Developing a Personal Social Media Strategy: Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter…who am I?

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Mar 6, 2009 in Culture | 16 comments

How many social networks and web 2.0 apps can a person use? What do you do with each of these? I read an article recently about a phenomenon where people who had 100′s of friends on Facebook were committing “Facebook Suicide“. Some ‘killed their virtual self’ because of their loss of privacy and others from a sense of ‘how can I really be friends with 500+ people?’ Some start over with a new identity to do a reboot of who they connect with. Others just go through and unfriend vast numbers of people hoping they wont’ notice.

If I could do it all over again, here’s how I would have executed my personal social media plan:

1. BLOGGING: I would have picked a more singular voice for my blog Goodmanson.com. Right now I step between Church Planting, Missional Ecclesiology, Culture, Church Technology, a bit about my work at Monk Development and a very limited level of personal posts. I hope because there is a unifying factor in seeing all these as part of a calling/mission that it still works. I wonder if church planters who read my blog wish I would do more posting on that and less tech related posts and vice versa. Ultimately, I’ve tried not to create a ‘Cat Blog‘ or a ‘Boss Blog‘ but a Viral Blog that spreads ideas online. This means I don’t really blog personal stuff and reserve those postings to other apps.

2. FACEBOOK: If I could do this over again I would friend only those that I am close with on Facebook. I’m closing in on 700 friends and I know that most are acquaintances and some I don’t even know at all. One challenge with this number is that people I’m close to get lost in the stream of the crowd. I continue to post pictures of my friends & family and update my status with things that I imagine are entirely uninteresting to people who aren’t close to me. If people decide to un-friend me because of that I don’t take it personal. If fact, I wish I had early on used LinkedIn for more of the people I know through work.

3. TWITTER: Twitter is an unstoppable force that I haven’t done much with. UPDATED: After I made this post I began to use Twitter primarily to communicate about what we are doing at Monk, church technology and church planting. In this month Twitter became the third highest referral source to my blog. I now use Twitter as a tool to communicate what I am doing in these areas and other links/ideas that my followers may be interested in.

4. LinkedIn: As I stated in #2, If I could do it over again I would have connected with more people through LinkedIn. It has a more professional, networking focus that I would use to connect with acquaintances I meet at conferences or through work. I am fine with anyone Linking in with me and hope to expand that network rather than Facebook.

5. OTHERS: As of yet I don’t see a need to join any ‘Christian’ social networking sites just like I don’t go to ‘Christian’ malls. I am a part of a few online community sites that are private and allow me to discuss very specific topics with others who are swimming in similar streams. These include private threads for people to discuss leadership, church planting, technology, etc. These niche sites are helpful and allow us to resource others who have experience in areas important to me.

These are just a few of the ways I would re-do my social networking, what would you do different?

New Blog Design & Updgrade of WordPress

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Mar 5, 2009 in Church Technology | 8 comments

I just re-launched Goodmanson.com with a new WordPress theme. I like that it’s fairly clean and simple. I still need to do a bit of tweaking (such as add thumbnails to more posts) but hope you like it. In the process I also upgraded to 2.7.1 from 2.5. Come on over and see the new digs.

The Truth about Church Websites and Effective Online Outreach

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Mar 4, 2009 in Church Technology, Church Websites, Featured Articles, General Technology | 11 comments

Thank you for all who participated in today’s webinar, nearly 80 people signed-up for it. For those who missed it, here was the description of the webinar:

We have all heard about the importance of a church website, the craze of social networking and the need for pastors to blog. But how effective are these strategies really in being missional and gathering people? Learn from a 2009 study on “The State of the Church Online: Websites & Mission” involving numerous church websites & strategies where we learn what really is happening. Answer questions such as: How effective is your church website? What can you do to improve this? Who is visiting your website? Why are they really visiting? Where are these visitors coming from? What are best practices in design and outreach? Learn how to enhance your web ministry and impact hundreds, if not thousands of people. This valuable session will equip you with practical strategies that your church can implement whether you are an online expert or a beginner.

Information about the study:

• 74 churches participating (target = 100) Sign your church up to participate in the study.
• web analytics
• congregational surveys
• phase II : interviews/case studies
• church size range of 5 to 45,000 people
• 27 internal designer & 20+ other designers

We are releasing some of the key findings from a sample set of our research (the full research project will last 2-3 months longer).

• 0% of respondents who were Non-Christians said their going to church was influenced by the church website.
• 6% of participating churches had a gospel presentation on their website.
• 27% of the respondents said the church website was how they first learned about the church.

We looked at 3-case studies of College Park Church, Park Community Church & Kaleo Church. We looked at the content viewed as categorized by activities a New Visitor would access (Service Times, I’m New Here type information) versus Events or Media. (see graph) We compared these to a few other churches who were receiving 4-11% of new visitor traffic and made some design observations. We also looked at where the online visitors were coming from to visit these churches.

We shared research based on segmenting three different profiles: Visitors (attending the church for under 3 months), Beginners (3-6 months) and Regulars (6+ months). Here are some of the findings based on the profiles:

Visitors

• 77% said the church website was somewhat to very important in my decision to attend the church.
• 83% said the church website was somewhat to very important in facilitating their participation in the church community.

Beginners

• 45% said the church website was somewhat to very important for their ongoing discipleship and spiritual growth.
• 73% said the church website was somewhat to very important in sharing their faith with others (friends, business colleagues, others)

Regulars

• 27% said they visit the church website more than once a week.
• Feature Rated Most important: Listen or ability to download Sermons.
• Most requested functionality: Ability to post prayer requests or needs.

Again thank you there was a lot more information from this, if enough people comment below that they’d like to hear it we’d be happy to schedule another webinar.

Future Webinars: Beyond the Web 2.0 Noise: How to use the Internet to Disciple & Create Real Community

Website Stolen

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Feb 23, 2009 in Church Technology, Ekklesia, Monk Dev | 10 comments

Any help you can lend out there but DataFizz is taking credit for this design of Viviana Rodr??guez Amoblamientos SA. It is a direct rip of Denver Seminary built by Monk and designed by Designwise Studios. They’re even using the same css file names (monkcms.css).

State of the Church Online : Goals Met

Posted by D. Goodmanson on Feb 21, 2009 in Church, Church Websites, General Technology | 4 comments

We have hit and now are exceeding our response goals! Thank you to all who promoted & participated in the State of the Church Online surveys. We have over 500 responses to the Social & Community Network survey and over 50 churches who will participate in the web analytics evaluation. Thank you Church Relevance, Godbit, Digital @ Leadership Network (DJ & Cynthia), Collide Magazine, Tall Skinny Kiwi….I can hear the music getting louder to try to make me finish…Church Tech Review, ChurchBIT and anyone else I’m forgetting!

We have begun to analyze the data from the State of the Church Online for Social & Community Networks + Church Websites & Usage. Want to hear the results of these studies? We will put together a report of the findings and two Webinars are scheduled to report on these results. Sign-up:

The Truth about Church Websites and Effective Online Outreach
Wednesday, March 4, 2009 10:00 AM

Beyond the Web 2.0 Noise: How to use the Internet to Disciple & Create Real Community
Wednesday, April 8, 2009 10:00 AM