How to Manage Your Social Media Networks

The first question that a ministry needs to answer is how many people will participate in the social media strategy of the ministry. My recommendation is that you have two people at the beginning and see how that goes. The reason that I suggest two people is that one person should be in charge of gathering content for the ministry and the other person should be in charge of pushing it out. Of course you can have more people do this because you may want to have people commenting and responding to users on the social networks. But initially, the main focus is gathering content and pushing it out. How many hours per day? Social media operates 24 hours a day. However, it’s unrealistic to believe that someone will be managing your social media properties for the ministry 24 hours a day. Instead, dedicate 2 – 4 hours daily gathering content, scheduling it for social networks and responding to online users. As time progresses and you get more people involved on behalf of the ministry, you will increase those hours. Hopefully though, your process will be much more streamlined.

Software to help – Hootsuite.com is a free scheduling software that makes social media management much easier. Hootsuite connects with social networks Facebook and Twitter and allows you to schedule updates, add files and coordinate a full social media strategy from one location. The main benefit of Hootsuite is that you can schedule out all your Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter posts for the week (or month) at one time and let the software automatically post items for you. This will keep a continuous stream of content coming from the ministry and allow you to focus on other things such as gathering more content or responding to online users from various social networks. Hootsuite also has great reporting features that can help you identify some key metrics in your social media campaign such as who are your top 10 followers, how many people clicked the link you sent out and how many people are “liking/subscribing to” you weekly on social networks. Add this capability in with the Google Analytics for Social Media features where you can track social media links coming to your website and you can start to see how effective your social media campaigns are on a grand scale.

For more information on this and other topics, get your copy of "The iChurch Method Volume 1: How to Advance Your Ministry Online." or The iChurch Method Volume 2: Changing the World When You Login or even sign up for the iChurch Method Online School.

Online Church is Effective

Normally I would talk about how to implement an online church or quote stats on how it has impacted churches but today, I just want to do something different. I want to tell a great story. This past weekend I taught quite a few sessions at the econnect conference and it was one of the greatest experiences I have ever had for a variety of reasons. Here are the reasons:

1. I was able to meet the great people at Group Publishing (including Brian Abbot and Bob D'Ambrosio) and they truly took care of me and Nils Smith.

2. I was able to teach, fellowship and serve with my friend Nils Smith, a great guy and as I always tell him, my long lost brother in digital ministry.

3. I taught, interacted and engaged with a diverse crowd of people that were eager to learn how to utilize online tools more effectively for ministry. This crowd was hungry for knowledge and they were open to everything we were teaching. Even with their past traditions and church informal ways, they looked past all of that and said how can we reach the millions that are online and do church in a new way! And best of all, I cannot say how many times people mentioned to me that they were appreciative of what I taught....that blessed me immensely.

4. This is the most important thing, I heard a story that encouraged and transformed the way I think about what I do. First let me say that I have had moments where I wondered how effective The iChurch Method was and should I change my focus from churches to businesses and teach in that realm. Well after this story I am about to share with you, I will surely let you know that I am on the right path and The iChurch Method will continue well into the future. I was talking with a guy and he mentioned that his wife recently passed due to cancer but prior to passing she spent much of her time bed-ridden. But she managed to worship by watching T.D. Jakes Online and to be more specific, the internet church page that I played a role in creating. His wife also used Social Media to form a facebook group for women with cancer and they communicated and shared what they thought heaven would be like. And he just wanted to thank me for what I was doing and he was happy that he met the guy who created the page that helped his wife worship prior to her passing. Those words encouraged me so much that I knew I was on the right path.

I feel blessed!!

Is buying fans/followers/views Social Media Prostitution?

Over the last two years there have been quite a few companies that have sprung up that allow people and companies to purchase followers, fans, views, retweets, repines and a variety of other social media services. These services have been utilized by major celebrities, political figures as well as companies and brands. It wasn't until recently did the services come to light and start to receive scrutiny from the social media networks as well as other social media experts, but it was only a matter of time before quick fix options became a business (social media services is now on its way to being a 100+ million dollar industry in just a few years). Facebook continues to update and adjust it's advertising services and allows you to bid on CPC campaigns to get more fans, which seems to be an elaborate approach to buying fans, is it not? Twitter's advertising solution allows you to promote your account in user's stream and thus get more Twitter followers and yes, this service costs, so isn't just another way to buy fans? YouTube gives you the opportunity to setup video ads that appear before people watch YouTube videos which after they watch there's a call to action which can include asking them to subscribe, this service costs and gives you YouTube views and subscribers, so isn't that another way to buy them?

Personally, I have developed social media strategies to help companies build their following using content strategy methods, specific delivery times and two-way interaction but I do understand how social media services you purchase can be useful. I think it all comes down to this, when you purchase services, it's for perception, to appear bigger than you are and get people to follow you based on that, but the relationships are unreal and non-existent. But when you build your following in a more organic manner, then you develop true relationships with them and create a longer lasting, mutually beneficial online social media relationship.

Which goes back to my title, if your goal is to just get fans in numbers, then take the prostitute route and just pay for it and get the immediate results. But if you want to develop a true interactive online social media following then you have to put in the time and work it takes to wine and dine them, advertise to them, promote posts and tweets and tell them you really care.

For more information about Social Media check out How to Get One Million Social Media Fans by Jason Caston.

The Rise of Visual Social Media

Over the last year or two, social media has entered a new stage of growth and it’s focused on “visual content” that can be created, consumed and shared easily. This is one of the main keys to building a large fan base as well as communicating with them; by providing engaging visual content that will ignite them to action. Photos and graphics are a great example of this.

Facebook first exhibited this when it introduced a new feature called the timeline, where users’ Facebook profile became a visual representation of their Facebook existence. Additionally, Facebook allowed users to start adding events, past locations and milestones to their Facebook profiles. Now this profile page not only became a visual representation of a user’s online life, but their offline life as well. Facebook also started filtering a user’s newsfeed to provide customized content based on the top 30% - 40% of people a user interacted with most. In order to get more people to interact with the user and see their posts, they had to be more visual in nature, specifically with photos and graphics, because these could be shared and consumed easily from any device.

Google+ has also focused on “visual content” within their social network by recently adding quite a few features. The large cover photo that each profile page has is a great example; it’s the first thing you see when you go to a person or business google+ page. Google+ has also updated their photo albums with larger viewing options and full-sized photo uploads. Larger photos hold people’s attention longer and increases engagement. The option for full-size uploads allow people to keep their entire photo albums within Google+. Additionally, Google+ highlights and expands photos and videos in the stream so that they stand out while people are viewing then, thus drawing the user’s attention more quickly, especially on mobile devices.

When Twitter added the ability to share photos from within Twitter without having to use an outside service, it was a clear sign that Twitter realized the importance of visual features. Then, Twitter added a cover photo and photo album feature on the user’s profile page where people could see all the photos they uploaded to Twitter. This was yet another visual feature that pulled people to their site, made them stay longer and gave them more reasons to share photos on Twitter.

More recently we have seen the rise of platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, two fully visual social networks that are built on media such as photos and videos. Instagram, fresh off its one billion dollar deal with Facebook, has become the #1 mobile photo sharing application. The best part about Instagram is that it’s completely mobile which displays the power of mobile photo sharing. Likewise, Pinterest was initially thought to be only a photo sharing sight for women and moms but as Pinterest’s popularity has exploded, it’s now more than just a network for photos. Their secret is that they also accept videos. This multimedia social network lets people “pin” photos and videos expressing themselves and their brands in full multimedia fashion. And finally, let me not forget YouTube, the #1 video site on the entire Internet where you can find any video about anything.

For more information on this and other Social Media topics, get your copy or How to Get One Million Social Media Fans today.

Top 5 Social Media Predictions for this Year

It's 2014 and I am looking forward to this year in terms of social media and online web technologies. There are so many new advancements that we will see this year and I can't wait till they are released. But first, I wanted to talk about my top 5 predictions I have for social media this year. Check out the video above and if you don't have time, here is a quick summary.

1.Diversity Your Networks - There's more to social media than Facebook and Twitter and this year many organizations will realize that. More specifically, Facebook will make it much more difficult for organizations to use that network as their only social media presence. There are many social networks (in addition to Facebook and Twitter) that are effective for reaching your online audience such as YouTube, Instagram, Vine, Pinterest, Google+ and more.

2. Visual Social Media - Use more photos and videos to tell your story via social media. Photos are the most shared form of multimedia on social networks and video is the most engaging form of multimedia on social networks. Therefore, we need to incorporate more photos and videos to better tell our stories and connect with people via social media.

3. Pay to Play - Facebook Promoted Posts, Twitter Ads and Google Ads will become more important to reach your online audience. You may not have to have a large budget but you will need to consider spending something in order to reach people online more effectively.

4. Mobile - Think Mobile first and then Desktop. Mobile is growing by leaps and bounds and online users are connecting with our web properties (social networks and websites) with mobile first and then desktops. Therefore, we need to make sure our website strategies and social media strategies take into account people on the go using mobile devices.

5. Analyze, Optimize, Repeat - Have a strategy, just don't Wing it! Use your Google Analytics, your Facebook Insights, your Twitter Stats and other data to develop a strategy and see how effective your social media efforts are. This year we need to work for efficiently, streamline our processes and get measurable results.

Ministries Can Use Google Hangouts on Air

Google Hangouts On Air allows you to have an online meeting on camera with up to ten people with all ten talking and contributing if necessary. It also allows you to stream this meeting live to Youtube.com where anyone can watch on their computer, mobile phone or tablet. After you are done, Google will send you an MP4 file for your very own. You can then add this to your archived video and/or chop it up and repurpose it. If you prefer, you can make it private so that no one else can hear or see the meeting except the participants.

With Google Hangouts on Air, there’s at least five great ways to use it for the Internet Church Campus:

1. Stream your sermons or Bible studies live and record them on Youtube.com.
2. Interactive Bible Study or Ministry meetings that can also be recorded for record keeping purposes.
3. Interactive Counseling sessions.
4. Special Events such as conference previews, webinars and online trainings (note: Google Hangouts on Air does not work with paid services so your use of this will be free to users and viewers for now).
5. Podcasts done quickly and easily.

To setup a Google Hangout on Air for Ministry you just need to login to Google+ and click on the Hangouts option, invite the users you want to participate and launch the hangout. The only drawback is that each participant in the hangout needs to have a Google+ account.

For more information on this and other topics, get your copy of "The iChurch Method Volume 1: How to Advance Your Ministry Online." or The iChurch Method Volume 2: Changing the World When You Login or even sign up for the iChurch Method Online School.

Should Pastors be on #Facebook, #Twitter and other #Social Media?

Should Pastors be on #Facebook, #Twitter and other #Social Media? What if they say something wrong? Digital Technology has had a profound affect on the identity of the Christian Minister. Here is the transcript from the video above.

Well I think technology with the ministries that I’ve worked with—again they’re very much personality driven—what people want access to in addition to the church is the pastor. What technology has done is kind of torn that veil from us. If you look at a typical weekend service you’re not able to get to the pastor. You’re in a church with thousands of other members and once the pastor is done preaching then he pretty much disappears. You might have an opportunity to shake hands with him on the way out, very rarely, but for the most part that’s it. You saw him preaching the sermon and then he’s off.

What technology does, especially in a case of a large minister like Bishop Jakes, that’s him actually using his Twitter. Most people don’t believe that, but that’s him actually on Twitter responding to people, good and bad. And when people ask him questions, him actually putting out the daily devotionals and him talking to people. That’s what he wanted; he wanted access to the people as well as them having access to him.

That’s what I think the digital technology does, it gives people access to the pastor and lets them, for good and bad, have a glimpse of what he is like outside of the pulpit because that’s all people are used to seeing. Or the especially high quality produced segments where the pastor’s talking about some type of campaign or some type of next message that’s coming up or something like that. No, you actually see this pastor on a arbitrary 12 p.m. Saturday talking about, “I’m out with my family running around at the park,” or something like that. You see how the pastor is a real person and may not always, usually is not 24-7 spiritual churchy mode all the time, and you get access to that.

That is a good thing but it also can be a bad thing because you actually see the pastor in a real light as far as the beliefs you 100% agree with and the beliefs that the pastor may have that you don’t agree with. You may see that via social media or any type of digital media. That’s the stuff that people sometimes can deal with or sometimes cannot deal with. And they look outside of the local area for the most part for the pastor to have a national reach or international reach; they associate that pastor with the church. They may not even know the name of the church but they know the name of the outreach ministry. For example, people know T.D. Jakes Ministries. They may not know The Potter’s House Church. People know Ever Increasing Faith Ministries but they don’t know it comes from Crenshaw Christian Center.

So they associate that pastor with the church and everything he says is an extension of that church. So, when he says something, they feel like the pastor offended them, the church offended them and they don’t want to be affiliated with that anymore. That’s the bad part about it; it amplifies the pastor’s reach.

Join me at the eConnect Conference [Updated]

I’m most excited to be able to share this special discount code with you for $50 off:

The code is: SpecialOffer (one word; case sensitive)

If you register by January 10th you will still get the early bird rate and get the cost down to just $149. This event will be great for you to attend whether you know very little about technology or consider yourself an expert. Group offers a very warm and conversational space for you to learn and engage with other ministry leaders about utilizing online tools for ministry purposes.

I would love for you to join me at the eConnect Conference on January 29-31, 2014 in beautiful Loveland, CO. Group Publishing is hosting this amazing event where we will be discussing how to use social media, online video and other online tools for greater ministry impact. I’m also very excited to be joined by my good friend Nils Smith, author of the Social Media Guide for Ministry and soon to be good friend, Brian Abbott.

At this event we will discuss social media, websites, mobile apps, and how all of these things translate to becoming effective ministry tools. I can’t wait for the conversations that will be had and hope you will be a part. Click here for more information and to register for this exciting event!

How Come Only a Few Fans See My Facebook Posts?

I originally wrote this post in Summer 2012 and I wanted to put it out again because a few weeks ago I read this article on AdAge Digital, "Facebook Admits Organic Reach Is Falling Short, Urges Marketers to Buy Ads". I have seen quite a few fanpage owners ranting about how their posts are not reaching as many fans as previously and that something was going on. Well, Facebook has finally admitted their plan (which I knew was coming a few years back when they went public), which is to make you buy ads and promoted posts to reach your Facebook audience.

Developing social media strategies for churches was originally something that I did out of necessity because I would be one of few people working for a ministry that knew how to utilize social media. As these strategies started to show some measures of success, I would analyze, optimize and repeat. A good social media strategy is to provide inspiration, information and communication to the variety of networks that you are one. Once you provide that then analyze the results, fine tune your approach and then repeat the process. This always works, even though Facebook seems to be changing the rules.

Once Facebook went public, they changed from a focus on connecting people as a social network, to a profit minded, business entity. Facebook’s initial IPO was good but immediately their stock started tanking and they were losing market cap value. Many people wondered if Facebook even had a business model and what exactly were they selling.

Well Facebook does have a business model, and they sell you the ability to communicate with millions of people all around the world. Their Facebook newsfeed is their “Golden Goose” and millions of businesses strive to get their content into people’s newsfeeds. Facebook uses an algorithm called Edgerank to determine what information appears in your newsfeed and what doesn’t. Therefore, if you have 1000 friends on Facebook, you may only see the posts from 270-300 of them, based on who you communicate with the most. Likewise, if you are a fan page, and you have 1000 fans, on average about 125 of them will see your posts, based on who interacts with your page the most.

Now, here’s the kicker, Facebook has a “Promoted Post” option where they will “SELL” you the ability to have your post viewed by more people. So, not only do they not let your post be seen by all the people that have “Liked” your fanpage, they sell you the option to make that possible. From a business perspective, I must admit, I like it, but from a Facebook user perspective, this sucks.

Therefore, there are options such as Facebook NewsFeed Optimization where you actually have to develop a content strategy to push out high quality visual content via Facebook (ideally photos and videos), make a call to action in the post so that people interact with it (share or like this photo, click this link), and even promote the post to increase engagement. This is the new Facebook, it’s time to adapt.

**Another key point I want to add is that I am going to advocate that all the ministries, churches and organizations that I work with and speak to at events, please diversify your social media networks. Do not put all your eggs in Facebook's basket. If you have the resources, please use Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and/or YouTube... (as well as Instagram, Pinterest and Vine).

For more information on this and other Social Media topics, get your copy or How to Get One Million Social Media Fans today.

Social Media Webinar

Make sure to join Joel Sams from Symbiota.com and myself for a great social media webinar Dec 16 at 3pm CST and Dec 17 at 7pm CST. We will discuss 5 Big Mistakes Churches are Making on Social Media, mistakes such as:

• Not Engaging Your Audience
• Not Diversifying Your Networks
• Not Changing Up Your Content
• Not Getting the Word Out About Your Social Media
• Not Taking Advantage of Automation Tools
• and more…

Click Here to Sign Up Now

We look forward to seeing you there!!

The iChurch Method TV - Why I wrote The iChurch Method

I wrote the book for a few reasons. One, because I wanted to get the information and knowledge that God had put inside of me out to the masses. I work for large churches; they have large budgets and great resources and stuff like that, but smaller churches may not have the resources or the expertise to hire a Jason Caston, so I wanted them to be able to have access to the information and knowledge that I had. I wanted to put these resources into a book format that they could get access to.

The book, for a low cost of an average book, $9.99 and $19.99 or something like that, you can buy the book and see the approaches that I took with these large churches. Now, when you see it happening with these large churches you may think it’s costing $10,000 dollars, $20,000 dollars, $100,000 dollars just because you think that church has that budget. In actuality it’s costing $100, $500, maybe $1000 dollars, and that’s well within the reach of a small church. So, I wanted them to be able to have access to that.

Literally the iChurch Method, the book, is a brain dump of what I do in a typical week working with these ministries. I don’t want people to think the book was something that’s not actually going on right now in real time. It’s not old technology; it’s real technology that’s current and going on right now. I wanted them to be able to have access to that.

I also wanted them to have access and reach people the same way large churches are doing it because when it comes to a website it doesn’t matter if you have a bible study in your living room or a small storefront church or a large mega church. The technology that you have access to is all the same, so you just need to have the resources and the knowledge and expertise on how to utilize it, and that’s what I put in that book.

After looking at the book, the next step is to figure out how you want to approach it. The book was written twofold. The first half of every chapter is written with a strategical perspective, so that’s for the decision makers or the pastors or the leadership to be able to make a well informed decision about what they want to do with the technology that was presented.

So, if a pastor reads the first chapter which is about websites, the first half of it is about the strategy of websites and why are we using them and what technology is being introduced to provide that solution, that way the pastor or leadership can have a well informed discussion with the technical person that may actually implement the solution. The pastor is well informed enough to have a conversation so that the technical person is not able to take advantage of them. That was another aspect of me writing the book was to empower leadership and pastors and the people of the smaller churches to have the knowledge to not let companies take advantage of them that are maybe out to just try and make a profit off of the church. I don’t want that to occur.

The next step is to figure out, from a strategical perspective, if you want somebody else to implement it for you. If so, then you can take this book, know exactly how you want to implement it, hand it to them and say, “Look, I want you to do what’s in chapter one, do what’s in chapter three, not so much chapter two; we’ll get to that later, and do what’s in chapter four. I read the book, so I know what’s in it and I just want you to implement the solutions that I’ve seen.” I think that would be the best approach for that. Now, there’s another aspect to it if you have a pastor that’s tech savvy. Some pastors I’ve worked with have wanted to implement it themselves. So, the second half of every chapter is a technical section where I’ve actually given code snippets or I give screenshots of walkthroughs of how to implement and set up Facebook fan pages, how to set up podcasts or how to load up videos on Vimeo.com and stuff like that.

If you want to get hands-on and roll up your sleeves and actually do it, then I provide solutions for that as well and examples on how to do that. If people want to do it themselves, they can; otherwise they can hand it off to someone who can do it for them and they know exactly what it is they want done.

The last week of April 2013, maybe early May 2013, I’m going to release Volume Two of the iChurch Method. Volume One that I released was called How to Advance Your Ministry Online. That was just the introduction as far as me showing people how to utilize the technology and advance your ministry online starting from nothing.

With Volume Two, Changing the World When You Log In, is taking what was introduced in Volume One to another level. For example, in Volume One we talk about how to get your website up, what content management systems to use. In Volume Two we’re talking about taking that website that’s already implemented to another level using technology such as the parallax, responsive design, and stuff like that. We just want to keep taking things to the next level.

A good example is in chapter two. In Volume One we talk about multimedia, podcasting, online video, online streaming. In Volume Two in the multimedia section we’re talking about creating an entire internet church campus. Now I felt like I had to wait to give people information on how to implement an internet church campus because I wanted them to first have a website before they tried to jump up and try to create an entire internet church campus.

Once you start putting all these multimedia aspects together and these interactive aspects together, you can start creating that internet church campus, and that’s what I want to start guiding people towards with that. Of course with social media, the next level of that is we’ve seen Facebook bought Instagram, we’ve seen Pinterest really take off, and we’ve seen this visual social media really take off based more around video and pictures and stuff like that and I want to educate and inform people on how to utilize that.

Of course in mobile, mobile websites are really the initial step of getting a church or ministry online, but now let’s talk about mobile apps and how to take that to another level. Let’s talk about tablets and how to best utilize those and implement and integrate those into the church.

For more information on this and other topics, get your copy of “The iChurch Method Volume 1: How to Advance Your Ministry Online.” or The iChurch Method Volume 2: Changing the World When You Login or even sign up for the iChurch Method Online School.

The iChurch Method - Vol. 1 and Vol. 2

Since I have released The iChurch Method Vol. 2, I have been getting the same question, what’s the difference between the two books? And, which one should you buy?

First and foremost, the two books is that they are continuations of each other. They both focus on the five areas of The iChurch Method, which is websites, multimedia, eCommerce, social media and mobile. The difference between them is that vol. 1, How to Advance Your Ministry Online is the basics of The iChurch Method and vol. 2, Changing the World When You Login, is the advanced version of The iChurch Method.

Here is a breakdown

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Vol. 1 - How to Advance Your Ministry Online Websites Objectives of a Website Using a CMS (Content Mgmt System) Website Layout Multimedia Podcasting Live Streaming for FREE Archived Video Adding media to websites eCommerce Basic Online giving setup Basic Online store setup Social Media Social Media Strategy - Part 1 Sharing content from website Facebook/Twitter basics Mobile Mobile Websites

Vol. 2 - Changing the World When You Login Websites Advanced websites with Responsive design. Search Engine Optimization Analytics Multimedia Internet Church Campus Google Hangouts eCommerce Online giving forms Offline Commerce Social Media Social Media Strategy - Part 2 Visual Social Media Mobile Social Media Mobile Mobile Apps

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The reason I have two books is that technology is always evolving and changing, therefore in order for organizations to keep up, they need books and trainings that are always evolving and changing. I will continue to publish The iChurch Method volumes as long as necessary to keep ministries updated on current technologies.

The iChurch Method TV - Ep. 12 - Developing Online Content Strategies

Continuing The iChurch Method TV series, I was asked a question about helping a church develop online content strategies. Here is the transcript of the video above:

First I would ask them what you consider an ideal membership for you right now. If you’re trying to get a million members for your church then we can look at that. If you just want 1000 people and that’s as many as you feel you can handle then we can look at that as well.

Once we establish that then we start looking at the content that the ministry is putting out; how often are you preaching, what other content do you have such as announcements, what other leadership in your ministry is pushing out content. We start gathering all that content together. Once we look at all the content that the ministry is putting out, then we start figuring out how we can distribute it—whether it be social media—we look at the website and what information is on there, and we just start looking at how many different ways we can distribute that information. Continuing with that, we look at multimedia because we want to look at the online video aspect. Do you want to have live online streaming services or would you rather just record your services and archive it and let people watch it later? We ask those questions.

Then we look at online donations; is that something that you want to do. With the content that we were looking at before, do you have enough to start creating digital products? You may not have the resources to create DVDs and CDs but you can create digital products if we’re recording the sermons.

Then we look at, again, social media; is your church ready for that and do you have the resources. I’m not trying to put everything on the pastor. The pastor is gifted at ministering to the people and preaching to the people, so I’m not trying to make the pastor “Mr. Everything” for the church. So, do you have the resources and possibly volunteers to utilize social media? Maybe some young people that are very enthusiastic about it and that are also very enthusiastic about your ministry.

Finally with mobile, I want to help them understand that aspect. When I tell them about just anything with digital ministry they immediately think computer ministry, but I’m trying to help them understand it’s internet ministry, online ministry, so you have to include mobile devices, tablets, and anything that’s going to be internet enabled well into the future. We’re getting into the era of the Jetsons now, so people have to understand, and churches have to understand, that everything is going to be internet enabled.

For more information on this and other topics, get your copy of “The iChurch Method Volume 1: How to Advance Your Ministry Online.” or The iChurch Method Volume 2: Changing the World When You Login or even sign up for the iChurch Method Online School.

The iChurch Method TV - Ep 15 - Ministry Growth Online

Continuing The iChurch Method TV series about ministry growth online, here's the transcript from the video above.

I would tell a minister that basically you could continue to do ministry as you do it for your local and regional reach. Continue to push out the content that you already are; preaching your sermons and ministering the people in the way that you do. But, understand that now it’s going to be packaged and distributed to an international audience.

I’m not trying to tell them to change the way that they do ministry, I’m just letting them know that I’m giving you a larger distribution of the content and of the ministry and taking the gospel to the four corners of the earth.

For more information on this and other topics, get your copy of “The iChurch Method Volume 1: How to Advance Your Ministry Online.” or The iChurch Method Volume 2: Changing the World When You Login or even sign up for the iChurch Method Online School.

Join Me at #iMinistry2013 [Updated]

UPDATE: There are two major updates that have occurred since I first published this blog back in September 2013. First and foremost, I will be speaking at the conference on Wednesday, Oct 16 during the Social Media and Online Advertising sessions. Second, the conference will be streaming live at http://go.mediasocial.tv/iMinistry starting at 1pm CST on Tuesday, Oct 15. These two great new happenings have made me even more excited about the conference and look forward to you joining me there or online!! (follow the conversation on social media as well using #iministry2013

Original Post below Last year I was searching for any conferences that incorporated Church and Technology. For some reason, there weren't many (Biola Digital Ministry Conference, iMinistry Conference, TDJ Pastors and Leadership Conference, Echo Conference, Christian Leadership Alliance Conference) and it seems that the church continues to show a blind eye to the advancements in technology and how the church can use technology to reach the masses. But in late August, I found out about the inaugural iMinistry Conference, so I figured I would check it out and I was amazed.

Now, let me preface these next lines by saying, it takes a lot for a conference to impress me, not because it has to be a grand production, but because I am very good at what I do so I need to see quality content being taught in addition to people who are very good at what they are teaching. This was definitely the case at iMinistry Conference, people such as Seth Farrior, Nils Smith (who seems to think just like me, we must be twins), Jason Morris, Jan Touchberry, Nate Merril and a score of others. Many of these aforementioned people I connect with on Facebook/Twitter daily and in the case of Nils, have even traveled with.

This year they are continuing to teach a variety of topics such as Social Media for Ministry (a panel that I will be participating in), Online Church Campuses, Connecting with users online for ministry and much much more. I enjoy a conference like this because in addition to learning from these very gifted and talented individuals, I enjoy the camaraderie of being around like minds and people with visions to reach the world online for the kingdom.

You should join us this year, register today and get $50 off using the discount code FACEBOOK.

How I got involved in working with Ministries

Continuing The iChurch Method TV series, here's the transcript from the video above.

The first ministry that gave me the opportunity to work with them was Crenshaw Christian Center out in Los Angeles. When I got there in 2007 they were utilizing technology as best they could. The people they had on staff were working on some great technological things but they just didn’t know how to utilize the internet as best as it could be used at the time.

What I was able to do was come in and look at what they had going on and start looking at how they could do it better. Coming to a large ministry—from the outside looking in— you think that they know everything; they have everything going on. What I was able to see was how I was able to utilize my skill set and actually make an impact instead of just coming in and being a cog in the wheel.

With that ministry I was able to start working on developing solutions for their websites and multimedia, eCommerce, social media, and stuff like that, and see how it actually transformed the ministry because it was able to bring those aspects to the ministry in a way that they weren’t using them before.

Likewise, when I was working with TD Jakes Ministries and went out there—even starting back to when I came in for the interview—they asked me what I could bring to the ministry. I gave them five areas; I said, “I can help you out with your websites, multimedia, eCommerce, social media, and mobile.” Subsequently those five topics became the chapters in the book I wrote, The iChurch Method.

What really helped me out with these ministries is seeing the things that I was bringing to the ministry, actually seeing the impact of them and how people were able to interact more with the ministry via technology. But, I also see that even as large as these ministries were and the great impact that they already had from me watching them from afar all these years, I saw that something that God put in me was actually able to help them at a time such as now.

It was two-fold. First let’s go back to Crenshaw Christian Center. Starting with them I was a one-man department. Basically I was hired to revamp the entire web presence. Everything that was going on on the internet that you see such as the social media aspect of it, the mobile, the website, I was a one-man department. I had a graphic person that worked with me but any internet solutions, whatever I came up with, was the solution they went with.

I worked very closely with the pastor. He was a young guy like myself, early 30s, so we had a good idea what we wanted to do in terms of technology and he would give me his ideas and I would make them happen in terms of technology.

On the other side of that, with T.D. Jakes Ministries, it was a much larger environment. I was a part of a team. I came in and initially they wanted me to work specifically just on websites but then when I started telling them the other expertise that I had, which was the eCommerce, the multimedia, and stuff like that, I started to expand to other teams. Initially I came in working with online marketing and that was initially what they thought I could do. Then I kind of became a hybrid of working with IT because of the actual programming stuff that I knew how to do as well.

The real kind of pivot came when social media really took off on the scene. TD Jakes Ministries, when I got there, they weren’t really using social media in that manner and this is 2010. So, when I started showing them some solutions and developing some strategies for them to help utilize social media on a whole other level—mainly Facebook and Twitter at that time—then they really let me just go ahead and run with it. Basically kind of probably to keep me quiet.

But, the thing that happened that was phenomenal was social media took off; it exploded. When I got there they probably had 2000 people just off of the name of the pastor, Bishop Jakes. Within two years we increased that to a million.

The iChuch Method at ACU Summitt

In the middle of Texas there's a small city called Abilene. In Abilene is one of the most advanced Christian universities called Abilene Christian university. Prior to stepping foot on campus december 2012, I had never heard of the school but I am glad that I was invited back then as well as Sept 16 - 18, 2013 for the 107th ACU Summit. In December 2012, I was invited by Prof. John Weaver to come record a set of interviews and teachings about my thoughts on Church and Technology. Here are the interviews.

It was a great opportunity for me because not only was I called in to be a guest speaker but also Prof. Weaver used The iChurch Method books in his course. This marked the second university (Biola University was the first) that used The iChurch Method as a training manual.

At the end of my visit, I was informed about an annual conference ACU has where numerous people from around the country gather to discuss how to better conduct ministry as well as learn from the brightest in the kingdom. I was also invited to teach The iChurch Method at this conference since it was one of the first methods for the church that focused on the technical aspects of doing ministry online.

Therefore, if you are able, join me Sept 16 - 18, 2013 at Abilene Christian University where I will be teaching The iChurch Method for 3 days from 4:00 - 4:45pm as well as selling and signing The iChurch Method and How to Get One Million Social Media Fans books.

What to do when your Hootsuite Account gets Hacked

Around 7:30pm CST on Sunday, Aug, 18, 2013, I got a text that said, hey your Twitter account is sending out crazy tweets, change your password. I didn’t think it was a big deal because I hadn’t tweeted from the account in a while but I do know that it’s not difficult to get your Twitter account hacked so I headed to my laptop to fix the issue. Prior to making it to the laptop I got two additional texts and a phone call which meant the issue wasn’t small and wasn’t just my personal account. What transpired was an issue that seems to have came out of nowhere and just as quickly disappeared back from whence it came. My Hootsuite.com account, that manages my social media networks and two very large ministries that I work with (one with over 3 million social media fans and another with around 100 thousand social media fans) was hacked and sent out two spam email links. My first thought was damage control, so I immediately started deleting tweets from the ministry accounts and my business accounts, which in total was about 20 - 25 accounts.

I then started to research the issue by Googling “hootsuite account hacked” which gave me the following link: http://newthoughtmarketing.com/ntmblog/social-media/hootsuite-hacked-yesterday-july-28-2013/. Now this link highlights that issue that I dealt with in getting my hootsuite account hacked but it also highlighted the main point i’m trying to make with this blog post, there was no warning that my account would be hacked, and once the two links were sent, there was no further indication that my account was compromised. Furthermore, there hasn’t been a statement from Hootsuite regarding the hacks except the common directions to remove all social media networks, change your password on hootsuite and the social media networks and then reinstall the networks. This response is fine but outside of a person in a forum stating that the issue could be 3rd party addons giving hackers access to Hootsuite, there isn’t any information on how this attack occurs and how to prevent it in the future. It’s just a mystery with no rhyme or reason and that’s not a good situation to be in when dealing with multiple accounts for multiple organizations. I have reached out to @hootsuite and @hootsuite_help so hopefully I will hear something back in the near future.

The iChurch Method TV - Ep 16 - Church Partnership Programs

Continuing The iChurch Method TV series, here's the transcript from the video above.

The iChurch method will help you develop an online network of your own. I would say look at a network; look at something like Facebook. You see that you have a lot of people that are connecting on there. I would say if you want to have a partnership program, what if you had your own Facebook, your own network where ministries were connecting with you and also interacting with each other via this network. We create that for you so you can have this online network where ministries can interact and they can provide training and leadership for them in this partnership program. We would create that for them and lay it all out, and let them figure out if that was what they wanted to do and if that was the route they wanted to take online.

Participation would be basically the same way you would run an offline partnership network; what is the content you want to get out, what are the levels of membership, what is the goal and purpose of your partnership network, and what do you want to get to the members of your partnership network. Once that content is generated and that overall strategy is dictated, then we just take that offline strategy and just put it online.

For more information on this and other topics, get your copy of “The iChurch Method Volume 1: How to Advance Your Ministry Online.” or The iChurch Method Volume 2: Changing the World When You Login or even sign up for the iChurch Method Online School.

How to Advance Your Ministry Online

The world is rapidly changing, and in order to keep up, and minister effectively to your congregation, you need to take advantage of the latest technology that your parishioners are using to stay connected with friends and family, do business, and take care of their personal and spiritual needs. This can be a confusing set of circumstances to navigate, with all kinds of media sites and technology out there clamoring to be utilized, all claiming to be the best way of reaching your current and potential congregation. How do you proceed? Here is a rough, abbreviated breakdown of the technology that is available to you to help you reach and expand your congregation.

Your Website If you don't already have a website, why not? Printed phone books and encyclopedias are nearly obsolete, as the internet makes information so much more easily accessed, from finding local vendors to answering your children's homework questions. If your church does not already have a website, it should. And if it does, it should be updated frequently with fresh, informative content to keep parishioners checking back regularly to see what's new.

Multimedia - Interactive Multimedia Your church building may only hold 100, 200, or 500 members, but your virtual church can reach millions, through the power of media. Do you have a pastor who is a particularly powerful speaker, someone people wait all week to hear? Videotape the sermons and make them available online. You can post them on your website, your Facebook page, YouTube and more, to attract more members to your church, or increase your revenue by offering them for sale, via CD, DVD or audio or video download from your online store, which brings us to…

eCommerce Take donations online, sell recordings of sermons and motivational lectures, allow parishioners to purchase tickets to special events and more with an eCommerce site.

Social Media Harness the power of the most interactive technology the world has ever known by leveraging social media to get your message out to more people than your predecessors could have ever dreamed of. With the right message, or a captivating photo, video clip or other post, your church can go viral, and expand far beyond the reach of its physical walls.

Mobile Technology Almost everyone seems to have a smart phone these days, and they're always surfing the net. If they're looking for spiritual guidance, be the one to give it to them with a mobile-optimized website. What difference does it make? Imagine seeing your current website on a 2-inch square screen and you'll understand. A mobile optimized site shows your visitors what you think is important, and lets them browse through the rest of the site at their leisure.

In summary, as bewildering as it may seem at first, the newest technology that is overwhelming us with its rapidly evolving applications is a powerful tool for churches to reach out to members and potential members in a way never before possible. It's a brave new electronic world out there. Make sure you're a part of it.

For more information on this and other topics, get your copy of "The iChurch Method Volume 1: How to Advance Your Ministry Online." or The iChurch Method Volume 2: Changing the World When You Login or even sign up for the iChurch Method Online School.