Popular pastors are getting more reaction from their tweets than celebrities like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, Christians have heard.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz, Twitter's social innovation leader, had some good news for Christians at the annual National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville on Monday.

When the company looked at its analytics, it noticed that tweets of Bible verses were "doing really well".

"People of faith were really engaged with these Bible verses," she was reported as saying by The Christian Post.

"Religious content on Twitter is incredibly engaged.  

"You can look at a pastor such as Andy Stanley and see that he will tweet something out and get more reaction and more engagement than famous celebrities like Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber with 50 times as many followers." 

Fellow guest speaker at the convention, Facebook's Katie Harbath, said the number of 'friends' or fans was important but not as important as the engagement of these fans.

"A fan is worthless is they are not seeing your content and not engaging," she said.

Rather than thinking only about acquiring large numbers of fans, Harbath said organisations need to start thinking "how do we become social in everything that we do".