Measuring Social Media Marketing Strategies of Christian Female Religious Leaders

This work faces the question of how female Christian leaders are structuring their marketing social media oriented strategies. In particular, we examine the communication strategy of a Catholic nun, two Protestant leaders (one Methodist and one Lutheran) and a charismatic Christian within a megachurch. We explore three main aspects of the question: first, the ‘knots’ of their communication strategy (the number of products/services they offered as newsletters, books, podcasts, blogs...); second, the result of these strategies in terms of volume of their audience; and third, the topics they talk about and the use of SEO and ‘copywriting strategies’ to be more engaging. As an added value of this study, we tried to quantify each of these aspects.


Introduction
Months before the megachurch Hillsong opened its new outpost in Atlanta, its pastor sought advice on how to build a church in a pandemic. From Facebook. The social media giant had a proposition, Sam Collier, the pastor, recalled in an interview: to use the church as a case study to explore how churches can 'go further farther on Facebook'. For months Facebook developers met weekly with Hillsong and explored what the church would look like on Facebook and what apps they might create for financial giving, video capability or livestreaming. When it came time for Hillsong's grand opening in June, the church issued a news release saying it was 'partnering with Facebook' and began streaming its services exclusively on the platform. Beyond that, Mr. Collier could not share many specifics -he had signed a nondisclosure agreement.
[…] Facebook, which recently passed $ 1 trillion in market capitalization, may seem like an unusual partner for a church whose primary goal is to share the message of Jesus. But the company has been cultivating partnerships with a wide range of faith communities over the past few years, from individual congregations to large denominations, like the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in Christ. Now, after the coronavirus pandemic pushed religious groups to explore new ways to operate, Facebook sees even greater strategic opportunity to draw highly engaged users onto its platform.
This excerpt comes from "Facebook's Next Target: The Religious Experience", a story published in The New York Times on July 2021, by Elisabeth Dias. 1 According to Statista estimates, 2 in July 2021 Mark Zuckerberg's 'trinity' -Facebook (+ Messenger)-Instagram-WhatsApp -took the biggest slice of the cake. At first place among the most popular social networks worldwide, ranked by number of active users, we find Facebook with 2.8 billion people joining, followed by YouTube with 2.2 billion subscribers, WhatsApp with 2 billion users. Then, Instagram with 1.3 billion, Messenger (1.3 billion), WeChat (1.2 billion) and, over a long distance, the emerging Chinese social network TikTok 3 (732 million subscribers). If we consid-er only Facebook platform, in January 2016 it had 1.6 billion users, 4 which means it duplicated its audience in five years.
To get the pulse of the Facebook/WhatsApp/Instagram crash of seven hours on 4 October 2021, let's consider that, according to The New York Times estimates, these platforms today reach an average of 78 million dollars in six-hour sales, mostly from small businesses, social organizations and individual professionals.
We must reflect on how the communication of the religious phenomenon is changing in social media times, and how it has changed in COVID-19 time. On this last aspect, having strong data on how much the current pandemic has impacted our lives is easy. We experienced enough to say we cannot come back for instance from the increase in the use of webinar platforms. 5 Before the coronavirus, pandemic three percent of marketers received more than 15 webinar invitations per week, which grew significantly after the COVID-19 outbreak. Since then, 10 percent of respondents said they saw more than 15 invites per week in their inboxes. 6 Social media are an integral part of daily Internet usage, and in 2020 we passed an average of 144 minutes per day spent on social media and messaging apps. That means and increase of more than half an hour since 2015. 7 Also, the acceleration of the increase in number the number of users of social media is now evident. Statista estimates that 4.41 billion people worldwide will use social media in 2025, compared to 3.78 billion in 2021. 8 These are huge numbers if we consider that the world population also includes children, people with difficulties or disabilities who are not able to manage such a technology, and old people.
When we talk about the 'Internet' we should be careful not to fall into the mistake of considering social media as an isolated and independent place of the web. Social media are only a branch of the structure of marketing strategies. Nowadays, marketers (and we have to keep in mind that editors who survived are also very good marketers) put a lot of emphasis on webinars, video campaigns, and other new opportunities like newsletters and email automation campaigns, to reach their audience. Email -for instance -is still a real worthwhile marketing strategy. According to the State of Marketing Re-JoMaCC 1, 1, 2022, 157-184 160 port (2021 version), 9 this market generates 42 dollars for every dollar spent, making it one of the most effective solutions for increasing the audience. Statista 10 reported the global e-mail marketing market was valued at 7.5 billion dollars in 2020 and is projected to increase to 17.9 billion by 2027. There are 4 billion daily email users worldwide, expected to climb to 4.6 billion by 2025.
35% of marketers interviewed 11 used to send their customers 3-5 emails per week, and 78% of them saw an increase in email engagement over the last 12 months. We should not be surprised if 4 out of 5 marketers said they would rather give up social media than email marketing.
Christian institutions have been aware so far of the tremendous opportunities offered by online marketing strategies to reach very large groups of people. One of the most significant phenomena started in the mid of the twentieth century within the Protestant tradition is that of megachurches. Among literature we find the designation 'megachurch' for a congregational formation of considerable proportion and thereby drawing scholarly attention. Indeed, for their part, most informed academic studies, despite the varying perspectives adopted, appear to focus on the size of the congregation, that is, congregations with a weekly attendance (adults and children included) somewhere between 1,800 to 2,000 attendees. 12 The aim of a megachurch is to bring the Christian gospel message within the branches of the contemporary environment: first of all, social culture and economy. Megachurches belong to the tradition of post-denominational churches, 13 which are congregations not associated with one of the traditional denominations. 14 Post-denominational churches are independent churches founded by a charismatic individual or group of individuals. These traditions made extensive use of their marketing and communication strategies for growing up. In this line, a marketing-oriented perspective is not a prerogative of the last ten years, where we saw a massive use of social media. 15 The question is: what happened in recent years, where these marketing opportunities became even more accessible -also in econom-ic terms -for all people? In this work we dare to answer these fundamental questions on how living religious communication is changing using marketing solutions to 'spread the Verb', around three knots: first, we are not interested in religious Christian institutions or churches, but in single religious leaders; second, we are interested to examine only female leaders, to explore if they are seizing this opportunity, and how; and finally, we aim to measure their marketing strategy, also using online tools for SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
Certainly, the following does not purport to be an all-inclusive contribution on the link between marketing and religion among US history. 16 However, there is not much literature on individual female leaders, but only on Megachurches male leaders. 17

Methods
The main difficulty of such a work is selecting which leaders are the most interesting to study. We decided to select 25 female leaders worldwide, who are very active online. The first 25 leaders' selection followed two main criteria: 1. we wanted to compare representatives from different denominations and -if possible -from different parts of the world; 2. we considered leaders who are on social media [tab. 1]. We also considered 1. the number of websites and social media accounts; 2. the volume of the audience reached; 3. the variety of products/services provided (newsletter, books, podcast, blog…). We did not base this first research on a previous list. We collected information 'empirically', searching online and through the main social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok). We selected 25 female leaders, and for each of them we collected information about age, the country where they operate, the congregation, their title (nun, monk, minister, bishop, university theologist, etc.), and their presence on the main social media, in terms of numbers of followers. This first step brought out the four female leaders to focus on, 18 who emerged as the most active on the Internet and on social media. However, we had not considered the number of followers 18 We considered both their personal accounts and the 'corporate' accounts, i.e the accounts of their churches and associations. as one of the drivers of our choice. We chose them due to the quantity and quality of their presence online, considering that we aimed to select only four leaders.
As a result, this work will examine the communication strategy of a Catholic nun, two Protestant leaders (one Methodist and one Lutheran) and a charismatic Christian within a megachurch.
The first of these leaders is Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, an American Benedictine nun, theologian, author, and speaker. She has served as Benedictine prioress and Benedictine federation president, as president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women. She has a personal website, a Facebook account (13k followers), and a Twitter account (1,251 followers).
The second one is Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran minister and public theologian. She served as the founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints, a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in Denver, Colorado. She has her dedicated website, she is on Facebook (287k followers), Twitter (112k followers), Instagram (141k followers) and she is the only one who is also on TikTok (650 followers).
The third is Vashti Murphy McKenzie, bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first woman to be elected as a bishop in the denomination's history and past president of the Council of Bishops (now retired). She has her dedicated website, a Facebook account (9k followers) and a private group (1.8k members), a Twitter account (172k followers) and an Instagram account (298k followers). She also has a YouTube channel with 600 followers.
The last one is Bobbie Houston, founder and senior pastor of the Australian premise of the Hillsong Church, a global charismatic Christian megachurch (recently involved in a scandal on financial abuse that led to a multi-million-dollar international quotation). She has her dedicated web pages on the Hillsong Church's website, a Facebook account (57k followers), and an Instagram account (72k followers). She also uses the Hillsong channels, which reach millions of people, to disseminate her messages.
As previously mentioned, our analysis started by examining three main aspects of the question about how the religious female leaders' communication is changing in social media times, using marketing solutions to 'spread the Verb'. First, the knots of their communication strategy (the number of products/services they offered as newsletters, books, podcasts, blogs, etc.); second, the result of these strategies in terms of the volume of their audience; and third, the topics they talk about and the use of SEO and 'copywriting strategies' to be more engaging.
As an added value of this study, we tried to quantify each of these aspects. We counted the knot of the communication web for each leader (summarized in tabs 1-4), we mapped the volume of audience for each channel, and we use SEO tools to analyze their texts online. In particular, we used two tools: Keyword Tool 19 and Cluster Army (for its long tail generator). 20 These tools are used by copywriters to compose texts that could be easily found online, through a search engine (like for instance Google). Putting a keyword about the topic we would write on into these tools, they provide a list of all the most used related words. The tool collects info about what users search most online and on the most 'clicked' contents, and it is a piece of crucial information for building text that could reflect people's needs, questions, doubts, and so texts that be easily reached online.
For example, if we want to write something about 'feminist theology', putting this occurrence on one of these tools, in a few seconds they show us the list of most used related words. Using them in texts increases the possibility to reach a wider audience. Of course, SEO is not a marketing magic wand, since today all experts know how to improve their texts using these tools.
We are aware that a weakness of this study could be that the quality and quantity of the interaction between the leaders and the public remained out of its analysis. Such an analysis needs data from insights of each social media account (i.e, how many impressions, interactions, visualizations, or the increase of the followers in a specific period, etc.), which are personal data that cannot be available without the consensus of the owner of the account. However, we take it into high consideration as one of the most important issues to reflect on, also respect to the reaction against haters, trolls and shitstorms, which are phenomena even more common through social media. We find it an interesting topic that could be explored more henceforth.

Joan Chittister OSB, The Unspoken Sister
Our first case study is Joan Chittister (1936), PhD in Speech communication theory at Penn State University, who is a leader like American leaders are expected to be: sharp, passionate, solemn, direct, and strongly heart-moving. She explicitly defines herself as a supporter of justice, peace, and equality, "a beloved and best-selling author, a soul-stirring speaker, and a gifted spiritual guide". 21 Joan Chittister's spiritual activity is mainly political and the first thing you can notice visiting her website or social media is that Joan's is an individual charisma. Her communication is marketing oriented. We started examining her website, which is a personal site, that is centered on her strong JoMaCC 1, 1, 2022, 157-184 164 individuality, before than on her community. An interesting detail: the domain of the website is .org, which, unlike the more common .com, denotes from the outset the explicit desire to be structurally not as a blog, not as a website, but as an institution, a brand, albeit in the non-profit world. 22 On the homepage, the Call to Action -marketing docet -is very clear: at the center of the web page the user is asked to subscribe to the newsletter and listen to podcasts, which are small contributions of five minutes each. The newsletter, which is the elegant dress of email marketing, is essential to collect the contact of new people -the email, in this case -to be used whenever there are initiatives or new books, or meetings, or gadgets. Joan Chittister drags the audience, and it is interesting how much she is followed and 'gadgetized' while still alive. For instance, on her website a person can buy her personal calendar in mini and maxi format. Nothing strange if we think of other Catholic monastic experiences, including the Italian ones, where all the products through which the monastery is maintained can be purchased through e-commerce, but the difference is substantial because here it is not the community, but the single figure of Sister Joan to generate 'fans'. 23 We can say that Joan Chittister's website is certainly built by excellent marketing experts for two main reasons: the structure of the website itself and the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) activity in its contents. Each content is accessible with a single click from the homepage menu, which means that each web page within the site has a very simple URL with a well-defined title tag. The reason is 'helping' Google find our online content more easily in the great sea of content that is online on the same topics. The more a web page is hidden, such as a sub-link of a sub-link, the harder will be for Google or other search engines finding it and suggest it to a user who searches for a certain word online linked to that content. The second aspect is the SEO. The person who writes the content for Chittister's site writes following the rules of SEO, that is, choosing keywords that a user could type into search engines in relation to the topic of the content and articulating the speech around those words. It is obvious at first glance and can easily be verified by using some keywords generation SEO software available online.
Not only tools play a dominant role, but also the tone of the communication: always clear-cut, brightly coloured, safe, and valid for everyone, but at the same time vague, precisely because it must be suitable for everyone. The very definition of spirituality, a word that makes a theologian blush, is very clear on the homepage: "Spirituality is about the hunger in the human heart. It is a commitment to immersion in God, to a search that has no end". 24 Hunger, engulfing hunger. Even the expression 'looking for', from the one who seeks, is used a lot by Joan Chittister, with a perceptible hungry breath of having to find something, reach a destination to stop on, plant a flag and look back.
To sum up, the marketing strategy of Sister Joan and her community is strong, very well built to keep people involved in her predication, but not aggressive and focused more on her books and writings than on her gadgets or social media.

4
Nadia Bolz-Weber, the 'Sarcastic Lutheran' Nadia Bolz-Weber (1969) -the 'Sarcastic Lutheran', following the nickname she gave to herself -is a Lutheran minister and public theologian, who served as the founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints, a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in Denver, Colorado, until 8 July 2018. 25 She is very committed to LGBTQIA+ community and related topics.
She writes and speaks about personal failings, recovery, grace, faith, and really whatever the hell else she wants to. She always sits in the corner with the other weirdoes. 26 In December 2021 she appeared to be such a religious influencer on social media: she has 290k followers on Facebook and 141k on Instagram [tab. 5].
She is significant to study for many reasons, in particular because she uses a very 'colorful' language, with words that can be consider 'unpolite', 27 to get closer to the reader. For our purposes, she is of interest because she makes a step forward, opening her own private social network: The Chapel, "an experimental gathering of spiritual misfits", where "we can meet each other, pray together, develop connections, and have some great conversations (and all without a 24 https://www.joanchittister.org/content/contemporary-spirituality.
27 Just a few examples. The slogan used in the homepage to push The Chapel is "All are welcome just don't be an asshole". And on the homepage of her website she writes: "God, please help me not be an asshole, is about as common a prayer as I pray in my life" (https://nadiabolzweber.com/about/). tech-giant selling our personal data or interrupting us with obnoxious ads)". 28 The Chapel app was available for iOS for 6.99 dollars per month (with a free 3-day trial). 29 Her marketing model is quite traditional: she has a very well-built website, with a clear call to action to her podcast called The Confessional (available on Spotify and Apple podcast), her books, her social media and events. She offers free services that lead to payment services. The newsletter remains free, but paid subscribers receive more regular writing, threads in which to interact with her, monthly "Ask Me Anything" threads, news from the book club and the opportunity to support her work.
By joining The Chapel the subscriber had access to exclusive content (i.e., daily prayers, videos of her conversations with various writers, thinkers, activists, and artists). The Daily Prayer (starting at three days a week) will be live, brief, interactive, and led by different people each month. The Chapel also included the Media Club, engaging new media each month: online TV, podcasts, music, and movies. Furthermore, in The Chapel anyone was able create a post on "grace, freedom, prayer, recovery, decolonization, anti-racism, LGBTQIA+, and so many other". Nadia's charity model on the paywall option is interesting: when explaining why she believes in memberships fees, she tells her audience who cannot pay, the access would be free for them. Moreover, she donated 10% of net profits to support non-profits.
About the language on her website, as we said, it is very colorful, and it currently is built on the idea of "not being an asshole". This slogan is very well declined in many ways on the web pages, also in a short video. 30 The idea of forgiveness is explained in a very simple way, using general words: Freedom, Fighters, Connection, Beauty, Change, Shine and Darkness. The core is that the forgiver is a 'Freedom Fighter'. Very simple words, even if vague, easy to be found by SEO and that do not need very much commitment for the reader but are able to reach him instantly due to the images they arise in them, as marketing writing suggests doing.
The choice of using very colorful words -differently, for example, from Joan Chittister's style -could be read as related to the necessity, fully expressed by Nadia on many occasions (for example in her books and during many interviews), 31 of rethinking the traditional religious representation of women as angelic figures and celebrating physical purity as a fundamental virtue for the Christian believ-28 https://nadiabolzweber.com/.
29 When this article was published The Chapel was no longer available. er. 32 For instance, in 2018 she called for women to send her their purity rings, to be melted down into a sculpture of a vagina which she regarded as representing the healing of the psychic damage induced by the purity movement. 33 Last but not least, also in Nadia Bolz-Weber, as we found in Joan Chittister, we noticed 'all quotes', also published on the social media, that are her own sentences and slogans or from people she talks with on her podcast, instead of quotes from other Lutheran theologians or philosophers. The Bible itself is very little explained, which can be a little odd for the Lutheran world.
The marketing strategy of Nadia Bolz-Weber is complete: well-structured website, app and videos for mobile users, and strong social media presence 34 [tabs 4-5]; it is focused on her colorful and very outspoken video or audio speeches, instead of her writings, on the most burning topics in the feminist and LGBTQIA+ scenario. Her communication strategy is complete: there is a website whose domain is her name, a clear link to her social media presence -especially to her YouTube channel -and her latest books that she describes as "influential". The homepage also includes a direct link -called Marketplace -to her Amazon page for building all her bestsellers. Bishop Vashti McKenzie has her own app, called Praycation, "Prayer, Scripture and Praycation, a 31-day guide to a deeper relationship with God", 35 that costs 0.99 dollars.
Being an ironing female leader has been the core of the communication strategy of Bishop Vashti McKenzie since the 2000s. As the 32 For example: https://modernreformation.org/resource-library/web-exclusive-articles/the-mod-the-sacred-vagina-nadia-bolz-weber-and-sexual-purity/.
34 She is the only one also on TikTok to reach the youngest generations. first female bishop within her church, she has a strong commitment to encouraging other women to become leaders. She describes herself as "an electrifying preacher and an anointed woman of God". 36 One of the services she offers is the Payne Theological Seminary, where she focuses on Adaptive Leadership for a Changing Church and Community. 37 But above all, she manages the Selah Leadership, a VIP online Facebook group: 38 a place for women to renew, refresh and be resourced. It's virtual and person-to-person events for C-suite, community and church leaders to step back, retool and level up their personal and professional lives.
The addressees are the 'Queens' -using McKenzie language: Queens, some of us will start this making resolutions. How has that worked out for you in the past?! Other Queens will do a Vision Board, set goals or make promises about health, money, career and relationships.
[…] Queens, the adventure is waiting. Welcome to the Year of One! 39 About the language, both on the website and on her social media channels, she uses very strong words inspiring movement and planning a strategy: leader, love, strengths, move, live, sparkle, light, being closer to God, rise, wake up, selah. 'Struggle' is another keyword, very common particularly in the first of McKenzie's books and articles. Only a few quotes from the Bible, especially from the New Testament, are present on the website. Instead, all the posts are of her: pictures of her celebrating or doing things, or quotes from her sermons. She rarely shares external contents. One of the marketing rules is do not includes URLs that bring the audience and the traffic out of our own website/social media. This is the reason why, for example, some big newspaper editors have, as an internal rule for editors, to avoid including links, also to original sources.
The keyword of her website is the idea of selah, "an ancient word that means to pause, stop or stop here before moving forward". 40 McKenzie calls herself, for example in her twitter bio, 41 the first us-  er of this idea. Actually, selah ‫ֶל(‬ ‫ס‬ ) is a Hebraic word used 74 times in the Hebrew Bible -71 times in the Psalms and 3 times in the Book of Habakkuk. 42 Linguists proposed some meanings of this word. One is given by assigning it to the root, as an imperative means 'Lift up', equivalent to 'loud'. For a singer it is like 'make a pause', so maybe in the context of the Psalms, it would be as the writer's instruction to the reader to pause and exalt the Lord. Selah is at the center of Bishop McKenzie's current communication she disseminates to other women is to take their time to prepare themselves, understand what they want and the way to achieve their goals, and then go and struggle to take the place they deserve in the society.

6
Bobbie Houston, the Colour Sister Bobbie Houston (1957) serves as the Co-Global Senior Pastor of Hillsong Church, a global charismatic Christian megachurch (part of the Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity) based in Australia, founded in 1983 by Brian and Bobbie Houston. The core slogan of Hillsong is being a church that "believes in Jesus, a church that loves God and people". Such a description could be applied to the majority of churches, indeed. The historic specific characteristic of Hillsong is the strong presence of music since its foundation. Through the record company Hillsong Music Australia, they deal with musical productions of contemporary Christian music. As the founder of her church, Houston's communications should be considered as the sum of her personal communication channels -her website and her social media activity [tabs 4-5] -, and of the communication within the church's channels. If we only consider her personal activity, she describes herself on the website with a lexicon coherent with the 'musical' inspiration of the church: she is passionate about seeing humankind find their way home to Christ, and the potential of local churches to become magnetic in health, vibrancy, relevance and embrace. 43 Her website is built around her video and audio communication, which is very simple and enthusiastic, like a teleshopping way of communicating: 44 short sentences, simple language and concepts, assertive sentences, clear indications, answers not questions. The language is very basic: keywords are love, friendship, God. She encourages people to be strong. In her discourses, all is great, all is su- perlative; God is irresistible. 45 Her voice is loud and smiling, always comforting; her position is standing, facing the camera. Houston has also a YouTube channel -Catch up on The Sisterhood Friendship Table with Bobbie & Friends 46 -where she invites 'friends', women, for discussions around a range of topics, including health, job life.
The synaesthetic approach is reflected also on the name of another Houston's commitment. She is the founder of Colour Conference and the Colour Sisterhood, a global movement of women united around a mandate to make the world a better place. 47 The choice of the concept of 'colour' as a marketing keyword for all the copyright around that project does not only mean that they aim to involve women from different ethnicities. Instead, the Colour Sisterhood is a growing movement of women who are responding to the simple invitation to be the change and make a positive difference in their local and global communities. 48 As a strategy, she opened dedicated Facebook 49 and Instagram 50 channels where she encourages women to share their stories of success that came from vulnerable situations 51 [tab. 4]. Music and body expression are at the core also of this experience.
The 2022 edition of the Colour Conference (March 2022) is built around the key concept of 'shadows and wonder' 52 and it aims to get start from the impact of the pandemic on women's lives. "It goes without saying that over the past two years the global pandemic has been 45 https://www.bible.com/it/reading-plans/22991-the-irresistible-nature-of-god. 48 Colour is a global movement of everyday women with hope in their hearts and change in their steps. A 24-year journey has seen this diverse and fabulous host of women help multitudes of others. The annual Colour Conference, hosted by Hillsong Co-Global Senior Pastor Bobbie Houston and the Hillsong team, is held globally with over 47,000 women and girls in attendance. It continues to influence women of all ages, backgrounds and cultures, uniting them under one cause and encouraging them to contribute to bringing a solution to the needs they see within their local and global communities. See https://hillsong.com/colour/history/.
49 https://www.facebook.com/ColourSisterhood. 50 https://www.instagram.com/coloursisterhood/. 51 "If making the world a better place resonates with you, you belong within the Sisterhood story. Follow The Colour Sisterhood and Bobbie Houston to keep up-to-date with all that's happening".
52 "Is s language I sense for the coming year. These three words paint a picture. The Book of Acts declares that in latter times, God would pour out His Spirit, on both men and women, young and old, and that they in turn would become the history-makers, movers and shakers, poets and prophets of a new era. I believe we are living in the very centre and heartbeat of those days, and I believe that God is continuing to pour out His Spirit on a movement of brilliant and breathtaking women who are up for the challenge and adventure, light and shade, wonder and influence" (https://hillsong.com/colour/).

Measuring Social Media Marketing Strategies of Christian Female Religious Leaders
JoMaCC 1, 1, 2022, 157-184 171 disruptive to many aspects of society. If you have suffered loss of any description, our hearts go out to you and we trust that knowing you are part of a praying and caring sisterhood brings comfort and resolve" writes Bobbie introducing the 2022 Conference on the website. 53 The exhortation is again focused on the idea of being stronger, brave against difficulties. 54 To sum up, it is evident from Bobbie Houston's online communication, that Hillsong Church is part of the charismatic Pentecostal world concerning the way of communicating -for example, the importance of music and the use of the body in communicating with God and with the community 55 -and the use of the mentioned marketing strategies. In this context, she stands out for her commitment to all-women empowerment and the use of the idea of Sisterhood as the hidden side of the moon of the evangelic teaching of Brotherhood.

Synthesis and Discussion
This first journey around the communication channels of these four religious women allowed us to highlight many common aspects of their online predication, concerning topics they insist on, the language and the channels they use. Such a similarity suggests the evidence that they (or their consultants) know and use very well the current marketing strategies. Below is a list of six common points, we can identify throughout the online communication of these four female leaders. First, the website. The structure of all their websites is the same: they are focused on a personalistic use of their religious images. All the websites have a big picture of them on the homepage, a slogan or a keyword chosen as representative of their thought -"Passion for God, Passion for justice, Passion for life" 56 (for Joan Chittister), "Don't be an asshole" 57 (for Nadia bolz-Weber), Selah 58 (for Vashti McKenzie), Sisterhood 59 (for Bobbie Houston).
All the websites have a clear call to action on the first screen of the homepage: books and newsletter for Joan Chittister, join The Chapel 53 https://hillsong.com/colour/.
54 "Men, women and young people are rising with stronger convictions and greater passion to see His goodness felt in tangible ways. God is surely preparing the earth for strategic days of outpouring and harvest." https://hillsong.com/colour/. See, for example, Wagner, "Branding, Music, and Religion". Second, the language. Each of them builds very simple and immediate discourses around specific keywords, easily connected with the topic (God, Love, Mercy). They usually express the idea of being strong, to be empowered. A common style found in each female leader is the idea of having the courage of achieving goals, transforming ourselves and our life, becoming who we want to be. The individualistic focus is evident: they talk to single people and for single people, even if in Sister Joan Chittister we find a more in-depth orientation through a community view. We can suppose this last aspect is related to the belonging of a Catholic monastic tradition.
Third, the focus on female empowerment. All of them define themselves as committed for empowering women. The question is from which perspective. Even their concrete approach may differ -participating in Facebook groups (McKenzie), joining live on YouTube (Houston, Bolz-Weber) -the fil rouge is support women on express themselves and educate them as future leaders. Their effort is not directly connected to an interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, but instead is a mantra to be achieved as we live in a contemporary age. Many aspects should be studied further, but we limit ourselves to mentioning two of them: the empowerment they offer is always personal, based on the idea of 'Never Give Up'. 'Resilience' is a public health term, that also arose as a central term in popular culture. We find this concept in advertising, lifestyle magazines and TV, but this idea based on having the courage to empower ourselves is not a foregone conclusion.
The message in all these contexts is similar: the resilient woman may not be able to avoid tough life situations, be it getting divorced, being made redundant, or having her benefits cut, but she can still 'spring through' hard times via a combination of intensive self-management strategies and a positive mental attitude. 60 In our study, we found that in media and popular culture notions of resilience are increasingly addressed to women, and that middle-class women in particular are presented as possessing the stuff it takes to become successfully resilient. 61 The authors identified three central features that characterize the contemporary ideal of the resilient woman: First, she must be able to bounce back unscathed from catastrophe by following the guidance of self-help aphorisms, such as 'have self-belief,' 'give up on being perfect,' 'be adaptable to change,' 'and 'focus on the good stuff' […] Second, media and popular media teach us that the resilient woman acknowledges her pain and struggles but swiftly recasts them as opportunities. Then, 1of a burgeoning self-help literature (addressed especially, although not only, to women) that teaches us that insecurity, inequality and struggle are the 'new normal' and that the best way to cope is by reframing adversity as an opportunity for growth. 62 Thus, maybe as a consequence, the four leaders rarely mention in their discourses the other kind of inequality gaps (socio-economic, educational,…) linked with the gender gap. Joan Chittister, who defines herself as "an outspoken advocate of justice, peace and equality", 63 seems to be more linked to this community view, within the Benetvision project, a research and resource centre for contemporary spirituality. However, a general concept of Sisterhood could be found both in Houston and McKenzie.
As an interesting point, we noticed only sister Joan Chittister explicitly defines herself as a feminist. The gender universe of each of them is different, as it is the audience to whom the predication is addressed, and the language used. Bolz-Weber talks to all the LGBTQIA+ community, McKenzie to women that would become leaders, Houston to all women. 64 It is interesting to mention that all the 25 women examined before choosing the four to be analyzed in depth describe themselves as committed on female or LGBTQIA+ empowerment.
Fourth, the choice of using their own quotes instead of quotes from other sources, especially on social media. The messages are (almost) always around their personal quotes and pics. Of course, we must consider the different approaches to the Scriptures between the Catholics (represented, here, only by Joan Chittister) and the Prot-62 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/the-limits-of-the-resilientwoman-ideal/.
64 The Hillsong Church position on LGBTQIA+ topics is not well defined. See https:// religionnews.com/2014/10/16/hillsongs-brian-houston-says-church-lgbt-issues/; and also "I wish to correct reports that Hillsong church has 'an openly gay couple directing a choir' at our New York City campus. Hillsong's position on homosexuality and gay marriage has not changed and is consistent with Scripture. As I have stated previously, I believe the writings of Paul are clear on this subject" (https://hillsong.com/it/ media-archives/hillsong-church-statement-by-senior-pastor-brian-houston/). estant archipelago. This trend is more evident for the three Protestant leaders examined. 65 Fifth, the kind of presence on social media [tabs]. All of them are on the main three social media: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and Nadia Bolz-Weber has also opened a TikTok channel. Each of them seems to have a publishing plan: the majority of the posts are frequent, structured around the topics they cover, linked to the events of their community, focused on pictures. They all have very good pictures of them, for sure made by professional photographers for their online presence. Two of them -Nadia Bolz-Weber 66 and Vashti McKenzie 67 -have their personal app and Bobbie Houston uses Bibble.com. 68 Last but not least, our analysis could be included in a broader tradition of studies on the impact of the North American model of the charismatic evangelical leaders become paradigmatic for the whole of Christianity, including the Catholic world. 69 Our results seem suggesting it is accepted also by female leaders.
In conclusion, we would stress that this first investigation poses more questions than the answers. First, we would extend the analysis to include other female religious leaders, to see if these trends could be more generalized. Moreover, an analysis should also include male religious leaders, to study common aspects and differences. Second, as already mentioned, a deeper social media analysis should be based on the 'Analytics' from each social media account, that are of course not accessible. Without these insights we can only measure the number of followers, the frequency of the posting and have an idea of the volume of engagement of the audience, but not more. We have not used tools for text analysis in this first research, for instance for measuring the number of occurrences of each word most used by each of the leaders examined.
A broader question is if and how using such marketing strategies and trends could impact on the contents of the preaching, and, consequently, on the messages of this new way of telling the Christian message: how much does SEO rules can, for instance, drive the quality of the contents? And what about the run of using new 'slogan', even shorter, even colorful? What about the exaltation of concepts such as humility or the value of listening and of silence? Marketing rules are built around and for the current society, basing themselves on 65 It is interesting to mention the Joan Chittister website has a .org domain, instead of the other three leaders whose websites use a .com domain.
66 When this article was published The Chapel was no longer available.