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How Do You Join Twitter?

Someone asked. So here’s the answer.

Google Twitter. The Twitter site will come up first in Google results and you will see the sub-option SIGN UP. Click on that and follow the instructions.

You will need to supply your name and an email address. You can use your current email or open a free account dedicated to Twitter — it’s up to you. We did not have a dedicated 2×2 email address before. We opened a free G-mail account with Google.

You will have some options in creating a profile. Twitter will guide you through the start-up steps. Don’t be alarmed that you are asked to choose some people or organizations to follow right from the start. Twitter will present lists of celebrities who might appeal to your interests. You may have no interest in any of them. (We followed Lady Gaga, Steve Carrell and National Geographic. How’s that for eclectic!)

All of this is just to get you going. Twitter is all about following and being followed and they are trying to teach you good Twitter habits from the start. You can unfollow (stop following) any person or organization at any time. Stick with the ones that are fun. Click “unfollow” if they annoy you (there will be some that bombard you with self-promotion). By taking note of what annoys us, we will be able to figure out how we want to be perceived on Twitter.

01 Dec 2012

Ministering in a Design-Driven World: Branding Part 2

An article in Forbes today talks about how design is now a pivotal part of any organization’s identity.

The article speaks to the Church. Churches are accustomed to poor design in their publications. They work with poor equipment and volunteers much of the time. The church newsletter, dotted with cheesy clip art, is fairly standard even among large churches. It’s almost a universal branding—and the branding message is not a good one.

Your members will accept this approach to design. But  is it working beyond your church membership? Is it helping you communicate with the world — a world that is increasingly influenced by design.

Don’t despair. Good design is accessible even to design amateurs.

Facebook makes design simple. All you have to do is upload photos. Everything will fit into the design template. There is still an art to finding, choosing and using photos. Taking your own photos is so easy today, there should be nothing stopping you.

But Facebook is Facebook. One design fits all!

Blogging formats offer the same professional design capabilities with more variety. Start your blog by choosing a theme — there are hundreds to choose from. It will be easy to create a clean and functional web site using a theme (template).

Ask your members to spend an hour taking photos of the neighborhood for you to use on your congregation’s web site, blog or Facebook. Make a contest out of it to get more people involved and add to the fun! They don’t have to be “church” photos. They can be street scenes, store fronts, parks, schools, gardens, fields, sports, architectural features or public events. This will communicate to the unchurched that your congregation cares about the neighborhood.

Be cautious about using images of people without their permission. You can do this by artful cropping. Watch your local TV news for tips. Whenever they take school footage for example they tend to show backs of heads or images of kids walking or playing with heads totally cropped. If the people are your members and they say OK — go ahead and use full images.

Clip art has come of age. There are great sources of photos available for free use if you add a photo credit at the bottom of your post.  Try Photopin or Flickr.

Learn to use a photo image editing program.  (Type “free photo editing software” into your search engine.) Most computers have a basic application pre-installed.  Start by learning to size and crop your photos. Then learn to add type or adjust colors.

It’s time to say good-bye to the amateurish church newsletter. People expect more today. And it isn’t hard to give it to them. It helps to brand your church as progressive and forward-looking, not stuck in the past with out-dated communication skills.

04 May 2012

Getting Over the Fear of Facebook

If you want to drive the message of the Church, hop in. But you won't be the only car on the road.

Facebook remains an enigma to the Church.

The few churches using it seem to use it as nothing but a digital bulletin board.

There is power in Facebook. The power is twofold.

  1. Facebook can build relationships.
  2. Facebook has reach.

Building Relationships with Facebook

Jason Stambaugh of heartyourchurch.com talks about Facebook as the Weekday Bridge of the Church. It can be used to foster relationships that happen Monday through Saturday. Face-to-face encounters are invaluable, he recognizes. But the little midweek interchanges help to build the connections that make face-to-face interactions more possible, more frequent, and foster more tightly knit community.

The discussion will not be led or moderated as is the custom in the world of religion. That may be why the Church doesn’t understand it. There’s nothing stopping anyone from adding their two cents.

Part of the hesitance of the church to embrace Facebook is fear of losing control.

The fact is the Church lost control of its message a long time ago.

Yesterday, you could control your message with cumbersome qualifying hoops and censorship. Hard habits to break.

Today, the only way to control the message is to be part of the dialogue.

If you want to drive, hop in. But you won’t be the only car on the road!

The Incredible Reach of Facebook

Looking at rough and round numbers, the average Facebook user has nearly 200 friends (a number which continues to grow). Allowing for overlap, each of those friends adds another 100 or so to the network. So if your congregation has 50 people using Facebook during the week, your community has the potential to reach 10,000 people at the first tier of the network and 1,000,000 at the second tier of the network.

  • What is your Sunday attendance?
  • What is the circulation or readership of your parish newsletter?
  • What’s the circulation of your denominational magazine (which probably reaches only those already involved in Church)?

Just do the math and stop spinning your wheels.

photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photo pin cc

25 Apr 2012

The Role of Facebook in Christian Community

We have not advocated that churches, as a body, rely on Facebook. Our main reasons are the intimate nature of Facebook and the need to monitor it, both of which we think present challenges for churches and are best managed individual to individual — not institution on behalf of an individual.

But the fact is, most of your church members are probably on Facebook. We can advise and encourage individuals to use Facebook in a loving way — which will strengthen Christian community on or off the Social Media grid.

HeartYourChurch web blogger, Jason Stambaugh, shared his experience on Facebook when he recently reported the death of his mother. We extend our sympathy to Jason and his family and thank him for sharing with us and so many other “strangers.”

Jason’s blog post is an intimate account of his feelings on “pressing the button” to share his personal tragedy. It is worth a read.

He ends his post with four suggestions on the use of Facebook when sharing personal news.

(1) Like the post and leave a comment. By liking and commenting, you are helping to circle that person and their family with love.

(2) Share the post or link with your own personal message. I shared a link containing information about my Mother’s viewing and funeral. A handful of people reshared that link with a personal message about my Mom. Not only did I appreciate that they were helping me spread the word, I really enjoyed seeing what they had to say.

(3) Send the person a message. With so many likes and comments flowing in, it was hard to keep track of what everyone was saying. About a dozen or so people sent me Facebook messages that I received directly, like an email. They were easier to read and keep track of. If you have something you’d really like to share with the bereaved, send them a message.

(4) Do something.  Follow up your like, comment or message with an action. Whether it’s attending the viewing or funeral, sending a card or making a casserole, it will mean a lot to the person and/or family. The follow-up action makes your words “mean” something.

The last point is the most important. Facebook in the Church cannot replace the loving touch, the soft shoulder, the warm embrace, a hand held in prayer or the sympathetic tear. It sounds so old-fashioned, but we must remember to send a card, flowers, or deliver a hot-dish to the family—and attend the funeral.

Share this with your Facebook-loving congregants.

photo credit: John-Morgan via photopin cc
28 Mar 2012

Should Churches and Pastors Be on Facebook?

Facebook vs Blogging

A year or so ago announcing your presence on Facebook was the latest craze. Many Church leaders tried this route as congregations and regional bodies added Facebook pages.

We visited the Facebook page of one prominent church leader. It started with a hesitant attempt to engage the flock. Within one year, the Facebook page had deteriorated to nothing but announcements of press releases. One young person had posted a deep concern on the “wall.” The answer received to that post was obviously written by a staff person, someone monitoring this prominent leader’s Facebook page — a digital age blow off.

That points to a real danger of church engagement on Facebook. People reaching out expect a caring person online waiting to hear them and willing to answer. They expect the Facebook owner to be reading what they write and they expect that person to respond when they’ve invited the inquiry. A digital blow-off from a third party, offered days later, has the power to devastate.

People will sense phoniness and turn to active forums that really ARE listening and engaging.

As proof . . . after one year this church leader had NO friends and few followers. So what was the point of the big Facebook announcement?

Facebook requires more daily attention and commitment — more time than most church leaders are able or willing to give.

We visited dozens of congregational Facebook pages . . . again . . . mostly press release type announcements with no real engagement. Most had very little activity.

This is why we recommend that congregations enter Social Media through blogging. You can develop your pace and control the content much more easily. People can engage just as they do on Facebook, but are likely to be more thoughtful about it and more willing to wait a day or so for a response.

There is some value to being on Facebook. You can feed your posts through the various Social Media outlets and get some traffic benefits. But it is hardly worth the fanfare of announcing it.

If you make a big announcement about your Facebook page and then doing nothing with it, it is like crying Wolf. Don’t say it if you don’t intend to play it!

photo credit: {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester} via photopin cc
08 Mar 2012