In this episode, host Rev. Ryan Dunn chats with guests Nathan Webb and Shane Russo about their innovative strategies for utilizing YouTube to grow their digital church communities. They dive deep into the tools, challenges, and unique approaches they leverage for successful content creation and audience engagement.
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In this episode
Rev. Shane Russo is the founder and lead architect of GoBe.church--an all-digital expression of church. He also is currently the lead pastor of Niles First United Methodist Church in Niles, Ohio. Check out the YouTube ministry @GoBeChurch
Rev. Nathan Webb, AKA "Nerd Pastor Nate", is the founding pastor of Checkpoint Church--an all-digital ministry for nerds, geeks and gamers. He posts regularly on YouTube at @CheckpointChurch
The Checkpoint Church viral video Nathan and Shane referred to is here:
Some other tools Nathan and Shane mentioned:
Related Episodes
Episode transcript
Ryan Dunn [00:00:03]:
Welcome to the Mycom Church Marketing Podcast, your resource for outreach communications, social media, and new technologies to bring your congregation into the digital age. I'm not the Reverend Dan Wunderlich. I'm Reverend Ryan Dunn. In case you missed the announcement, Reverend Dan has, I guess, in a sense, retired from my comm so he can continue to focus on his localized ministry and his family. I'm humbled to be stepping into this role as host for my comm following Dan. It was a number of years ago that I attended a training on social media outreach, and Dan was the presenter. And what he said and the ideas that he presented at that time made so much sense and were so inspiring to me that it set me on a new course for ministry. So I eventually left youth ministry in the local parish.
Ryan Dunn [00:00:54]:
And today, I serve in the digital parish as a minister of online engagement for United Methodist Communications. Now in that role, I've worked in digital content development, social media management, and for the past several years have hosted and produced both the Compass podcast and the Pastoring in the Digital Parish podcast. And while we found that there was so much overlap between my comm and Pastoring in the Digital Parish, it just made so much sense to combine them into one super podcast, so to speak. In fact, if you've been a follower of either mycom or pastoring in the digital parish, you've already experienced some of that cross pollination as I've been on Mycom previously, and Dan has been on Pastoring in the Digital Parish. We even shared episodes. So I'm excited for the course ahead, and I'm excited to get to this particular episode, because of this topic. We're hosting a panel discussion on YouTube for this episode. As a search engine, YouTube is more utilized than Yahoo, than Bing, than ask.com.
Ryan Dunn [00:02:03]:
As a content host, more people watch YouTube than those who watch cable TV. 45% of people watch or use YouTube daily. I'm one of them. And if you're listening to this podcast, there's a significant chance that you are one of those people as well. That for sure represents a lot of people that we could be reaching with our church, but many churches are somewhat YouTube challenged. Video content takes some effort and investment, and when you only get a dozen views in return, well, it feels deflating. So in this panel, we're talking with 2 United Methodist pastors who have found some ways to efficiently create video content for YouTube, and they've been able to figure out some secrets for getting the YouTube algorithm to share their videos with a wide audience of people, helping to spread a little compassion and some good news into the digital space. One of our presenters is reverend Shane Russo who planted a digital church called GoBe Church.
Ryan Dunn [00:03:06]:
You can actually find that online at gobe.church. He planted this church while pastoring a more, quote, unquote, traditional expression of church in Ohio. Our other presenter is reverend Nathan Webb, who often operates under the moniker nerd pastor Nate. Nathan founded the digital church called Checkpoint Church. It's a church for nerds, geeks, and gamers. They're fun to talk with. They're full of practical ideas for your church or ministry to bring a stronger presence to YouTube and maybe help the church at large subvert the algorithm of that platform for good. That's next on the Mycom podcast.
Ryan Dunn [00:03:54]:
We are talking YouTube on the my com podcast. Whereas YouTube is often referred to as the second most popular and most utilized search engine behind Google, which Google owns YouTube. So I'm not sure how that works. It's like Google just controls it all. But you search United Methodist Church on YouTube and the results are not necessarily happy results. At least if you're not in if you're not looking for, like, outrage videos about the United Methodist Church or something like that. So we are being joined by 2 United Methodist pastors who have invested quite a bit in YouTube and have seen growth on their YouTube channels that has translated into some growth in their church expressions as well. Shane Russo and Nerd Pastor Nathan Webb are here, And they're gonna help us imbibe in some or figure out some useful YouTube strategies where we can begin to subvert the algorithm a little bit for the good in sharing some, well, some goodness across the land.
Ryan Dunn [00:05:03]:
So let let's get into it. Shane, let's start with you. Can you first start, by telling us, like, what your ministry context looks like? What are you doing?
Shane Russo [00:05:13]:
Yeah. So, I my ministry context is twofold. I'm a a 2 point charge pastor, at a physical location and a digital church plant. East Ohio conference, this past July, so not not 2024, but 2023, our bishop appointed me to plant our 1st digital church plants. Really, we're, like, one of a handful in our Methodist system. Right? If if that because
Nathan Webb [00:05:39]:
I know.
Shane Russo [00:05:40]:
Yeah. And so, and so I'm I'm juggling both worlds of, like, an old, you know, over 100 150 year old physical church with a dwindling aging population, population and then doing completely online ministry, with the Gobi church. And our digital ministry hub, sort of the discipleship making, community making hub is on Facebook, which I'd rather it wasn't. I wish you were on Discord, but Facebook is where the people I reach just tend to be. They they have an aversion for Discord, which is why I like the ability to, like, hop over into Checkpoint and to to get my fix there. But so most of it is on, Facebook in terms of that, but probably my largest, I'd say audience potential comes from YouTube. And that is where, we've had probably the most consistent strategy and growth over the last year. We went I mean, actually, not even the last year, over the last 6 months because this really all started popping off in January ish.
Shane Russo [00:06:48]:
Yeah. So that's kind of the the quick and dirty of it all.
Ryan Dunn [00:06:51]:
Cool. Well, Shane name dropped Checkpoint Church. So, Nate, tell us about Checkpoint.
Nathan Webb [00:06:56]:
Yes. So, Checkpoint Church is a church plant starting into our 5th year. We started back in 2020 right in the midst of the pandemic, with a church for nerds, geeks, and gamers. We didn't realize at the time that we were gonna be digital, but pretty quickly we realized, yeah, we're kind of gonna be digital. And it made a lot of sense anyway considering the folks that we wanted to reach. Initially, we were online, maybe we should copy Comic Con, maybe we should try and do a board game cafe model, and then that year kind of foisted us online. And so we started to say, well, if the nerds, geeks, and gamers aren't at Comic Con, where are they? And the answer we found was a platform called Twitch. And so we started reaching people on Twitch, and then they wanted more than what we were doing on Twitch.
Nathan Webb [00:07:36]:
And so they said we need more time with you. And so we started to invest into Discord, as Shane mentioned a moment ago as our church building. And then, eventually, they said, okay. This is great, but we want more of the spiritual stuff. We wanna talk about stuff. We wanna dive into the discipleship of it all. And so we started to invest in YouTube at that point. I am very familiar with YouTube, grew up on it, digital native, had my own channels, you know, before that I've I've tried to make work.
Nathan Webb [00:08:03]:
And so it just made sense for us to get on there with a platform I was super familiar with and felt comfortable, running. We started to implement nerdy sermons over in that avenue and, started to explore it. And along the way, we built out a discipleship pathway where we intended it to be a funnel of people. The most people are gonna reach or finding us on Twitch, then they were gonna check out our church building on Discord, then they were gonna dive deeper into spirituality with us on YouTube. Beginning of this year, everything changed and everything kinda flip flopped because we went viral on YouTube, and we swelled there. And so our our funnel has kind of gone topsy-turvy, and it's become quickly, our our biggest avenue for reaching people, for the first time. And, yeah, I've I've I've sort of shifted our names a little bit to consumer, contributor, and cocreator spaces. And, I consider YouTube now to be almost a contributor space because we have such an active, comment community now where it's it was maybe where we were just kinda putting out advertisements, but now it's where people are engaging with us before joining our church building.
Nathan Webb [00:09:08]:
So it's a bit of an interesting twist in the model, but it's been an exciting one nonetheless.
Ryan Dunn [00:09:15]:
So, Nathan, let's just keep talking about what you're doing with YouTube then. So it sounds like you you've shifted strategy going into this year. How are you utilizing YouTube now?
Nathan Webb [00:09:27]:
Sure. So we we've used it a lot of different ways. We used it as our newsletter at one point. We were trying to get, content out to folks on a weekly basis of, like, here's where we're at. Here's what's going on this week. That didn't work particularly well, but we did try it. We've tried podcasts there. We still have a podcast that we're releasing every week over there, and that's going fairly well.
Nathan Webb [00:09:48]:
But where we've really found, our niche is in these things called nerdy sermons, which for people that are more familiar with YouTube, they're really video essays. They're really short video essays. So typically around 10 to 15 ministry. Happy, well edited, quick to the punch. We we have a great editor that Shane and I both share who does an exceptional job. And, we put out that kind of content to be really well and easily consumed. It's asynchronous. It's something that can then be engaged in other spaces, but that's the meat of what we're doing on YouTube.
Nathan Webb [00:10:21]:
Since we had a video go viral, like I said, everything kinda changed in our focus. And so now we're also trying to be a little bit more consistent with releasing shorts, which is, of course, the short vertical TikTok like content. Try to do that 5 days a week. So weekdays, I've started using more of the posts functionality as much as I can to try and engage with some of the community that YouTube wants me to use that feature for. But for the most part, it's been 2 pieces of content every single week, and then also the shorts content as close to daily as I can possibly get. And that's been the routine that we've rocked for quite a while since kind of hitting our stride early in 2024.
Ryan Dunn [00:11:01]:
When you say a video goes viral, is that, like, 10 times more views than the norm or more so, less so?
Nathan Webb [00:11:09]:
Yeah. So there's a there's a really good, I don't wanna shout out another church marketing podcast, but Brady's here, of of the church tools podcast does have a really good metric for this, and he calls it viral for me posts. And so if you have something that goes 10 x from your usual, then, yeah, he says that is a viral for me post, and it's something that should be celebrated, something that happens maybe 4 times a year, more often if you're lucky. But if you keep consistent, that's how that will go. What I mean whenever I'm talking about this viral video is not 10 x. I mean a 100 x. I mean a 1000 x. I'm bafflingly viral.
Nathan Webb [00:11:44]:
I think there's these elements of, like, true organic virality, and then there is, like, you know, just phenomena. There's something that doesn't even make sense. And so we had a video in particular that was just so abrasive in a way because it was something that Christians didn't wanna talk about or were ragging on, and we were viewing it in a positive light, and so it took off. And because of the negative press that it was already getting, the the the mixture of this, hatred and love at the same time gave it a certain sense of virality that was just insatiable for the Internet. And so, yeah, that's two answers. I think that 10 x is something that should be noted and celebrated. But what I mean is, like, this didn't we couldn't even comprehend the growth that we hit.
Ryan Dunn [00:12:28]:
Shane, going back to strategy, are you utilizing a similar YouTube strategy these days?
Shane Russo [00:12:34]:
Somewhat. Yeah. So a lot so a lot of that overlaps. We started so we started our our channel a year ago, and we started initially almost exclusively at with short form content. And and it was things that I was making that was specific for that. Like, I was making shorts for that. So whether it was me talking a point or I actually early in the early days of it when I was really I mean, I got a ton of views real early on in the 1st few months using a strategy of just putting text on a, like, a moving background and, like, having it having it come out and be read. And it was always just, like, some kind of weird random fact about people.
Shane Russo [00:13:18]:
Right? Psychological fact or emotional or whatever. And those actually got probably some of the most consistent engagement in terms of comments and stuff. I need to start doing those again. I think what happened was they stopped getting as much feed or as much as many views as they were, and I got disenchanted, and I just moved on to something else. Shorts has been and we're talking, like, multiple Shorts. At one point, I think I was putting up 4 a day. Now I'm putting up 2 a day on YouTube consistently. But funny enough, they're getting more consistent views across the board, but they're also I'm spending less time on them, so I don't know that they're as good as they were before.
Shane Russo [00:13:59]:
But because of my general growth overall with my long form content and and doing that stuff, they're getting consistently, like, more views. Like, we just hit this, after right at right at a year, we hit 400,000 views on our channel. Most of those the vast majority of those are short form content. So, yeah, that started. So my our strategy is I put out a sermon every week, and it's more of a traditional sermon than I mean, Nate's sermons are great. His nerdy sermons, he calls them video essays. That's fine. Call them whatever you want.
Shane Russo [00:14:36]:
It's it's still a sermon in my book. Right? And and but if you compare the 2, mine is mine is probably more like what you would see in a quote unquote traditional church.
Ryan Dunn [00:14:49]:
In the pulpit, but it's kinda like
Shane Russo [00:14:52]:
Yeah. I mean, I've I've done a lot with my background. Yeah. But it's it's, yeah. And I would say that so so we put one of those out a week, and then every day, 7 days a week, 2 2 shorts that are based normally off of that long form content or some long form content. I've I've chopped up hour long interview videos that I've done before and created, like, 2 months worth of shorts out of that and stuff like that. And social probably wouldn't be able to keep the consistency up with how frequently I do it with the demands of my time now if I didn't use some specialized tools for that. But, also, using those tools has cut down, again, sort of the micromanaging that I'm doing, which I know is different from what Nate does.
Shane Russo [00:15:38]:
But I've also not really noticed much of a fall off, but I'm constantly I'm constantly trying to experiment with exactly how what kinds of shorts are out there. So some of them are informational, some of them are just fun. But one of the main focuses for our channel from the beginning, especially for the short form stuff initially was to, connect with people, like build the community, not be trying to teach them or preach to them or disciple them exactly, but it was more online, tell us about you. And that's been, like, my overarching digital ministry strategy anyway. And then when you get them to like, once you get that investment both ways, then it becomes that time. And I know and that's not this too dissimilar to what's going on. Like, that's kind of the driving force behind a lot of it. But that YouTube was a very intentional space where we started off that way.
Ryan Dunn [00:16:33]:
So when you're talking short form video, especially taking, like, segments of your sermon, and and putting those out as short form video. Are you then using that short form video to invite people or even drive people towards the the longer content? And I ask this because most of our listeners here are engaged in an organization that is producing the long form content on a weekly basis in the form of a sermon. So are you kind of taking that sermon and and parsing it out into that short form
Shane Russo [00:17:07]:
concept. Intentional about it, that is what I do. But I will also say I've seen almost no evidence that people are actually jumping over to my my full video from my short stuff. Again, I I'd like to I'm sure there's studies and, like, metrics on this. But my just sort of anecdotal experience on our channel has been that people either come for short stuff or they come for long stuff. And the retention on my short form stuff is off the charts higher than my long form stuff anyway. Social, people come to my channel for the short things. I use the long form content because I want it out there, but also because it drives the algorithm.
Shane Russo [00:17:47]:
Like, having long form stuff that's getting views makes it so my short form stuff is more in people's feeds.
Nathan Webb [00:17:56]:
Okay.
Shane Russo [00:17:58]:
So I'd like in a perfect world, yes, it would feed them into that, and then that would feed them into the group and all of that. And that is, like that's the thing, but it's not working that way at the moment. So what I really need to be doing more consistently and more intentionally is is using marketing on the short form stuff as the channel that that moves people where I want them to be.
Ryan Dunn [00:18:20]:
So would you all say that there's still value in producing the the 20 minute long video even though it might get I'll just throw around numbers here, arbitrary numbers, but, like, 300 views whereas a short form video that could be 3 and a half minutes long might get 3,000 views. Is there still value in having that 10 to 20 minute video?
Nathan Webb [00:18:43]:
I think if you're getting 300 views on a sermon, you're doing fantastic. Yeah. No doubt.
Shane Russo [00:18:49]:
Yeah. No doubt. I think
Nathan Webb [00:18:50]:
maybe if you're getting You
Shane Russo [00:18:51]:
came out of a mega church already. That's probably more
Nathan Webb [00:18:54]:
the experience that most people are finding by just kind of dropping their sermons on YouTube. It's it's hard to get growth, and it's hard to find it. I think that there's an element of, what what do you want this platform to be, and how do you wanna use it? And so what I would encourage a lot of people that are creating that 20 minute sermon, if you wanna post it, cool. If you don't wanna post it, cool. But the question is, why do you wanna post it to YouTube? Are you posting it there because you want to create a YouTube audience? If that's the case, then go for it. But odds are, most people aren't trying to create a YouTube audience. They wanna get searchable. And so you're gonna wanna try and post videos.
Nathan Webb [00:19:31]:
You could even do chunks of videos instead of shorts and try and tag them around things that you want to be known for, answering questions. But if you're wanting to form a community around your shorts, odds are you're probably already doing a better job of that on Facebook and Instagram reels. And so the real question is why are you posting which content where? And and, like, what is the reason for your content on this space? And if you answer that question for yourself and you have an answer and you have a legitimate initiative behind it, then I'd say go for whatever feels right with your gut and with your vision that you've got laid out. But odds are, I would say there are a lot of churches that just don't even bother asking the question of, like, what is our strategy for this short form content? Why are we posting it in that space? It's the same reason why I often tell churches not to get on TikTok. Say if you wanna get on TikTok, send your pastor to TikTok. Mhmm. Yeah. The church is not desired there.
Nathan Webb [00:20:24]:
That's not what TikTok is for. Whereas if you're on YouTube, it's gonna be a little bit more professional. And so if your pastor's on YouTube, that might work, but your church could also have a really viable audience there. It's just a matter of what do you want behind that space.
Ryan Dunn [00:20:38]:
Well, Shane, the local church that that you're working with, if they were starting to express a want to build out a a YouTube presence, what would you use to kinda feed that want? Or how would you justify that church moving on to YouTube?
Shane Russo [00:20:57]:
Well, interestingly, my first foray in this, like, when I'm in my 4th year at this church and and early on, I actually was growing their YouTube presence. I've stopped doing that because I just don't have the time to do it do it all. And we had gotten up close to, like, 300 subscribers or something church was all organic, you know, all, with no no promotion, no anything like that. So, I mean, but for them, their their average worship attendance is online 35. So we had an audience there of 10 times what they normally do, and I it was all long form. I did hardly any short well, actually, no, that's not true. I did the, I did the sort of get getting to know you stuff over there, and we got a lot of views that way too. So, actually, the strategy was very social, but that isn't I was doing that to both sort of learn and to get it out there and see what what was working, what wasn't, while also doing some other things.
Shane Russo [00:21:52]:
For them, That is not the strategy I would use for them to to drive anything. I use something different with them that is strictly driven by Facebook and community groups there. Things that already exist, that have had an actual tangible physical impact on the on our location there. The strategy is completely different. Honestly, if anybody even noticed that I'd stopped posting to that channel a year ago, which nobody has. Nobody's literally said anything to me about it. If they had, I would have told them, I don't think this is the best use of my time or our time. I think the a better use of our time for this location, for this church is to do this thing over here.
Shane Russo [00:22:35]:
Now now having said that, go back to what Nate said about why are you posting the things that you're posting. Are you trying to grow an audience? Are you trying to grow a community? Are you what is what are you trying to do? And that will dictate why and how you post things there. I think a lot of churches use it for two reasons. 1, they either go live there in lieu of Facebook, right, which I see that a lot, and or they use it mostly as a repository for their stuff so that they can point people to some some old sermon that they did, which is not. That that's fine. That's there's value in using it as a collection site. You know what I mean? But I think I think I'm not sure how I'm not sure how I would tell my physical church that we should use YouTube other than how we we I started using it with it in the beginning, and that was as a, by posting posting our sermons, but also, posting a lot of the getting to know you short form. I would probably use a very similar strategy that I'm using with Goebi.
Shane Russo [00:23:42]:
Church, honestly, but the results would be completely different because we don't have the other parts of the infrastructure set out to absorb that.
Ryan Dunn [00:23:51]:
Well, I've come across both come to cross both of your existing YouTube presences. And what I kind of appreciate is that there are plenty of videos that have like triple digits in terms of views accented by several videos that have 5 digits or more of, of views. And I believe you can correct me if I'm wrong. I believe that you are posting plenty of videos with no expectation that it is gonna get the 5 digits or more views. That you're gonna continue doing these videos that, that drive the the triple digits knowing that that's all they're they're gonna get and that there's value for that. But have you noticed any commonalities in the videos that have taken off, so to speak, in the videos that you've produced that have hit, like, the 5 or more digits in views.
Nathan Webb [00:24:43]:
Yeah. For for us, it always has to do with controversy. And so that was kind of what I was getting at with, with the element of the the one video that had Christian saying real bad things about it, and then we were kind of a breath of fresh air for fans of this show. That was birthed out of kind of the opposite of controversy and the controversy existed before us. And then we stepped in and said, well, actually, and, and sort of were a beacon of light for people that wanted to hear a pastor's perspective in a positive view. And so that's our best performing video by far. But before that, our viral for me post, our 10 x posts, we're still along that same line of, like, what's really popping off in pop culture, which is what our focus on is on for our video essay nerdy sermons. And so that worked really well for us.
Nathan Webb [00:25:30]:
What could shock somebody to say, I can't believe a pastor is talking about Cult of the Lamb. Right? Like, I can't believe a pastor is talking about this anime or that movie. And so often, I'll try and focus up a little bit on, like, what's making the Christosphere angry right now. Because odds are if Christians are pearl clutching, there's there might be some good fruit in there that I can, tap into, teach a valuable lesson, maybe change a few minds of the pearl clutchers, but definitely be a beacon of light for those that are tired of being told that they're bad because of shows that they watch and games that they play. And so that was a real, like, formative moment for us was seeing that correlation and saying, well, let's see how can we continue to tap into that as a means of these videos doing better, performing better, and reaching a wider audience. I'd say it's not tried and true. We had one that randomly went well for Pokemon concierge. No clue why that one did so well as it did.
Nathan Webb [00:26:28]:
It was certainly online not to say that I was phoning it in, but, you know, it's a 40 minute 5 episode show, like, 5 minutes at a time. It was it was just a nice pleasant easy breezy show that I was like, this will be an easy nerdy sermon, And it wound up really tapping into people that cared about the shows. It's hard to guess even still, so I wouldn't say there's online an expectation behind any of them. But there is a, like, I know what's probably going to work well and what's gonna be kind of just another good, nerdy sermon.
Ryan Dunn [00:27:01]:
Shane, you generally don't have a problem saying things like they are. Do you court the controversy too? Do you poke the bear some times intentionally?
Shane Russo [00:27:08]:
I resemble that remark. Second of all, I was actually sitting over here going, like, Nate really does not wanna name which video popped off for him. And I'm sitting here going, he's, like, going out of his way not to name it. I love it. How many views does that one have, by the way, now?
Ryan Dunn [00:27:22]:
Is it, like
Nathan Webb [00:27:23]:
We're almost at 200 k.
Shane Russo [00:27:24]:
Yeah. Okay. Just about
Ryan Dunn [00:27:26]:
I'm gonna link it in the show notes. So it's
Shane Russo [00:27:28]:
Oh, it's
Ryan Dunn [00:27:29]:
No way around it.
Shane Russo [00:27:30]:
It's funny too because the person the the level 2 member that did, like, part of the with the scripture reading in that, they were, like, they're, like, oh my goodness. That room is gonna see me. But yeah. So the yes. Actually, very similar to to Nate. It's controversy, but where his is online, what is irritating Christians in sort of the gaming nerdy realm, Mine is what is what is irritating Christians in the political sphere, the social sphere, the I mean, his is social too, but I mean, like, like, social justice, sphere. Our channel my whole ministry I shouldn't say my whole ministry, but a big hallmark of my ministry is debunking, like, very conservative theology and world views and, like, giving a space for those who believe differently to know that it's okay to do that and you can be a Christian and do that. And so all of the shorts and and stuff that have ever gone viral for me have been things that come like, directly and sometimes abrasively, countered something that was popular.
Shane Russo [00:28:36]:
I am a 100% convinced that if I spent even just a little bit of time paying attention to what's going on currently right now and making sure it's based on that very direct in opposition of some of these things, I would I would get, I would get more views. I'd get more followers. My thing is is the reason why I haven't done that is just because I haven't wanted to yet spend the energy, spend the energy investing in the responses. Right? And I am of the mindset that do not put something on the Internet that you don't want to engage with. Right? I hate fake posting and and doing that, dropping, some kind of bomb and then just walking away and letting letting the the pieces fly where they that is irresponsible. Right? So if I'm gonna put this stuff out there and and hold to that and wanna engage in that and actually really foster the community that I say I wanna foster, would that mean it's going back and forth with some folks sometimes. I have to invest in it, and I just haven't wanted to invest that kind of emotional energy into it yet. That's not to say I won't because I'm real close to just going, you know what, y'all? Let's go.
Shane Russo [00:29:45]:
Let's just do it. Right? And this happens almost I feel this way almost after every June. After every pride season I put out, and I get a bunch of yahoos talking about my head looking like an egg, you know, because they can't come up with anything original. Although, there was one real good one this year where they were, like, good to see that all the king's horses and all the king's men put them back together. I actually laughed out loud at that one. I was online, kudos to you. That was a good way to put that. So yeah.
Shane Russo [00:30:10]:
But it's controversy. Right? We we tap into separate elements of it, but it's all what are Christians saying that is isolating themselves off from the rest of humanity and the rest of Christianity? Like, I wanna talk to the rest of them. Like, you can have your bubble, whatever, but just know that I'm gonna be ministering to the folks outside of the bubble and letting them know that it's okay out here. It's fine. It's better than fine. It's good to be out here. So but that is the commonality through every single one of them. Every single one has had some element of irritating a conservative.
Ryan Dunn [00:30:47]:
I I brought up some of those viewership numbers earlier to note that y'all are not just, like, going out there for the views. Like, every every video is not a outrage video or a controversy video that there's something deeper to be said there.
Shane Russo [00:31:02]:
Correct.
Ryan Dunn [00:31:03]:
And that it's not just about courting the views.
Nathan Webb [00:31:06]:
Well, it should also be noted that, like, even channels that have grown like ours have, if I post a video that's completely disconnected from anything we've ever done before, I'm gonna get a couple dozen views. Yep. At most. Like, that's gonna be that's gonna be the true base of our audience that's gonna say, you know, out of these 35,000 people, I'm gonna have 50 that are willing to click on a random new video that's not in our usual format, usual thumbnails, usual SEO. If none of it feels familiar, then YouTube's only gonna serve this to a really small portion of my audience. If they only see it and they don't interact with it any more than they normally would, it's not gonna get sent to the rest. And so I'm still kind of beholden to, like, what I want to do anyway and what needs to be done that we're doing consistently. But that's not to say that I'm not still very much in experimentation phase.
Nathan Webb [00:31:53]:
And we're gonna have things that are not gonna work as well and that we're gonna drive for a little while. And then we're gonna have our things that we know we need to keep doing because we've got the audience that trusts us at this point.
Shane Russo [00:32:03]:
I also wanna be clear, though, as you pointed out, I'm not putting out I don't generally put out videos that are argumentative against the point or the people that I that I disagree with. Right? It's usually it is usually argumentative and disagreeing, but it's more so in a way that is targeted to the people who who need to hear that it's okay not to believe this thing. So it's not online, and and that's another reason why I haven't really embraced this place.
Ryan Dunn [00:32:32]:
Here's why you're wrong. Yeah.
Shane Russo [00:32:34]:
It's saying Okay. And that's why I haven't embraced the controversial mentality online, totally, like, to say, you know, like, pastor Paul said this thing this week. Here's why that's wrong and what you should believe instead. I would go viral all the time if I did that. In fact, I'm gonna put that in my pocket just in case things don't work out. But, but, I mean, it's more like, hey, I've seen this idea floating around the Internet. I don't think this is healthy, and here's what we can do instead. Right? And so it's still controversial, and it's still gonna pick at the same people who already are not happy about that media.
Shane Russo [00:33:07]:
But I do it in an edifying, uplifting, building way rather than I'm tearing down this person or this. You know what I mean? So, it is controversial, and it taps in all that, but it's not it's not intentional. Why didn't the camera go? It's not you know what I mean? So it's not intentionally, like, trying to be
Nathan Webb [00:33:26]:
I think it goes back to what we were saying about knowing your audience and knowing the intention of the space that you're on. And so I I think I can speak, for Shane, and I can definitely speak for myself here in saying that we're going into this thing as church planters. Mhmm. I do not consider myself a televangelist. I do not consider myself a prophetic voice. I'm not trying to do this thing that is to to boost my own ego. But instead, I'm here to be a pastor amongst these people. And so that was an important differentiation that I made right from the get go is, like, this is Check Point Church.
Nathan Webb [00:33:57]:
This is not Nerd Pastor Nate. And so sometimes it may feel like an ego thing that I have a moniker online of Nerd Pastor Nate. But in fact, that was very intentional to divide myself from the community we're creating and then the content creator for lack of a better term. Sure. I am a content creator, and I do create content for Checkpoint. But it's very important to me that I differentiate between those ministry, between what's actually marketing, and between the people that I'm trying to reach. And so if I'm only going out there and poking the bear, then there are there are great TikTokers that do that exact thing, and they're great televangelists. They're great missionaries.
Nathan Webb [00:34:32]:
They're great this. But I'm here to be a pastor to Checkpoint. And so the the the work of marketing that I'm doing is very intentional because I want to reach people that would want to be a part of Checkpoint. Not that wanna think that I'm a great prophet and think that, wow, how brave of you to speak out, for this TV show. I don't care about that. I want people to say, Checkpoint has a pastor that is serving this congregation towards a community that welcomes people that like this TV show.
Shane Russo [00:35:00]:
Still has to leave the TV show. Have an hotel. Okay. Have an hotel.
Nathan Webb [00:35:05]:
So, yeah, this this whole argument there is, like, what are we doing? Why are we doing it? And if you can answer that question, almost all of the rest falls into place.
Ryan Dunn [00:35:15]:
This is the MyCOM podcast. We're talking about building a YouTube strategy for your ministry with Shane Russo and Nathan Webb as a people pleasing any gram 9. When we start talking about, not being afraid to go to the controversial subjects, I get a little bit scared about, you know, my ability to grow a YouTube channel, particularly because I think about the amount of energy that I'm gonna have to invest in moderating the comment section. Have any tips, tricks, ideas that you utilize in moderating your comment section?
Nathan Webb [00:35:52]:
Absolutely. The the biggest one the biggest one for me and the biggest, like, mind shift that I needed was, somebody referred to negative and toxic YouTube comments one time as vandalism. And ever since I heard that, it's like, I can delete it. I don't have to read this. I shouldn't feel guilty that I'm censoring somebody's voice. No. This is my church building. This is my church space, and somebody has come in here and vandalized it.
Nathan Webb [00:36:19]:
Somebody's thrown a rock through my stained glass. Somebody has spray painted the side of my church, and I don't have to tolerate that for free speech. And so that was an important differentiation for media, like, our con there there there are comments that I'm going to engage with that are toxic. And then there are some that I'm gonna delete and feel no guilt about banning people, deleting people from my space. That felt so strange at first, but that's something that the more I've gotten accustomed to it, the more that I've been capable of doing it. But that is the big mindset shift for media, like, can you view toxicity? I'm not talking about all feedback, even constructive criticism. Can you view toxicity as vandalism and say, let's get out the soap and sponge and get rid of this?
Shane Russo [00:37:05]:
Yeah. Ours is very similar, in that vein. It was, it was really early on where I was I was differentiating between like, I will sometimes let things that are personal sort of attacks on me, specifically. Like, I almost never delete those egghead comments because they're usually, I'll actually come back with something online, oh, that was so original online, thank you for thank you for noticing. It's very odd, you know, it's very, you know,
Nathan Webb [00:37:33]:
some extra pressure. Into a quilt or something someday. Right.
Shane Russo [00:37:35]:
It's gonna be put them on socks or something. It'll be great. But so sometimes I'll let those go. It just depends. But usually, like, the the milder ones like that. If it's a comment that is a direct, like if if it's a comment that's an attack on whatever position I'm holding, that those stay. Those almost always stay. And I will engage with those just online, but if it's a toxic, like, attack on the community or and here's the way I view it.
Shane Russo [00:38:00]:
So he views it as vandalism. That's a great way to view it. I view it like this. I would never be allowed to walk into somebody else's church building on a Sunday morning and start just in the middle of it all, just start spouting off all the craziest nonsense. Tell them how terrible they are, how how invaluable as humans they are. Like, I would never be allowed to they would not only would they ask me to leave, I might get arrested, and if I'm in the South, I might get shot. So, you know, okay. That was a generalization about the South, but you don't see that crap happening in the North is all I'm saying.
Shane Russo [00:38:33]:
But but truly, we can't do that. We would never allow that in a physical space, so how dare we allow that? And and especially because these spaces in general are being intentionally crafted to be safe or, the marginalized communities that I'm trying to reach. Right? And so, and I say that. That's plastered everywhere. Like, you don't you can say what you wanna say. You can engage how you wanna engage, but that doesn't mean that everything is going to be you don't you there is no free speech on this channel. There's freedom to engage, but there's a clear line. And if you go over that line, then you can take that.
Shane Russo [00:39:12]:
And there are lots of other channels out here that will take what you're selling. But that's not here because this is for the LGBTQ community. This is for people for racial justice. This is for, you know, environmentalist. This is for progressive Christians. This is a place for us to feel safe to explore these things further and deeper and to be more like Christ. And if your goal here is to be counter to that, then there's listen. The the world was built for you.
Shane Russo [00:39:40]:
So, you know, you can have fun over there, but it I don't need to keep that on here. I don't want people coming onto my channel thinking they're going to be safe and then seeing some something that immediately targets them personally. That's just never gonna happen. And so I I have less of a concern about doing it, and I always have, but that does come with people going, well, I thought I thought you were inclusive. Like, yeah. We are inclusive, but that doesn't mean we that you can just be any old kind of way here. There's a difference between being accepting and inclusive and being a doormat for your bad theology and ideology. You know what I mean?
Ryan Dunn [00:40:21]:
Okay. Yeah. That's helpful stuff. I'm I'm gonna ask you about tools online a little bit, particularly Shane. I'm interested in how you're scoring together 2 short videos a day, but, in the meantime, has there ever been an idea that you've had that you were gonna take to YouTube that you thought was just gonna take off and it didn't? Every podcast.
Shane Russo [00:40:43]:
I don't know why. I don't know why podcast just don't
Nathan Webb [00:40:46]:
work for for my my demographic that I'm wanting to reach. I love podcasts, and so I have that. But, like Yeah. YouTube has the podcast feature, and I was like, cool. They're gonna incentivize us. And if we use their new feature, they're gonna be like, great. We'll boost you to the top. And just not really.
Ryan Dunn [00:41:03]:
Take it off.
Nathan Webb [00:41:04]:
I always wanted to be more engaging, and they never have been. So that's definitely the biggest one that just doesn't work. And then online too. Really online and podcasts are the 2 things that haven't worked well. If I go live from my phone on YouTube, it works pretty well. If I go live from my computer on YouTube, I might as well, be talking to the people in this room with me. Like, it's it's pretty pointless. So I don't know if what that is or why they don't work, but those are the things that have fallen pretty flat.
Shane Russo [00:41:31]:
Yeah. I'd live is definitely one of those for me too. I'm still trying to figure out how to how to make that work, but I've never gotten any traction there even with the audience that I have. It's and and part of it is because of what the lives that I have done, like, people. I wish it were different, but people are generally not that interested in in doing a worship service that is not already connected to, like, an actual church. And even then, I just said actual church, a physical church. Good lord. What's wrong with me? See, look, I don't even I don't
Nathan Webb [00:42:05]:
talk to Tom. Here comes
Ryan Dunn [00:42:06]:
the edit. Yeah.
Shane Russo [00:42:06]:
Yeah. I gotta remove that. Make sure that does not get in the edit. But yeah. So so there's that. I think and early on when I was experimenting with the getting to know you things, I also used that same kind of format for some racial justice pieces that did not they just it part of it was that it was early. The other part that it was not that. The quality wasn't that great, but, also, I just don't think that time that, at that, yeah, at that time, it was something that was interesting to folks.
Shane Russo [00:42:39]:
I know I could do it differently now and do it better and do it around, you know, probably June February, and it would get a lot more traction. So part of it is just timing. Right? I think I was trying to do it in August, You know, like and there were no there were no controversies around that at that time. Right? And so I think the things that have flopped have been timing based and also just, I think the tool is better utilized. It's live is a good feature, and and I've seen people have success with it. But I think most of those channels have have very specific types of content that they post that is conducive to a live audience. Most other YouTubers that are popping off are not doing lives as a general part of their their strategy.
Ryan Dunn [00:43:34]:
Well, let's talk about tools for success then. And, Shaina, I'm really you piqued my interest with talking about doing 2 shorts a day. What kind of tools are you utilizing that helps you produce in that kind of volume?
Shane Russo [00:43:46]:
Well, in the way I'm doing them now, I think I think Nate uses the same tool. We just use it slightly differently. Again, he invests a little bit more time, I think, into curating them. I I've noticed it in the in the quality of his shorts specifically because they they all make much more sense sometimes than mine do. But Opus Clips is, is the tool that I use, and it's an AI, sort of driven tool where you just put in your your long video. Actually, you can just put your YouTube clip, like, link there, and then tell it some parameters, have it, you know, like, have a template that you've formulated or use one of theirs, and then tell it this is the this is what I want, in terms of length and all of that. And then, you know, a few minutes later, it'll come back with, you know, anywhere up to 20 or 30 clips, and then you can go through each one of those and edit those down further. Now, I generally don't do that that often.
Shane Russo [00:44:43]:
I will look at them and make sure, like, they make some sort of sense, but I'm I'm less interested in them at the moment telling, like, having a beginning, a middle, and end, and that sort of thing. And but I need to do better at that because right now, that is the place where, most of the views, most of the engagement is happening. And so crafting those in such a way that every one of them has a call to action, that would that would be very beneficial. But that's how I do it is and then I'm able to post those across all of my platforms that I use, but specifically YouTube and and and schedule those out. And so that that tool also has the ability to schedule out, right natively, but that's not necessarily the best way, I I think, but it gets me what I'm trying to do. So, it's it's how I'm able to do it that quick. If I had to download every one of those and upload them individually, that would take church, much more time, and I just don't have that time to dedicate right now to doing that. But is that's the tool I use and I love it.
Ryan Dunn [00:45:41]:
Are you pulling those clips from the 15 minute sermon that you're doing?
Shane Russo [00:45:44]:
Yeah. I just I just what I do is after I upload my my long term my long term my long form video, my sermon, I just take that YouTube link and put it right into the web browser for Opus Clips, and then it and and tell it what exactly, like, all the parameters, and then it does the rest. Now, it doesn't always pick sometimes, it doesn't pick the greatest and and it tells you, like, too, like, what it thinks the quality of these are and why and how maybe you can improve or whatever. Some of that's very good. Some of it's, like, and some of the videos it picks are just trash. For the most part, like, it, I mean, it's very important about the quality of the content you put in. Right? If you're putting in trash videos, you're not gonna have great clips. Right? So part of that is making sure that my long form stuff is as good as it can be, so then the short form stuff makes sense.
Ryan Dunn [00:46:35]:
Alright. Nate, you're doing a lot of nodding.
Shane Russo [00:46:37]:
One one rule before what that has done for my long form stuff, though, is just changed how I write it in ways that it's more pocketed to so that I actually find myself writing in clips sometimes to say, like, oh, this would make a nice clip, you know. And so I don't do that on purpose, but I have noticed probably over the last few months, it's getting more and more like that, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Yeah. I'm not I'm
Ryan Dunn [00:47:01]:
not sure why.
Nathan Webb [00:47:02]:
Alright. We're gonna get to Nate, but then I have
Ryan Dunn [00:47:04]:
to ask you, are you consistently disappointed in that what you think is gonna be the clip? Opus clip is not pulling out.
Shane Russo [00:47:11]:
No. I can see that. It usually does. It usually it usually
Nathan Webb [00:47:13]:
Okay.
Shane Russo [00:47:14]:
It usually will let it put it in there.
Ryan Dunn [00:47:17]:
Alright. Good for you.
Nathan Webb [00:47:19]:
Yeah. My stuff does not pull out my favorite clips. I I I really the nerdy sermons don't work for Opus. We've done several of them, but it tries to draw out the pop culture stuff because it recognizes keywords. And so it's gonna see he's he's talking about She Hulk. She Hulk's a show. I can find that on the Internet. And so it's gonna pull out those naturally.
Nathan Webb [00:47:38]:
But the last thing I want is a 60 second clip of me explaining the plot of She Hulk. Like, that's not my goal Yeah. With our with our content that I wanna create. And so I find myself often, like, butting heads with Opus. I do really like what Opus can do. By far, OpusClip is way better at editing our podcast. And so we put out a a, like, news show every single week. And so it's 6 segments of news and then a game show and then 3 more segments of news and then some, like, upcoming things.
Nathan Webb [00:48:07]:
And so it's already so super segmented that I can pop it into Opus. It clips them pretty much, and then I just take it and tweak it a little bit in the editor. And, it makes phenomenal clips of all of the segments, without with really very little work on my end. So in that way, it's huge, but there's some content that I think performs better and some that doesn't. It really does a good job with sermons too. If I go and preach somewhere IRL, then it does those pretty well and does the tracking for them. I did see Descript recently started doing this as well, and they now have an AI that's built into it that looks for shorts, and we'll try and find the best shorts out of whatever video you edit into Descripts. Everybody's doing it in some way, shape, or form.
Nathan Webb [00:48:49]:
And and, as, my friend Jason Moore often likes to say, right, AI today is the worst you'll ever see it. And so, this is always gonna get better and always gonna improve. There's gonna be another platform coming out there. So, the more we can use the platforms to help alleviate some of the stressors of the time consumption of the ministry, the better. But I will say a tool that I just wanna name real quick is just using YouTube. Like, go into the settings and actually use YouTube, because they will reward you for using everything that they've got there. It doesn't matter if you don't have anything to put in a card, come up with a card. You need to be using the cards.
Nathan Webb [00:49:30]:
Doesn't matter if you want an end screen, Use the end screens because they're gonna incentivize people that use that. Add in the transcript if you can. Use the description. Use tags. Fill up those 500 tags. Like, whatever you wanna do, find a way to use all of the elements of YouTube, and you will be amazed, at how it will reward that kind of full use of their own suite that they have built into it. They have a a a new thing for thumbnails where you can test thumbnails, a, b, and c. And so I'm gonna be testing thumbnails partly because I wanna know what performs best, but also because I know YouTube's gonna say, hey.
Nathan Webb [00:50:07]:
One of our creators is using our custom thumbnails thing. Let's push them a little bit further. And so the more that you can work with YouTube, the more that I feel like they will work with you. Using posts, using polls, taking the maximum capacity of a platform is always gonna make the platform learn you and trust you a little bit more as a creator on that actual platform.
Shane Russo [00:50:30]:
Mhmm.
Ryan Dunn [00:50:30]:
I have this ongoing theory behind social media strategy, and YouTube isn't part of social media platform. And that all these platforms or apps want users to stay on their apps. And so if we adopt that mindset of, well, how do we create content that's gonna feed the monster of the algorithm that wants people to stay within this app? We're going to increase our presence there a bit more. So yeah. And that feeds right into that. If you're using their tools, they're seeing that you're investing and trying to get people to use their app a little bit more. Totally makes sense. Well, we are about out of time, but any last tools that you wanna offer for the budding YouTube maker, creator, contenter out there?
Nathan Webb [00:51:15]:
I don't remember which one Shane uses. I use one of the APIs that's built into it called TubeBuddy. And so that would be a good idea if you wanna invest in one of them, and just kinda take advantage of the things that they offer. That's the one that I have. I have a TubeBuddy pro account that helps show me how my video is performing SEO wise, so that's search engine optimization. And so there's only so much stuff that YouTube tells you. They do tell you quite a lot. I highly recommend understanding your analytics as well.
Nathan Webb [00:51:42]:
But TubeBuddy, is gonna plug in there and show you some things that they don't, and show you some options that they might not, do the math for. So highly recommend finding some kind of plug and play, something to work with YouTube to better understand it.
Shane Russo [00:51:58]:
Yeah. I use, in that vein, I use vidIQ. It's it's the one I use, and I have a pro account for that. And one of the things I love about that is being able to use their keyword inspector to try and find the keywords, and the tags and things like that that are that are high ranking that will help, things, help things sort of grow and stuff. But they give you, like, they give you all the good analytics and stuff, and they have also an ability where they may get very seamless to optimize videos that you have up, like, you can just analyze a video, like, how, like, you have it out there whether the thumbnail, the description, like, all that stuff, and it will analyze and tell you these are things that you could improve that might improve the the the, reach of your video. And so, yeah, that that's the one I use. I and yes. But whether it's that, I used to have a TubeBuddy account.
Shane Russo [00:52:50]:
Like, something like that, they're gonna they're gonna go a long way in helping helping make that happen.
Ryan Dunn [00:52:59]:
Cool. And any last pieces of advice in general for our budding YouTube creator out there?
Shane Russo [00:53:07]:
Yeah. I have I have one, and this is specific to church folks, to churches who want to get into this space. If you're going in trying to be a successful YouTuber, you will fail because it takes a completely different mindset, for what you're trying to accomplish. If you're trying to make disciples for Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, that's going to require you to behave differently and to engage differently with folks than, say, mister Beast. Although, I would I would argue that he's done a lot of good in the world. But my point is if you're trying to be a successful YouTuber, that is different than being a successful Christian.
Nathan Webb [00:53:45]:
That's good stuff. I don't have anything to add. I feel like that's that's
Shane Russo [00:53:48]:
No. No. That's nice. It
Nathan Webb [00:53:50]:
it sums up well. My theory that you just gotta you gotta you gotta know what you want from this platform. Mhmm. And know the know the why behind what you're here for and then have a plan for what's next. And so I think that YouTube could be a viable community platform. For us, it's Discord. For Shane, it's Facebook. But knowing where you want people to go is also huge.
Nathan Webb [00:54:09]:
And we could have a whole, other podcast talking about just analytics and how to read those. So feel like I've got plenty more, but the if the juice is worth the squeeze of a couple minutes is the question because there's there's plenty more to be said.
Ryan Dunn [00:54:23]:
We're gonna table that for a future episode of the MyCOM podcast. But Shane and Nathan, thank you so much for joining us, for leading us through your experiences, and for making my first episode here in this new foray, so comfortable and informative. Really appreciate you both. My friend. First, my comm episode is a wrap. Thank you for taking this journey into the wild, sometimes wonderful world of YouTube with me. I can recommend some other episodes if you'd like to dig further into this topic or a related topic. In fact, 2 of our most recent episodes in the Mycon podcast are quite relevant here.
Ryan Dunn [00:55:03]:
The episode about digital storytelling with Sabrina Joy Stevens is gonna help us tell good stories online. And then the episode about enhancing sermon videos with my friend, Catherine Price is gonna help level up your YouTube presence. You can find these episodes along with other episodes and episode notes at resourceumc.org/mycomdash podcast. Of course, resource UMC is your one stop destination for leaders throughout the United Methodist Church. So visit there often for ideas and inspiration for leading the church into the future. Again, my name is Ryan Dunn. Big thanks to United Methodist communications for making this podcast possible. Specifically, thanks to Renee McNeil for production and content support, to the marketing team at Ewing MCOM for helping me get the word out, and thanks to Online Denson for technical support.
Ryan Dunn [00:55:57]:
MyCOM is a monthly podcast generally premiering new episodes on the 3rd Tuesday of each month. So I'll be back with you in August. I'm really looking forward to it. In the meantime, peace to you.