NOTE: To see the most recent version of the data that I’ve been collecting (and reference in this post), please click here.
As is my New Year’s tradition, it’s time to recap the social media data that I’ve collected over the 2018 calendar year! This year, I’ll be making two posts, one for the United Methodist Church and one for the Episcopal Church, and this is the UMC edition.
For those reading one of these recaps for the first time, here’s the backstory: I began collecting this data as an intern for the Arkansas Conference Center for Technology back in July of 2016, and the data fascinated me so much that I just kept on keeping track of it. It’s even factored into my own undergraduate education in college, as I conducted my senior capstone on United Methodist communication and outreach across different mediums, specifically focusing on Millennials and Generation Z.
As an extension of this, I take a moment on every January 1st since then to highlight the top 5 conferences on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram in terms of growth over the past year. In 2018, United Methodist Annual Conferences have added 4,974 followers on Instagram, 5,034 followers on Twitter, and 9,795 likes on Facebook! Here are the top 5 (in growth) conferences by social network:
- West Ohio (@westohioumc) – 728
- Indiana (@indianaumc) – 479
- Great Plains (@GreatPlainsUMC) – 448
- Arkansas (@arkansasumc) – 440
- Tennessee (@tnumc) – 391
- Rio Texas (@RioTxAC) – 670
- Florida (@flumc) – 240
- North Georgia (@connectngumc) – 177
- East Ohio (@eastohioUM) – 164
- Memphis (@UM_MemphisConf) – 162
- Florida (@flumc) – 386
- North Georgia (@ngumc) – 274
- Great Plains (@greatplainsumc) – 270
- Arkansas (@arkansasumc) – 263
- Louisiana (@umclouisiana) – 242
In addition, I’d like to especially highlight all of the new social media accounts created this year, all of which were on Instagram:
As always, I share my thoughts and research in the hopes that this ends up being of some benefit to someone, and as always I appreciate any comments or questions. Please feel free to contact me at sayhi@jacobturner.me, or leave a comment below! I always love hearing your thoughts or what your conference is doing.
Until next time,
Jacob
JacobTurner.me 