Social Media and the Church- Twitter Tools

I have spoken to church leaders about using social media in the church a couple of times and the one thing that seems to come up more often than not is the issue of time. With everything else that is going on throughout the week, taking the time to update Twitter, Facebook or to write a blog seems like a challenging task. The question should not be do I have time to use social media, the question SHOULD be how do I make time use social media to reach people with the love of Jesus.

I work a full time I.T job, have 4 kids under 7, a wife who works 2 nights a week as a nurse and a part time staff gig at my church that takes up about 15 hours or so out of my week. Now I may not be the busiest person in the world, but my life does not stop most days until I go to bed. I have to balance spending time with my kids and wife with both jobs and house work. I told you all that so you would know that this is not being written by some one who sits in a office all day and has all the time in the world. My life needs short cuts. I need short cuts to use social media, not only for the church but for my personal accounts as well. Here are a few I use for twitter:

TwitterFox: This is a Firefox add on that puts little Twitter Icon at the bottom of your browser. When you click on it all of your friends recent updates are put in a nice neat little box in the corner of your browser. You can even update you status, see your @replies and Direct Messages (DMs)

Seesmic Desktop: A lot of people will tell you tweet deck is the best desktop Twitter Application. I disagree but only by a little bit. You can view and update multiple twitter accounts at one time as well as your Facebook page. So if you have a personal twitter and manage the twitter for your church you can update them both with out logging out and logging back in.

TwitPic: The Seesmic desktop allows you to put links to pictures hosted by TwitPic if you don't want to use Seesmic than you can simply go to the Twitpic Site enter your user name, upload pics, write a comment of two and they load the pics to Twitter for you.

Twitter Feed: This allows you to ad an RSS feed (such as your blog or Google reader shared items) to Twitter and every time you update it post a link and a short comment to your twitter feed.

Facebook Twitter App: Allow you to update you Twitter account from Facebook and Facebook account from Twitter. It's really Cool.

Twiggit: A tool that post a tweet every time you Digg a Article on Digg Nation.

Tiny URL: Not a short cut but a URL shortener so you can use less of your 140 characters when you want to post a link

Last but not least this is not really a shortcut but for Stat nuts like me I love to something I can use to track my twitter account so I use Twitter Analyzer. It provides tons of tools to see everything you have been doing on twitter.

Another Tool we will talk about in a later post is the Flock Browser. Without getting too technical its basically the Firefox browser built for Social Networking. Check it out if you get a minute.

I hope these help you use twitter faster and more efficiently. Do you have twitter short cuts that you use in your ministry? What are they? How are you using them? Let me know!

Public Speaking

I am a tech guy. I love all things technology. On Sunday mornings I can be found in the back running something or directing something. I do not however speak on Sunday mornings. That is what we have communicators for. This past Sunday I broke my own rule and co-taught with Philip. The topic was social networking. A topic I love and feel that all churches and church goers should embrace (as long you have people in your church under the age of 70). We spoke about how the church should use social media and how regular people can use social media to do great things for God. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be because I was prepare and it was a topic I enjoyed. Was I perfect? No but the audience laugh at my jokes a few times a lot of people ask questions afterwards so I would say it was a success Next week I am getting up there again and talking about Discover Point's community projects. This is another subject I am passionate about so it should be fun.

So if you are a media director (our whatever your title is) on staff at your church and you have never got up in front of your and spoke about how God is using technology or social networking in your church talk to you pastor and see if he can't develop a sermon series surrounding it. Get up there and educate people on how they can use technology to reach more people for God. Heck I liked it so much in 2 weeks Philip and I are going speak to a group of local pastors about how they can use social networking in their churches. Let see if we can't start a revolution. I'm in are you?

Marketing on Social Media

I love social media. I am a Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Blogger addict. I love to talk to friends, meet new people and share my thoughts with complete strangers. I spend hours trying to figure out how we can market Discover Point through social media. What I found is that you can't truly market a product effectively on social media sites. You can however market ideas, personalities and brands. Social media is a huge tool for the church that few have yet to tap into. Heck I spend hours ever week trying to figure out how to use social media more effectively for kingdom building. I know a lot of churches that have the misconception that is not the place for the church. It's too "of the world" "Facebook is the devil" and that could not be any further from the truth. With Facebook twitter and even this blog I try to connect with people where they are and this day and age a lot of them are right in front of their computers. I use the church Facebook group to not only connect people within the church but to show people outside our church, searching for something, the personalities of people in our church. We are a friendly fun, loving, down to earth crowd. We love technology, creativity and innovation. Using Facebook and this blog and twitter I try to share our "brand" our personalities with people so people will feel more comfortable being at church. I want to shake the awful preconceptions people have about church. I guess what I am saying is use social media for all it is worth. Its the best free marketing your ever going to get.