Social Monday: Secrets of Powerful Blogging

Social Monday: Secrets of powerful blogging

By Christian Piatt

It seems like everyone’s blogging lately, and those who aren’t often feel left out of the loop and bewildered about the whole “blogging thing.”

Well, if it makes you feel any better, lots of people who are blogging are pretty close to clueless too. So here are a handful of tips to help you make more out of your blogging experience.

Know your purpose: Sometimes people blog simply as a glorified diary to jot down personal thoughts to share with friends and family. Others, however, are expecting the world to flock to their blog once it’s set up, and then wonder why they’re getting little or no traffic. So before you even start, try to define why you’re doing this. Is it to educate people about something on which you’re an expert? Is it to get them to visit your website, or maybe purchase something? Maybe you’re using it to build community. Whatever it is, know this from the outset and let this guide your content.

Know your audience: This is another one where people can often get tripped up. Just getting lots of traffic on your blog doesn’t mean it’s effective. You need to make sure you have in mind who you’re writing for, and where they can be found. Once you know this, your blog work will become more effective.

Select a blog host: Once you’ve done your initial homework, it’s time to pick where you’re going to host your blog. There are plenty of free hosting sites, but make sure the one you choose allows for keyword search (described more below), and has the capability to be integrated into your website if you have one (also explained more below). The most common hosts are WordPress, Blogger, Blogspot, LiveJournal and others. But more important than its popularity is whether or not the blog host can do what you need it to do.

If all you want is to create something for a select group, such as a church group, family or specific circle of friends, you’re pretty well set. However, if your goal is to draw in new readers, growing traffic from people you may not even know, read on…

Blog Search Engines: Sites such as Technorati, Blogsearch, Digg and Google Blog Search can help raise the “searchability” of your blog posts. This means that people searching online for the kind of content you are generating may stumble across you. There are plenty more search tools like this, but you want to make sure you’re in the big ones so the most people have the best chance of finding you.

Keywords or Tags: Any blog host worth using will offer the ability for you to add tags to each post. These are the key words people should use to find your post. For me, I always include my first and last name as well since, as an author, I want my name to be high in all search engines when they look for me. Make sure your tags are fairly common words, and avoid using words you think may grab some attention, but that actually have nothing to do with your content.

Active Links: Like in this post, you’ll want to offer direct links to things online to which you refer so readers can jump right to them. Folks get annoyed in the blogosphere if you talk about a resource, and then don’t give them the link right to it. Become a sort of portal of information, and readers will return to find out what else you have to say. This also doesn’t hurt your searchability, or Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Integrate into your website: This is where I’m a bit of a hypocrite, because although I recommend adding your blog to your website so people can directly read it from your main page, I have yet to do this myself! This can greatly enhance SEO for your site, and it also make for more of a one-stop shop for people to find all they want to know about you or your organization in one place. As an alternative, at least make sure you have direct links to your blog from your website, or even RSS feeds (Real Simple Subscription) so people can track your post activity.

Feeds: If you’re on Facebook or other social networking sites, look into the ability to add a feed to your page. This just means that you tell the site where to find your blog. Once you set up a feed, each new post will automatically show up on your Facebook page. For you authors, you can also add a feed to any book page on Amazon by you. Check out Amazon’s profile features for more on this.

Regular, reliable content: Last but not least, make sure you’re giving readers what they want and expect, when they expect it. Think about if you got your newspaper at different times every day, or if you opened it to find a new layout every time you tried to read it. Familiarity and predictability help lead to faithful readers, so keep this in mind when asking yourself, “is this blog-worthy?”

Christian Piatt is the author of MySpace to Sacred Space: God for a New Generation, and Lost: A Search for Meaning, and he is a columnist for various newspapers, magazines and websites on the topics of theology and popular culture. He is the co-founder of Milagro Christian Church in Pueblo, Colorado with his wife, Amy. For more information about Christian, visit www.christianpiatt.com.

Social Monday: Public image, limited

John Lydon mosaic by Ed Chapman. Photo: dullhunk (Creative Commons license)

“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”   – Ecclesiastes 1:2b (NKJV)

Anyone who’s using social media and has tried to talk with someone who’s not using it about why you use it has undoubtedly encountered the perception that social media is an exercise in narcissistic navel-gazing. And yes, to a small extent, they’re right — Twitter and Facebook and Friendfeed and YouTube are populated by people sharing the minutae of their lives — sometimes in earnest, and sometimes, tongue-in-cheek.  [IMO that's part of the beauty of it--check out this application that picks up all the Tweets with the words "love," "hate" "think" "feel" and "believe" in them and then tell me you don't agree].

What I often sense behind the “social media is vanity” objection is that the person objecting understands that the walls between one’s “public” and “private” image have been torn down. And rather than trying to reconstruct those barriers, people have decided to go out and play in this in-between space.

Yep, that’s a little frightening — more so if you’re a prominent leader in your local community, in business, in the church, or in some other sphere. There’s the “public” you, and the “private” you, and you’ve worked hard to cultivate your public image. You want people to respect you, and venturing into social media feels a bit too much like that recurring nightmare of standing in front of the crowd to deliver a big presentation or sermon, and suddenly realizing you forgot to get dressed that morning.

Social media experts are up on this, and they’re ready to help. Do a Google search on the words “build personal brand” and you’ll get lots of good links. While the idea of building a personal brand is not new, there are plenty of people with excellent (and free) advice on how to do this in the dawning age of the public/private sphere.

If I could choose one bit of advice, though, it would be this: Just be yourself. Don’t become paralyzed by the fear that you might accidentally reveal a political preference, or a detail or habit or like or dislike that will suddenly cause your carefully cultivated image to crumble. If you allow fear to be the litmus test for every Facebook status update, blog post, or Tweet, you’re doomed from the start. All you’ll be doing is building a “personal bland” — a vanilla version of yourself that stands out even more in the colorful realm of social media.

This doesn’t mean you should let it all hang out, of course. Use your best judgment, know that you’ll make mistakes, and learn from them. The fact that your athlete’s foot is acting up may be TMI, but people won’t be shocked if you tell them you hate folding laundry, or that you have a favorite TV show. Posting your favorite ice cream flavor might elicit some “me too’s” from the crowd, and (I promise) it won’t damage your credibility.

As long as it’s not vanilla.

Social Monday: Jump in the podcasting audio-stream

By Christian Piatt

Christian Piatt is an author and new church planter in Pueblo Colorado with his wife, Amy. His podcast can be found on iTunes, or by visiting his website at www.christianpiatt.com.

When I first heard of podcasting, I thought it was pretty cool. Immediately, I went online and set up free subscriptions for way more of my favorite shows than I can reasonably listen to, but as a junkie for free information, I couldn’t pass it up!

How great would it be, I thought, if I could do my own podcast? But surely it’s way too complicated and time-consuming to manage myself, right? I had received a book on podcasting a while back, but I was too intimidated to get started. For months, it remained no more than a good idea in the back of my mind.

Then, because of a series of curious circumstances, I ended up with a credit of a couple hundred bucks at my local music store, which is a dangerous thing. I wandered the aisles for a while and came across a cabinet of digital recorders. The price tags ranged from $200 to $350 bucks, and given my experience with digital recording gear, I assumed these were mediocre gadgets at best.

Turns out that digital recording technology has come a long way both in quality and affordability. Next thing you know, I’m on my way home with a little portable unit, complete with built-in microphones, cables and headphones. At home, I did a few test runs, speaking and playing into the recorder, amazed at the quality of this little machine that ran off of four AA batteries.

Maybe this podcast thing is not such a crazy idea after all.

I got online and found links to Audacity, a free audio mixing software program. Surely, I figured, this thing is lame. I mean, who can get anything decent out of some freeware? But the more reviews of it I read, the more convinced I became that it could at least handle my basic needs.

Next, I’d need a host site – somewhere to put my podcasts online so people could find and play them. Again, after some browsing, I found Podbean, one of many podcast “hosts” who offer free basic packages to get you started. Like others, they charge for premium services and extra memory storage, but I could get started and see if this podcasting thing was right for me without signing up for some pricey membership.

As a fan of National Public Radio, I had a fantasy of making my podcast sound like “This American Life,” so I’d need some sound clips to break up the narrative. I found more than I could use in three lifetimes at FreeLoops.com and The Freesound Project.

Outfitted with all the necessary gear, now I needed some interesting content. I started by narrating a few chapters from my newest book project, followed by a memoir-style account of my own faith journey and some spoken word clips. But what about ministry? Could I use podcasting to get the word out about our church on a local scale, or maybe nationally? That’s when I put together the “Big Fat Jesus Head” series I did with my wife.

I was getting some decent traffic from friends and people I told about my new project on Facebook, but I wondered if there was another way to get my work in front of people who liked podcasts, but who might not know who I was. That’s when I learned about Podcatchers, which are online services that serve as a clearinghouse and search tool for the thousands of podcasts out there.

In a few months, I’ve gone from this podcasting thing being an intriguing but daunting idea to having almost 600 hits on my first handful of episodes. Even better, when people search my name on search engines, the podcast is yet another thing that pops up. My literary agent was thrilled too, because that book project she was promoting for me found a foot in the door when a publisher showed interest in listening to the first few chapters online.

Next steps include recording Amy’s sermons, archiving personal stories from members of our church, concerts and interviews with other activists, artists and various people of interest. Aside from being a great tool for non-readers to get your message, there’s something deeply personal about hearing someone’s story or message in their own voice.

Now that I got it going, I have to wonder why it took me so long to come around. Turns out even we tech-heads have our hang-ups about new technology. But like anything else, it’s just a new tool at my disposal and, once I learned how to use it properly, became another avenue for personal expression, publicity and connection with people regardless of place or time.

Even better, it’s broadening our circle of people who hopefully will get some benefit from the ministries we’re doing here in Pueblo. If what Amy preached about Sunday can help someone in Nebraska a month from now, it just extends the life and scope of our ministry.

If you ask me, that’s technology at its best.

To sign up for Christian’s E-newsletter, “Faith Portals,” visit www.christianpiatt.com, or email him at cpiatt@christianpiatt.com.

Social Monday: Can Twitter Save Your Church’s Soul?

The world is aflitter over Twitter. The micro-blog service seems to be popping up everywhere in our culture lately. From television news coverage of the Presidential debates to the first reports and images of the crash of U.S. Airways flight 1549, Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets have been getting a lot of attention and press. All of this attention, in my opinion, is absolutely warranted. These new social technologies are allowing people to connect with each other and share information in ways that we could have never imagined 20 years ago, and this has major implications for churches. 

When people are connecting, no matter what over, there is always opportunity. Corporations, our government, non-profits, and churches are all logging in to the social media world to try and tap into this wealth of warm bodies to win over as new customers, donors, and even parishoners. Personally, I have used Twitter to contact customer service about my cable television service, blogs to obtain information about everything from news to products to candidates, and my favorite podcast helps me decide which new gadget is my next “must have.” My own church, University Christian Church in Seattle, uses Twitter, podcasting, and blogs. Even Disciples World is using Twitter.  With all of the new possibilities new communications tools like Twitter have to offer, social media is the answer to our churches evangelism and outreach prayers, right? Not exactly.

While these tools are certainly wonderful, they are not magic pills to reach a new generation of people.  Setting up a Twitter account or Facebook page for your church will not automatically make your church attractive to the 20 something crowd.  Contrary to what we may wish, there is no tool or program that will make people want to come to our churches.  What makes people want to be a part of our church communities is the same today as it was 2,000 years ago — storytelling.  When we are able to tell our story (i.e. God’s story) to the world both honestly and relevantly, we tap into the same power that drew and continues to draw so many to Jesus.  It is from the telling of our story (who we are, why we are here, what we are like, etc.), not the technology itself, that tools like Twitter derive their power for churches.

So, how do churches go about telling their story using these new tools?  

First, churches need to become good listeners.  These new social media tools are all about conversation.  As we all know, the key to being a good conversationalist is being a good listener.  These new tools are not like radio or television where the goal is to broadcast a slick message to as many people as possible.  Instead, these tools focus on two-way communication.  Often times, these conversations are messy, silly, hard…anything but slick and easy.  They are, however, quite often meaningful.  Communicating like this outside of the church walls can be a new experience for churches, but it is not impossible.  If a church wants to begin using something like Twitter, the best thing for them to do is to start by seeing what other people and organizations are talking about and how they are talking about them.

Second, churches need to be willing to play.  Jesus told us that we must become as little children.  Social media offers churches a great opportunity to do just that.  When a church enters the world of social media, it will make mistakes.  It will do and say things that seem silly at times.  That is okay.  In order to be a good teller of its story, a church needs to be willing to speak like a human and not like an organization…and humans look a bit silly from time to time.  So go out and make mistakes…it is the best way to learn.

Finally, churches need to be honest as they tell their stories.  A church that tries to be something it is not will not enjoy much success in the world of social media.  If people sense you are not being honest, they will stop listening to you.  You don’t have to be flashy or cool to be relevant and engaging.  Your church’s power to attract people doesn’t lie in cleverly crafted marketing copy or cool graphics.  Instead, it lies in the power of God.  Trust that.

Social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, podcasting, or blogs are nothing to be afraid of for churches.  While the technologies may seem new and strange, they can be learned.  The heart and soul of these tools, though, is nothing new to churches.  Churches have been telling their stories for a long time now.  If your church chooses to use some of these new tools (and I hope you do), use them bravely and honestly.  Have fun with them.  And, above all, tell your story well!

Will Boyd is a social media and new media producer and consultant.  His company, Will Boyd Media Solutions, specializes in helping faith groups and non-profits navigate the world of social media, podcasting, and technology to tell their stories to the world.  He has worked with Sojourners Magazine, the Disciples of Christ Historical Society, Goddard College, the Disciples Divinity House at Vanderbilt, and others.  Will also recently finished a bachelor of arts degree from Goddard College focused on the role of new media and social technologies in the world of sustainable marketing.  Will lives in Seattle with his wife, a Disciples pastor.

Social Monday: Church 2.0: Spider vs. Starfish – Part two

Last week, I threw a bit of a teaser out there, with this whole “Spider vs. Starfish” concept. As I’m sure many of you have lost hours of sleep, and perhaps have had a hard time forcing down a decent meal in eager anticipation of the follow-up, I figured it wasn’t fair to keep you waiting any longer.

The whole concept came from a book on business management practices, called The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom. The model presented here resonates with the idea I’ve had for a while now that church could learn a whole lot from the structure and governance of organizations like twelve-step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous. After all, they have reached millions with virtually no budget, and they seem immune to economic conditions, flourishing while we institutional churches struggle to keep the doors open.

So what’s the difference?

I might help answer that question with another question; if you cut the head off a spider, what happens? We all know it dies, right? But what if you cut off the arm of a starfish? It just grows another starfish. Where you once had one, there are now two. In trying to stop it, you actually only made it stronger.

So, how many of our churches are more like spiders instead of starfish? I thought so.

Here’s where the advent of recent technology might teach us an awful lot. If Rebecca Woods will indulge me in the future, I’d gladly post some other blogs about using applications like facebook, podcasting and blogging to further our ministries, but for now, let’s consider them a little more systematically.

In particular, consider a phenomenon known as “Web 2.0.” This is much like the so-called “leaderless organizations” that Brafman and Beckstrom are referring to. They are viral in nature, highly adaptable and scalable, and relatively easy to manage because the users generate the content.

I’ll offer a few examples to clarify the differences between a 1.0 – or spider – model and a 2.0 – or starfish – system. Amazon, which has become a behemoth presence for online commerce, would be considered a 1.0 model. They have a product that they sell to customers, pretty much in the traditional model, despite their lack of storefronts. Though they’ve been successful up until now, they are depending on some basic truths about the market. If, for example, the cost of paper or transport fuel went through the roof, it would affect their business model significantly, or if a supplier shut down, they might be stuck.

eBay, on the other hand, is a 2.0, or starfish, model. eBay, as you probably know, doesn’t actually sell anything. All they do is create the framework within which people can conduct business. This means they can be a conduit for everything from sweat socks to automobiles and homes. If the price of gold plummeted and jewelry markets crumbled, people could just sell more baseball cards or used books on eBay.

Another comparison might be looking at the difference between the traditional military structure versus a network like Al Qaida. Though you can throw an entire military into chaos by attacking its senior leadership or supply lines, Al Qaida is hard to stop in one sense because it is a headless beast. You kill or capture current leaders, and a dozen more pop up in their place. The system is so adaptable, it’s hard to stop.

Our churches have been based upon a 1.0 “spider” model for centuries, and so far, it’s worked pretty well. But now, we’re surrounded by starfish like facebook, Craigslist, BitTorrent, MySpace, eBay and the like, and we wonder why it is that we, the institutional church, don’t seem relevant to younger people.

For starters, we not only don’t look familiar: we don’t even look relevant.

People may not be able to put their finger on it, but they know 1.0 versus 2.0 when they see it, especially younger people. There are consequences to being a starfish organization instead of a spider, such as letting go some control over the content exchanged within the system, but there’s great opportunity as well.

In future installments, I’ll discuss a few more ways in which we can employ Church 2.0 methods in our existing congregations, both with technology, and even on our boards and in our Sunday School rooms. But for now, look around you and see if you can start spotting the differences between the spiders and starfish, all around you.

Until next time!

Christian Piatt is the author of MySpace to Sacred Space: God for a New Generation, and Lost: A Search for Meaning, and he is a columnist for various newspapers, magazines and websites on the topics of theology and popular culture. He is the co-founder of Milagro Christian Church in Pueblo, Colorado with his wife, Amy. For more information about Christian, visit www.christianpiatt.com.

Social Monday: Church 2.0: Spider vs. Starfish – Part one

I’ve been asked a number of times to speak to various churches and other leadership groups about young adults, their relationship to organized religion, and their take on – and use of – technology. Unfortunately, church and technology tend to generally mix about as well as the football team and chess club. Neither the two shall meet, right? Who needs technology to find God, after all?

Sure, a few of us may have put up a screen to show words to our praise songs, and we may have even had a kid from the youth group throw together a website for us…which hasn’t been updated in about forty-seven years or so. As they say in the twelve-step tradition: how’s that working out for you? Folks generally fall into one of two categories. Either they are terrified by technology and want to have nothing to do with it in church at all, or they see it as some sort of silver bullet that, if aimed properly, will magically fill the now-empty pews with young families.

In truth, neither perspective is particularly realistic. For one, technology isn’t going anywhere, so by ignoring it, we risk making our churches even more irrelevant. On the other hand, if we hope that technology – or emergent worship, whatever that is, or a groovy website, or even a podcast – will save us from a fate we’re hoping to avoid, we may be putting way more trust into a handful of tools than they deserve.

Rebecca has invited me to contribute a few pieces to the NewsMuse blog, for which I’m honored and grateful. In future installments, I hope to share some ideas about how technology can be used to complement a vibrant ministry, as well as dispelling some misconceptions about technology, digital media, social networking, emergent worship and so many of these postmodern-emergo-hip buzz phrases we hear so often, yet about which we understand very little. So stay tuned to explore questions with me such as:

What exactly is “Church 2.0?”

Are you a Spider Church or a Starfish Church?

What do young adults really want from organized religion?

What the heck does it mean to be postmodern, and what is emergent worship?

Until next time!

Christian Piatt is the author of MySpace to Sacred Space: God for a New Generation, and Lost: A Search for Meaning, and he is a columnist for various newspapers, magazines and websites on the topics of theology and popular culture. He is the co-founder of Milagro Christian Church in Pueblo, Colorado with his wife, Amy. For more information about Christian, visit www.christianpiatt.com.