Does it really matter How our Church’s Facebook page is setup?

Question: Is it wrong to get Mafia Wars gifts from other church members? Is it creepy? Or is it just me?

Setting up a Facebook page for your church can be a hit and miss ordeal, depending heavily on how you set it up, how you manage it, and ultimately, what your purpose is for the Facebook page. For isntance, don’t just take a picture of the front of the church. It’s cold and impersonal. And social media is all about, well, being social.

A great example of this is my own church, which has a large, extended Facebook family of close to 300+ people, all connected to one another and communicating on a daily basis. Yet less than half them are members of the Churches actual Facebook page! I believe it is because we have a great big picture of the church right there on the front page. My advice (if anyone is listenting) take a giant picture of the entire CHURCH BODY from a higher vantage point, maybe outside the church, smiling and waving into the camera.

Those looking for Christ aren’t necessarily looking for a great building. If that’s your criteria for picking a successful “body”, then maybe you need to spend some time in Acts. People looking for Christ are looking to see his face in the faces of the members they’ll be praising and working with.

The bottom line?

Your Church’s Face is You

If you’re reading this, understand that this isn’t some marketing plan that you first have to run by the church. It’s a good idea to let them know what you’re doing, but truthfully, this can totally be an arm of your ministry. Social media is all about organic growth, i.e. word of mouth, and this is a great way to connect with people.

Facebook Groups

A great way to connect with like minded individuals is through group pages. Group pages can be setup by anyone in the church, and serve not only as a ministry “funnel”, but also a way to tie the members together behind certain causes and movements. The groups can be about anything really. I would keep them Christ centered, myself, since you will be tying them back to the main church Facebook page, or the church web site.

This just gives your church that much more of a face int he community, i.e. yours. The more people know about you and your church, the more likely they are to come to you when they need salvation, need help, or better yet want to serve our Savior. And Facebook Groups are an ideal way for them to make first contact.

How to set up a Facebook Group for your church

Make the topic broader than just about “the church”.
The last thing we want to do is have this simply be about a building. This has to be your thing.  My recommendation before doing this is to pray, and see if this is something God is leading you to do, and then ask for direction from God, and if needs be, church leadership. Don’t do it as a marketing method to draw people in. I hope that’s how this comes across. The idea here is to connect with people who have similar passions, and thus possibly grow the church through that connection.

But the most important aspect is to do this as a function of some service to our Creator.

The group should be highly topical, and actionable. For instance, just making a group about abortion isn’t going to get very far. Your audience already agrees with you. However, a group which is dedicated to raising money to help unwed mothers pay for carrying the baby to term – now that’s a movement that people can get behind

You could start a prayer chain, and invite the church members to join. Start a group discussion on increasing outreach, and then follow through.

Finally, and most importantly – localize your group.

When creating your group put everything in local context. So if you’re doing a group on Christian Outreach make the title of your group “Christian Outreach in Lexington, KY” or “Serving the Poor for Christ in Raleigh, NC”. This is the most important component for connecting with people in your community. This way, when localities are searched in Facebook, guess what comes to the top?

Facebook does a good job of hiding the Groups setup. Here’s how to locate it:

At the top right, just left of the search bar click Settings > Applications > Groups (which is about midway down the page) > and then click the “Create New Group” tab at the mid-top-right of the page.

Beyond that I would just let the creative juices flow. If you have an idea go with it. If you don’t, do not force the issue. Let the spirit lead you, and you and your church will be rewarded. Anyway, that’s my two coppers.

God bless you guys!

P.S.

If you would be more interested in learning how to grow your church through social media click here.

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Blessings!

At one time I would have been able to answer that question with a flat “No. Get out of my office.”It’s microblogging. What the hell can you say in 140 characters anyway?

Yet, much to my chagrin. Twitter has survived Fad-dom, and it has settled in to become a part of the marketing equilibrium.

The question of “which” shouldn’t even be on the radar screen. Both are used as a means of connecting to other people, thus increasing visibility of you, your products, your offers, your writing, or whatever your commodity happens to be. The truth is, in terms of connecting with your customers and potential customers there are strengths and weaknesses to both.

Neither should be ignored, and yet both can stand alone in your marketing model. What follows is a comparison, and explanation of how to use both, so that you can make an informed decision on which is better for you, or if you should use both.

How do they compare to one another?

Twitter, the Good and Bad:

• Due to the viral nature of Twitter, you can build a targeted audience significantly faster than Email. And it’s very simple to do.
• You can stay in constant contact with followers without having to worry about being “spammy”. (BUT DO NOT SEND A BUNCH OF SALES CRAP)
• Your message has 100% deliverability to the reader.
• You don’t have to do anything spectacular to gain a followers except provide good content, which you have to do anyway.
• The venue is one where people expect, and want you to post more often, especially if you provide excellent content.
• Also, Twitter is just plain simple to master.
• BUT Twitter is NOT set it, and forget it.
• It is time consuming. It is  a daily thing if you’re going to undertake it, and it can eat a whole day fast.
• Deliverability of your message is 10o%, but message clickthroughs are statistically WAY WAY lower than with email.
• It’s harder to build a bond with your readers.
• It can get hectic trying to keep up with people who leave messages.
• Also, following a lot of people can get kind of crazy, just because the amount of tweets that pour in.

Email list building:

• For most people Email will always be the most intimate way you can connect with your core audience.
• It’s actually less time consuming than most social marketing, once you master the techniques.
• It depends heavily on the amount of traffic you can generate to your squeeze page/lead capture.
• Even if you use Aweber, much of your email marketing efforts end up in the spam folder.
• List building can be expensive, and requires a lot of trial and error.
• Is not terribly simple to learn, or implement, and has a significantly higher learning curve than Twitter.
• Often requires a web page.
• Definitely requires an autoresponder service like Aweber. That’s a minimum of $19 per month, and goes up depending on how many emails over 500 you send.
• Even with all of these downsides, it is still one of the most powerful tools in the Internet Marketing utilitiy belt.

How to build the list: The short version

There are numerous ways to begin building your list, and they suit many varied tastes and personalities. Probably one of the most common ways is via a squeeze page, or squeeze offer.  It’s called a squeeze page because people have two options when they land on it.  a.) They can take you up on your compelling offer of free goods, or b.) leave.

The Squeeze page works like this:

1. For free or very cheap (like maybe a $1) offer someone an outstanding product.
2. All they have to do is give you their email address so you can send them the link to the download.
3. In the process their email is stored with a list management service like Aweber, which allows you to keep sending them useful stuff, and make the occasional offer via email.

Another way to build your list is by participating in Joint Venture Giveaways. Basically it’s like a big flea market.

1. Marketers sign up to be vendors at the flea market, and they entice the passers by with free stuff.
2. The customers (those visiting this digital flea market) can get as much free stuff as they want, because their email address is their currency.
3. If you decide to download the free “gifts”, the link takes you to the vendor’s squeeze page, where you leave your email, and are sent the download link, as mentioned above.

JVG’s can be effective if:

• You find enough quality events, especially some of the more prolific ones (check the Warrior Forum’s JV forum).
• You can write great headlines for your offers.
• And giveaway a pretty decent product which converts well.
• Headlines and product testing both require trial and error.

If you hone the skill and visit a steady stream of events, you can come build up a significant number of emails in a fairly short period of time.

Hosting JV events can bring you about 1,000 or more addresses per pop! But hosting them costs money, anywhere from $150-300 per event to purchase individual software licenses. And, regardless of what the software vendors will tell you, they do have a learning curve, and the software can be buggy as Hell. However, you will probably make most of that back during the event. A well planned JVG can generate several thousand dollars in revenue.

There are other ways to build your list, but I don’t want to belabor the issue.

Building Your Twitter Empire

First, we have to get into the mindset of what Twitter is. In spite of the fact that they call it microblogging – it is NOT really a blogging platform. You can certainly have entertaining and humorous quips within the 140 character limit. You can also get across very concise,  abbreviated ideas. But it’s real power is that it is your own, private link aggregate. You find great content (or create it, which I’ll touch on in a minute) and then link to it. People like your content. People follow.

This opens the door to send them to offers in the future.

So that’s our first step: Find good content.

People who use Twitter do so for several reasons: to be educated, informed, provoked, enlightened and/or entertained. Whether it’s a joke, a video, a blog post, a picture, news article or something else entirely, make sure it covers at least one of these bases. In the next post I’ll have a video which will cover some basics for finding great content. I recommend getting at least a page of good links before taking the next step.

Just as an aside, some of the great content could and should reside – say – on your own blog! Link to your own stuff early and often! It’s a great way to increase your audience and develop just one more connection with them.

Gaining Followers

Now we’re going to find ultra-targeted, rabid followers. Are you ready?

It might be a little hard to follow, so just pay attention.       /sarcasm.

1. Go to the Twitter search bar
2. Type in your niche.
3. Search it.
4. Click on one of the Users in the results page.
5. Check some of their content to make sure they’re in the same market.
6. Follow Them.
7. Click on THEIR list of followers. Repeat the above process above.
8. Rinse. Repeat.

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow…  Follow as many people as you can.

The result is basic recipricative marketing. You give. You get. You follow. Then, typically, you will GET followed – if for no other reason than common courtesy. What follows is kind of a snowball effect. Lots of people who follow one person, also tend to check out who that person is following. So, good content, i.e. great, useful linkage, means more followers.

There are a few services, and scripts which will let you auto-follow people who are follow specific keywords, but I’m iffy those. I tend to think organically, and so do a lot of people who prescribe to the wonders of social media networking. The scripts may in fact work great, but building a more personal list over time might actually be more effective in the long run.

But hey, building a massive following, super-fast fan-base is certainly seductive, so I’ll give it a go. If it works we’ll soon find out soon enough.

The Bottom Line

I still don’t think Email can be touched in terms of the bond it builds between you and your prospective customers. There all sorts of testimonials of people doing amazing things with lists of just a few hundred (rabid) subscribers. Twitter is a fantastic tool, though, which should not be ignored. In fact, I think in many instances using the two of them to compliment one another is the easiest and best way to maximize each tool, and push you closer to success in your marketplace.

Over the next few weeks, I’m really going to put a lot of what I’ve learned about Twitter into practice, and see what we can make happen. I’ll be posting videos which will let you watch over my shoulder as I build a business around email AND Twitter. It should be interesting.

So there you have it. Twitter and Email have laid down their swords, struck up an uneasy truce, and have, in fact formed an alliance with the likes of Digg, Facebook, and your blog to take over our lives, and lead us to ruin – or unfathomable success. I don’t know which yet, but I will.

This is my addition to that pile of non-demystifying rabble. But I maybe I don’t have to demystify anything. Instead, I’ll give you some ideas to help you avoid being mystified all together!

The Destructive Mindset of “Going it Alone”

Does this sound like you?

“I can’t just start throwing money at this problem. Pay somebody? Are yous stupid? I can do this. I know I can! Besides it’s only been a month since my website broke. I’ve still got enough time to figure it out… till I die.”

Face it. Your Ideas Are Bigger Than Your Capabilities

Being techy is handy. It has allowed me to build a tidy little business helping the non-techy. You may (or may not) be surprised to find out how many people actually consider themselves techy, when they clearly aren’t. I like these people. They’re rugged individualists like me. And like me, they’ve gotten themselves into trouble on more than one occasion, and have needed the help of someone more experienced to get the job done.

Think of it like this. If you spend two weeks trying to figure out how to do something, which would have taken someone else a two hours, how much did you really save? How much is your time actually worth? Furthermore, did you fix the problem? Are you totally sure you fixed it? Is it going to rear it’s ugly head later down the road?

The bottom line is that this is going to cost you one way or the other. So preempt the problem, determine how much you’re going to pay, and then go about finding a quality individual, or firm to outsource to.

You don’t need to do this on your own. And you shouldn’t.

I can’t fix my own car

It’s true. I would like to think that I have enough testosterone to figure it out, but alas my skeelz only go so far. I can change the oil and the filter, perform a tune up, and a few other things. But beyond that, I’m “mystified” by my car.

So, let’s think about this. If I had a delivery business and my car broke down would I

a.) take it to a professional, or,

b.) fix it myself?

Of course I would take it to my mechanic. The reason is simple. (NOW PAY ATTENTION)

Every day my car is down, I lose money.

Conversely, every day your website is down, or incomplete; or your squeeze page isn’t properly linked to your Aweber account; your permalinks are broken; you have a database error; your CSS is screwed; you’re infected with a virus; your typography is so bunched that it can barely be read; your site isn’t cross-browser compatible; you can’t get your sales videos to post right – IS A DAY YOU LOSE MONEY.

It’s simple. You either do the things every day that make you money, or you don’t. And spending 40 hours trying to figure out a new technology, costs you more than you save. While you’re trying to figure this crap out, your ideas are fading, and your motivation is getting sapped. With every frustrated moment you log off of the computer without a resolution, you’re losing the battle in the mind.

Some people give up because they can’t get the tech stuff down.

Isn’t that sad? I’ve known people, (I’ve talked them “off the ledge” in internet marketing forums), who quit, or were going to, because “it’s too hard” to get everything in place.

You don’t have to be like this. You can change. And it’s just a matter of perspective.

The Mindset That Will Change Your Internet Business

You need a team. And part of that, if you’re serious about IMing, is partnering with good people, i.e techies, programmers, graphic artists, mentors, partners and colleagues. Solomon tells us in Proverbs that “iron sharpens iron”. You need others to help you sharpen your ideas and make this work. And you need to let talented people hone your ideas with you.

And that may start with finding good techs to work with. Don’t go with a one-tech fits all, either. Find a multitude of people to partner with, and when a problem arises, outsource it.

We’d all like to think that we can do this on our own, and maybe some of us can. But, focusing on what you’re good at, and letting others do the same within your organization, is a surefire way to maximize every moment you spend at this endeavor, and get you one step closer to seeing real, lasting success.

In the next article we’ll go over some criteria to finding your little group of henchmen. I’ll cover the basics of some of the job boards, and give some ideas to those with limited (even super limited) budgets.