How to Set up Your Internet Campus

There are a few services you can use to setup your internet campus such as LifeChurch’s http://ift.tt/1hlk0WI, or 316 Networks http://ift.tt/1eJh3Kp and these are some good services. But the online software that has the best user experience and is the most cost efficient has to be Plain Joe’s Media Social (www.mediasocial.tv) Internet Church Campus software. Media Social has come up with the easiest solution; if we look at the following screenshot we see how they setup their online campus software.

Here are the features of Media Social’s Internet Campus Software

• Ad Space – Ad space area for the ministry with images to showcase products, events and services of the ministry.
• Login/Logout – This is the login/logout area of the administrator.
• Who’s Online List – This area shows who all is logged in to the internet campus. This area is used for the ministry to communicate with individuals as well as see important information about everyone logged in and watching.
• Video Player – This is the major viewing area of the online campus. The live or archived video stream is shown here in 640×480 format.
• Announcements/Polls – This great feature allows for real time announcements and polls displayed right under the video player. A great way to communicate with online viewers in a quick and efficient manner.

Here are additional features with Media Social’s Internet Campus Software. Let’s start by looking at the icons that are in the left column of the interactive module beneath the announcements/polls area.

• Livewall – The livewall is the live chat area for real time communication and chatting with administrators and online viewers.
• Notes – The Notes tab allows users to take notes and email them to themselves or others.
• Schedule – The schedule tab shows the schedule for live and/or archived shows.
• Facebook – The Facebook tab is the facebook integration where users can interact with facebook within the internet campus.
• Map – The Map tab shows the locations of online users, anywhere in the world.
• Unlock Tab – The unlcok tab allows the tab to unlock from the page and become it’s own webpage module.
• Additional Ad Space – Beneath these tab features is additional space for image ads for ministry events, products and services.

With all these features setup for you, your organization is responsible for providing video content that you want to stream (mp4 video files) as well as a live streaming provider. In my last book, The iChurch Method Vol. 1, I talked about how to use livestream.com or Ustream.tv as a free live streaming provider and that solution could work with Media Social as well. Another feature not mentioned here that’s available in the back-end is the scheduling feature. Many ministries want to broadcast at a certain time and/or setup a schedule of shows for the day or week. This feature is available via Media Social and the internet campus can become an entire media center for the viewers with scheduled programming very similar to the traditional television experience.

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What’s an Internet Church Campus?

If you go to a mega church, you will likely observe a sprawling sea of buildings. You will also find a huge variety of places to go and things to do. There might be a women’s conference in one building. A group of men will be having a Bible study in another. There may also be a live service in the chapel. Some churches even have bookstores where you can buy the latest Christian books and movies. The fact is, this large physical campus gives you many choices to pursue your faith.

So, what is the Internet Church Campus? It’s the same thing as the campus described above except for one difference: it’s all online. The official definition of an Internet church is as follows: a multimedia-driven church experience that is entirely online. An online user can attend a Bible study, donate, attend live services, watch past services, attend a conference, buy the pastor’s book and do just about everything you can do in a physical church except the laying of hands. And it’s all driven by video, audio, images, chat and documents.

Here’s how far we have come. In the good ole days, you went to church Sunday mornings and then possibly to Bible study or another service on Wednesday evenings. Now, instead of you going to church, the Internet Church Campus brings the church to you. And the church doors are open 24/7 365 wherever you are because your mobile device, tablet or computer allows you to attend. That’s pretty exciting!

Chat Live
One option for your Internet Church Campus is the ability to chat live with your friends. If you were in church, you could lean over and chat to your neighbor about the service or message. With Chatroll.com, the Internet Church Campus can duplicate that. Some users really love that feature especially if they are watching the same program but from different locations.

Groups and Communities
Another great feature of Internet Church Campuses is online groups. Online groups are small groups that meet online to discuss Bible lessons, minister to each other and give the online group a sense of community, very similar to the home-based groups that are in some of the largest mega churches in the United States. Online groups use common group features provided by Facebook Groups or Google+ Communities. These social network group/community features allow a set number of people to interact online, share information and documents and form an online community all within Facebook or Google+.

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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How Can eCommerce Help Your Ministry?

Obviously, anything that brings in revenue helps to finance the activities of your ministry, enabling you to spread the word, grow your congregation and continue to do all of the wonderful things that you do in your community. Here are some of the most successful ways you can use eCommerce.

Online Donations
Making an online donation is as easy as putting a bill in the collection plate these days, thanks to technology harnessed by the Obama campaign in 2008 to raise $125 million from an impressive army of small contributors. Paypal.com and kimbia.com both have free donation modules you can add to your website without much difficulty, which will allow your parishioners to donate via credit card.

For those who don’t like to use credit cards, eChecks allow someone to make payment to your ministry directly from their bank account. For parishioners who tithe regularly, this is an exceptionally convenient way to do it.

Online Event Registration
For events that require a ticket, you can get paid online in advance and allow participants to print a receipt. This saves time and money, negating the need to print tickets, handle cash, deal with bounced checks and other headaches. You can set a limit on attendance and stop selling when the tickets are sold out. Registrants can get information about the event at the same time, such as parking, directions, time and date and more.

Selling event tickets online also allows you to capture information about your attendees, such as name, address, email, phone number, age, marital status and gender, which you can use to market other events and services later on.

Online Store
Add an online store to your website to sell DVDs, CDs, video and audio downloads of sermons and lectures, books, church tee shirts, calendars and more. Digital products, such as video and audio downloads and eBooks are the best source of revenue for your online store, as they are pure profit. The parishioner pays via credit card to download the product, receives it immediately, and you don’t have to worry about shipping and handling or anything else of that nature.

Selling videos and audios of your sermons and major church events is also a great way to spread the word about your ministry, and can help you expand your congregation significantly. Consider posting some of your sermons on YouTube with a link to your store site to generate more interest.

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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Why Your Organization Should be on Social Media

Traditionally we start our church organizations to impact our communities or even have a national presence but very rarely do we realize that once you create a website or social media account, you become an international organization. Social Media is one of the best ways to reach people with your message because it allows you to reach people right where they are at, on their social network of choice, and let the information flow from your organization to their social profile. Additionally, very few organizations understand how important their ministry content is to people, who are in areas where they cannot worship openly and proclaim their faith, thus leaving them worship in online settings and utilize online content to help them in their spiritual walk. Organizations should strive to reach people wherever they are at, on whatever network they are on, via any device they pick up. This is the opportunity that social networks give us.

While working with T.D. Jakes Ministries I have had the great opportunity to see the impact of social media and how it can impact millions. When I arrived at the ministry in Jan. 2010 the ministry’s main outreach focus was television, conferences and church letters, now fast-forward to Jan. 2014 with 2.2M Facebook fans, 1.4M Twitter followers and over 5M YouTube views, we have integrated social media into every aspect of our ministry and no matter how you connect with us, we inform you about our social media networks. One of the great ministry stories I’ve seen using social media is when Bishop Jakes decided to start a prayer chain one morning, he started with a prayer that he posted on Facebook and asked people to add to the prayer and about two hours later with over a million views and 50,000 shares, real time ministry had blessed numerous people via social media.

Which Network is the Best?
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. The Social Network your organization should be on depends on your content, where your audience is and capability to use the network. If you have a just a small amount of content 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. Ask your audience which networks they use the most and get started there. 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.

What Should We Post?
To give you some guidelines, here are four focal points in establishing your organization’s message via social media:

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

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

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 organization takes time to acknowledge them and respond back. Don’t appear too arrogant to respond to your 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 organization sees their comments/questions and cares.

Consistency – The network that you push content out to your online users is irrelevant if there isn’t a consistent strategy behind it. The networks will come and go but the strategy remains the same, make sure the content from your organization flows consistently via your online properties to your online users.

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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2014 Pastors and Leadership Conference

Coming up quickly, March 6 – 8, 2014, I will be teaching/attending/working at the 2014 Pastors and Leadership Conference. It’s always a great experience for me at this event because this was the first conference I ever spoke at back in 2011. It also was the event that I released the first iChurch Method book in 2012. Another great thing about this conference is that in addition to speaking at it, I work the conference’s online experience including social media, mobile apps and online streaming experience.

This year I am looking forward to teaching four sessions which include
Social Media Basics, Social Media Advanced (twice) and Digital 360 (The iChurch Method). I am also continuing my pattern of releasing new products at the conference by announcing that I am releasing the following products:

• The iChurch Method Workshop Training DVD
• How to Get One Million Social Media Fans Workshop Training DVD
• The iChurch Academy Online Training Course – Updated and Expanded
• The iChurch Method Digital Download Card with all iChurch Method Products and Online iChurch Academy Access

Make sure you join me there!!

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Where is Social Media going?

Here’s a question that many people are asking, where is social media going in the future?

More Mobile Device Integration – Right now we see social media integrated into many aspects of our lives and that will continue to grow. Facebook Home is a newly released platform that integrates Facebook very deeply into your Android Phone experience, basically putting your social media network front and center on the phone. This makes social media the main focus of the phone instead of the traditional focus of emails, text and phone calls. This advancements shows how deeply integrated social media will look to become since millions of people carry their mobile devices with them. Social media is looking to be the #1 use of your mobile device. Facebook has been the #1 app downloaded on mobile devices for quite some time.

More Website Integration – With Twitter cards now being more accessible via websites and the Facebook graph becoming more utilized, our social networks will play a role in our browsing and online usage. We will consult our social networks’ opinions in our shopping, online decisions and therefore make sure we are logged into our networks so that each website is catered to our likes. Facebook and Google look primed to lead this evolution.

Share as much video as we do photos – Right now it’s not as easy to share and consume videos like we do photos. Social networks and bandwidth restrictions make it much easier to share photos than video. Videos are increasing in consumption but they do not have the volume of creation and distribution that photos and graphics currently have. As technology progresses and networks continue to focus on visual content, video will become just as important as photos.

Social media will continue to integrate into new industries – Education and Health Care are two great examples of industries that are starting to use social features much more. This will continue to increase over time and more industries will see the benefits of having social sharing features more integrated into their online processes.

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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How to Manage Your Social Media Networks

The first question that a ministry needs to answer is how many people will participate in the social media strategy of the ministry. My recommendation is that you have two people at the beginning and see how that goes. The reason that I suggest two people is that one person should be in charge of gathering content for the ministry and the other person should be in charge of pushing it out. Of course you can have more people do this because you may want to have people commenting and responding to users on the social networks. But initially, the main focus is gathering content and pushing it out.

How many hours per day? Social media operates 24 hours a day. However, it’s unrealistic to believe that someone will be managing your social media properties for the ministry 24 hours a day. Instead, dedicate 2 – 4 hours daily gathering content, scheduling it for social networks and responding to online users. As time progresses and you get more people involved on behalf of the ministry, you will increase those hours. Hopefully though, your process will be much more streamlined.

Software to help – Hootsuite.com is a free scheduling software that makes social media management much easier. Hootsuite connects with social networks Facebook and Twitter and allows you to schedule updates, add files and coordinate a full social media strategy from one location. The main benefit of Hootsuite is that you can schedule out all your Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter posts for the week (or month) at one time and let the software automatically post items for you. This will keep a continuous stream of content coming from the ministry and allow you to focus on other things such as gathering more content or responding to online users from various social networks. Hootsuite also has great reporting features that can help you identify some key metrics in your social media campaign such as who are your top 10 followers, how many people clicked the link you sent out and how many people are “liking/subscribing to” you weekly on social networks. Add this capability in with the Google Analytics for Social Media features where you can track social media links coming to your website and you can start to see how effective your social media campaigns are on a grand scale.

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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Online Church is Effective

Normally I would talk about how to implement an online church or quote stats on how it has impacted churches but today, I just want to do something different. I want to tell a great story.

This past weekend I taught quite a few sessions at the econnect conference and it was one of the greatest experiences I have ever had for a variety of reasons. Here are the reasons:

1. I was able to meet the great people at Group Publishing (including Brian Abbot and Bob D’Ambrosio) and they truly took care of me and Nils Smith.

2. I was able to teach, fellowship and serve with my friend Nils Smith, a great guy and as I always tell him, my long lost brother in digital ministry.

3. I taught, interacted and engaged with a diverse crowd of people that were eager to learn how to utilize online tools more effectively for ministry. This crowd was hungry for knowledge and they were open to everything we were teaching. Even with their past traditions and church informal ways, they looked past all of that and said how can we reach the millions that are online and do church in a new way! And best of all, I cannot say how many times people mentioned to me that they were appreciative of what I taught….that blessed me immensely.

4. This is the most important thing, I heard a story that encouraged and transformed the way I think about what I do. First let me say that I have had moments where I wondered how effective The iChurch Method was and should I change my focus from churches to businesses and teach in that realm. Well after this story I am about to share with you, I will surely let you know that I am on the right path and The iChurch Method will continue well into the future. I was talking with a guy and he mentioned that his wife recently passed due to cancer but prior to passing she spent much of her time bed-ridden. But she managed to worship by watching T.D. Jakes Online and to be more specific, the internet church page that I played a role in creating. His wife also used Social Media to form a facebook group for women with cancer and they communicated and shared what they thought heaven would be like. And he just wanted to thank me for what I was doing and he was happy that he met the guy who created the page that helped his wife worship prior to her passing. Those words encouraged me so much that I knew I was on the right path.

I feel blessed!!

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