Join me in Hawaii, Yes, I said Hawaii!

Join me Friday, March 21, 2014 in Honolulu, Hawaii at the http://himonline.org/events/honolulu-conference/ as I will be teaching two sessions. The first session will be The iChurch Method: How to Advance Your Ministry Online (10:30am) and the second session will be The Internet Church Campus (8:30pm). While I have taught the iChurch Method numerous times, this will be the first time I have unpacked and taught The Internet Church Campus which consists of how to implement an internet church campus, online groups and the internet TV channel.

I am looking forward to a great conference and an even greater experience. You can follow my updates conference Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Design quote

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

How to Set up Your Internet Campus

There are a few services you can use to setup your internet campus such as LifeChurch’s www.Churchonlineplatform.com, or 316 Networks http://solutions.316networks.com/ and these are some good services. But the online software that has the best user experience and is the most cost efficient has to be Plain Joe’s Media Social (www.mediasocial.tv) Internet Church Campus software. Media Social has come up with the easiest solution; if we look at the following screenshot we see how they setup their online campus software. Here are the features of Media Social’s Internet Campus Software

• Ad Space – Ad space area for the ministry with images to showcase products, events and services of the ministry.
• Login/Logout – This is the login/logout area of the administrator.
• Who’s Online List – This area shows who all is logged in to the internet campus. This area is used for the ministry to communicate with individuals as well as see important information about everyone logged in and watching.
• Video Player – This is the major viewing area of the online campus. The live or archived video stream is shown here in 640x480 format.
• Announcements/Polls – This great feature allows for real time announcements and polls displayed right under the video player. A great way to communicate with online viewers in a quick and efficient manner.

Here are additional features with Media Social’s Internet Campus Software. Let’s start by looking at the icons that are in the left column of the interactive module beneath the announcements/polls area.

• Livewall – The livewall is the live chat area for real time communication and chatting with administrators and online viewers.
• Notes – The Notes tab allows users to take notes and email them to themselves or others.
• Schedule – The schedule tab shows the schedule for live and/or archived shows.
• Facebook – The Facebook tab is the facebook integration where users can interact with facebook within the internet campus.
• Map – The Map tab shows the locations of online users, anywhere in the world.
• Unlock Tab – The unlcok tab allows the tab to unlock from the page and become it’s own webpage module.
• Additional Ad Space – Beneath these tab features is additional space for image ads for ministry events, products and services.

With all these features setup for you, your organization is responsible for providing video content that you want to stream (mp4 video files) as well as a live streaming provider. In my last book, The iChurch Method Vol. 1, I talked about how to use livestream.com or Ustream.tv as a free live streaming provider and that solution could work with Media Social as well. Another feature not mentioned here that’s available in the back-end is the scheduling feature. Many ministries want to broadcast at a certain time and/or setup a schedule of shows for the day or week. This feature is available via Media Social and the internet campus can become an entire media center for the viewers with scheduled programming very similar to the traditional television experience.

How Can eCommerce Help Your Ministry?

Obviously, anything that brings in revenue helps to finance the activities of your ministry, enabling you to spread the word, grow your congregation and continue to do all of the wonderful things that you do in your community. Here are some of the most successful ways you can use eCommerce.

Online Donations Making an online donation is as easy as putting a bill in the collection plate these days, thanks to technology harnessed by the Obama campaign in 2008 to raise $125 million from an impressive army of small contributors. Paypal.com and kimbia.com both have free donation modules you can add to your website without much difficulty, which will allow your parishioners to donate via credit card.

For those who don't like to use credit cards, eChecks allow someone to make payment to your ministry directly from their bank account. For parishioners who tithe regularly, this is an exceptionally convenient way to do it.

Online Event Registration For events that require a ticket, you can get paid online in advance and allow participants to print a receipt. This saves time and money, negating the need to print tickets, handle cash, deal with bounced checks and other headaches. You can set a limit on attendance and stop selling when the tickets are sold out. Registrants can get information about the event at the same time, such as parking, directions, time and date and more.

Selling event tickets online also allows you to capture information about your attendees, such as name, address, email, phone number, age, marital status and gender, which you can use to market other events and services later on.

Online Store Add an online store to your website to sell DVDs, CDs, video and audio downloads of sermons and lectures, books, church tee shirts, calendars and more. Digital products, such as video and audio downloads and eBooks are the best source of revenue for your online store, as they are pure profit. The parishioner pays via credit card to download the product, receives it immediately, and you don't have to worry about shipping and handling or anything else of that nature.

Selling videos and audios of your sermons and major church events is also a great way to spread the word about your ministry, and can help you expand your congregation significantly. Consider posting some of your sermons on YouTube with a link to your store site to generate more interest.

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.

Why Your Organization Should be on Social Media

Traditionally we start our church organizations to impact our communities or even have a national presence but very rarely do we realize that once you create a website or social media account, you become an international organization. Social Media is one of the best ways to reach people with your message because it allows you to reach people right where they are at, on their social network of choice, and let the information flow from your organization to their social profile. Additionally, very few organizations understand how important their ministry content is to people, who are in areas where they cannot worship openly and proclaim their faith, thus leaving them worship in online settings and utilize online content to help them in their spiritual walk. Organizations should strive to reach people wherever they are at, on whatever network they are on, via any device they pick up. This is the opportunity that social networks give us. While working with T.D. Jakes Ministries I have had the great opportunity to see the impact of social media and how it can impact millions. When I arrived at the ministry in Jan. 2010 the ministry’s main outreach focus was television, conferences and church letters, now fast-forward to Jan. 2014 with 2.2M Facebook fans, 1.4M Twitter followers and over 5M YouTube views, we have integrated social media into every aspect of our ministry and no matter how you connect with us, we inform you about our social media networks. One of the great ministry stories I’ve seen using social media is when Bishop Jakes decided to start a prayer chain one morning, he started with a prayer that he posted on Facebook and asked people to add to the prayer and about two hours later with over a million views and 50,000 shares, real time ministry had blessed numerous people via social media.

Which Network is the Best? Is it Facebook and their one billion users? Is it Twitter and their easy-to-use network? Is it Pinterest and their Pictures and Videos? Is it YouTube and their massive video network? Which one is it? Well, the answer is simple: the best social network is whichever one your organization knows how to use. That’s the hard part for organizations to grasp when they start social media: start with the network that your staff knows best. The Social Network your organization should be on depends on your content, where your audience is and capability to use the network. If you have a just a small amount of content and the people you have on staff know Twitter best, then start on Twitter. If you have people on staff that are familiar with Facebook then use that social network. Ask your audience which networks they use the most and get started there. You don’t have to be on ALL of them but it’s good to be on as many as your staff can handle. If you can only be on one network, then make the most of that network until you get the ability to expand to more.

What Should We Post? To give you some guidelines, here are four focal points in establishing your organization’s message via social media:

Inspiration - Make sure to provide inspiration and motivation via your social networks. These are the best types of posts. Whether they are quotes or photos with encouraging words on them, everyone wants some type of inspiration in their life.

Information - Provide information about your organization via your social networks. Don’t assume that everyone reads your website or saw your eblast. Distribute the information about events and other happenings via your social networks. You can also repurpose flyers, newsletters, eblasts and other marketing materials and send them out via social networks.

Communication - Social media is “Social,” therefore it should be a two-way communication. If you post to a network and people comment, ask questions and take time out of their busy day to respond, then make sure your organization takes time to acknowledge them and respond back. Don’t appear too arrogant to respond to your social network fans, even if you don’t have the staff or time to answer every comment or question. At least answer some. Show that the organization sees their comments/questions and cares.

Consistency - The network that you push content out to your online users is irrelevant if there isn’t a consistent strategy behind it. The networks will come and go but the strategy remains the same, make sure the content from your organization flows consistently via your online properties to your online users.

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

2014 Pastors and Leadership Conference

Coming up quickly, March 6 - 8, 2014, I will be teaching/attending/working at the 2014 Pastors and Leadership Conference. It's always a great experience for me at this event because this was the first conference I ever spoke at back in 2011. It also was the event that I released the first iChurch Method book in 2012. Another great thing about this conference is that in addition to speaking at it, I work the conference's online experience including social media, mobile apps and online streaming experience.

This year I am looking forward to teaching four sessions which include Social Media Basics, Social Media Advanced (twice) and Digital 360 (The iChurch Method). I am also continuing my pattern of releasing new products at the conference by announcing that I am releasing the following products:

• The iChurch Method Workshop Training DVD
• How to Get One Million Social Media Fans Workshop Training DVD
• The iChurch Academy Online Training Course - Updated and Expanded
• The iChurch Method: How to Advance Your Ministry Online Book
• The iChurch Method: Changing The World When You Login Book
• How to Get One Million Social Media Fans: Take Your Social Media to the Next Level Book
• The iChurch Method Digital Download Card with all iChurch Method Products and Online iChurch Academy Access

Make sure you join me there!!

Where is Social Media going?

Here's a question that many people are asking, where is social media going in the future? More Mobile Device Integration – Right now we see social media integrated into many aspects of our lives and that will continue to grow. Facebook Home is a newly released platform that integrates Facebook very deeply into your Android Phone experience, basically putting your social media network front and center on the phone. This makes social media the main focus of the phone instead of the traditional focus of emails, text and phone calls. This advancements shows how deeply integrated social media will look to become since millions of people carry their mobile devices with them. Social media is looking to be the #1 use of your mobile device. Facebook has been the #1 app downloaded on mobile devices for quite some time.

More Website Integration – With Twitter cards now being more accessible via websites and the Facebook graph becoming more utilized, our social networks will play a role in our browsing and online usage. We will consult our social networks’ opinions in our shopping, online decisions and therefore make sure we are logged into our networks so that each website is catered to our likes. Facebook and Google look primed to lead this evolution.

Share as much video as we do photos – Right now it’s not as easy to share and consume videos like we do photos. Social networks and bandwidth restrictions make it much easier to share photos than video. Videos are increasing in consumption but they do not have the volume of creation and distribution that photos and graphics currently have. As technology progresses and networks continue to focus on visual content, video will become just as important as photos.

Social media will continue to integrate into new industries – Education and Health Care are two great examples of industries that are starting to use social features much more. This will continue to increase over time and more industries will see the benefits of having social sharing features more integrated into their online processes.

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

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!!

Create Multiple Products from a Sermon

You can take a powerful sermon, church pageant or any other film-worthy event from your church and create four different products which you can sell online and in your church bookstore to bring in revenue. Here's what you'll need: • A computer, preferably a Mac; • iTunes media software; • A good video camera with microphone; • ImTOO Video Converter standard video conversion software (available at imtoo.com); • A Google Docs account, or Adobe Acrobat full version plus MS Word; • A PayPal business account.

Film the Event Use a good quality video camera with a microphone attachment to film the sermon or other event. This can be as easy and inexpensive as a Flip camera with a wireless lapel microphone, or a high quality digital camera with a microphone attachment. In any event, you want to make sure you pick up the audio as well as the video.

Convert the Video to a CD and MP3 These are the first two products you will create. Import your video into the ImTOO software and convert it to an MP3 file, which you can sell in your online store as a digital download. Then import the MP3 into iTunes and burn it to a CD. Put the CD in a clear plastic case and sell it at your church bookstore as well as in your online store. You can even make a label for the CD case using a picture taken from the original video.

Convert the Video to a DVD and MP4 Your original video should already be in MP4 format from your camera, but if not, convert it to MP4 in your ImTOO software. Good specs to use are video size 640 x 480, bitrate 1200kbps, max bitrate 2500kbps, audio bitrate 64kbps and sample rate 48000hz. This MP4 file can then be placed for sale as a download from your online store.

Next, download ImTOO DVD Creator or Nero Suite, and use this software to turn your MP4 file into DVD format, which you can burn onto DVDs to be offered for sale in your church bookstore and online store.

Use YouTube to Advertise your Videos Consider putting one or more of your MP4 sermon files on YouTube with a link to your online store. This will help generate an appetite for more videos and bring in customers to your store, and ultimately to your church as well.

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 - 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.