What about Twitter???

I have to admit when I first heard about Twitter I didn't get it. Twitter is a micro-blogging, social networking environment where people post short bits of information. These short posts must be no more than 140 keystrokes long and are called Tweets. Tweets are very much like your status message on Facebook (if you don't know what Facebook is check it out), but without the other frills. You can "follow" a particular person or group and stay up to date on their tweets as they are posted. One feature that attracts people is that you can follow and post tweets from your phone.

When I first checked it out a number of months ago I was quickly bored by the posts I read. It was mostly what people were doing at the moment (what TV show they were watching, what store they were shopping in, what they just ate for dinner and so on). It didn't take long for me to move on to other tools and write Twitter off as relatively useless. But I have to say I am changing my mind. No, I have not gained a new interest in what people had for dinner this evening, but I have found some folks to follow that are doing much, much more with this tool.

I fancy myself a shutterbug and so I started "following" the "tweets" from some professional photographers, whose work I admire. I noticed that for the most part their tweets contained links to blog posts, articles and images they had posted on the web. In essence, they were using their tweets to drive traffic to their main websites or blogs. I started learning by their posts. I was more aware of what was going on in the field of photography and I was starting to pay attention. I found out about seminars and events through tweets before they were even posted on the web! I was able to sign up for a seminar here in Denver before it was available to the general public because the photographer posted a link in his tweet. That is when the lightbulb went off for me. You see Twitter is about connecting people with information. Oh sure, there are thousands (maybe even hundreds of thousands) of people that are going to tweet that they just brushed their teeth, but that is the background noise we must get past. We can drive people to information and if we connect them to information they want (or need) they will keep "following."

So what does this mean for ministry?
One ministry example to look to is House to House, Heart to Heart. You may know HTH from the direct mail work they do for the church, but they are doing more than that. Their website hosts video lessons, sermon audio, articles, tracts and more. They are also using Twitter very well. Two or three times a day they "tweet" with links to content on their site. Sometimes they link to articles, other times it is a link to a sermon audio, but the point is they are driving traffic. They are "pushing" information out rather than simply posting the content and hoping people find out that it is there. Often times we build it (a building, a website, etc...) and hope people will come. But Jesus told us to GO and teach. The folks at House to House obviously understand that. They are going, and as they go they are teaching. Certainly I suggest that you check out their website, but I also suggest that you follow them on Twitter at @HousetoHouseHTH.

Imagine driving people to your podcast or sermon audio on your website. Think about letting people know that you just posted a great article to your blog on having stronger marriages. Maybe you simply tweet a verse of the day with a link back to your website for more. Tweet about a seminar you are doing with a link to your website with the details. Can you see the possibilities? Check out Twitter, but don't tell people what you had for dinner - give them food for their souls instead. These tools can help us reach thousands, what message are we sending them?

You can follow me on Twitter at @jmhite.

Blogo and Skitch for adding material to your blog from the desktop

Ok, I know...it has been awhile between posts again. The main reason for this has been my schedule. I am teaching much ore now and also trying to get ready for another trip to Tanzania! I am very excited about that and look forward to sharing information (and photos) from the trip when I get back.

A second reason that my posts have not been flowing freely lately is that I find the Blogger editor lacking. It does everything fine, but it just isn't convenient (can you say spoiled user here). For this post I am using a new desktop blog editor, Blogo. I am just using this tool for the first time, but I must say it is very easy to get up and running. I have been using MarsEdit, which I like overall, but I have a very hard time with graphics uploading to my posts with it. There seems to be a problem with Blogger and MarsEdit concerning graphics that I cannot seem to fix. Blogo seems to have no such issues. One feature that I really like about Blogo is the preview of my post. When you select preview it shows you how the post will look within your blog. It grabs a template from your blog and shows you EXACTLY how your post will look once posted. Other packages may do that, but MarEdit didn't.

The graphic of the Blogo logo was captured with Skitch. I have to say that I love this tool. Skitch is a screen grab tool, but I must say it is the easiest one I have used. One of the features in Skitch that I am really drawn to is the ability to scale you screen grab before you save it. After you capture the section of the screen that you want to capture you simple drag the size of the window to get the graphic to the desired size. The dimensions of the graphic are listed in the bottom corner of the window and are updated dynamically while you drag the window size. This makes it very easy to get the graphic the size you want right from the get go. Skitch also comes with a web account to store your captures online for easy retrieval. I LOVE THIS APP! It is in beta right now and so the price is right....FREE! I must say however, I have tried to use a number of screen grab programs and Skitch beats them all for ease of use and working the way I need it to.

Sadly, both Blogo and Skitch are for MAC only, so PC users are out of luck. Both of these programs are excellent additions for anyone blogging from a MAC. I am a much happier blogger using them!

So why am I so excited about Slideshare...

If you look at the last few entries I have made here, they all revolve around an online service called Slideshare. This online community allows you to upload and share slide presentation with people in a variety of ways. People can see the presentation on the Slideshare website itself (www.slideshare.net), you can embed the presentation in your Facebook profile, on your blog or website and even email links to anyone you would like. You can get to my Slideshare account and see some of the presentations I have posted by clicking here.

While this may be cool for some, (especially ministry tech geeks like me), it begs the question SO WHAT? I mean, what is the big deal about being able to put your sermon presentations online? Does that really matter?

Well, it might. Obviously leveraging the power of your visuals with your audio will help you communicate more effectively. If not, why did you build the PowerPoint presentation to begin with? But it goes beyond that...or at least it should. 

Think of some of these possibilities...

1. Build short, 3-4 minute presentations to teach people about the inspiration of the Bible, Christian evidences, the importance of the church, New Testament Christianity and more and then embed them in your Facebook profile, blog or congregation's website.

2. Build a short 3-4 minute presentation that describes your congregation, its purpose and mission to attract visitors.

3. Build a presentation to introduce new members to the elders, deacons and ministry staff.

4. Build short presentations to answer common Bible questions that people ask most often.

Getting the idea? There are hundreds of ways that you might leverage this tool in ministry. Share your ideas with me...I would love to hear what ideas you all come up with...let me know!

Here is an example to get you started...

The Beauty of the Universe

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: hubble galaxies)

If you build it they will come...but how many and from where?

Let's talk about traffic. No I don't mean how long it took you to get to work today or that logjam of cars on the Interstate trying to get across town. I am talking about who is coming to your website or blog. Traffic is obviously important in this sense of the word. If no one is coming to your website or reading the posts that you labored over and posted to your blog, then why do it? If, on the other hand, you have people visiting your site from Korea or Ukraine or India, and you are in Denver, Colorado are what time your services are held and cool Mapquest directions to your building really all that important? We need to understand that the web is an international tool. That visitor from Korea, quite honestly, couldn't care less about what time services start. You need to provide him (or her) with more. Teach him some biblical truth that he didn't know before. Share something that will plant a seed in his life that may bear fruit for the Lord.

So who is coming to your site and where do they come from? I am often asked if there is a way to tell when people visit your website or blog. The answer is a resounding YES with the help our our friends at Google. Google Analytics is a free statistics package that you can easily add to your website or blog. Once installed on the pages or your website or blog you can get detailed stats about the number of people visiting your site and even where they come from. The amount of detail that can be gained from this tool is really impressive. You can learn the number of new visitors vs. returning visitors and dozens of other stats to help you understand who is looking at your site. One of the more interesting reports shows you a map of the world and when you hover you mouse over a color coded country (the color coding indicates traffic volume) you can see how many visitors have come to your site from that country. A simple click on the country shows a close up map of that country with dots from the various cities containing visitors. As an example, I know that within the last 30 days our school website (www.bvbid.org) has received:
- 2090 visits
- 55.89% of those visitors are first-time visitors to our site
- 50 countries had visitors
- within the U.S. we had visits from 49 states - North Dakota was a no show

Certainly this information can be very useful to a ministry website or blog. Knowing that a vast majority of your traffic come from a particular region or area of the globe may help you realize that you have an opportunity to reach out to people in places and lands you never dreamed were possible.

Ministry Tech class complete!!!! Yeah!

I just finished teaching Ministry Technology class here at Bear Valley and it went very well. More and more students are hooking in to what these technological tools can do for them and I am very excited about that.

New Ministry starting in the Northwest

One student, Mike Green is heading for the Northwest U.S. after he graduates this week to do church planting work. He has started a blog at nwevangelist.blogspot.com and plans to make it a regular part of his ministry. He has already started posting some good material that I think everyone will find interesting. Check it out.

The power of subscribing...
Blogging as a tools for preachers and evangelists provides some really unique opportunities to teach. One of the greatest advantages of using blogs is the ability that readers have to "subscribe" (don't worry - it is FREE) to your blog and stay up to date on what you post very easily. Check out online tools like Bloglines. This tool allows you to subscribe to to blogs you want to read regularly. Once you subscribe, Bloglines goes and looks for new posts on these sites every time you launch it. That means you can have the information come to you rather than you trying to remember to visit umpteen blog sites to see what is new. I currently have 55 blogs on various topics (Logos, ministry, photography, missions) that I check everyday with one simple click of my mouse. Check this out...it will change the way you think about blogging.

Making posting blog entries easier....

As I mentioned before I do most of my work from a MAC these days. I am very happy to be back on the MAC platform and find myself more productive here. One tool (available for the MAC only) that is making my life easier is MarsEdit 2. MarsEdit 2 is a blog publishing tool that allows you to create, edit, and post blog entries from your desktop. I have always felt that the online blog editors for Blogger and other platforms was a bit clunky. MarsEdit is easy to use and is very flexible. I can create posts even when I am not online and post them when I get to a connection. It really makes things easy. I know that there are similar products available for the Windows world, but if you are on a MAC you really need to give this a try. You will love it.

New blog about our work...

Pat McIntosh, Assistant Director of our Extension Program here at the Bear Valley Bible Institute of Denver, has started a new blog about the Extension work. You can find it at mcintoshmissionreport.blogspot.com Check it out and learn more about what we are doing all over the world.

Area preachers exposed to new tools...

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of Denver area preachers about technologies that can be used in ministry. They wanted to know about what we are doing at the Bear Valley Bible Institute with our Chapelcast podcast. That gave me the opportunity to talk about a number of things. I introduced them to the idea of setting up blogs and how blogging could be used by minisers and preachers. We discussed RSS feed readers (like bloglines and newsgator) and how these can be used to subscribe to content and more efficiently gather information from websites and blogs.

While a number of these concepts and technologies were very new to them, I was very excited about their reaction. A number of people asked if I was going to podcast the presentation and as much as I hate to admit it....we didn't tape it!! I know, dumb move. I may try to go back and screencast it to make it available later though. I had a number of preachers ask if I could come talk to their elderships or members about this stuff. I definitely saw a spark. Please pray that this word can be spread and that more and more preachers will see the value of using these technologies to help their congregations spread God word and grow themselves.