Social media shares Easter with thousands

This year, Archbishop Colin Johnson delivered his annual Easter message in a new way – by YouTube video. At 6 a.m. on Easter morning, the Archbishop’s message of hope and new life appeared on the diocese’s website and social media channels.

“The world is not as it should be, but the world will not be that way forever,” Archbishop Johnson said in the video. “With the first light of Easter day, everything changed, because Jesus had been raised from the dead.”

To share that message more widely, the diocese turned to paid social media advertising, spending $50 on Twitter ads and $200 to boost the video on Facebook. Boosting a Facebook post guarantees that more people will see it in their news feeds, a tactic many organizations use to reach larger audiences.

Six days later, the archbishop’s message had been watched nearly 900 times, making it one of the diocese’s most popular videos. It was shared 89 times on Facebook, within the diocese and beyond, and received 17 comments – more than any previous post.

This success wasn’t due entirely to paid advertising. Of the nearly 40,000 people who saw the posts on Facebook and Twitter, about 7,200 were organic views, which means they weren’t the result of the advertising campaign.

While the goal of the ads was to encourage people to watch the Easter video, they also helped to promote the diocese’s presence on social media. The diocesan Facebook page accumulated three dozen new likes in the week following Easter Sunday, a significant spike compared with previous weeks.

In addition to sharing the archbishop’s Easter message, the diocese also continued its use of social media advertising to invite people to church. This year’s ads ran from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday with the message, “Christ has risen – celebrate with us! Find new life this Easter at your local Anglican church.” Each ad linked to the diocese’s Find a Church web page and featured a photo of a yellow daffodil.

For a budget of $250 split evenly between Twitter and Facebook, the ads reached nearly 60,000 people and received 457 interactions between the two platforms. In contrast to previous campaigns, Facebook users were more likely than Twitter users to click on the Easter ad.

Watch Archbishop Johnson’s Easter message on the diocesan YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/tordio135.