Today is my (@sowhatfaith) Twitterversary. I have now been tweeting for two years. I took some time to compare my first year on Twitter to my second. That analysis yielded the following data: As my comfort level grew, so did the frequency of my tweeting: average daily tweet count was 2.6 in year one compared to 6.8 in year two (an increase of roughly 150%) As I better understood the role and value of Twitter, I moved away from posting my tweets on my Facebook wall. Read More …
Social Media
Jesus as Facebook’s Most Liked? (#0486)
Jennifer Preston's recent New York Times article explores how a Facebook page about Jesus became the most popular page of all: For the last three months, more people have “Liked,” commented and shared content on the Jesus Daily than on any other Facebook page, including Justin Bieber’s page, according to a weekly analysis by AllFacebook.com, an industry blog. The Jesus Daily is the creation of the 41 year old medical researcher Dr. Aaron Tabor. Tabor writes most of Read More …
Review of The Church and New Media (#0481)
Meet the Authors Brandon Vogt is a Catholic layperson who blogs about theology, technology, social justice and books at ThinVeil.net. Vogt contributes the text's introduction and conclusion while relying on authors with varied backgrounds and expertise to contribute the chapters: Father Robert Barron, Jennifer Fulwiler, Marcel LeJeune, Mark P. Shea, Taylor Marshall, Father Dwight Longenecker, Scot Landry, Matt Warner, Lisa M. Hendey, Thomas Peters, Shawn Carney. Additionally, Read More …
New Church Growth Via Social Media (#0473)
Out of the Box Worship Center in Hillsville, VA is a non-traditional United Methodist small town church that is gaining attention for its dramatic social media driven growth. Launched in January 2011 as an extension of First United Methodist Church of Hillsville, VA, the new church start has grown enough to need two services in their 180 seat worship center. So What? Out of the Box's pastor, Ronnie G. Collins, stated, "When the church first started, we placed one full-page ad Read More …
The Biggest Question About Social Media (#0465)
Steve Thorngate, assistant editor of the Christian Century, recently wrote these words: The biggest question about social media and the church is not how the church can harness the power of social media for good ends while safeguarding against bad ones (useful as such discussions may be). It's how social media is changing what it means to be church. So What? It is important to understand what it means to be church in America today. More specifically, church leaders should understand Read More …
7 in 10 Now Use Video Sharing (#0447)
According to the latest research by the Pew Research Center, 7 in 10 (71%) of American adults who go online now use video sharing sites. The current number represents a five-percentage-point increase from the 66% of online adults who reported being video-sharing site users a year earlier and a 38-point increase from five years ago when the Pew Internet Project took its first reading on use of such sites. So What? Around the time the folks at Pew started this annual survey, many larger Read More …
Your Church’s Social Media Goals (#0446)
Adam Bowers, owner of Adam Bowers Media, recently blogged about the advice he gives churches about creating social media goals. Since there is no universally accepted standard of success and no simple way for parishes to determine how their results compare to other churches, he presents a solid framework for developing a social media strategy: Do your homework – research pre-existing social media use at your church. Before you can formulate goals, you need to make sure Read More …
Why Your Ministry Should Have a Blog (#0444)
Guy Chmieleski has served in campus ministry at four institutions of higher education associated with three different denominations (Baptist, United Methodist and Church of Christ). On his blog, he shared his own experiences as a blogger, a bit about a presentation on why blogging is important that he made recently to the United Methodist Campus Ministry Association, and four reasons why he will be integrating a blog into his campus ministry work and thinks other Read More …
Learning the Unwritten Rules of Social Media (#0440)
Rajesh Setty, author of Upbeat: Cultivating the Right Attitude in Tough Times (2009) and President of Foresight Plus, recently shared his list of the unwritten rules of social media: Connection does not imply permission Access does not imply entitlement Activity is not productivity More is not better Reciprocation is optional Amplification without accomplishment is futile Engagement without enrichment is not effective So What? Most who enter the world of social media do so Read More …
The First Rule of Social Media (#0432)
Michael Buckingham is the founder of Holy Cow Creative (a church creativity and design studio) and the creative director for the Center for Church Communication and Church Marketing Sucks. Last week he wrote about the importance and power of the question mark in social media. He writes: The very first rule of social media that I put in place with the churches I work with: There should be more question marks than periods on your page. Now of course this is a rule of Read More …