Thanks to articles and podcasts, I learned of a phenomenon called “Social Media Sunday”. Carolyn Clement started this great yearly event. It focuses on promoting a church’s social media presence, and familiarizing a congregation with how they can help bolster that presence. Yet the most controversial aspect is the encouragement of congregation members to actively engage and share with social media during parts of the service. Despite your concerns about social media, there are ways you can better integrate it with your regular Sunday services; and this article explores how.
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Tag: Social Media
CWS Podcast – Ep. 51: Customer Service – Getting Connected
In a previous episode I gave some tips for making someone’s first visit more comfortable. Now I will give some ideas for getting new visitors quickly and easily connected to the church. Of course, when I say “church” I mean the people, not the building. Getting connected with your church’s community may not always be easy, and I hope to share some ideas for using your church website to draw people into relationship.
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Web Teams: Starting An In-House Team
How do you go about creating an in-house web team for your church? What skill sets do you hire, and in what order do you bring them on board? Whether you are starting a website from scratch, or are taking it over after an external company developed it, there are several key roles you must fill on your new team. These roles are in a purposeful order, which is not to say that one is more important than the other. It is just a logical progression of needs and skills that will get your website running quickly and in the right direction.
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CWS Podcast – Ep. 47: Social Media Marketing and Engagement
Many questions arise when a church decides to do that “social media thing”. Who should your church market to, what platforms are the best, how should they push content, and why should they respond to their audience? These and many other problems can be solved by creating a two-pronged attack plan. This plan should include both social media marketing and social media engagement.
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Digital Tools for Non-Traditional Churches
The first electric general-use computer, ENIAC, was announced in 1946. Of course, this room-sized computer looks very different from today’s computing devices. Consequently, what churches looked like in 1946 is vastly different than what we see today. This forces us to re-think what churches look like, and what they need to succeed. In this article, I explore three examples of non-traditional churches and the digital tools that can both promote their presence and enhance the experience.
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CWS Podcast – Ep. 46: Landing Pages and Your Church
If you are trying to promote an event at your church, one great tool for this is a landing page. If done correctly, they focus visitors on a much narrower scope and nudge them toward a single decision more quickly. But what do landing pages consist of, and how can my church use them in its overall strategy? Read on my loyal reader while I hopefully answers all these questions and more!
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Hunting for Social Media Engagement
Believe it or not, the tactics and strategies used in hunting can be applied to seeking out new website visitors on social media outlets. You will see that these best practices used in the woods can help you get an edge in finding, knowing, and establishing worthwhile relationships with your social media audiences.
My father is an avid hunter, and growing up with him meant spending lots of time in the woods and learning to hunt. I enjoyed many hours walking in the great outdoors, learning about various animals, and developing a great appreciation for nature. I never envisioned that I could apply those lessons to websites, but inspiration comes from all aspects of our lives. In this article, I will relate to my time spent studying the whitetail deer.
CWS Podcast – Ep. 39: Website Evolution, not Revolution
If you already have a church website, I hope you do not hear my podcasts and decide to completely re-make your site. There are actually very few good reasons to create a completely new website. Instead, try making incremental changes that will add value as you go along. Regardless of your stance on the subject of human evolution, you definitely should believe in website evolution!
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Church Social Media: Measuring Success
Measuring success; we all want to do it. So how do you know if your efforts on social media are bearing any fruit? Can you justify the hours your are spending posting a steady stream of updates to the multitude of social media platforms? This article explores what measurements exist, what they mean, and some tools you can use to monitor your success.
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Church Social Media: Social Media Authentication
Did you know that social media could be used for something other than announcing what you had for breakfast, or sharing funny pictures of cats? Online identities can be used across the web and increase how often users interact with your church’s website. If you have sections on your site where you hope users will interact with you, include social media authentication to give them less hoops to jump through and give you more community activity.
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Church Social Media: Getting Help to Create, Curate, and Disperse Content
Social media content often looks like it comes from a fire hose. Watching your feeds scroll by with new posts coming every few seconds or minutes may be very intimidating. You may wonder how can your church produce so much content? Even more daunting, how can you be heard in the crowd? This article will explore how to overcome these obstacles and help your church’s online outreach flourish
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Church Social Media: Social Media Foundations
What social media foundations can you lay at your church to make your online ministries more effective? By creating good processes and having the discipline to adhere to them, you will bolster interactions on your various platforms, and boost traffic to your websites. This article contains tips on creating and recycling content, defining and sticking to a schedule, as well as curating and automating your publishing process. The end result should be a vibrant and flourishing online church community.
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