Marketing and Management Thoughts » Social Networks

Managing your Churches Online Reputation

Paul Prins — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:14:13 +0000

I recently read the article ‘Managing an Online Reputation‘ by Kermit Pattison in the NYT. It was a great article and we recommend that you check it out online. The three keys are to Monitor, Manage, and Promote. Below are some of the highlights:

Automatic Alerts
Set up automatic alerts to notify you when your business is mentioned in a review or blog. (See Below)
List on Local Search Sites
Local search sites are the new Yellow Pages — make sure your business is listed. The more complete your listing, the more likely you are to get good search results.
Monitor and Respond to Reviews/Critiques
Respond to reviews to show readers that you are listening and that you care about customer service.
Use Review to Improve
Online reviews are a gold mine of business intelligence. Analyze metrics to get a better sense of your customer demographics.
Don’t Fake Reviews
Don’t write false reviews to puff your business or trash a competitor. You can severely damage your reputation…and look really silly.

To monitor your online reputation check out some Web tools that do just that. We use Google Alerts here at nineteen05 and simply subscribe in our RSS reader to get updates daily. We have several set up for our business name, staff member names, and some key terms related to our business. Some of the tools in that review are free, others can get quite expensive. For churches I would recommend the free options.

Free Automatic Alert Options

Google Alerts – Searches blogs and more
technorati.com – Blog Search Engine
keotag.com – very simple, but lacked ability to search all sources at once
monitorthis.info – Blog Search Engine (found out of date entries)

Quick Guide to Twittiquette in 10 Steps

Paul Prins — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:47:04 +0000

With the rise of twitter (and their 140 character limit) there has been much confusion over what should be considered appropriate and what should be avoided. As I’ve read blog after blog on the subject these are the top 10 ideas the bubble to the top.

Define your purpose for this account, and be interesting
When you clearly understand what your account is for everything will fall in line. People who follow you will understand the content you are posting, and will understand what content is coming in the future. This will attract the followers that you want.
Posts that have pass-along value
When posting something decide if it has value that someone else might pass along. This would exclude comments about what you had for breakfast or what you are doing at this very moment. Unless of course what you are doing would have value to those you are interacting with on twitter.
Be a part of the Conversation
Don’t just simply follow people. Talk to people about what is going on in life. There will be people you don’t know, and people you do. If you begin to interact you’d be surprised to watch some of these relationships make the online to offline jump.
Remember it’s Public
Be smart about what you post. Remember that anyone out there can read your tweets. To avoid subjects that would be seen as culturally taboo, unless there is a purpose for it.

Click here to view the embedded video.
Not for chatting
We understand that people want to chat. There are several services out there for chatting online. Remember #4, that that conversation is completely public. People seeing this conversation will likely be turned off by it.
Response to someone RT your tweet?
Its flattering and encouraging when someone retweets something you posted. As a best practice send a private message to those who you can. Otherwise a short reply (@username) saying thanks goes a long way.
When you RT from someone else
Let people know that you are re-tweeting their post. It’s really simple, all you need to do is write ‘RT: @username -’ and then post the tweet. If it is to long when you re-post, see if there aren’t words you can shorten or take out.
Keep your content Fresh – NO Repeats!
Don’t keep posting the same thing. People will stop following you since they believe they already know everything you are going to share with them.
Get an Icon, good description, and Custom Background
There are very few customizable options on twitter, so use the ones you have! Use an icon people will recognize, and same goes for the background. Keep it simple. Make your description a sort of vision statement for your tweets. If you say you’re a Web Developer you should have posts about being a developer. If you say you’re a pastor you should post pastoral tweets.
Watch the self promotion!
If you are posting good and original content then the need to self promote should be minimal. This includes bragging about the number of followers that you’ve gotten to. Keep the content fresh and relevant and people will understand your value.

Thats my top 10 list. There might be something that would be added to the list. Anything you want to add to it? Leave it in the comments or reply to us on twitter @nineteen05.

Related Post: Twitter and 50 Ways to FAIL

Sources: NetworkWorld, Adam Copeland, Brandflakes,

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/web/2009/042709web1.htmlNetworkWorld

Seeing the Twitter Community

Paul Prins — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:55:22 +0000

This is what the twitter community would look like if it was only 100 people. It’s a fun play off the ‘if the world was a village‘ concept. Thanks mkandlez, for the graphic.

Who uses twitter and for what?

Paul Prins — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:05:33 +0000

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networks on the web. One thing people always seem to say about it is, ‘what is it for?’ To be honest it seems as though everyone has their own answer to that question. The data below does lend some insight as to how people are using the site as of this summer.

In June 2009 a survey was done on twitter by Sysomos to see how people are using twitter. The results include the following.

72.5% of all users joining during the first five months of 2009
85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day
21% of users have never posted a Tweet
93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people
5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity
New York has the most Twitters users, followed by Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco and Boston; while Detroit was the fast-growing city over the first five months of 2009
More than 50% of all updates are published using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.
There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)
Of the people who identify themselves as marketers, 15% follow more than 2,000 people. This compares with 0.29% of overall Twitter users who follow more than 2,000 people.

How do power users use twitter?

Of those 5% who account for 75% of the activity they discovered that (source):

Of the most active Twitter users updating more than 150 times/day, nearly all of them are bots operated by sources such as hotels offering deals, regional and national news services, regional weather services, the top news within Digg, games, anim services, tags within del.icio.us and financial aggregators. These very active bots account for one-quarter of all tweets.
Among the most active Twitter users with more than 50,000 followers, we find singer Tyrese (@tyrese4real), actress Alyssa Milano (@alyssa_milano), celebrity Tila Tequila (@officialtila), tv host Jonathan Ross (@wossy) and evangelist Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki).
60.6% of the most active Twitter users live in the United States, while 6.9% are located in the U.K, 4.7% in Japan, and 4.3% in Canada.
The split between genders among the most active Twitter users is fairly balanced with 54% male, 46% female.
88% of the most active Twitter users have never missed a day without making at least one update, while another 2.1% have only been inactive for one day.
48% have more than 100 followers, compared with 6.3% for overall Twitter users.
44% of more than 100 friends, compared with 7.5% overall.
33.7% of the most active Twitter users have joined Twitter this year, compared with 72.5% of overall Twitter users who have signed up this year
The most popular keywords within bios are Internet marketing, music lover, Web designer, video games, and husband/father.

When to post on twitter?

It is interesting to note the times of day that are most used on twitter. If you are posting something and hope others to see it is it best to be on the upside of these curves. Which would place it between 10 and noon, and then between 6 and 8pm.

Twitter and 50 Ways to FAIL

Paul Prins — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:46:31 +0000

Twitter is quickly becoming one of the easiest social networking platforms out there today. While the membership numbers aren’t as high as Facebook the sheer portability of it, and the nice mobility of it make it worth while to me. Not to mention the ability to integrate our blog, twitter, and Facebook all together (How to is here).

Lee Odden (a man with nearly 14k followers on twitter @leeodden) wrote a piece about the common mistakes he sees on twitter that dilute your following. Below are his top ten, and check out his blog for another 40 submitted by his followers.

Top Ten Ways to Fail on Twitter

Don’t auto reply follows with a link to your free piece of crap ebook.
Don’t provide an obscure description of who you are and what you do
No photo or an image that only makes sense to you and your imaginary friends
Don’t mention a great resource with no link
Not customizing your background
Don’t post 10 messages in succession (also repeated below)
Don’t follow over 1000 people in a 2 hour period
Don’t write about the cat/hamster/potted plant over and over again
Don’t swear often and expect business people to take you seriously (Unless you work for Outspoken Media)
Don’t over-abbreviate.

Final Thoughts

I feel like the last one here is most important for churches, and would add to it using insider lingo. If you have a nickname for locations or people, don’t use them in your twitter feed. Doing that will only make people feel unwelcomed and on the outside.

Make sure to check out the full list over at his blog.

Use a blog, twitter, and facebook at the Same Time with 3 steps

Paul Prins — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:09:02 +0000

One of the great things about this whole web 2.0 thing is how different websites work together. This is done by them providing access to their system through something called an API. But what it means for us, less work!

So how does it mean less work? As someone in ministry (or even working full time) the prospect of being able to trim time off of our list of to-dos is very exciting. So here is how you can post on your blog, and have that update your twitter account, and Facebook status for free. Follow these 3 simple steps.

The Three Steps

Install & Setup TwitMe on your blog
Activate the Twitter facebook application (here)
Blog and watch the magic happen!

First you need to install (or if you have an account here at insights for church, you only need to activate) the plug-in Twitme (Download it Here). What this plug-in does is post a tweet to your twitter account whenever you post something to your blog. It does more then that but that is the excited part for us here. All you need to do is supply your user name and password for it to work.

Next you activate the twitter Facebook application. With hundreds of millions of people on Facebook and some tens of millions joining each month this is a dynamic and quick way to update your status.

One more quick trick

Facebook has a feature that allows you to import your blog posts directly into Facebook into their ‘notes’ application by editing the import settings. All you need to do is paste in the URL to your feed (for word press users this is the address of your blog + ‘/feed/’ so the feed for us here is http://nineteen05.insightsforchurch.com/feed/).

Why do all this?

One of the biggest secrets to advertising is customer impressions. How many interactions does someone have with your brand/you. As a church leader this generally translates to this:

The more times someone hears from you during the week, the more your message and relevance increases for them, leading to more life change, and a greater commitment to Christ.

If it is as simple as taking 5 minutes to set something up, to maximize on what you are already doing. I say go for it!

Now on Twitter…. Nineteen05!

Paul Prins — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:22:55 +0000

The micro-blogging site twitter could very well be the next generation of blogging (though there are serious limits to such tiny posts and it is a very different experience). We over at nineteen05 just set up our twitter account (@nineteen05).

Our main motivation for doing this is to quickly and breifly communicate product releases, customer service info, new features, user submissions of feature adds, and to keep in better more consistant communication with our customer base.

If you are using twitter, make sure to follow us and we’ll return the favor!
If you haven’t started, get your FREE account and let us be one of your first contacts!

Building Community: Video Sharing Sites

Paul Prins — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:12:32 +0000

In terms of building community this is probably the least effective method of those listed in the original post for the series. I make this statement because the main purpose of these sites is entertainment. For this purpose I’m going to break this down into three sections; Promotional Videos, Follow-up Videos, and Documentaries.

I would first post all of these video on your churches website for your members before heading over to a site like You Tube. If you’re interested in posting to multiple video sharing sites at once check out our post on tube mogul.

Promotional Videos

Click here to view the embedded video.

These could be general promotional videos for your church (like a commercial) or for a sermon series. The purpose for posting these videos online would be with a hope of attracting people to your church website, and your church itself (so make sure your church domain name is in the video and description!!!). I wouldn’t go out of my way to create videos to post online to sites like You Tube but to re-purpose content you’ve already made to show on a Sunday morning.

The main idea is to give the world a glimpse of the community happening inside (and outside) of the walls of our church. If you’re videos get some traction online it will hopefully help to lower peoples hesitation to the Church and to Christ whom we represent.

Follow-up Videos

After your church holds great events (including mission trips) post a follow-up video online. These videos could be a compilation from a conference your youth attended, a video made from the Christmas Eve candle light service, or a summer church picnic in the park. These are great because they show your community in action. For those in your church it is always fun to me reminded of times you had (and to see yourself in a video).

For people outside of your church these videos can provide an intimate and personal insight to what is going on inside your church. Of anything I believe this could have a tremendous effect at breaking down false expectations/views of what it means to be a part of the body of Christ. These videos can also be referenced by your members in emails to friends that could hopefully lead to inviting them in the future.

Documentary Videos

Click here to view the embedded video.

While not really fitting under the idea of community building as the previous two this is an area that the Christian faith is lacking in greatly. Google Video is one of the sites that allows longer videos to be posted. A quick search for videos about faith reveals many promoting Islam and other faiths, along with videos pulling down Christianity (one not so flattering video is to the right, but there are some positive ones). What a need for high quality christian documentaries!! You could go about building community through the group of people that come together to produce these documentaries for the web to combat lies that are being spread and to give hope.

If you know of anyone in your church who has a gifting and passion for film & documentary please empower them to make these films! Films that show the active work of the faith in today’s world.

Building Community: Photo Sharing Sites

Paul Prins — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:24:13 +0000

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 most for free I believe. We personally recommend Flickr and they are probably the most popular among those listed below. It is very easy to use, they have a free option (and a pro account for $25/yr allows 2 gigs of uploads/mo, and shows all your photos all the time, instead of only the 200 most recent with the free account). Sort your images into set, and then group the sets into collections for quick access. These photos can also be downloaded at full resolution if someone wanted to print a copy for themselves (this is an option for each account/image).

Facebook also has a photo feature but I wouldn’t encourage using it for this purpose. These galleries are not accessible publicly (for most people over 30 who don’t have accounts), there is no access to the full resolution image, and by uploading images to facebook they become the property of facebook (see their terms of service).

Building Community

Most of these sites allow you to create some sort of photo sharing group. By doing this you can encourage members of your church to post and share their photos in the group. This allows everyone one simple place to go and view photos from events and trips your church goes on.

Imagine having a group of students on a mission trip after hurricane Katrina doing cleanup and posting photos mid-trip online for everyone back home. All they would need is an hour in a wi-fi hot-spot (like many coffee shops or hotels) and they can upload photos.