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It’s time to stop dabbling with social media

January 12, 2012 — 3 Comments

Last week I had the opportunity to meet with a few groups of United Methodist Church leaders near Washington, DC to discuss how the church can best use their websites and social media tools to reach people more effectively.

My social media presentation was largely focused on the fact that Twitter and Facebook are no longer tools for churches to be “playing with”; they’ve become legitimate communication tools.  While most churches are doing fairly well with Facebook, Twitter remains a problem.  I’m hoping the tools I shared with them will help get things rolling.

Google+

Even though the sessions were only a week ago, my thoughts on Google+ have changed.  At the time, I said something like “You need to focus hard on Facebook and Twitter, and start playing with Google+ because you’ll need to be active there later this year“.  As it turns out, “later this year” is now.  The reason for the sudden shift is Google’s release of “Search, plus Your World”, which adds heavy Google+ integration into the search results.  Here’s a quick video showing how that works:

That alone should be enough to encourage you to get your organization on Google+.  But it goes further.  Try searching for “music” or “cars” and you’ll get a result similar to the shot below.  Notice the area that I outlined in red.

Notice that the red box is for Google+ profiles only; no Twitter or Facebook found there.  That is seen by some as anti-competitive, and perhaps it is, but that’s simply how it works right now.  Britney Spears trails a variety of artists on Twitter (Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, etc), but none of them are on Google+ yet.  As a result, she’s suddenly getting a lot more free promotion when someone performs a search.

For now, that area doesn’t matter much for your business, but it will soon.  For local searches, Google will almost certainly start showing businesses in your area instead of just generic industry-related results.  If you wait until that happens before you join Google+, you’ll be way behind.  Suppose Katy Perry sees those results and joins Google+ to get back in the game.  While she may catch up to Spears eventually, she’s already behind by 1.3 million followers.  How far ahead do you want your competition to get before you join the game?

Faces in the main results

Not only is that side bar relevant, but the main search results (in both personal and non-personal mode) are already full of results from Google+.  In many cases, those results show the face of the author of the post even if the post was made on their own blog.  For example, the below search for “google earth imagery january” shows my face next to the second result, because it knows that I wrote that article and it connects to my Google+ profile; and this is the non-personal results!

Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket

As much as I love Google+, I’m certainly not advising you to bail on Facebook or Twitter.  As I said at the beginning, those are legit communications platforms and your organization needs to be active on both of them.  For now, at least, all three are very important to your organization.

If you want to dabble in social media, there are places to do that.  Play with Pinterest (connect with me), play with Path, or play with any of the other new services popping up.  Pinterest may become more serious this year, but for now you can just poke the tires a bit.

I don’t have time

I hear it a lot — “not another service to keep up with!”, but it’s all about your mind set.  Instead of worrying about how you’ll have time for three separate services, just look at it from the positive side.  Now you have another way to connect with your customers, and this one will help you show up more frequently in the search results too.  It’s a win-win!

Once you get things set up, simply take 10-15 minutes/day to post your latest thoughts and respond to people that are talking to you.  It doesn’t have to be a huge deal.  If it takes longer than that to respond to everything coming your way, then your business is likely doing well and you can afford to spend more time working with those people (or hire someone to help you out).

Do you think any other services are worthy of the full attention of your business right now?  I can see LinkedIn being one for a few organizations, but that’s about it.  Agree?

In Facebook, Google+, Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Twitter , , , , , , ,
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Your competition isn’t always right

August 26, 2011 — 6 Comments

No matter what line of business you’re in, you can often get inspiration and ideas by checking out your competition.  You can see what kind of stuff they’re putting on their website, how they’re using social media, what new products they’re stocking, etc.  However, you ultimately need to trust yourself.  Here are a few examples.

Using music to set the tone

I was recently talking to a client about her site, and suggested we take the background music off.  After a brief discussion, she agreed.  When I asked why she put it up there in the first place, she said that a lot of her competition did that and she was trying to match them.  Being a brand-new business, emulating some of the established sites is certainly a great idea.  Now that she’s removed the music and they haven’t, she’s a step ahead!

Facebook “welcome tabs”

I have a lot of clients asking for “welcome tabs” on their Facebook Page.  While it’s certainly appropriate in a few situations, it seems that most people are doing it simply because everyone else is doing it, and no one is really thinking it through.  Most users come to your Facebook page for the content — information, specials, etc.  Why put an extra page in their way?

It feels a lot to me like the “splash pages” everyone had in the late 90′s — simply an unnecessary step between your user and the content they want.  We all eventually realized how stupid those were, so how are Facebook welcome tabs any different? (Honestly — leave a comment and convince me how they’re a good thing for everyone.  I’m certainly open to changing my mind if someone can supply a solid argument.)

Copying the church down the road

One church I worked at was obsessed with the other big church just down the road.  We’d often spend thousands of dollars copying activities that they did, even if we didn’t need them.  It was quite sad.  There were essentially two ways that our leadership viewed things:

  • If they’re doing x, and we’re not, we need to start.
  • If we’re doing x, and they’re not, we need to stop wasting time on it.

This was especially problematic during the rise of social media, because the “other church” was slow to adopt it.  Therefore, it was tough for us to convince our church leadership that it was worthwhile.  The “other church” is a wonderful place, but they have made some very poor technological choices over the past few years; very dumb things with their website, very little social media, etc.  Copying them in those areas would have been a foolish mistake.

Stylish restaurant websites

Have you ever tried to pull up a restaurant website on your phone?  It’s almost always brutal.  Slate recently had an article about this, and I agree completely.  Not only are they often unusable on a phone (especially an Apple device, with no hope of loading their cute Flash menus), but they’re equally frustrating from a normal browser.

My thought is that it’s the restaurant owners and their desire for a particular ambience that cause most of the issues.  While you certainly want the actual restaurant to have that feel, putting cheesy background music being a painfully “creative” navigation bar isn’t the way to do it on the website.

The University website

(via xkcd.  awesome site)

Part of this comes back to the problem of the University website.  Universities think that we want to read about the school’s philosophy and press releases, and that idea is validated by other universities posting the same junk on their home page.  This is very similar to churches that post a big link to their denomination’s website, rather than providing decent driving directions.

Check them out, but be smart

I’m certainly not saying you shouldn’t see what your competition is doing.  As I said at the beginning, you can often get some good ideas from them.  Just be smart, and always view things through the eyes of your customers.  Ask yourself, “if I was a customer, why would I visit the site and what would I be looking for?”  If the answer is “cheesy music and a mission statement”, find someone to help you think through it a bit further. :)

In Church, Companies, Facebook, Marketing, Mobile, Site Content, Social Media , , , , , , ,
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Church Website Review: Alamo UMC

October 7, 2010 — Leave a comment

Cheryl recently contacted me and asked me to take a look at her site.

Alamo UMC – www.gbgm-umc.org/Alamo

I’m not a big fan of the gbgm-umc sites.  While I certainly appreciate what they do (free web space for churches — it’s a great ministry), most churches should no longer be on there.  Many have a hard time staying under the 10MB limit, and you also have to deal with the horrible site URL.  Imagine telling someone your URL in person:

It’s g-b-g-m-dash-u-m-c-dot-org-slash-alamo.  No, no, g-b-G-m. Right. No, that’s a dash, not a slash. No, that one is a slash. Ugh. Got it?

Cost used to be a major factor, but those days are over. You can get hosting from HostGator for $4.95 a month, and domain costs $10 year.  All told, that’s less than $6/month.  Your church can’t afford that?  Really?

Anyhow, as part of the review I brought up a few previous posts:

On to the review. Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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Church Website Review: Magnolia Creek Baptist Church

September 10, 2010 — 2 Comments

I didn’t plan on doing this many reviews this week, but I found another site that I thought would be good to look at (and another one coming soon as well)

Magnolia Creek Baptist Church — www.magnoliacreek.org

I found this one via Twitter yesterday when their worship leader, Jud Kossum, tweeted about it.

Before we get to the video, a few quick reference links that you’ll notice I mention during the review:

With that said, on to the review.  As always, leave your thoughts and questions in the comments section below.

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Church Website Review: Journey Church

September 9, 2010 — Leave a comment

I saw a tweet from PLAYCreative today that simply said:

We just launched a website for a our client Journey Church from Peoria AZ! Check it out www.lifeisajourney.org

So naturally, I took a look.  I look at quite a few new church sites each day, but this one was quite impressive.  It was apparent that it was well thought out, and I felt it was worth sharing with all of you.

Journey Church – www.lifeisajourney.org

Like many sites, I thought their page titles were pretty weak.  Beyond that, though, it was a great site!  Watch the review below, and feel free to leave additional comments.

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Church Website Review: Parkside Bible Church

September 7, 2010 — Leave a comment

Today’s review is one I found on my own.  They didn’t ask for me to review it, but the company that designed it tweeted about the new site, so I checked it out.  It’s a good site on first glance, but seemed to have quite a list of minor problems.  It seemed like a good one to use to highlight some of the issues that many church sites face, in the hopes that it’ll help you to fix yours.

Parkside Bible Church – www.parksidebible.org

Here’s a bit more info about a few things I mention in the video:

As always, please leave comments if you have additional comments or questions about this review.

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Seriously, your church isn’t made of bricks

September 5, 2010 — 1 Comment

I talked about this four years ago, but feel it’s worth mentioning again.

If you ask most someone: “Tell me about your church“, they’ll usually reply with something like:

Our church is full of God-loving people, we’re friendly to new visitors, we have wonderful music, we have an excellent pastor, we have a passion for missions, etc…

On the flip side, how often do people answer like this?

Our church is covered on three sides with red face brick, and on the back side with HardiPlank siding.  We have Chelsea Green asphalt shingles on the roof, and we’re hoping to re-surface the parking lot soon.

The answer is never!  When you talk to people about their “church”, they know that you’re asking about the congregation.  However, so many church sites feel the need to feature their building as the primary image on their home page.

For Example

I Googled for local churches to find an example, and came across Holy Family Catholic Church.  Not to pick on them, but they do this worse than most.  They have eight different pictures on their home page, and none of them have a single person in them!  In case they (hopefully) change that in the future, a screenshot is on the right.

I saw another site that featured rotating images of their church sign and all of the cute slogans they put on there.  While I’m sure the congregation thinks it’s neat, it’s not helping very much with a first time visitor.  I doubt a non-believer ever came to a church because their sign said “Stop, drop and roll doesn’t work in Hell“.

The solution is very simple; just put some smiling faces on there.  Rotating images are great too, but be sure that it’s not just a black hole for non-Flash browsers (such as the iPhone and iPad).

Your Facility

That being said, I think it’s important to have photos of your building on the site.  In fact, most churches should devote a section to “our facility”.  There are two reasons for this:

  1. If I’ve never been to your church and I don’t know what it looks like, I’ll feel more comfortable trying to find it if I can see what it looks like.
  2. Churches often say things like “the Bible Study will meet in room B-124“, or “join our prayer meeting in the Chapel“.  Where is B-124?  Where is the Chapel?  This is more of an issue for large churches with multiple buildings, but it’s always good to provide as much information as you can.

Just be sure to put that somewhere off the home page (typically in [About Us] –> [Facility] or something like that) and you’ll be fine.  Use that valuable space on the home page to start giving people a sense of kindness and personality about your church.

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Church Website Review: San Jose Christian Reformed Church

August 26, 2010 — 2 Comments

Here’s the last review I’ve got for now: San Jose CRC – http://www.sjcrc.org/

If you’d like for me to take a look at your site, just contact me and I’ll be happy to help.

Check out the review below, and leave a comment if you have any other suggestions for them.

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Church Website Review: Stratton UMC

August 24, 2010 — Leave a comment

One more quick review for tonight: Stratton UMC – http://www.gbgm-umc.org/stratton/

It’s just a one-page site, but there are a few things they can correct as they begin to move forward.

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Church Website Review: Oak Haven UMC

August 24, 2010 — Leave a comment

I’ve decided to spend some time reviewing various church websites, upon request.  I look at things such as new visitor friendliness, overall usability, SEO, and anything else that catches my eye.  I’d be happy to take a look at your church website, too — just contact me with info and I’ll do a quick review of it.

On to our first one for now: Oak Haven UMC – http://www.oakhavenumc.org/

The review is contained the video below, but I reference a few items during the video.  They include:

On to the review!

In Church, SEO, Site Content, Site Reviews, Social Media, Videos , , , , , , ,
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