New Twitter Back Grounds

One thing on my to do list has been to create new twitter backgrounds for bwsworld and for Discover Point. I thought it would be easier than it was. I spend about 2 hours last night resizing the images until they worked on a variety of screen resolutions. Check them out when you get a minute.

@bwsworld

@discoverpoint

Thursday Quick Tip: Share your Flickr Photos on Twitter

I like Twitpic a lot but I like Flickr even more and now that Flickr allows me to post my photos to Twitter I will use Twitpic less and less. I could regurgitate how Flickr explains this process but I will just point you to the FAQ page on Flickr where they do a great job explaining the process. This is a great way to let people know when you have posted new photos.

Here is the link

Thursday Tip

I had a friend ask me today how to share Youtube videos on Facebook and Twitter. Youtube has made sharing its videos very simple.

When you upload a video it gives you the opportunity to share that video on Facebook, Google Reader and Twitter. Once your on the screen to upload your video you should see the links to connect to Facebook, Google reader and Twitter. Simply use the links to sign on to your accounts and your done. Every time you upload a video it will let all of your friends know, so they can watch it.




If you want to share some one else video you can do this by clicking the share link under the video screen. You will find links to several social networking sites. Click on the one you want use. Sign into your account follow the prompts and the video will be uploaded.



To embed a video on your blog, copy and paste the code next the word embed on the right of the video. Then find the HTML section of you blog and paste the code.



Hope this helps

Top Ten Tuesday- Search Sites

Every Tuesday I try to list my top 10 favorite things. I am going to try and be more useful with this portion of my blog. I am going to try and list things that I use that are helpful. So no more top ten favorite movies or TV shows just useful stuff from now on (I hope). Today is my top 10 favorite search sites. Some are specialized some are not.

10. Google Blog Search- Finds me new blogs to read or useful content on obscure blogs

9. Foodieview- Recipe Search engine that I love. Looking for a good recipe try them out.

8. Yahoo- My 3rd back up search engine.

7. Compfight- Flickr search tool that searches not only by content but by tags and other things. It helps me find the photos I need fast.

6. Digg.com- Packed full of interesting links to cool stuff. I can view what my Friends find interesting too, which is always fun!

5. Reddit- See Digg.com

4. Deliscious- See Reddit

3. Twitter- Really great search engine that hasn't got a lot of Press until now. There is a lot of current info on topics out on twitter and it is easy to find.

2. Bing- New kid on the block and despite it being a Microsoft project I really like it!

1. Google- Old Faithful. I know they want to take over the world blah blah blah, let them so far all they have done is made my web experience better.


Well there you have it. Please let me know if this was useful and what Top 10 list you would like to see!

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?

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!

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.

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!