Flock to the Rescue

I think I am weird in the fact that I use 4 different browsers depending on what project I working on. When I am social networking I use FireFox and Flock. Never heard of Flock? I suggest you you go to there web site and check them out. Flock is basically Firefox built for social networking. It brings everything together and makes it easy for you to share pictures, videos, blogs on all of your networks. I really like the picture sharing feature! It has a great side bar that links everything together. If you are serious about social networking and want to save time the Flock browser maybe the solution for you!

Features I like about Flock

1. The web Clipboard: Easily Drag and drop text into the clip to save and post somewhere else latter


2. Drag and Drop Pictures: Easy upload photos to services like Flickr and Photobucket from the side bar and then drag and drop them to share with Friends or post to a blog.

3. Side bar that puts it all together: View all of your feeds from one place within your browser while browsing other sites.

There are several other features that you will find useful and time Saving in Flock. Again if Social networking is taking too much effort to keep up with try Flock.

Social Networking and the Church- How to Detemine Effectiveness

Last week I talked about how to track your Social Networking effectiveness. A few people I know ask me about Facebook Analytics and whole there is no great way to do this Mashable had a great article today on Socialtoo's new Facebook Analytics package. I have yet to test this yet but I will soon and let you know the result's. That said Effectiveness of your Social Campaign depends on a lot of things.




1. Who you trying to communicate with (People in your church, People outside your church, Both)

2. What you actual plan is. For example if you are trying to get people to an event that begins and ends on a specific date then you will want to put as much information out on the web as possible so you can be seen by as many people as possible. If you are trying to build relationships with people then you will take your time.

3. Who are the people you are trying to communicate with. This sounds like #1 but once you decide what group you are trying to communicate with you have to decide who they are. Are they college age students, Middle aged families or hip 80 year olds. The demographic you are trying to reach will help you determine the effectiveness of you communication.

4. How often are you communicating?

These are all things you need to consider when desiding how effective your social networking is. Really these are things you should consider before you start a social networking strategy for your church. Considering all of these things (plus the many other variables that are unique to you) then use the tools I laid out last week and then descided whether or not your social networking strategy is working. Next week I will talk about my personal strategy for when social networking is not working.

Social Media and the Church: The importance of Numbers

We have all heard the line "ministerially speaking" when referring to the number of people who attended a service at our church. I means we exaggerate the number to make it sound more impressive. Unfortunately when it comes to social media I need facts or something close to it. We want to know what is working and what is not. So today I am going to list the ways we keep up with my social networking stats and next week I will talk about what we do when things aren't working. 1. The biggest most popular and best way (in my opinion) to track stats is Google Analytics. You can't track everything with G.A but your blogs, your website and any other tool you use where you can control the code of the page. Analytics provides you with a huge range of tools that can not only tell you how many people visited your page but where they visited from, what browser they were using and there mother's maiden name (last one was made up). They have an awesome reporting system as well . I could go on and on about G.A but that is another post.


2. Twitter Analyzer: A twitter tool that will let you know everything you need to know about your account to make sure it is effective.


3. Card Comments: We pass out little connection cards every week and one question it is"where did you hear about us". I keep track of everyone who came from the web.


4. General feedback: I ask people what they think of the social media we use. I ask people what they get the most out of. I ask people how they like to communicate. Because I want to know what tools people are using so I can communicate better.


5. Sign ups online- I judge how well an online camping is communicating to the people within my church by how many of them sign up online rather than sign up physically at the church.


What ways do you you use to see how well your social media is working?

Social Media and Church: What are you trying to do?

The single most important thing to me when deciding how your church should use social media is to ask your self "What am I trying to do?". Are you trying to be cool? Are you trying to change the way people think in your church? Are you trying to communicate better? Are you trying to save money? Are you trying to reach new people? There are so many ways to communicate things to the people of your church. There are paper bulletins, announcement slides, verbal service announcements, blogs, twitter, Facebook, email, YouTube and probably several others that I have forgotten. It has been said many times that for businesses that social networking is a strategy. It takes planning and research to know if you should use social media to communicate. It takes knowing the people who come to your church as well as knowing your community. For that matter it takes knowing who you trying to communicate with. It takes trail and error. The most important thing it takes is knowing what your are trying to accomplish. So what is your stategy? What are you trying to do through social media?

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?

This is for all of those who still don't get twitter

I found this a a great site called common craft
it has a ton of simple videos about social networking. Check it out!