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Church Social Media and Technology Presentation Excerpt

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In July I was in LA for the FICWFM conference and presented a session on Church Social Media and Technology. Here is a short excerpt from the session and as soon as the final version is edited and released I will have it here on The iChurch Method. [ylwm_vimeo height="400" width="600"]46858607[/ylwm_vimeo]

The Church website, a powerful ministry tool

I heard a stat recently that made me stop in my tracks and really think about it, the stat was that 60% - 75% of new visitors to churches check out the church’s website prior to visiting. Now let’s think about that for a second, the majority of new visitors to a church are first introduced to the church via the website. That means that the website immediately becomes one of the most important parts of the ministry. How many times have you seen a church’s website and just shook your head at the lack of quality that the website displayed. I understand that there are many churches that have limited budgets and are not able to invest thousands into a new website but there are low cost solutions to make sure the website delivers the same quality ministry that someone would receive if they stepped into the church building.

If churches understood how important a ministry tool that the website is and gave it the same attention they give ministry items such as church buildings, internal ministries and sanctuaries, then we would see more high quality websites that engage and connect with people prior to them coming to the actual church. Don’t pay attention to all the things you traditionally viewed as important within a church and negate the website because many people are looking at the website as an extension of the church.

Now let’s teach, if you would like to know some ways to enhance your website there here are some helpful tips.

      When people come to your website they are usually looking for service times, directions and contact information. Also, if you are streaming weekend services then they are looking for that as well.
      There are free services such as Google Sites (sites.google.com) and Wix (wix.com) that offer websites that churches can easily make and initially establish an online presence. But do not rely on free solutions for an extended period of time, start off on those sites and then graduate to your own website on your own server, something built by a web designer/developer and hosted on a service provider like GoDaddy (godaddy.com).
      Make sure people can get anywhere on your website within 2 - 3 clicks.
      Don’t try to cram everything about the ministry onto the homepage, it makes your ministry homepage look like an online hoarding location. Less is better on the homepage, stick to large banners, an online video, social media icons, and key links to things that people are looking for.
      Purchase The iChurch Method and learn How to Advance Your Ministry Online.
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Church Technology, bring the people in or take ministry to the people?

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I was having a conversation with a childhood friend (who is now a pastor) about Church and Technology and we came to a crossroads about how we thought churches should utilize technology. We both agree that churches should use technology to reach people and expand the outreach of the ministry, but he asked me how often does technology result in additional people in the sanctuary. My approach to technology and the entire premise of The iChurch Method was to use technology to take the ministry to the people. I developed a strategy that would inform your local congregation and give them a way to connect with the ministry online, increase your online audience that is not local by providing them online tools to connect and providing information for future church supporters by positioning the ministry to be accessible in numerous ways via technology. To help churches make sure they were taking ministry to the people, a supplement to their base premise of creating a location for people to come, get healed, change their lives and participate in ministry.

It never occurred to me that there was a focus by pastors to utilize technology to get people into the sanctuary OVER building an online audience and increasing the supporters that may never set foot inside the church. It appears easy for pastors to understand tv ministries and using TBN or The Church Channel to broadcast their churches to millions around the world and look for donations from their tv supporters, whom may never step foot into the sanctuary. But there seems to be a disconnect by these same pastors when it comes to building an online ministry using video, social media, mobile devices and streaming to build an online audience that they may never see but will still support the ministry via online donations.

Therefore, I believe that churches, ministries, pastors and Christianity in general will need to embrace technology, invest in online ministries, websites, mobile solutions and social media. Churches will need to continue to take the ministry to the people and make sure whatever device a person picks up, their ministry is accessible from it and accept the fact that online audiences will continue to grow and the church will have supporters that they see every weekend for services and supporters that they don’t see but still embrace the church as well. What are your thoughts on Churches embracing technology?

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FICWFM conference event (Updated with Presentation)

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On Thursday, July 26, 2012 I taught at the FICWFM conference in Los Angeles, CA. It was a session on How Churches can best use Social Media and other aspects of the iChurch Method. The session was a great success and many churches were able to get a better grasp of how to use technology and social media to advance their ministry online.

Here is the PPT presentation from my session - FICWFM social media conference presenation (PDF file).

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Mobile Websites vs. Mobile Apps

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Most recently at a conference I was asked which mobile option should a church take, a mobile website or a mobile app? This question seemed to quickly get the attention of all the attendees at the conference because a strange hush came over the room in anticipation of my answer. Thus, I took a deep breath and said with all confidence, “Both...now let me explain”. I am a proponent of mobile apps, I thoroughly love my iphone and ipad and the numerous (128) apps that I have installed. I also have an Android phone with apps installed as well. The apps and their native integration into the operating system of the phone makes their usage much easier than a mobile website. Unfortunately, apps are phone specific and each app is limited to the phones that have that operating system, while mobile websites can be programmed for numerous phone because all of the latest smartphones have HTML5 Webkit enabled updated mobile web browsers.

A mobile website is the first step in a mobile web strategy therefore prior to a church investing in mobile apps, they should create a mobile website. One mobile website can encompass numerous mobile smartphones and that should be the focus of the mobile website, to reach as many mobile devices as possible. Initially, I used to say to only create a HTML Webkit enabled mobile website that will work with the latest mobile browsers but after attending the Biola Digital Ministry Conference, I learned that an even more scaled down mobile website should be created by the church to reach people in developing countries with limited mobile access. People in developing countries most often can only access the internet from mobile devices that have slow connections and therefore your church mobile website for this audience should load very quickly and not have too much going on. Remember, in order to do this you need to create a high level mobile website and a low level mobile website and program it to load either site depending on the connection and mobile device the user is on.

Therefore, let’s recap, if you are creating a mobile strategy for your church you first want to create a mobile website that can reach numerous mobile devices. Next, you want to create mobile apps for the iphone/ipad, next android, and finally windows mobile devices since those seem to be gaining attention as of the last few months. What’s your mobile strategy for your church or business?

What is Klout? Klout.com that is..

My great aunt asked me a question on facebook a few weeks ago that made me really think for a second, she asked “I don’t understand Klout, can someone please explain it to me”. I have been on Klout for almost a year and I have a general understanding of Klout with a score of 61 but personally I still don’t totally understand the algorithm or how to easily make my score go up or down. I don’t expect them to explain their algorithm in full because just like Google’s search or Facebook’s newsfeed, that is proprietary information, but I do expect them to release more information on how to enhance and utilize Klout so that more people and organizations will embrace it. According to Klout.com: “Klout measures influence online using data from your social networks. Anywhere you have an online presence, you have the opportunity to influence people by creating or sharing content that inspires actions such as likes, retweets, comments and more. The more engagement your posts receive, the more influential you are. Klout uses this information to provide you a Klout Score that measures your overall influence.”

Initially I thought Klout was just another software out there that you can sign up for and hopefully it becomes more useful in the future but now I am starting to see the benefits of Klout as my score continues to increase. I have connected Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Youtube, Linkedin, Foursquare, and Instagram accounts and therefore as I interact normally with social media than my score increases. I can see how this could help a ministry or business because you can sign up as an individual influencer or a brand influencer and connect your social media accounts. One glaring thing that’s missing from Klout is Pinterest, there is no way to connect your Pinterest account to Klout and that needs to change in the near future.

Finally, as more organizations use Klout and take the scores of influencers into consideration, people will continue to take steps to increase their score. Here is a great article from Wired about Klout - http://www.wired.com/business/2012/04/ff_klout/all/ and I think this will give a great explanation on the benefits and drawbacks of it. In my short time on Klout I have found that the more I post (which I use bufferapp.com to post continuously) the more my score rises.

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Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Facebook Newsfeed Optimization

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According to Wikipedia, Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural," or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic"), search results. For quite a few years I have been familiar with SEO and the benefits of appearing higher in search engine results, specifically Google. As I have continued to help websites with their SEO, I have dealt with Google changing the search engine algorithm and thus making my strategy obsolete as I have had to relearn the new steps to improve search engine results. It’s not the easiest thing to do but it has been quite a task for ministry and business websites. While reading http://allfacebook.com/news-feed-optimization-seo-facebook_b92006 last week I was introduced to a new term, Facebook Newsfeed Optimization. This is the approach to get stories and posts on facebook into as many people’s newsfeeds as possible. Facebook uses the EdgeRank formula to sort newsfeeds, the EdgeRank formula is based on how Facebook judges the closeness of two people (or a person and a brand), how valuable an activity is (sharing a photo is better than clicking “like,” for instance), and how long ago it took place. Precisely how these factors are measured is not revealed, and, like Google, Facebook is constantly making tweaks.

Therefore, when you are developing your online strategy, as you have your webmaster make sure your website is search engine optimized, make sure you have your social media manager make sure your facebook strategy is newsfeed optimized to your audience. To do this you need to go to edgerankchecker.com and connect via facebook and let them check your fanpage and analyze your audience, this will give you important data such as when to posts, what posts are most impactful and what the audience likes best.

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Amazon Cloud Computing Outage? Cause for Concern?

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I was just reading Managing risk in the wake of Amazon's cloud outage and it discussed the outage that occurred last week where the cloud servers at Amazon went down. The issues were said to occur due to bugs in the code or inclement weather, depending on which source you read. With that being stated, here are my thoughts on the dependability of cloud computing. In the early 2000s I was working in corporate america for a variety of companies because I was a web developer consultant. I had the opportunity to see a variety of organizations IT structure and how they reacted to the monthly and even weekly server issues that occurred within the company. Microsoft Outlook email would go down, Intranet server would go down, Internet connectivity would go down and every time a vital service went down, no one panicked or questioned the use of the service, they just waited until it was resolved. Yes, millions of dollars was being lost in man hours due to the lack of productivity during this downtime but there was never a mention of removing the Microsoft office servers or any other servers as our solutions.

Now, since the cloud is a viable solution to help small businesses compete with larger corporations and grow from a one man website into a fortune 500 company, it appears to come under attack more often than not. The cloud, and more specifically Amazon cloud solutions and even Google’s cloud solutions have a very successful uptime rate that is upwards of 95% - 98%, that’s extremely higher than what we dealt with in the early 2000s and for a fraction of the costs. When Netflix, Instagram and Pinterest went down last week, it wasn’t the cloud that we were upset with, it was the fact that these services that we depended on went down and someone had to take the blame. When in reality, we could’ve all been patient and waited a few hours or a day for Amazon to fix the issue and we go back to life as normal.

Companies need to make sure they have redundancy plans in place and backup sites available but the best lesson for working in the cloud was the title of this article - How to deal with cloud failure: Live, learn, fix, repeat.

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Biola University Digital Ministry Conference

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Last week I attended the Biola University Digital Ministry Conference (http://events.biola.edu/bioladigital/), and it was a very informative, innovative conference.  There were amazing speakers there and even though I didn’t get a chance to attend every session, I did attend some good ones and learned some very interesting things. Ranging from mobile ministry strategies, web content strategies and where digital ministry will be in 20 years, I think that overall the conference consisted of educated digital ministry specialists teaching other digital ministry specialists.  With that being stated, here are my notes from the conference.

  • FaithVillage.com did a session on their christian social media platform.  This social media platform is the next step in the evolution of social media and a great place for christians and non-christians to network, interact, learn, shop and operate in a great online environment.  I am sure there is more to FaithVillage.com and I look forward to visiting their offices which are located near our offices.
  • MobileMinistryMagazine.com founder Antoine Wright did a session on mobile ministry strategies and it was a great session indeed.  First and foremost, he taught the session from a mobile phone, the slides and entire presentation was from his Nokia phone.  Not my phone of choice (iPhone fan here) but the “practice what you preach” was in full effect for this session.  
    • Coca Cola’s mobile strategy is 70/20/10 - 70% sms, 20% website, 10% apps.  Most people think that apps and mobile websites are the first steps in a mobile strategy but SMS was surprisingly the most effective approach.
    • 52% of new phone purchases in the US are smart phones
    • 70% of mobile web use is searching
    • Before you get started develop a strategy that answers “what are my mobile goals” and “what are my mobile issues”.
    • opera mini is the most used mobile website
    • main questions of mobile users initially (and even non mobile users) is “where is the church located” and “what time is the service”
    • mobify.me (web service that takes a website and makes it mobile) works with wordpress
    • Develop a strategy for users that have less that smartphones, which is quite a few users of developing nations where bandwidth is at a premium.
    • Going from a mobile website to a mobile app is whole bunch easier then going from app to website. Build the website and from there take the best parts of it and add that to an app.
    • Dont add high res photos and anything that add unnecessary downloading
    • Dont add complex features
    • Dont limit your website to just high end mobile devices
  • VisualStoryNetwork.org Clyde Taber gave a great explanation of Visual Ministry and the continuing transition of the entire online audience moving to a majority visual exprience online.  Also, there was a strong emphasis on telling a compelling story online.  Your ministry’s online properties should tell your story and not just try to push information.
    • People are talking and reading less, viewing and social networking more
    • A good book example is by Nicholas Carr - The Shallows - our brains are being reconfigured to consume information and push it out in small bursts
    • The internet has gone visual
    • Youtube is the second largest search engine
    • People are becoming visual
    • People love a story
    • Know your audience
    • Know your goals
    • Know your technology
  • Digital Ministry Trends session was about what trends are apparent in digital ministry today and what will be relevant in the next 20 years.  There was one consensus about anything digital, forecasting one year out is good, three years out is possible and five years out is just guessing, anything further than that really is pointless because technology will move faster than you think and the intangibles come into play.
    • Social networks are integrated with everything online
    • Everything will begin online, including ministry (85% of young people check out a website online before coming in and choose church based on website)
    • The majority of churches ministry starts on the website.  
    • 17% of searches now include a map or geographic feature
    • Still many low-tech areas and people, billions are entering from the developing world and rural america
    • For global reach you need low bandwidth sites and high bandwidth sites
    • Your internet reputation is everything, you are being evaluated and researched online before people even come in the door.
    • People are initially looking for location, service time, and children's ministry.
    • Content needs to go from device to device
    • Format wars (Apple, Android, Windows) will continue into near future but finally a universal format will win out
    • Keep it simple
    • Most people hate technology but use it because they have to.  They don’t want to feel confused, helpless or stupid.
    • Live chat boxes will be helpful, people want instant interaction
    • Customer service will be a winning factor
    • Mobile devices have changed the entire landscape of the internet and they have been the fastest adopted technology in the history of mankind.
    • Social Media will lead to a more customized internet experience and that is what people will come to expect.
  • Web Content Strategy session with Drew Goodmanson from MonkDev.com. This was easily one of the best sessions of the conference.  Drew and his company Monk Development has been one that I have been following for quite a long time and I have went out to San Diego and met with them and talked about opportunities to further work with them.  Therefore, I was very much looking forward to Drew’s session and learning quite a bit from him.  

    • There are 6 web strategy problems that most ministries have
      1. Skymall syndrome - whatever the church sees it wants to do without thinking about strategy
      2. Ministry schizophrenia - people more dedicated to their ministry within the church than the entire church vision
      3. ministry narcissism - ministry web strategy is designed for internal people and not the normal world. They don’t know who is visiting their website, what they want and they expect people to figure out what the ministry is trying to say.
      4. Blind men and the elephant - no one has experience building a website to reach the people. they believe that their previous experience is what makes them qualified to do this project.
      5. Death by committees - technology moves fast, the decision process is extremely slow
      6. Volunteer hostage situation - volunteer holds website hostage
    • Discovery phase in developing website strategy consists of:
      1. How are people using your ministry and website?
      2. Survey members, do interviews. Use them for validation of what you are doing or want to do, not discover a whole bunch of new ways because you will lose focus of what you are trying to complete.
      3. Use your previous website analytics
      4. Plan your social media content calendar
      5. Realize that your website is the first connection for people

    • The church is a corporation, cause and a community

Overall, this was a great conference and I look forward to participating again next year.

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Evolution of Digital Ministry

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I was reading an article on the evolution of digital ministry and it gave a good explanation of where the church had been and where it was today. I spoke about this just last week at the Pastors and Leadership Conference in Orlando Florida. I explained to people that my job within the ministry was to make sure the ministry was able to utilize the most current technology that is available today as well as forecast where technology was going and make sure the ministry would be able to utilize that as well. As I read about where digital ministry had been, I started to see a more clear picture of how it got to where it is today and where it is going. Here is a recap: In 2000…Websites An increasing number of churches recognized the value of a church website. It was a digital land rush where most sites served as a digital billboard or brochures highlighting the church’s ministries. Unfortunately, this approach offered little value past the first visit. The website was a one way communication where churches broadcasted information to online users such as service time, location and church information.

In 2003…Multimedia As bandwidth access grew in homes, more churches saw the potential to distribute sermons and other media to a much broader audience than their brick and mortar congregations. Thus they started having archived multimedia on their website (audio and video) and using flash on their websites.

In 2006…Ecommerce Content management systems rose to popularity as churches took control of maintaining their own content through blogs, event calendars, and other features. Church websites transitioned from being a static brochure to a dynamic magazine. The arrival of e-commerce came with online donations and online stores.

In 2009…Social Media Many churches start implementing streaming sermons, social media (Twitter and Facebook), and some offer a church online experience (internet campus v1) complete with worship, sermons, instant chat, and online prayer.

In 2012…Mobile (and more social media) Due to smart phones, mobile web browsing is surging, but most church sites are clunky to navigate in a mobile browser. Church apps and mobile sites are becoming more interactive and facilitating a way to interact and communicate with the ministry. Social media integration is growing with a focus on social streams and social sharing of church content.

In 2015…Internet Campus/Internet TV/The Cloud With 4G and eventually 5G internet access the cloud will become a larger player in bringing technical costs down in online ministry. Online software such as Google Apps and Dropbox will be integrated into ministry technical solutions and work will not be limited to onsite at an office but be anywhere via a tablet or other mobile device. Sharing everything via social media will become more common with options such as seamless sharing via the social graph and facebook. Online Interactive Internet Campuses will become more common and triple in numbers. Church attendance will increase 50% but not in actual pew numbers, but due to online members who support churches from their computers and mobile devices. Internet TV will become more common with internet enabled televisions and internet tv devices becoming more powerful and common.

This evolution of digital ministry is the basis for The iChurch Method, as you can see each year highlighted above has a topic that was prevalent at the time next to it and these correspond to the chapters in the iChurch Method book, Websites, Multimedia, Ecommerce, Social Media and Mobile. This is the order we believe that your church online strategy should take. And of course the 2015 hot topics are what the next edition of the iChurch Method will focus on...stay tuned.

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2012 Pastors and Leadership Conference

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[ylwm_vimeo height="375" width="500"]39897315[/ylwm_vimeo] Today I leave for Orlando and the 2012 Pastors and Leadership Conference. I have the pleasure of presenting two workshop sessions, a beginner and intermediate, on Social Media and Ministry. I am presenting again with Marc Jeffrey, whom I presented this session with at the 2011 Pastors and Leadership Conference. But this year is a bit different...

For the first time I am teaching from The iChurch Method book as well as selling the book onsite. Last year when I taught at the conference I wanted to provide a resource for attendees so I made sure to give everyone my email information and asked them to reach out to me for questions. A few of them did but i’m sure many more didn’t and that was unfortunate because I enjoy answering questions. This year I am bringing books for purchase as well as registration information about The iChurch Method online membership network that provides online webinars, tutorials and other training resources to help churches with their online ministry presence.

This conference has a wide variety of trainings sessions and some of the greatest preachers and speakers headlining the event. Bishop T.D. Jakes, Pastor Joel Osteen, Pastor Sheryl Brady, Pastor Charles Jenkins, Pastor Cory Brooks, Bishop Tudor Bismark and Dr. Cynthia James just to name a few. I remember I went to a conference in 2004 where Bishop Tudor Bismark spoke and gave a great word and at that time I never thought I would be teaching something just as important at a conference with him. But The iChurch Method is just as inspirational, timely and important as anything that any preacher can speak on at this conference. These pastors and leaders need technology and it is transforming ministries all over the world, and T.D Jakes ministry is a great example of that.

I look forward to teaching a great session, distributing The iChurch Method book, registering members for The iChurch Method Network and helping ministries advance online.

Google is doing just what we need it to do, keep other companies on their toes

As I continue to read about the enhancements that Google is rolling out I find that I continue to see two things from Google. One, they are creating an amazing ecosystem that we all are being sucked into by the freemiums such as Gmail, Google Docs/Drive, Youtube, Google+ and Android. And two, they are keeping other companies competitive and innovative, which is exactly what we need Google to do. This article here is a great example because as soon Google+ increased their profile pic size, Facebook did the same within 24 hours. Outside of search and Youtube, I don’t see Google as a leader in any other industry. I find that they are second or third when it comes to online office software with Microsoft Office leading that front. I find that in online storage they are just getting into the game with Dropbox and Box.net having a good start ahead (and even Microsoft Skydrive). In the mobile arena the android operating system is seen as a competitor to the industry leading Apple iOS. In social media, Google+ is the fourth to fifth largest social network behind Facebok, Twitter, Pinterest and Linkedin. And Gmail is very high in terms of online mail usage but Yahoo and Hotmail have more users.

With all that being stated, Google is in the game and keeping all those industry players on their toes and not letting anyone become complacent in their industry. I enjoy Apple products very much but I also enjoy that Android Mobile makes sure to keep adding features to stay competitive. I really like Google+ and the features on the social network are innovative and easy to use but with Facebook coming out of the gate as the social media behemoth for so many years, Google+ is an afterthought for people who don’t have time to manage multiple social networks, Facebook and Twitter were hard enough as it was. Therefore, Google+ needs to stay in the game even though it appears that it’s Facebook or Twitter’s game to lose.

As I look at how ministries can use Google as a service, I believe that they can use Google as an online component to many of their administrative and marketing needs to help advance the ministry online. For example, distributing the video content of the ministry via Google+ and Youtube are great ways to create an online audience. Google+ is still a growing social network and is a great place for a ministry to build up an audience and have video chats online using Google+ hangouts feature. Ministries can use Google Apps as a low cost alternative to Microsoft Office and have a fully online cloud hosted office applications suite that isn’t limited to the office but is accessible wherever there’s an internet connection and from whatever device the ministry personnel wants to you such as laptops, desktops, ipads, iphones, android phones and others. These cloud services are already being used heavily by universities, nonprofits, small businesses, local schools and other organizations that see the benefit of having full office software without having to worry about high licensing fees or servers. This is just one of the many options the cloud and Google offers to help ministries advance online.

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How Churches are using Technology, the interview by CW33 news

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On Wednesday April 18, 2012, I was interviewed by CW33 about how Churches use Technology. The article was printed here. This whole story was based on a USA today article located here about "More congregations using online tools". The interview was shown on the Monday evening news at 9pm CST and here is the video. [ylwm_vimeo height="337" width="600"]40916919[/ylwm_vimeo]

How can Churches use Pinterest

Just last week I was asked about Pinterest and how it could be used for churches. I have been watching Pinterest, just as I watched Path, Color, Instagram, and other online software tools that seemed to be based on pictures. I initially thought Pinterest was going to just be another fad but as time progressed (fueled by a large female audience), Pinterest took off and hasn’t looked back. Here are a few links that I looked at first prior to getting started on Pinterest for myself.

http://www.ministrybestpractices.com/2012/02/how-to-use-pinterest-for-your-ministry.html

http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/2012/02/churches-reaching-out-with-pinterest/

My initial thoughts on Pinterest are that it’s the easiest and best way to tell a visual story for your ministry. The church has the greatest story ever about Jesus Christ so why not use multimedia (pictures and video) to tell this story. It’s been years in the making that a network that focused on the most engaging forms of media on the internet, pictures and video, would eventually take off. It just need to be easy enough that anyone could do it quickly and with a low learning curve. Pinterest is just that, easy, visual and engaging. Now, here are some examples of great things that your church can post to get you started on Pinterest. (List below is from Ministry Best Practices Link above):

  • Share inspiring quotes
  • Share photos of your people serving, doing ministry or doing life together
  • Share news
  • Highlight books/music
  • Sharing the gospel/evangelism
  • Share sacred art/stations of the cross
  • Scrapbook your church's body life
  • Create themed boards for your church's singles/youth
  • Highlight your events
  • Share pictures that illustrate your sermon series
  • Highlight your ministry's mission

Have fun and if you are looking for more information about Church and Technology you can check out The iChurch Method today.

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Ministry and Social Media - Make it Easy to Share

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In my book The iChurch Method I talk about how easy it is to setup sharing features on your website using addtoany.com or sharethis.com. Both of these sites have great sharing features that I have implemented on sites that I have created. For 2012, I have decided that my main teaching focus will be “share everything”. I want to make sure that every website, video, photo, graphic and important statement about the ministry is shared with the onilne members via social networks. Now, I already teach about what to post, when to post and who should post to social networks in my chapter on social networks in The iChurch Method, but I want to reiterate that providing sharing tools on your website makes it much easier to let online visitors do the sharing for you. The issue that I run across when I am teaching and consulting ministries is they don’t know how easy it is to turn website visitors into mini-marketers with these share features. Online marketing has a variety of different forms and with social media, and the sharing features, letting people share your site for you with their social media contacts is one of the best and free ways to market your ministry online. Now, let’s explain how easy this is to implement

First let’s look at addtoany.com, go to addtoany.com and click the big blue button that says “Get the Share Button.” Once you click on that, you will get the page below. Now, let’s input the information to get a code for your webpage. First, leave the type as “share/bookmark widget.” Click the share option in the second row as we did below (the one with the icons for Facebook, twitter and email). Next, input the name of your page such as “Ministry homepage.” Then input the URL of the page such as www.ministry.org. Finally, click the blue button “Get Button Code” and the code will popup below the button. Copy and paste that code into your webpage and you are done!!

Next, let’s look at the short process for sharethis.com. First, go to sharethis.com and choose one of the popular button styles. Based on where you want the buttons to go on your website, choose an option that will fit accordingly. I normally choose the third one because I don't need the number counts on the website. Then click the "Get the Code" button.

Next fill out the registration form with your email address, domain name, and password. Click the "Register Button".

This will give you the code for your webpage, copy and paste that code into you webpage and you are done!!

Find out more about social media sharing buy getting your copy of The iChurch Method today.

Can ministry be done on Linkedin?

Can ministry be done on Linkedin? That is a great question. I have been looking on Linkedin for quite a while and I have only seen a handful of churches on there. Now I know that Linkedin is a professional network and it is all about business, so I believe that there needs to be some kingdom business conducted on there. That’s the most important business I know, thus Linkedin could be used in that manner.
It's not the content that needs to be changed, it's the presentation. If Linkedin is considered a professional network, then present the church's content in a professional manner. This way the message is not lost at all, it’s just packaged in a way that the people can receive it. This is very similar to the numerous varieties of churches we have in existence, some people go to small churches, some go to large megachurches and some only want to go online. No matter where people go, the important part is that they get fed the life changing gospel.
With that being stated there are two things that Linkedin could initially be used for by churches, number one is employment postings and number two is to reaching professionals for ministry. Now let’s get specific, since Linkedin is a great job posting social network, the church can post jobs there to attract great talent to the ministry. Next, there is the option to post status updates on Linkedin, these status updates could be motivational words of encouragement or daily scriptures that people can read and start their day with. If the ministry has created a business profile on Linkedin and starts pushing out ministry content as well as ministry updates, the people that the ministry is connected to on Linkedin can keep up with the ministry as well as receive encouragement. Whatever content the ministry wants to provide on the network, can be presented. It just has to be packaged in a way that fits the network and will be received by the masses.

How Can Your Church Take Advantage of the New Facebook Timeline Features

March 31st was an important day for facebook fan page owners, the pending timeline features were rolled out to all facebook fan pages. Facebook has been notifying admins for the last 3 - 4 months that this pending change was coming so there was quite a bit of time to prepare. As I started researching how to best utilize these new changes and increase visibility on facebook for churches, I came across come great articles that pointed out the best ways to make this happen. Here is a great article to use as a reference from social media today. http://socialmediatoday.com/johnhaydon/462416/eleven-ways-facebook-page-timelines-change-your-content-strategy Here are the things to focus on with your new timeline: 1. Tell a story - your new facebook fan page is a great way to tell a story with milestones, pictures, videos, and a variety of ways to showcase what your ministry has done, is doing and has planned. 2. Cover image - the cover image at the top of the new timeline page is a great way to showcase what's going on with your ministry. 3. Custom tabs - new custom tabs are much larger in width, instead of 520px they are now 800px which gives facebook developers much more space to work with.

There are other features that can be utilized and are discussed in the article above but the three aforementioned are a good starting point. If you are looking for more information you can find it in "The iChurch Method".

Google+ is great for ministries but.....

If you only need one reason to invest in Google+ for your business in 2012, this is the one. Unlike the other social media platforms, Google+ comes completely integrated with all things Google. This means that the tools you may already be using in your business like Google Analytics, Google Places, Google Maps, etc. are already “in-house”. And don’t forget Google Search, which has surpassed the 1 billion unique users per month mark, and the power of Google+ for business speaks for itself. From using circles to let followers self-select which content they want to receive to leveraging Google+ Hangouts as sales funnels, Google+ can bring value to your business right out of the gate and they are just getting started.

I read this statement about Google+ and I came to one conclusion, Google+ will be to Social Media what Android is to mobile phones, a good option but second rate at best. Now of course I know that I am biased towards Facebook and Apple iOS so I put those ahead of Google+ and Android but don’t get me wrong, I am a Google fanatic as well. I like Google and I believe they bring competition to the market but they are still second rate to me in some areas. First and foremost, Google+ has great features but has not found that feature to migrate people away from Facebook.

Also, they have not integrated a Google+ login to external websites the way Facebook Login has been integrated into sites. Actually, for all intents and purpose, Google+ hasn’t let many third party developers come in and do anything on their network, and that’s inhibiting their growth. And if we are talking about growth inhibitors, let’s keep in mind that Android is falling behind due to their fragmentation, they are on multiple devices and these devices all have different versions of android, thus developers don’t know which one to develop for, unlike Apple’s one or two version of iOS that are on it’s iPhones, iPods or iPads.

Finally, Google+ has potential but not until it does three things

  • Open up its API to third party developers
  • Creates a feature that gives people a reason to leave facebook
  • Integrates its login into external websites

Until these things occur, Google+ will just be the social network waiting on Facebook to fail. This is the main reason in The iChurch Method book we focus on Facebook and Twitter social networks (throw in Youtube), because those are the ones that are dominant now and have the best ROI for churches and ministries.

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Can the cloud help the Church?

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First and foremost, let’s make sure we clarify that the cloud is a technical term for hosted applications and not an actual cloud or heaven, LOL.  A few months ago I did a post about the cloud and how it could help ministries (http://thenewichurch.com/websites/can-the-cloud-help-ministries/). Today we are going to update that post and give a great explanation of applications that a ministry can use to go to the next level. I did first want to extract a few points from a great post that I read over at Mashable.com about the Pros and Cons of moving your Business to the Cloud http://mashable.com/2011/07/26/cloud-computing-business/ and how this topic can be applied from our church perspective.

First the main benefits of moving to the cloud according to the Mashable.com article are:
It’s scalable. If your business takes off, it’s easy to adjust your computing needs. Most cloud-computing is billed at a monthly rate, like a utility. So, if your business grows, you can just order more server space.

The initial costs is are very affordable. With the cloud, you don’t have to set up a server and spend all the man-hours it takes to get one up and running.

It can save money in other ways. Virtual Office apps located in the cloud make the administrative costs of running a business minimal.

There’s less IT infrastructure staff to manage. With cloud computing, you don’t need to hire a tech team, and a smaller team will save you money on payroll, benefits and more.  

Now let's look at the main drawback:
Your business is in the hands of another company.  If the servers go down of the online applications that you are using, then your business comes to a halt.  Even with SLAs (Service Level Agreements) that guarantee 99.9% uptime, you still have to account for the .1% change that your business is affected and have the appropriate redundancy plans in place.

Now, what are great applications that a ministry could use, that are located in the cloud?  Well here are some great ones to start with:

  • File Storage - A central location where files for the ministry can be accessed from laptops, desktops and mobile devices.  Also a place where backups and versions of files are kept as well as a secure environment.
  • Office Software - Email, Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Scheduling, Intranet, Photo Management, Analytics and other administrative software that can be accessed from laptops, desktops and mobile devices.  Also, this software has real-time collaboration features where users can work on files simultaneously.
  • Project Management - Software that includes estimation and planning, scheduling, cost control and budget management, resource allocation, collaboration software, communication, quality management and documentation or administration systems, which are used to deal with the complexity of large projects. This software can be accessed from laptops, desktops and mobile devices.
  • Phone and Video Conferencing
  • Web Hosting and Content Management Systems
  • Social Media