Which Social Network is the Best for Your Organization?

Is it Facebook and their one billion users? Is it Twitter and their easy-to-use network? Is it Pinterest and their Pictures and Videos? Is it YouTube and their massive video network? Which one is it? Well, the answer is simple: the best social network is whichever one your organization knows how to use. That’s the hard part for organizations to grasp when they start social media: start with the network that your staff knows best. Consider these four key points.

One. The Social Network your organization should be on depends on your content and capability to use the network. If you have a just a small amount of content, a few photos, text updates and videos, and the people you have on staff know Twitter best, then start on Twitter. If you have people on staff that are familiar with Facebook then use that social network and push text, video and photo updates there. Use whatever network you have people familiar with and your content will work on.

Two. Repurpose your content for each network. Once you have decided to use more than one network, you can repurpose the same content for multiple networks. For example, if you have a motivational quote from your pastor’s sermon, you can take that quote and put it out on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. You can then take the quote, put it over a picture of your pastor preaching and then put that picture out on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest. Also, you can use the actual video of your pastor saying the same quote and put that video clip out on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube. So you see, different types of content can go on different networks.

Three. Each network has its own community and its own best way to use it. For the sake of time, many organizations will have their Facebook posts go to Twitter or their Twitter posts go to Facebook. While this does conserve time, it takes away from the uniqueness of each network and hinders genuine growth on the network that stuff is being pushed to. Usually, the network that stuff is being “pushed to,” is the one that’s not being monitored. Therefore people that want to interact with the business on that network are not being answered because that network is usually just something that is being fed content and not attended to.

Four. You don’t have to be on ALL of them but it’s good to be on as many as your staff can handle. If you can only be on one network, then make the most of that network until you get the ability to expand to more.

For more information on this and other Social Media topics, get your copy or How to Get One Million Social Media Fans today.

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Social Media Strategy Tips for Churches

The most difficult part about using social media is maintaining consistency. Too often an organization sets out to harness the power of social media but ultimately loses interest over time, often because they discover that it’s more work than they had anticipated, or other pressing needs come up and the social media project falls through the cracks.

Consistency is vital if you want to maintain a social media presence. Just as with your website, if you don’t update your sites regularly with fresh content, people will lose interest. Set a strategy for your social media project and stick to it.

How Much Time Can You Spare?
Start by analyzing your staff and how much time each can devote to your social media sites. Different staff members will be suited to different sorts of social media. Some may prefer to sit down once or twice a day and post to your Facebook page, while others will enjoy posting frequent tweets through your Twitter account. Decide exactly which sites you will use, and who will handle them.

What About Content?
Social media is an excellent forum to repurpose content from your web page. Think about how news media use sound bytes, and do the same. You can use short video clips from sermons, quotations, announcements, photos – anything from your website is fair game. This is a great way to entice people back to your church’s website to read the whole story or watch the whole sermon.

The good news is, your staff can spend maybe an hour or less each day preparing the content they intend to post. Then they can take just a few minutes several times a day to actually post the pre-prepared material. By posting at different times during the day you reach a great many more people, as people tend to check their social media sites at different times during the day and evening.

24 Hour Posting
You can also use free software from Hootsuite.com to schedule posts any time of the day or night. Hootsuite works with Facebook and Twitter, and will allow you to set up dates and times for your posts to those two social networks. You can even schedule a whole week – or month’s – worth of posts ahead of time, which will save you a lot of time and energy and make sure that your message gets out, no matter what. This is a great way to reach night owls, shift workers, people in other time zones, and especially people who may be awake at odd hours due to stress or depression.

When managed properly, social media is an excellent communication tool. Take advantage of it to get your message out to the whole global community!

For more information on this and other topics, get your copy of “The iChurch Method Volume 1: How to Advance Your Ministry Online.” or The iChurch Method Volume 2: Changing the World When You Login or even sign up for the iChurch Method Online School.

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Is buying fans/followers/views Social Media Prostitution?

Over the last two years there have been quite a few companies that have sprung up that allow people and companies to purchase followers, fans, views, retweets, repines and a variety of other social media services. These services have been utilized by major celebrities, political figures as well as companies and brands. It wasn’t until recently did the services come to light and start to receive scrutiny from the social media networks as well as other social media experts, but it was only a matter of time before quick fix options became a business (social media services is now on its way to being a 100+ million dollar industry in just a few years).

Facebook continues to update and adjust it’s advertising services and allows you to bid on CPC campaigns to get more fans, which seems to be an elaborate approach to buying fans, is it not? Twitter’s advertising solution allows you to promote your account in user’s stream and thus get more Twitter followers and yes, this service costs, so isn’t just another way to buy fans? YouTube gives you the opportunity to setup video ads that appear before people watch YouTube videos which after they watch there’s a call to action which can include asking them to subscribe, this service costs and gives you YouTube views and subscribers, so isn’t that another way to buy them?

Personally, I have developed social media strategies to help companies build their following using content strategy methods, specific delivery times and two-way interaction but I do understand how social media services you purchase can be useful. I think it all comes down to this, when you purchase services, it’s for perception, to appear bigger than you are and get people to follow you based on that, but the relationships are unreal and non-existent. But when you build your following in a more organic manner, then you develop true relationships with them and create a longer lasting, mutually beneficial online social media relationship.

Which goes back to my title, if your goal is to just get fans in numbers, then take the prostitute route and just pay for it and get the immediate results. But if you want to develop a true interactive online social media following then you have to put in the time and work it takes to wine and dine them, advertise to them, promote posts and tweets and tell them you really care.

For more information about Social Media check out How to Get One Million Social Media Fans by Jason Caston.

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The Rise of Visual Social Media

Over the last year or two, social media has entered a new stage of growth and it’s focused on “visual content” that can be created, consumed and shared easily. This is one of the main keys to building a large fan base as well as communicating with them; by providing engaging visual content that will ignite them to action. Photos and graphics are a great example of this.

Facebook first exhibited this when it introduced a new feature called the timeline, where users’ Facebook profile became a visual representation of their Facebook existence. Additionally, Facebook allowed users to start adding events, past locations and milestones to their Facebook profiles. Now this profile page not only became a visual representation of a user’s online life, but their offline life as well. Facebook also started filtering a user’s newsfeed to provide customized content based on the top 30% – 40% of people a user interacted with most. In order to get more people to interact with the user and see their posts, they had to be more visual in nature, specifically with photos and graphics, because these could be shared and consumed easily from any device.

Google+ has also focused on “visual content” within their social network by recently adding quite a few features. The large cover photo that each profile page has is a great example; it’s the first thing you see when you go to a person or business google+ page. Google+ has also updated their photo albums with larger viewing options and full-sized photo uploads. Larger photos hold people’s attention longer and increases engagement. The option for full-size uploads allow people to keep their entire photo albums within Google+. Additionally, Google+ highlights and expands photos and videos in the stream so that they stand out while people are viewing then, thus drawing the user’s attention more quickly, especially on mobile devices.

When Twitter added the ability to share photos from within Twitter without having to use an outside service, it was a clear sign that Twitter realized the importance of visual features. Then, Twitter added a cover photo and photo album feature on the user’s profile page where people could see all the photos they uploaded to Twitter. This was yet another visual feature that pulled people to their site, made them stay longer and gave them more reasons to share photos on Twitter.

More recently we have seen the rise of platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, two fully visual social networks that are built on media such as photos and videos. Instagram, fresh off its one billion dollar deal with Facebook, has become the #1 mobile photo sharing application. The best part about Instagram is that it’s completely mobile which displays the power of mobile photo sharing. Likewise, Pinterest was initially thought to be only a photo sharing sight for women and moms but as Pinterest’s popularity has exploded, it’s now more than just a network for photos. Their secret is that they also accept videos. This multimedia social network lets people “pin” photos and videos expressing themselves and their brands in full multimedia fashion. And finally, let me not forget YouTube, the #1 video site on the entire Internet where you can find any video about anything.

For more information on this and other Social Media topics, get your copy or How to Get One Million Social Media Fans today.

http://www.ichurchmethod.com/rise-visual-social-media/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rise-visual-social-media

Who is your audience for your social media strategy? – Part 2

In case you missed Part 1 you can read it here

So let’s ask some questions: What’s your ministry’s message? What’s the voice of your church? What will be the message that you will convey to people via social media and how will you convey it? Will your church speak on societal and current issues? Will your church quote scriptures on every network? Will your church push out announcements and never respond to people?

Make sure your church isn’t one dimensional. There are many types of people that you can reach therefore you should distribute many types of social media posts. Here are three focal points in establishing your church’s message via social media:

1. Inspiration – Make sure to provide inspiration and motivation via your social networks. These are the best types of posts, whether they are quotes, scriptures or photos with encouraging words on them, everyone wants some type of inspiration in their life.

2. Information – Provide information about your church via your social networks. Don’t assume that everyone comes to church, reads your website or saw your eblast. Distribute the information about events and other happenings within the church via your social networks. You can repurpose flyers, newsletters, eblasts and other marketing materials and send them out via social networks.

3. Communication – Social media is “Social” therefore it should be a two-way communication. If you post to a network and people comment, ask questions and take time out of their busy day to respond, then make sure your church takes time to acknowledge them and respond back. Don’t let your church appear too arrogant to respond to its social network fans. Even if you don’t have the staff or time to answer every comment or question, at least answer some. Show that the ministry is seeing their comments and questions.

Notice how I haven’t stated whether to use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or any other social media network yet. The network that you push content out to your online users is irrelevant if there isn’t a consistent strategy behind it. Ten years ago, everyone was using AOL email to communicate with the masses. Five years ago it was MySpace. Three years ago Facebook and Twitter became popular. Just recently, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram have been introduced to the masses. The networks will come and go but the strategy remains the same: make sure the content from your ministry flows consistently via your online properties to your online users.

For more information on this and other topics, get your copy of “The iChurch Method Volume 1: How to Advance Your Ministry Online.” or The iChurch Method Volume 2: Changing the World When You Login or even sign up for the iChurch Method Online School.

http://www.ichurchmethod.com/audience-social-media-strategy-part-2/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=audience-social-media-strategy-part-2

Who is your audience for your social media strategy? – Part 1

Begin to segment your audience into categories so that you can gather church content geared towards a specific audience. For example, if you are targeting non-church members then you will tailor a social media post differently than if you are targeting church members. Most churches say they are focusing on members and non-members but their messages are always catered to members only, wasting a great opportunity to reach millions of other social networkers that may not attend their church.

There are times when we need to speak to church members via social media and update them on local ministries activities and events. Also, there are times when we need to speak to non-church members and offer them information, wisdom, guidance, compassion and a variety of other solutions that the gospel has for those that are not a part of the local body. We even need to offer messages that are tailored for those that are on the fence, looking for a reason to step in as well as a reason to step out. Social Media has the advantage of reaching people right where they are, speaking to them in a way they need to receive and moving them to make necessary changes for the better. This is one of the best ways to take ministry to the people.

Look at the content you currently generate. Social media is an excellent use for repurposed content. Take a careful inventory of your weekly production of content and make a list of how many different items your staff can produce. Content is king. If you have plenty of staff and time to post to social media sites yet have poor or inconsistent content, the effectiveness of the iChurch is greatly diminished.

Another aspect to consider when assessing the ministry’s content for social media is the impact of visual content. With the rise of visual social media (which we will get into later), we see the impact of visual content. Visual content such as photos and videos have a much larger impact on your social media audience. Photos have quickly become the most uploaded and shared form of social media content. 250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day with an additional 5 million uploaded to Instagram daily. Imagine the impact that your ministry could have by sharing photos of your ministry in action, worship photos from service and images that showcase the impact of your church in your community. Likewise, videos are the most engaging form of multimedia on the Internet. The term “going viral” appeared due to the massive sharing and popularity of certain videos passed around via social media. Here’s a great stat to consider, every minute 72 hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube. Therefore, when developing social media content, video must be included.

Part 2 Coming later this week!!

For more information on this and other topics, get your copy of “The iChurch Method Volume 1: How to Advance Your Ministry Online.” or The iChurch Method Volume 2: Changing the World When You Login or even sign up for the iChurch Method Online School.

http://www.ichurchmethod.com/audience-social-media-strategy-part-1/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=audience-social-media-strategy-part-1

Top 5 Social Media Predictions for this Year

It’s 2014 and I am looking forward to this year in terms of social media and online web technologies. There are so many new advancements that we will see this year and I can’t wait till they are released. But first, I wanted to talk about my top 5 predictions I have for social media this year. Check out the video above and if you don’t have time, here is a quick summary.

1.Diversity Your Networks – There’s more to social media than Facebook and Twitter and this year many organizations will realize that. More specifically, Facebook will make it much more difficult for organizations to use that network as their only social media presence. There are many social networks (in addition to Facebook and Twitter) that are effective for reaching your online audience such as YouTube, Instagram, Vine, Pinterest, Google+ and more.

2. Visual Social Media – Use more photos and videos to tell your story via social media. Photos are the most shared form of multimedia on social networks and video is the most engaging form of multimedia on social networks. Therefore, we need to incorporate more photos and videos to better tell our stories and connect with people via social media.

3. Pay to Play – Facebook Promoted Posts, Twitter Ads and Google Ads will become more important to reach your online audience. You may not have to have a large budget but you will need to consider spending something in order to reach people online more effectively.

4. Mobile – Think Mobile first and then Desktop. Mobile is growing by leaps and bounds and online users are connecting with our web properties (social networks and websites) with mobile first and then desktops. Therefore, we need to make sure our website strategies and social media strategies take into account people on the go using mobile devices.

5. Analyze, Optimize, Repeat – Have a strategy, just don’t Wing it! Use your Google Analytics, your Facebook Insights, your Twitter Stats and other data to develop a strategy and see how effective your social media efforts are. This year we need to work for efficiently, streamline our processes and get measurable results.

http://www.ichurchmethod.com/top-5-social-media-predictions/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=top-5-social-media-predictions