I've been very much in the blogosphere over the last couple of weeks. Last week I attended ProBloggers Training Day. (When I re-read my notes I will post anything relevant for this blog niche.) There were some brilliant insights and some disturbing ones. Especially when around people's motivation.
I don't normally lead my blog posts with negatives, but here are 4 surefire ways to wreak havoc in your church through blogging and social media that I learnt from the training day:
1) Be generous – with an agenda. If you are generous people will love you. They will talk about you. You will increase your followers or visitors to your blog. Its almost like you have to fake it to make it.
Recently I gave some books away. 3 books over 3 weeks. Not for any reason other than giving books away would help others. Got a real buzz knowing it would help someone I would probably never meet.
I also got the collective wisdom of thought leaders in the church communications blogosphere to help a series of guest post and put together the biggest blogging series so far called Church Marketing Myths. The traffic went off the charts. But again I only wanted to find out what others were thinking and put the best thinking out there in the church communications world.
In your church, use social media to connect people to others, be kind, its not just about what they can do for your church.
In summary, just be generous because you feel like it. Don't be motivated by what you can expect to get back. That sucks.
2) People are attracted to the potential money they can make – Not the value they can add.
The blogging presenters make six figure incomes. These guys really know they stuff. However, the questions some people were asking led me to think that they are driven not by the value they can add to a blog niche, but by the money they can make out of it.
When I started blogging I never knew who I'd meet or which organisations I'd be connected with. I've had the joy of connecting with some really cool people and recently had a huge announcement where I announced say that I officially suck at church communications.
In summary for your church, add value first. the reward will come if people find your content useful.
3) It's about quantity of twitter followers – Not quality of twitter followers.
After the event I had 50 new followers from people who also attended the event. The vast majority never met me. And if they were really honest they probably aren't really following me because I'm so funny or insightful. They are following me because they hope I will follow them back.
Here's the thing. If you follow me on twitter I will check you out. I see if you add value to my world. Are you funny? Are you insightful? You don't have to be in my blog niche. But likely I'll follow you back. If you are just following me because you think I'll follow you chances are I'm not going to follow you back.
For your church, some of you are just thankful that your twitter account even has followers. Do you know them? How are you connecting with them?
4) Create a community – to support your cause.
One of the presenters talked about how his community forums were like advocates for his cause. He rewarded those who were active and positive. The bottom line was not that there was a genuine community and wasn't it great that everyone was connecting, his bottom line was how the community supported his cause and became brand advocates.
I'm really glad you are a part of my community. I'm not going to ask you to do anything you don't want to do. I'm just glad you are here and are benefiting from some of the things I've learnt along the way.
I hope that your church like mine accepts people into your community that can offer absolutely nothing. That our churches can be a place just to serve those who are broken, hurting, messed up, or have it all together. That we won't be a church that is in it as long as 'they' are in it for us.
What are your thoughts?
Have any you seen any of this before? What would be #5 on your list?
