75% of World Leaders Use Twitter
If you are not one of them, what’s your excuse?
The pope uses Twitter. He had millions of followers before his first tweet.
We doubt that either the Pope or President Obama are pulling out their smartphones and drafting every tweet. But it is smart of them to use their available resources to harness the power of the Twitter platform.
TechCrunch reported that “it makes sense that some of the people with the most serious of occupations are finally starting to come around to the value of the platform.”
2×2’s Twitter Experiment
2×2 is running an experiment using Twitter. We began in December. We have learned that we barely have our feet wet in its potential and we are still learning how to use it within the church. We will continue our experiment indefinitely, so that we can advise other congregations.
Our end of December observations:
- Using Twitter is a mental discipline more than anything else. We must always be thinking of short and meaningful ways to connect. There is a reward and focus in doing so.
- It takes a while to develop a following. Just how long? Too soon to say. We have 17 followers on two Twitter accounts after our first month.
- We don’t know if there is a correlation, but our web site traffic doubled in the first half of December, slowed over the holidays, but shows signs that the holiday dip was temporary.
- Twitter is fun. There is value to being part of both sides of the Twitter conversation.
- Twitter is a great way to grow insight and understanding as we meet thought leaders with interesting viewpoints. While we currently have 17 followers, we have found 40 or more people on Twitter who regularly add to our knowledge and interests—and make daily blogging a lot easier. We believe this feature of Twitter is the answer to a major challenge for churches who want to use social media.