Phil Cooke is a nonprofit marketing guru. He has written numerous books on the topic, including Unique: Telling Your Story in the Age of Brands and Social Media (2012) and Branding Faith: Why Some Churches and Non-Profits Make a Difference and Other's Don't (2010). Recently, he suggested that "finding your authentic voice in social media isn’t that different from traditional media." In order to find your voice, Cooke suggests you don’t say things on Read More …
Social Media
Taking a Break (#1151)
Time for a Break A great deal has changed in the world of blogging since I started writing on a daily basis nearly three years ago, and much has changed in my own life as well. What Next? Over the next few weeks, I plan to gather input from many sources. I encourage you to leave your thoughts as a reply to this post. More specifically: What about this blog do you find most helpful? What type of content would you be most interested in reading in the future? When you think of Read More …
Mormons Go Social (#1143)
Late last month leaders in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced a shift in missionary strategy. More specifically, the church will increasingly encourage missionaries to leverage social media rather than the traditional door-to-door approach. This change is significant for several reasons, including: the recent lowering of the minimum age for missionary work ( from 21 to 19 for women and from 19 to 18 for men), the old rules that limited Read More …
Sermon Prep (#1142)
Thom Rainer, president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources, recently facilitated a Twitter poll asking pastors to share how long they spend preparing a sermon. The results show that most pastors take between 10-18 hours to prepare each message. More specifically: 70% prep between 10 and 18 hours, 15% prep between 7 and 9 hours, 10% prep for 6 hours or less, and 6% devote 19 hours or more to prepare each message. So What? Sermons vary widely in many respects, Read More …
Social Media Day (#1140)
Today is Mashable's fourth annual Social Media Day. Some 335 different communities will feature meetups. Many more people will contribute to the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #smday. So What? Social media has changed the way we communicate more than we often realize. Take some time today to reflect on your own social media journey from the initial days you explored the possibility of participating through your current involvement. In addition to reflection, I have Read More …
Happy Christian Tweeters (#1139)
While multiple research studies have sought to determine if Christians are happier than atheists, only one has considered this by relying solely on data from tweets. The results of this new study conducted by a research team led by University of Illinois psychologist Ryan Ritter are published in the June edition of Social Psychological and Personality Science. Ritter and his colleagues focused on over 877,000 tweets written by over 7,500 individuals following one or more of five well Read More …
New Twitter Analytics? (#1124)
About twenty-four hours ago, I was elated when I read Seth Fiegerman's Mashable piece relaying big news: Twitter released a robust analytics dashboard to all users. I immediately logged in to my account as directed, and was quite impressed by the data available. In fact, I was so delighted I passed the news of this new feature on to multiple colleagues. Within a few hours (thanks to seeing multiple tweets on the topic appearing in my stream) I realized that this new feature had Read More …
Ministry Leaders & Social Media (#1101)
BSM Almost all current ministry leaders completed their formal education BSM (Before Social Media). Most pastors, musicians, and educators learned a great deal about their professions, including how to communicate information about such with constituents and (ideally!) to a wider audience of prospective participants. Reality Check What happens when the communication and marketing channels they know best no longer resonate with their constituents? Increasingly people want to Read More …
The New Front Door (#1098)
A recent short video produced by the New Media Project features three pastors sharing their experiences with new media. While each short presentation offers helpful insight, one provided a compelling visual image for the role of new media. Eugene Cho, founding pastor of Quest Church, considers new media to be the church's new front door: . . . the front door of our churches have now changed. The front door is no longer the front door. In fact, I would tell you probably Read More …
Goodbye Blackberry, Hello S4 (#1079)
For the last several years I have been a Blackberry user addict. Day and night, my Blackberry has been within arm's reach. During this phase, I transitioned from writing most of my e-mails on a computer to composing the vast majority on my Blackberry, eliminated my land line at home and relied on my Blackberry, placed my files in the cloud, enabling easy access on my Blackberry (thanks Dropbox!), joined the social conversation, especially via Twitter, and experienced Read More …