Creating Podcasts of Your Sermons

Getting your sermons onto iTunes as a podcast is fairly easy and affordable, using a popular service called Podbean. Like YouTube for videos, Podbean requires that you create a free account for your organization.

Setting up an account with Podbean allows you to select a public channel in the Religion category, include your church logo or photograph of your pastor, describe your ministry and select keywords that will help anyone searching for your content to find you, and even provide contact information.

In this way you can make your podcast accessible on iTunes and also on Podbean, to reach a whole other population of people who may not have ever even been to your church – yet. Like YouTube, this gives you a whole new channel whereby to establish a presence on the Internet, to reach many more people all over the world.

You can provide links to your podcasts on your site; make them available for download at your Web store and more. Podcasts are popular for listening to while driving or doing other activities that are conducive to listening to music or inspirational messages.

Use Sound Bytes to Peak Interest

Consider placing short clips of your latest podcast on the front page of your site, to entice visitors to want to hear more. As audio files, podcasts are much easier to download, upload, and play, whereas a video might take much more time.

Podcasts are a powerful way of getting your message out there. You can even stream podcasts live during the actual sermon, so that those who are unable to make it to your church due to illness or travel can still listen to the sermon, and feel as if they were physically there on site with the rest of the congregation.

Podcasts can be archived, by subject, by date or by speaker, and even sold as collections for those who are looking for uplifting subject matter, or who like to listen to a particular speaker, or who missed a month of sermons and want to catch up. Be sure to take advantage of this valuable technology to get your message out to many more potential parishioners than old-time country preachers ever dreamed possible!

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://ift.tt/1aTwHa8

Is Your Ministry Website Ready for Mobile?

The future is mobile, a great iChurch should be accessible to anyone, from anywhere, anytime and anyplace. No longer are Internet users limited to computers plugged into their Internet connection at home or work. Folks are now mobile, on the move, all day long. This year, more smartphones, tablets and mobile devices are being released than any other prior year. As you are reading this, the transition from desktop/laptop computer users to mobile users is happening very quickly. In fact, recently for the first time since Facebook was launched in 2006, more users accessed their Facebook page via their mobile device then their desktops. This means that to reach all these users, your ministry must appear on mobile phones. When someone searches for God or Hope or Help from any device, your church needs to be there to answer them even if they are searching on a mobile device. With the mobile iChurch, you can do it.

I want to take a moment and tell you a couple of stories. This first one has to do with people in Africa living in very rural areas. These folks have cell phones that they charge up on car batteries. Even though their screens are low resolution, they can still visit the websites of churches and attend service with them, watch inspiring videos and receive the Good News. Their hunger for Jesus pushes them to find ways to reach Him.

Now imagine that “someone” who lives in your city, types into their smartphone “Is God real?” They see your iChurch on the search rankings and click on your website. Perhaps they send a text or email. Your staff instantly receives this inquiry at 8:30 p.m. and responds with an uplifting message directing them to a church service for more help. It happens every day.

How do get you there? First, you need a strategy. There needs to be a vision for the mobile presence of a ministry and how it will further the ministry. Let’s look at the options your mobile iChurch has available.

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://ift.tt/1qPGlAb

Join me in Hawaii, Yes, I said Hawaii!

Join me Friday, March 21, 2014 in Honolulu, Hawaii at the http://ift.tt/1erYlIn as I will be teaching two sessions. The first session will be The iChurch Method: How to Advance Your Ministry Online (10:30am) and the second session will be The Internet Church Campus (8:30pm). While I have taught the iChurch Method numerous times, this will be the first time I have unpacked and taught The Internet Church Campus which consists of how to implement an internet church campus, online groups and the internet TV channel.

I am looking forward to a great conference and an even greater experience. You can follow my updates conference Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

http://ift.tt/1lWbqS3

3 Innovative Options for your Ministry Website

When I look at the innovative web design/development techniques that are helping take websites to a new level, I see three things happening. One, CMS systems are being used much more consistently, which is a great way to manage websites with a large number of pages, allow internal users to update only their area of the website and a great way to update the website without knowing code. Two, Parallax animation features using jQuery, HTML5 and CSS has rapidly increased and we are now seeing website that are horizontally or vertically scrolling with the click of a button. Three, more and more websites are being built with Responsive Design features that work equally well on every device.

Content Management Systems (CMS)
If your site has numerous pages and collects information from a variety of ministries and internal departments, a CMS is a must. It allows non-technical users to update their own areas of the website. It also allows the technical staff to manage the website, restrict access and change the look of the website with minimal repetitive work and time. The best feature of the CMS is the ability to add plugins and add ons that enhance and expand the functionality of the CMS much more quickly then having to update and revamp the entire application.

A great example of this is WordPress, WordPress has long been considered a blogging platform and initially it was, but over time it has evolved into one of the best Content Management Systems for websites on the market. It’s price tag of FREE is very attractive to many churches and ministries who have limited budgets but would like unlimited website capabilities. With over 23,000 plugins, WordPress has an ecosystem of developers that are continually enhancing the abilities of the CMS. There are hundreds of thousands of websites that are using WordPress as a solution and with great plugins such as “adapt to mobile”, “block spam comments”, “online shopping cart” and “social media sharing”, this system is a great one fore ministries. Likewise, there are over 20,000 templates, which give WordPress the ability to change layouts quickly with the click of a few buttons. Anyone who has participated in the redesign of a website knows how drawn out this process can be and to see the possibility of it occurring in a few clicks is great progress.

Responsive design
According to Mashable.com, responsive design uses “media queries” to figure out what resolution of device it’s being served on. Flexible images and fluid grids then size correctly to fit the screen. Responsive design techniques also detect the type of device and change the site’s behavior accordingly.

As we look to the evolution of websites that churches and ministries can use to reach the masses, it’s imperative that we use techniques like responsive design to give online users great website experiences no matter the device. Google and Facebook are leading the charge in this space in their rollout of websites that are based on Responsive design. In March 2013, Facebook launched a major update to their users and created a timeline that looked the same no matter the device the user was on. The only way Facebook can look the same on a smartphone, tablet and laptop is by the brilliant responsive design layout. Likewise, Google+ started using responsive design techniques late 2012. This was the first time Google showed any real attention to their design aspects of their products. Google had already established itself as a company with great online software products but their design was always simplistic and minimal. With responsive design, Google is now showing their design chops and creating a synonymous experience on all devices.

In the mobile section of “The iChurch Method Volume 1″ I spoke about creating websites that have a version for the Laptop/Desktop and a version for mobile devices, which is a great solution but essentially double work. With responsive design, you can create one website and program it accordingly to adjust and adapt to multiple devices and give a unified online experience. Here is a good website with great responsive design templates, http://ift.tt/nIoCVq

Parallax Design
Another amazing website design/development feature that is gaining popularity is Parallax. Parallax animation features using jQuery, HTML5 and CSS has rapidly increased and we are now seeing websites that are horizontally or vertically scrolling with the click of a button. This development style is creating a single loading, interactive, animated web experience that engages users in a more effective manner and is often integrated into the responsive design layout. There are many templates that are available to create this experience for online users. Good ones that I have seen are:
http://five3.me (a wordpress template) and http://ift.tt/wqevtv (a HTML5/CSS template).

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://ift.tt/1lOoM2F

How Can a Small Organization Establish a Large Social Media Following?

“We are just a small organization, One Million fans seems unattainable.” I cannot count how many times I have heard this statement. Yes, I do agree that One Million social media fans is a lofty goal and the truth is we were not aiming for that number when we started at our organization. Our goal was to provide a good mix of “social” and “media.” We wanted to make sure we were “social” and interacted with our online users while providing “media” through a steady flow of high quality content from our organization. But trust me, this goal is attainable. Later in this book I will give you specifics on “what to post,” “what times to post” and “what types of content” to post. Those specific strategies will help you learn how to build your audience and increase interaction and reach One Million fans.

Another key step in building your social media following is to integrate your social media with your offline marketing. I will discuss this later but here are some examples:

• Adding social media sharing features to your website and allowing people to share with their social media networks.
• Adding social media follow icons to your website and high traffic webpages. This allows people to follow your organization from the pages they visit often.
• Adding social media to all of your marketing materials (fliers, ads, print publications and anything that your organization puts out).
• Have the CEO/Pastor buy in and use social media, as well as employees. Make social media a significant part of the online marketing strategy.
• If you have online video, add #hashtags and @twittername to the broadcast so people can communicate with their social network about what they are watching online or on TV.

No organization starts out with a large online following. We all start with a few and have to work our way up…or do we?

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

http://ift.tt/1eMetbl