Every quarter seems to bring another round of platform changes, updated algorithms and new best practices. It can feel like the digital landscape changes at a breakneck speed.
At Fishhook, we spend a lot of time paying attention to what's changing so we can help churches make strategic decisions (and not feel the need to chase every new feature). Here are seven things that stood out to us during quarter two, along with some practical ways your church can apply them heading into the next three months.
It's easy to get distracted by every new feature. But the churches seeing steady growth are often doing the basics exceptionally well. A few reminders as you head into Q3:
Show up consistently: You don't have to publish every day. Instead, build enough consistency that your audience knows they can expect to hear from you.
Speak directly to your audience: Who are you trying to reach? Someone who has attended your church for fifteen years? Someone driving by your building for the first time? The answer may be both … but different content serves different audiences. It’s so important to define your target audience and continue speaking to them directly.
Build a strategy for both newcomers and your current congregation: Sometimes churches focus entirely on reaching new people. Other times they only communicate with people who already attend. Healthy social media strategies do both. And, your current audience who is liking, commenting, saving and sharing your content helps reach new audiences.
Done is still better than perfect: Social media can easily become overwhelming. Remember that something is almost always better than nothing. Perfection shouldn't keep your church from consistently showing up and reaching people online.
Reels continue to be one of the strongest-performing content formats on Instagram. The best-performing reels capture attention immediately. (Last quarter, we talked about reel retention data and the ability to access analytics like skip rate, average watch time and the timestamp when viewers stop watching).
What does this mean for you? It’s time to be intentional with your hooks in two places: your visual and your caption.
Instagram is a visual-first platform. People decide within the first couple of seconds whether they're going to keep watching.
Don't neglect the caption … strong writing still matters! Your post’s opening sentence should encourage someone to keep reading while naturally incorporating relevant keywords where appropriate. This helps not just with engagement, but discoverability too.
When compelling visuals and thoughtful writing work together, your content can become significantly stronger.
One of Instagram's most-requested features has officially arrived. Instead of living with your feed exactly as posts were chronologically published, you can now manually rearrange your profile grid.
At first glance, this might seem like a small update. But for churches, it opens up quite a few strategic opportunities.
Rather than letting your newest posts always occupy the top of your profile, you can intentionally showcase the content that best represents your church. For churches, seasonal or high performing content can now be highlighted in addition to your account’s pinned posts. This feature could be especially helpful for secondary accounts, like for your church’s student or kids ministry.
Think about someone visiting your church's Instagram for the first time. What do you want them to see?
Now more than ever, you have more control over that first impression. Another benefit? This is great for churches that primarily post to the feed and don't have the capacity to be consistently in Instagram stories too. Even though your content isn't at the top of a viewer's feed in stories, your best feed content can be emphasized with grid rearrangement.
Instead of reposting or archiving content, you can simply reorganize your strongest posts to better tell your church's story.
We've been spending quite a bit of time digging into SEO, AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and one theme that continues to stand out is trust. Search engines are getting better at recognizing whether content is genuinely helpful and from a reliable source.
One framework you'll hear discussed more frequently is EEAT, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.
One simple way this shows up on your website is through outbound links. When appropriate, linking to trustworthy, relevant resources helps search engines better understand your content while also providing additional value to your readers. Rather than trying to answer every possible question yourself, consider pointing visitors toward aligned, vetted resources.
For churches, this might look like linking to:
The same principle works in reverse, too. When other reputable organizations link back to your church's website, it strengthens your SEO presence over time. Ultimately, SEO is becoming more about building trust and staying committed to putting the best content on your website.
If there’s one trend that continued throughout Q2, it was that real content created by real people continues to outperform a polished attempt at perfection. We've said it before, and we'll keep saying it: people connect with people.
Here are a few places we recommend leaning into authenticity:
Website: Your church’s homepage is some of the most valuable digital real estate you own. Use it to show people through photos of your congregation, worship, volunteers and more. Show (versus just tell) about the sense of community and belonging your church provides … help prospective visitors picture themselves there!
Social Media: Share moments from church life, not just announcements. Mix in face-to-camera videos as well as b-roll that shows genuine interactions. Graphics certainly have their place, but your content strategy should keep people at the center. Avoid using AI-generated graphics to promote your events. Far too much information and not enough visual storytelling (and not enough real people!) can bog down the graphic instead of generating excitement and inspiring action.
Google Business Profile: Publish updates that make sense to someone who has never attended your church. Think less about internal announcements and more about experiences that invite the broader community into what God is doing through your church.
Authenticity builds trust. And trust remains one of the most valuable things your church can build online!
If you'd like to dive deeper into this idea, the Fishhook team recently wrapped up a "What Is Real?" series where our team explored what authenticity looks like across leadership, content, design, websites and creativity.
The internet doesn't just need more content. It needs more meaningful content. Instead of measuring success by how many blog posts your church publishes, consider asking a different question: Did this post earn its place on our website?
Every article should serve a purpose and hopefully inspire the reader to share it with someone else. One great blog post is better than five average ones. And, a great blog post should answer a real question, address a real life concern, encourage someone or teach something valuable. Sometimes excellence means publishing less.
One quality, strategic, evergreen blog post can become:
That's a much better return than publishing several rushed articles that don't provide lasting value. As AI develops and churning out a lot of content can be tempting, keep in mind that trust online is becoming increasingly difficult to earn. When churches consistently publish thoughtful, helpful and well-written content, they're stewarding that trust well.
Church communications has its fair share of important strategy and serious moments. But, we also believe that there is joy in this work, too!
Here are two of our favorite church trends that made the rounds in Q2 and brought us joy:
The biggest takeaway from Q2? Church comms teams don’t need to overhaul everything they're doing. Instead, remember that intentionality continues to matter.
Use new features strategically.
Keep creating authentic content.
Invest in quality over quantity.
Build trust through your website.
Behind every metric is a real person looking for community, connection and the hope of Jesus. Technology will continue to change. The Church's mission stays the same.