Churches getting exposure with Social Media
With more than 80 percent of American adults online, churches of every size can benefit greatly from a variety of technological tools. An increase in options during the past decade has led to more advantages—yet it's also caused confusion for many churches. Pastors and staff often feel overwhelmed by the shear amounts of work involved just to keep up with changes.
Let's look at several technology-related projects, broken down by church size (although all of them should be considered by churches at all levels), that can help your church and its goals without becoming overly complex.
Small Church (less than 100 members): Tweets, Blogs, and Facebook
If your church is just getting started, or it's been around for a while but doesn't yet have a strong presence on the internet, several simple and inexpensive technology projects can help you build awareness for your church, keep in touch with people within your congregation, and achieve broader communication goals.
If your church is just getting started, or it's been around for a while but doesn't yet have a strong presence on the internet, several simple and inexpensive technology projects can help you build awareness for your church, keep in touch with people within your congregation, and achieve broader communication goals.
With more than 80 percent of American adults online, churches of every size can benefit greatly from a variety of technological tools. An increase in options during the past decade has led to more advantages—yet it's also caused confusion for many churches. Pastors and staff often feel overwhelmed by the shear amounts of work involved just to keep up with changes.
Let's look at several technology-related projects, broken down by church size (although all of them should be considered by churches at all levels), that can help your church and its goals without becoming overly complex.Small Church (less than 100 members): Tweets, Blogs, and Facebook.
Let's look at several technology-related projects, broken down by church size (although all of them should be considered by churches at all levels), that can help your church and its goals without becoming overly complex.Small Church (less than 100 members): Tweets, Blogs, and Facebook.
If your church is just getting started, or it's been around for a while but doesn't yet have a strong presence on the internet, several simple and inexpensive technology projects can help you build awareness for your church, keep in touch with people within your congregation, and achieve broader communication goals.Start posting
One of the easiest projects that can perhaps have the most benefit to your ministry is to start a blog. Blogger by Google (www.blogger.com) is surprisingly simple to set up, create posts, and upload images and videos. Another bonus: Blogger is free. With a blog, your pastor or church leaders can write about points not mentioned in the sermon, discuss ministry aspirations, hint at goals for the future, and even bring up personal issues to begin a more authentic communication channel within your church.
Start tweeting
Twitter (twitter.com) is now the third-largest social networking website, next to MySpace and Facebook. It can't be ignored—and it can be an effective tool for ministry. Twitter, known as a micro-blogging service because it allows its users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets), publishes text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Users send and receive updates for free from any device with an internet connection, making it incredibly simple to share what you're doing, what your ministry is working on, and things people can check out on your blog and website to extend the online hand of friendship. To simplify how much to keep track of, consider a free, simple service called Ping.fm (ping.fm), which allows you to connect your blogs and social networking accounts and update them simultaneously via e-mail or text message.
Twitter (twitter.com) is now the third-largest social networking website, next to MySpace and Facebook. It can't be ignored—and it can be an effective tool for ministry. Twitter, known as a micro-blogging service because it allows its users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets), publishes text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Users send and receive updates for free from any device with an internet connection, making it incredibly simple to share what you're doing, what your ministry is working on, and things people can check out on your blog and website to extend the online hand of friendship. To simplify how much to keep track of, consider a free, simple service called Ping.fm (ping.fm), which allows you to connect your blogs and social networking accounts and update them simultaneously via e-mail or text message.
Start networking
Facebook (facebook.com) can be a wonderful, free tool to connect with people online. You'll quickly find that many people in your congregation are already members. After you set up an account for your church (and Facebook now offers a direct way for groups and businesses to set up a page at facebook.com/pages/create.php), you can "friend" members who also are on the site, usually by finding them by e-mail address. Next, look under the "Applications" area of your home page for "Groups." Here, you can set up a group for church members to join and interact. Another Facebook application allows you to form causes (simply type "Causes" in the Facebook search tool to get started), a great way to get people involved in specific ministries within your church.
Facebook (facebook.com) can be a wonderful, free tool to connect with people online. You'll quickly find that many people in your congregation are already members. After you set up an account for your church (and Facebook now offers a direct way for groups and businesses to set up a page at facebook.com/pages/create.php), you can "friend" members who also are on the site, usually by finding them by e-mail address. Next, look under the "Applications" area of your home page for "Groups." Here, you can set up a group for church members to join and interact. Another Facebook application allows you to form causes (simply type "Causes" in the Facebook search tool to get started), a great way to get people involved in specific ministries within your church.
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