Social Media 101 2.0

Posted on 17. Nov, 2008 by Aaron Marshall in Social Media

RSVP on Facebook if you plan to attend.

I have been asked to speak to seminary students from the SBTS about social media. I will be live streaming the presentation using USTREAM. Follow me on Twitter if you would like a reminder.

Here is what I will be covering:

How to Use Social Media for Ministry WITHOUT Overloading, Burning Time, and Losing Your Religion

Social Media is said to be the biggest change in communications in the last 50 years. These social technologies are revolutionizing the way people are conversing, collaborating and connecting. If your goal is to reach people and bring glory to God than this is something you cannot ignore.

What you will learn:

• DIY Mass Communication: Increase Your Reach with Social Media

• Simple and Practical Tools for Getting Started

• Transformed and Transparent : The Significance of a Facebook Profile

• Keeping it Pure: How to Avoid and Block Distasteful Advertisements

• Avoid Info-Overload: How to Stay Up To Date without Staying Up All Night

• Status Updates: The Power of “What are you doing right now?”

• Build Authentic Relationships Online (Assuming you can do this offline)

Let me know in the comments that you will be watching and I will try and mention you in the presentation. Especially if you are in another country.

How to EASILY Record and Send Facebook Videos

Posted on 14. Nov, 2008 by Aaron Marshall in Social Media

Facebook has a feature that allows you to record video without any special software. This is a great feature for making videos to all of your friends or for private messages through your facebook inbox. I have made a point of trying to use video instead of text when responding to people on facebook. If you don’t have a web cam, I have used this one before and it works GREAT.

Tutorial Video

My Facebook Video Challenge to YOU!

I am not going to shave my head or anything but it would be awesome to see a bunch of videos pop up on my wall!

What are some ways that the Church can be using Facebook Video?

Interactive Preaching: Take Questions via Txt Message During Church

Posted on 29. Oct, 2008 by Aaron Marshall in Evangelism, How To, Mobile, Social Media

Because of new technology that exists this is actually an easy and inexpensive task.

Step #1 Sign-Up and Create a “TextMark“

Choose a keyword that will be easy for people to type in. If availble, choose short words or an acronym for your church.

Step #2 Create a PowerPoint slide that shows people VISUALLY how to ask a question using their phone

Send a text message to 41411 that starts with ASKSOJOURN followed by your question.

Example:

Step #3 Have a team Sift through the questions and forward them to your cell phone

This screen will be very valuable and make it easier to manage a big surge of questions. They will need to refresh the page occasionally to see new questions as they roll in.

There are several settings that need to be tweeked within TextMarks. Pay attention to the great option that allows you to respond with something like this when they ask a question…

Custom Response:

As always, I am curious to hear how others are using this kind of tool. Is there a better way?

Our Evolving Relationship with Technology: CHURCHSMO on the Radio with WFPL State of Affairs

Posted on 13. Oct, 2008 by Aaron Marshall in Social Media

Live at 11AM & Rebroadcast at 9PM / FM 89.3 or Listen Online Here

WFPL (a local radio station) invited me to be on a show to discuss the current state of affairs related to “Our Evolving Relationship with Technology“. I will be joining John Palfrey, a Professor of Law and a Vice Dean at Harvard Law School. He is a regular commentator on network news programs, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox News, NPR and BBC. Needless to say it will be an interesting conversation!

Follow-Up: Being on the radio was awkward, but fun! I didn’t realize that Michelle Jones from Consuming Louisville would be joining as well. It was good to have a familiar social media friend near by! You can listen to the show here.

Simple Tool for Making Website “Widgets” for Ministry Communications

Posted on 27. Sep, 2008 by Aaron Marshall in Evangelism, How To, Social Media

Sprout Builder is a fantastic new tool that will allow you to create a multimedia “widget” that can be easily embedded into other people websites or blogs.

Extend Your Ministry to Other Websites

When you change your content on Sprout Builder it automatically changes the content across all websites that have the widget on it. Instead of being just another link on someones blog you can have a multimedia presence and feed the latest content from your ministry automatically.

This tool has a mountain of applications for ministry. What other ways do you think Sprout Builder could be used?