agoraphobic church : keynote by ministry 2.0

• some shifts in the church that david has seen

• fundamentalism
• seeker sensitive
• new shift, our methods don't work. cool methods only go so far

• have growing culture that knows not pharoah
• fragmentation, each person can start a movement. lots of 'mini-movements'
• we have methodological freedom & technical power to advance the church from agoraphobic stage
  • agoraphobia, fear of the marketplace
  • fear of open space or ideas
• as people of the church we are zenopobic, fearful of stranger
• mission miopia, greatest mission that churches have is survival. a mission of survival isn't very inspiring
• if we only go after the churched we are only hitting a shrinking population
• wall-less, wireless, worn-out
  • we live in a day with the death of distance. bricks & mortar are no longer defining
  • nimble simple lean are the thing of the future
  • a mobility that redefines sacred space
  • how does an entity survive being open only one hour a week?..
  • wireless, anyone everywere anytime
  • worn-out, live in a culture of intense complexity
  • we can't explain it in the same old world words
  • (talk on varieties in life reminded of this malcolm gladwell ted talk)
  • you gotta come when we are open & hear what we have to say, no longer
• marketing is now content
• how do we use tech to leverage our message. the gospel is our core message
• not sin management (from dallas willard)
• its one thing to have the tech equally exciting to have content that matters
• more open to dialogue, less open to rhetoric
• if we continue our walled in gardens we will loose 'the race'

david foster is pastor of the gathering a church plant in cool springs area of tennessee

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at the core of social media : workshop session at ministry 2.0 technology conference

what is social media? the process of using interactive web-based tools to establish community

• why? what do you want to accomplish? in being part of social media
• dangers of failure to planning ongoing engagement

• at the heart of the tools is conversation
• a wiki is where people collaborate on a document, not a forum
• www.wearemedia.org social media site for non-profits
• people move tools, how to design to keep people
• there are people who create content & those who spectate
• participation, openness, conversation, community, connectedness by chris brogan (download his latest ebook, fish where the fish are)
• "we are not sure who'll have time to moderate it?" are you really ready?
• do you want to be a platform for people to participate in that open conversation?
• how business sees this
  • broadcast : we tell you what to think of our service
  • interactive : tell us what you think of what we tell you
  • social media : tell each other
• characteristics of all the tools, at the center is people
• ideas & beliefs develop on experiences and trust
• what makes something a good experience?
  • accomplishment
  • exceeding expectation
  • saves time
  • task accomplishment
  • the experience itself
  • packaging
  • brand
• 3 broad groups to experiences,
  • the core interaction describes the 'thing' (product or service) being purchased
  • the presentation layer describes secondary elements that have a direct effect on our perceptions
  • the communications layer describes those attraction efforts which an indirect effect on perceptions
• two halves to the model
  • the top half is the company space and all things that can be controlled by the company
  • the bottom half is what a user can create/work with
• mix of rational & emotional

experiences and trust

• what builds trust? what looses trust?
• experiences are the currency of trust
• trust makes social life predictable, creates a sense of community,…
• community depends on trust

the church needs tools

• that connect people globally and locally
• help people group around shared interests
• make it easier to share with the …

tools

• shared corporate gathering via ustream
• twitter or small groups or missionaries
• blogs, share your heart
• etc.. start with you needs and then find the tools

these are some things i'd like to accomplish at, through or for my church: (my generated list)

• develop pride in the ministry and message of our community
• have extensions to relationships from sunday to sunday
• inform parents and key players
• play some role in developing apprentices of Christ
• have familiar grounds to have tough conversations
• challenge the status quo of the church
• inspire others

categories

• facebook, myspace, bebo, hi5, ning, linkedin are social networks to connect people to other people
• digg, del.icio.us magnolia, stumble upon are social bookmarkings and collaborative filters
• wordpress, blogger, typepad are blogging platforms
• pbwiki, wikispace, wetpaint are wikis for collaboratives
• socializer, friendfeed, socialthing, profilactic are lifestreams and new to landscape
• skype, thinkature, stixy are collaborative communication
• forums or messageboards
• podcasts & videocast
• content communities are youtube, slideshare, where people gather around content
• shared events eventful, zvents, google calendar where you can share things that are going on
• livecast are live video like ustream
• microblogging is twitter, pownce

tips

• follow jeremiah owyang

stephen anderson is the vice president of design at viewzi. stephen promises to put his slides from this session on slideshare.

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driving traffic, to your church website : workshop session at ministry 2.0 technology conference

• you want to get people to come back, over and over again
• make the site the primary vehicle
• q? "how'd you make the transition from the printed to online newsletter" answer, "we just did it. we do have a once a month paper publication that is more storytelling of missions or ministry etc."
• forward compatability vs backward compatible. we make decisions on what we want to be about
• once you put everything on the front page, nothing is on the front page. people couldn't see it, lost in the mix. find the middle road.
• task based organization, what are using coming to your site to do?
• "highest real estate of a site is the top left"
• new to church is highest ranking, email newsletter 2nd, media and calendar are the sticky things that bring people back
• if it is on the bulletin then it goes onto the website homepage as featured item
• navigation structure of site. jargon and organizational thinking in navigation. use words that are understandable by others (ex. journeys, don't know if is youth or whatever). navigation shouldn't be done according to the organization of work.
• organize content according to users, not church structure
• consistency across the site is critical. having different structures for different parts of the site is frustrating for users
• search-ability of site. larger site need better search-ability. if smaller the structure needs to be stronger
• "don't make me think" book on search-ability
• integrate with the core values of your church. make sure everything goes in with your mission & purpose statements and movement of the church.
• tie to your discipleship values. integrate all throughout the site. putting in the message
• web credibility project, what is appeal of your site
• integrated brand position with your site. get content past peoples filter by being consistent across mediums
• develop a content maintenance plan. how are you going to keep all this going and up to date. chuck uses a weekly communications schedule. all the stuff that needs to be done that week (micro level). need to keep the site up to date to keep folks coming back.
• cross promotion (thinking like oprah). on her website she's promoting her tv show or radio show. on the radio show they promote the web site, etc. crucial to how you think about promotions
• business cards need to have the web site address. bulletins need to promote site, etc.
• in all flyers have short cut links to your promotions. they don't always have to just promote the homepage. www.sitename/ministry/ build that culture. children's ministry has its own domain name, but it just directs back to page within the site. domain names are cheap. can be printed on flyers, t-shirts, outside of church building, etc.
• newspaper ad, everything we do has the website address. we don't do ads in the faith section. we put in the sports or finance sections.
• direct mailer, has times and website for services. put prominently. do a /specificneed url for the message you are getting out.
• the web is a fast medium, people don't want to wander around your site (church & corporate site wise, youtube a bit different)
• email newsletters a primary driver of coming back to the site. it used to be really long and content heavy. now its short and links to information on the website. people scan & click
• email aquisition strategy, if you sign into the attendance pad you get the pastor emails and wednesday newsletter. also have online web site sign up. if you sign up for an event we don't put you in. will put you into specific event emails if attending those.
• social media, have people link back and help drive traffic back to you. blogs, facebook groups, individual and ministry blogs, podcast of sermons, etc. the more ways you are out there, the exponential the effect.

chuck russell is leadership development director at church of the resurrection in leawood kansas outside kansas city (that was for you chuck)

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how search engines work : workshop session at ministry 2.0 technology conference

• search engines go out and crawl the visibly accessible web. things that are not intentionally blocked by passwords or 'don not crawl' commands
• search engines read text, imagine a blind person reading. can't view images.
• they hold cache's or copies of the text.
• clicking 'cached' on search results gives clue why a particular page showed up so high.
• results circulate around relevant and popularity
  • relevance is about the amount of content
  • popularity is about the traffic & linked too the most
• if you put out a brand new site it might take 3 months to make it to the top of search engine because of popularity. need to get found.
• identify the landing pages of your site that you want people to find
  • optimize a 'new to…' page for new visitors
  • don't have to drive people just to your homepage
  • drive traffic for singles ministry. think search for 'franklin singles'
  • what are the most seeker oriented activities? what are the draws? the entry point
  • cor, uses a lot of paid search around Christmas & Easter
  • optimizing your code, get up on w3 standards. the better your code is or standards impliant the better you will show up.
• brainstorm search terms
  • the obvious are the 'church' hits the folks who are church shopping
  • wordtracker paid service, will give you some info on word searches to help optimize
  • how many key words do you want to manage for
  • using analytics can give you an idea of what people are searching for
• title tags
  • the things that show up at the top of the browser is the first thing crawlers see, optimize that to the key words you need
  • for every page you have you want to optimize that tag
• meta tags
  • used to be the way, but is moving away from that depending the search engine. google doesn't put much stock in it
  • the description tag puts in the blurb in the search engine results. its text the search engine will see but it is not something you see on the site. say something interesting to get people to click on it
• body text
  • the number of times a particular word shows up 'density' gives more optimization
  • want to do that without sounding non-sensical
  • tricks to use white text or microscopic text that is not visible will get you banned
• link building
  • popularity comes with traffic and inbound links
  • google webmasters tool
  • blogs are great for inbound links
  • press releases and stories in online newspapers
  • link:"site name" will give list of
  • the language of the incoming link matters
• advanced lp's (landing page)
  • using special landing pages with large use of keywords, then point people off to things they want to see.
  • use this for the long tail
• paid search
  • google adwords, pay for the click. mailings we have no clue the results of return, they say about 1%. on adwords you have very targeted audience
  • facebook, has so much data based on the people profiles, demographics, activity and can be targeted to those folks
  • roi, return on investment can exponentially pay for itself if someone shows up and stays
• local search
  • claim your business, free
  • plug in with that
  • can put in videos that are on youtube
• any time you have the opportunity to put out text that you can control you need to do that.
• directories / tools
  • submit your site if it is happens to not be there
  • google web master tool is important to have in use
  • analytics, google analytics is free, you can really get in and understand what is going on on your site

chuck russell is leadership development director at church of the resurrection in leawood kansas outside kansas city (that was for you chuck)

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