in a sea of information.
A dedicated app like Here I Am makes it simple for a church and its leaders to effectively reach their congregation. This tool cuts through the clutter that other social media apps create and is essential for reaching people when their attention is being pulled in multiple different directions.
– Will
