Marketing and Management Thoughts

Photo Sharing sites abound on the Internet. The majority of them interweave a combination of user uploaded photos with a community aspect (mainly through groups and comments on photos). These sites allow you to create an account, most for free, and then allocate all of your shared photographs into one location.

There is little people love more than photos (and photos of themselves). These sites allow for great access of your members to full galleries. After retreats, mission trips, confirmation services, and any other event you can think of. With so many people loving photography this provides a way for them to serve as a ‘Church Photographer’ and you create a valuable new role in your church.

Within your churches account you can upload all your photos and place them into sets/groups for specific events. This allows way more pictures to be posted and archived than makes sense to do on your churches public website.

Below is a list of sites you can use to host these photos

Keep Reading »

http://static.videoegg.com/ted/movies/UrsusWehrli_2006-embed_high.flv

Ursus Wehrli shares from his recent book Tidying Up Art in this fun video from the TED confence in 2006. It’s worth a the 15 minutes to watch and enjoy.

Following up our post on Facebook and MySpace I thought I would showcase a local church (for us here in Minneapolis/St. Paul) that many of you have heard of before, Bethlehem Baptist Church (who have a beautiful, albeit huge, website) and a snapshot of their Facebook page. I actually stumbled accross their page a while back when I read a wall post stating, “YAY MY LIFE IS COMPLETE. THE CHURCH HAS A FACEBOOK.”

Pretty cool and is an example of a church that as created the page, and doesn’t do a lot of upkeep (seems primarly for the youth group). Mainly it is for photos and probably communicating with the youth who are already on facebook.

Author, Pastor, and Teacher Eric Bryant

Looking for a way to answer the question ‘What are you doing?’ Enter twitter. It is a blog, but it only allows entries of up to 140 characters.

Its a network that allows you to post short messages and when you are signed in you can see all the messages of those people following you. It’s a very easy and covenant way to keep up to date with friends/organizations/businesses you are interested in.

While it doesn’t make a lot of sense to use for a church as a whole, for individuals or small groups it can be great.

It’s hard to explain exactly how people use it, but it is used by many people in ministry. One example is a man I recently was able to hear speak, Eric Bryant, who gave a fairly impromptu talk to students at Bethel Seminary about the approach Mosaic Church has taken to church.

Checking out his personal website has revealed not only a blog that he up keeps, but also his twitter feed.

Keep Reading »

I came across this today and thought it was worth posting/sharing with all of you.

Unsure of what that restaurant is? Its a McDonald’s in Tokyo (website) that is one of a small few design to introduce the Japanese to the Quarter Pounder. So often in marketing we hear about branding and image recognition being the important purpose of our brand. That is the reason companies spend so much money on television and magazine advertisements.

I love the minimal design, simply a red line around the black framed windows, one photo, and some nice brushed steel.

(via @nedwright, Core77)

ChurchMarketingSucks.com

Blogs are a great way to communicate with the world. With millions upon millions of blogs in the world focusing on ever subject under the sun why make another one? Because this one is personal for those you are ministering with and to.

Blogging is another very easy form of informal communication. While some companies do choose to use a blog for their formal communication it is traditional informal. Its a way to share thoughts from your life, or to write about your specialization for others to read. For you, this is perfect as you have members who want to know more about both! Now to decide what to focus your blog on, personal life, or theology…

Get your free blog here at insightsforchurch.com if you don’t yet have one.

Keep Reading »

It seems like everyone and there mom is on Facebook these days. What started as a school project has become a global phenomena in a matter of years. While there still isn’t a clear picture as to how these social networks can help organizations meet their goal, it is clear that a presence can have a positive effect.

Having worked developing social networking sites beginning in 1999 I hope to shed some light on the subject by explaining the differences, and suggesting how to effectively use the services for your church or organization.   Please give feedback at the end as well.

Keep Reading »

I realize this post will interrupt the series we just announced on Sunday (which I will write the first installment shortly) it is warranted.

Part of my daily reading includes a number of top design blogs which point their readers to portfolios of their peers on a regular basis. I have long loved art and design on the digital platform.

Check out I Am Always Hungry. The design is brilliant, and the work is very impressive. My only complaint is the clock on their site that reminded me I spent 35 minutes looking at everything they had posted.

If you have a few minutes check it out, beautiful.

Welcome to a new series that will be rolled out over the next few weeks where we’ll highlight the community building power of technology.

Everyone hopes that the ministry they lead will have an effect on influencing the lives of those they are ministering to. It is at this point that the church holds up the importance of community to bring about these changes. More and more we are learning empirically that intimate friends improve ones health and well being. This then becomes our goal; building communities of intimate friends.

Keep Reading »

There are a whole number of websites out there to post your videos to and why wouldn’t you with all the time that goes into making each one. The problem is that it takes so long to publish your video on each of them. This is where Tube Mogul comes in. It’s one website that allows you to upload your video files one, and publish them to over 20 video sharing website out there today (supported sites).

This service makes content re-purposing  that much easier to accomplish by allowing you access to quickly upload a video to multiple sites at once. On top of that they provide you with detailed statistics on how each video is doing on various sites (see image from their site to the right).

If you are doing a lot of promotional video work, or just creating videos that you want to get out there in front of the world I would encourage you to sign up and try out TubeMogul.com.