How do churches use social media well enough to make them worth the time?
Sitting around here is all well and good when it’s just me, the intern, seeing what could work and the possibilities behind everything. The real question is getting the ideas out of my head and putting them into action at a level where BTCChurch.com would benefit from it.
Bethel has a Facebook page and a YouTube account. Pastors have Twitters and blogs, and I think that’s about it. That’s awesome, and a lot more than most right there. However, if this whole “social media” thing is all that it’s cracked up to be, then we’re going to have an opportunity to turn the Internet into something that has a remarkable ROI.
Honestly? I don’t know. Anyone have any ideas?
What does it say about a world where I can search for Twitter apps and come up with over 270?
Today, I decided to just dive into as many social media applications as I can. So far, this has included Delicious (which I dabbled in way back in the day), 12seconds.com, Wordie, and basically just random things. Also, this means I’m trying to deck my Twitter account to the max, which is saying something since there’s now an entire convention devoted to Twitter and Twitter applications and the Twitter API.
There’s a lot of coolness in the social Web. A lot of weirdness, too, don’t get me wrong, but a lot of it can be turned around for good. Granted, it’s not much use unless your friends/audience are riding in the same vehicle, but hopefully everyone will be able to see your work online.
Twubble. I highly recommend it.
What kickstarted this push? This link : www.theconversationprism.com. Check it out!
Social media is, to put it mildly, all the rage. Twitter is booming, which is incredible considering that the vast majority of people who use it don’t fully get it. Facebook has grown up (or devolved, depending on your point of view) into a juggernaut that handles more than everything you need. Ning has turned even the most mundane of hobbies and occupations into fodder for social networks. All this has people like me except much smarter licking their chops and exploring new ways to use this in order to communicate with the public. College kids my age are being hired based on their ability to construct a tweet. Blog networks, complete with Twitter rings and Facebook fan pages, are popping up. Journalism as we know it is becoming circumvented by the ability for a “company” to directly communicate with its “fans” or “followers”.
I almost have to take a step back and ask why. I mean, there are still a lot of people like my family, several of whom have never even had an e-mail address. For every new trend that I’ve jumped on, I’ve had to explain it at least 5 times to someone who didn’t get it, and then had to sit and squirm while they asked the question “So, what’s the point?” Explaining Twitter to someone who doesn’t know the point of texting someone is like pulling teeth.
I think sometimes we fall into the trap of cursing those who aren’t on board the hippest trends with the shame of being lame or behind the times. Don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter to death, and the ability it gives to communicate is huge. Facebook is a big part of my day. I still don’t feel comfortable when we abandon traditional, personal ways of communication with technologically nifty ones just for the sake of being nifty.
If it makes it easier to spread information and communicate with people, then I want to use it. If it’s just cool, then I’m going to put on my cynic hat and make sure that it’s not just the new fad for the next 10 minutes.
In my experiences with design, the main emphasis hasn’t been on pretty, flashy colors or crazy graphics. In J-Graph, if your work doesn’t tell a story, tell it well and tell it quickly, then it’s not as good as it could be. Functionality, in my world, tops flash. That’s why you don’t see very many 3d multicolor chartoons or extravagent maps in newspapers very often, if at all – it just doesn’t work as well (my apologies to USA Today for being the exception).
How does this apply now, in a world where I’m not detailing the number of jobs cut by Company X over the past 50 years, but rather coming up with plans to attract and maintain churchgoers, and also keep them up to date on the latest information about the church’s activities? This is a strange new world, and I don’t think it has much difference in methodology, but how I apply training into the newer realm.
A church bulletin is not a newspaper, and should not be treated as such. However, there are scientifically proven methods that people use when they read for information. They scan, look at dominant images and read headlines. Granted, I’m not sure how much of a difference is made when the main story is about the size of a twitter post, but the principle remains the same – if you want people to get something, make sure they can’t miss it.
This is only day two, and my first day of really looking at stuff beyond just “welcome to internshipland”. I can already tell that this is going to be a fun little push in the right direction for me.
Oh, and those that doubt the power of infographics need only watch this.
http://www.vimeo.com/3514904
This is a totally new world for me to dive into. The world I lived in before this is gone, and the world I’m living in now seems so promising and interesting that the old way looks fruitless. Before, my personal goals, desires and beliefs were kept independent from my “profession”, especially since my world in Muncie and my world in Evansville were, literally and figuratively, miles apart. Now? I’m doing stuff in Evansville that I used to think I could only do in Muncie, and I’m starting to consider things in Muncie that I would normally only do while at home.
I’m excited, because all my life I’ve wanted to combine the things I love with the things I am good at doing. I always seemed to confuse the two – there are a lot of things I love that I’m not good at, and vice versa. I used to think that I could only pick one. I’m learning, and I’ll learn throughout this summer, that the two things can, actually, live and work together quite well. I’m very excited to learn the things I’m going to learn here, very excited to share my knowledge with others, extremely excited to be working with the people I will be working with, and, well, just generally very excited.
I’m feeling out all the new stuff. It’s so foreign…and yet really seems to fit well. The feeling you get seeing your name in front of a professional e-mail address for the first time is hard to explain.
More soon. This, hopefully, is going to be something worth continuing.
This should be fun. I’ll get back to this in a bit…but I’m quite excited, to say the least.
