Tag: Online Communities

Survey Reveals 5 Opportunities for Churches on Facebook

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Most respondents indicated they don’t think their church is doing a particularly good job with Facebook. While those results could be perceived as negative, a closer look reveals some big opportunities for those churches willing to embrace the world’s largest social network.

  1. Communicate More – Clearly people would like to see their church do more on Facebook.
  2. Ministry Pages – A second opportunity for churches is for individual ministries to engage with people through Facebook pages.
  3. Facilitate Connections – A third opportunity for churches is to help their people connect with one another.
  4. Evangelism – A fourth opportunity for churches is to encourage and train their people to develop relationships with those who are not Christians and show God’s grace and love to them.
  5. Facebook Ads – A fifth opportunity for churches is to use Facebook ads to reach out to people in their community.

A detailed report on the survey results including lots of pretty charts and additional analysis is available at OurChurch.com.

via churchmarketingsucks.com

Happy Sunday! I’m blessed to be bringing a new client on board — Q90 FM in Green Bay. Here’s a great post from a great resource I found; Church Marketing Sucks! :-D

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Four reasons your Executive Director should be on Twitter

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Executive leaders at nonprofits should put community engagement via social media as a top priority in their job descriptions. They need to get their hands dirty.

But more often than not they don’t.

A broken model?

Usually, staffers do the “dirty work” with social media while management gets a debrief on ROI.

This is like having a nurses aid listen to a patient’s acute cardiac symptoms and tell the heart surgeon where to operate. A lot of critical information would be lost without the surgeon using her own stethoscope to listen directly to the patient’s heart.

Listening to your community is no different. Your community’s voice has a particular rhythm that can only be understood firsthand.

Four reasons EDs should be on Twitter

  1. Executive leaders can understand the community better through unfiltered direct access
  2. They can create greater trust within that community by demonstrating the orgs commitment to engage
  3. Respond faster to the community by eliminating the time it takes to play the telephone game
  4. They can anticipate needs that less experienced staff members might miss

But what if our executive leaders are too busy?

Too busy? If they aren’t willing to make an effort to hear firsthand from the people they serve, maybe they aren’t the right leaders for the organization.

via johnhaydon.com

…or maybe they don’t have the right tactics & tools. You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’re interested in learning more…

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Easy Posting for Blogging Experts and First Timers Alike

I´m pleased to share with ThePRLawyer audience another amazing tool for public relations and marketing professionals called posterous.com. This website is designed for just about anyone to post music, videos, pictures and content on the Internet just by sending an email. There are options for first-time bloggers with simple instructions to get started and more advanced options for seasoned blogging experts.

Getting started is easy, sign up by sending an introductory email to posterous@posterous.com with the option to attach files like photos or videos and voilá! The reply is almost instant and you are set up with your very own part of the information superhighway. A variety of platforms (up to 30!) such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and/or Picasa can be integrated with your posterous. Once set up, you control where your information is going to be posted. It´s just that quick and easy.

Duct Tape Marketing´s John Jantsch explains the benefits for users by pointing out that “for many people, particularly those that rely on email as their primary communication and storage tool, this is a great way to create and curate content.” Jantsch also points out that posterous can be used as a hub for distribution with easy options to pick and choose what information to post and which platform it will be sent to.
via theprlawyer.com

Posted via web from Inside Posterous

I’ll be doing a webinar on using Posterous to establish thought leadership tomorrow at noon. It’s not too late to sign up…

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Ummm. Tell me again why I want to use social media to market my brand?

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What’s this?

“Nielsen recently released a new report that officially documents what many of us already know, just never substantiated through data. According to a study published at the end of January 2010, Nielsen observed the online social activity of consumers around the world and discovered an 82% increase in time spent on social networking sites in December 2009. On average, users spent more than five and a half hours on popular networks such as Facebook and Twitter in December 2009. In December 2008, users clocked just over three hours on social networking sites.” Source: Time Spent on Social Networks up 82% Around the World

Uh oh! If I leverage social media outposts to expand my brand into social media I may actually generate some leads…

;-)

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Some straightforward thoughts on social media…

…from Wisconsin social media guru [no, that’s not an oxymoron!] Dana VanDen Heuvel…

“Social media is an umbrella term for online technologies that connect people through networking, according to Dana VanDen Heuvel, founder and president of the Marketing Savant Group, Green Bay.” Source: Social media connects organizations, customers | greenbaypressgazette.com | Green Bay Press-Gazette

He goes on to say…

“”The value of social media is that it connects customers to us or to each other. It’s not just a list of Web sites or things to download,” VanDen Heuvel said. “It’s about meeting people in their medium. That is really what social media is designed to help you do.”

Businesses should care about social media, because it has changed people’s expectations of what organizations do online as compared with five years ago, he said. Also, three out of four Americans use some form of social technology: blogging, micro-blogging (Twitter), social networking (Facebook), sharing videos and others.” Source: Social media connects organizations, customers | greenbaypressgazette.com | Green Bay Press-Gazette

He goes on to talk about offering unique value through your social media outposts and such practical things as how often your should update Facebook pages, etc. Follow the link to read the rest of article — it’s really good stuff…

btw, Dana’s a great speaker and I owe a lot to him in terms of my growth and development in social media over the past year. Do take the opportunity to see him speak if you ever get the chance — you can see his schedule here. When you want to talk tactics and tools for IMPLEMENTING Dana’s strategies, however, comment, call or contact me! I’ll help you put Dana’s strategies into practice…

;-)

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TGIM 2/8/2010

I love Mondays! I get to go back to work at my quiet office with a supercomputer and a fast internet connection! Can’t wait…

In the meantime, Lifehacker is rating the five best Podcast managers…

“Podcasts offer a fantastic way to catch up news, listen to radio shows, and get great media delivered right to your computer (they’re like newsreaders for media). Check out these five popular podcast managers and let the entertainment come to you.

Last week we asked you to share your favorite tool for managing your podcast subscriptions. (The term for downloading a podcast is actually podcatching, and a podcast manager is a podcatcher—the more you know!) We rounded up the top five nominations, and now we’re back for you to review them and cast your vote for your favorite podcast manager.” Source: Five Best Podcast Managers – Podcasting – Lifehacker

Continue reading “TGIM 2/8/2010” →

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Teens break up with blogging…

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Image via CrunchBase


…and start flirting with Twitter!

“A new study published today by Pew Internet finds that teens and young adults are blogging less and using social networking sites more, with the prominent exception of Twitter.

Pew’s Report surveyed 2,253 American adults and 800 U.S. teens to get a reading of how they use the internet, which gadgets they own, and which social media tools they use the most.” Source: Teens Just Don’t Blog or Tweet [STATS]

Go to the source for the rest of the article. Some of the data will surprise you…

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Websites and social media

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I’m fond of saying “the answer is rarely either/or but frequently both/and”. Mitch Joel talks about the roles and relationships of websites and social media and how the answer may be both/and…

“There are two schools of thought when it comes to marketing brands online and the presence they need.

1. Build a website that houses everything – all of your text, images, audio and video – in one, centralized, location.
2. Use the existing platforms and build your presence within their community (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc…).

Both have merit, and you can also do a little bit of both. For example you can house all of your branded content in your own website, and use the existing online communities to set-up outposts (as Chris Brogan calls them) – a specific Facebook Fan Page or a YouTube Channel – to further promote what you’re about with strong links back to your mothership (or website). You can also use a Facebook Page as your home base and direct people to a microsite for more information or to gather more data from them than Facebook might allow based on their terms of service. Personally, I advocate for owning your own space, building it and nurturing it and using those other/existing platforms to promote or extend the brand. Brands should own their content, community and type of conversation and not be beholden to the terms of service or whims of someone else.” Source: What A Website Will Be… And Never Be | Six Pixels of Separation – Marketing and Communications Blog – By Mitch Joel at Twist Image

This blog is a great example [in my humble opinion] of both/and. Both/and, however, does not have to take a lot of extra time. It’s easy to connect your social media outposts to your website for maximum effectiveness and traffic. Call, comment or contact — I’d love to connect with you around ‘how’…

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“If I started today”…

Connecting (Chris Brogan)
Image by petermello via Flickr

…is an insanely great post by Chris Brogan on the topic of where I would start today if I wanted to use the internet and social media to promote my thought leadership position — NOW I understand why people like Darren Rowse of ProBlogger rave about him!

I came across it looking for the killer article for a prospective client that I really want to land and I couldn’t have picked a better one to help him make the right decision…

“Okay, so you’ve heard from someone that this social media and social networking stuff is great and you should get involved, and it’s really going to help you out. Maybe it will help you in the economic downturn. Maybe you have heard how you can use Twitter for business. But there’s a lot to it all.

Where would you start? What would come first? How might you think about getting out there and joining in on the experience?” Source: If I Started Today

You’ll have to go to the source to get the answers but it’s well worth the trip — and let’s hope that client ‘gets it’ whatever it is… ;-)

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Facebook for Fun and Profit…

Over the past 10 days I’ve had the opportunity to speak twice on the topic of ‘Facebook for Fun and Profit’ to LinkedIn groups Link Greater Green Bay and Link Appleton [thanks again, Mark and Stacie]. Here’s a post I wish I had in my aresenal before I did the preso — it includes some great tactical and practical advice I would have liked to include…

“Facebook’s not just for keeping tabs on friends and filling out quizzes — it can also be used as a highly effective business tool. It’s great for marketing your products, landing gigs and connecting with your customers.” Source: 32 Ways to Use Facebook for Business

Click the link to go to the source. For those of you from the group who requested it [Rich? ;-)], here’s a copy of my preso with a hat tip to Dana VanDen Heuvel of MarketingSavant.com and David Sauter of Envano who contributed thoughts and slides…

Happy Facebooking!

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Are you a ‘friend ho’?

Apparently I am or my college-aged son thinks I am because I’ll friend ANYONE in Facebook! My selectivity actually comes at the list level where I manage all kinds of subgroups. Here are my thoughts on the topic…

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