Marketing and Management Thoughts

Another followup to the Building Community series we did several weeks ago because I stumbled across Chris Forbes’ free e-Book “Facebook for Pastors” that does a pretty good job at explaining Facebook and its ministry possibilities.

It is a great supplement to what we wrote about in much greater details than I chose to in our blog and in a short 33 pages (several of which are the intro) lay out it quite well.

The bottom line on Facebook is there are people connected to it. It is not a web site or an Internet product; it is a network of people. Each person in the network is someone for whom Christ gave
himself. That is an important perspective for a pastor, wherever people gather, there are opportunities to minister.

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Download the ebook for free

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. (more…)

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.

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. (more…)