This video was made by the very clever folks at CommonCraft. They have created a simple and effective video showing – via simple animation – what Twitter is and how it works. It’s a great visual primer!
Archive for February, 2009
Twitter in plain English – by CommonCraft
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009In-Depth Review of “The Reason Your Church Must Twitter”
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009
The guys over at Twitterstop took the time to write a solid, in-depth review of my E-Book and have posted it on their blog (click here to read it).
I appreciate their website (great resource) and was pleasantly surprised to see it reviewed there. Their website is one worthy of bookmarking; and I have said that (and linked to it on this blog’s links) way before they reviewed the E-Book, so I’m not just being partial.
Enjoy!
The Hesitant Pastor & Twitter
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009I was in a conversation with a senior pastor that was considering starting a Twitter account so that he had a way to communicate about his life and ministry with his congregation. His hesitancy was in opening up yet more of his life – which already feels like living in a glass box – and giving up even more personal space.
What’s interesting about you, as a senior pastor Twittering, is that you control both the topics you Twitter about and the amount of information that you share.
With a lot of people showing up each weekend, there’s no way for you to know all of them, but THEY want to know YOU.
The scalability of your time on Twitter and the kind of information you want to share (hey, you’re still human – not living on a pedestal – a realization some have a hard time understanding) is far easier to manage than the non-scalability of personal face time with you and hundreds or even thousands of people.
My suggestion is to be who you are – the sometimes funny, sometimes eccentric, usually normal guy – so that they see your sermon illustrations about your life played out in real-life application. They’ll see that you’re not perfect, that grace and mercy are an ever present battle of the spirit against the soul and that you live a life not too dissimilar from theirs.
It’s hard enough being in ministry and living in the proverbial “glass house”. I recommend using Twitter for pastors as a way to keep people from wanting to go and stand next to the bedroom glass wall of that house.
What’s in this E-Book?
Monday, February 16th, 2009If you’re thinking about purchasing the ridiculously inexpensive ($5 bucks!) E-book, “The Reason Your Church Must Twitter”, I’ve listed a brief synopsis to the Table of Contents so you know what to expect.
Chapter 1 – Twitter as a Megaphone - One-to-many, targeted information. Highly useful for the church & each individual ministry.
Chapter 2 – Twitter as a Conversation – Engage with staff, volunteers, members, visitors & others with interactive dialogue. Easier and faster than email.
Chapter 3 – Twitter for Pastors - Perception matters. The humanizing of a leader is often a missing element in the connection between the church leadership and the congregants.
Chapter 4 – Setting Up Twitter in 1 Minute or Less – A step-by-step guide with pictures to show even the technically challenged how to set up Twitter.
Chapter 5 – How to Tweet – What should you say? What should you not say? How should you say it? Practical advice with easy to follow instructions.
Chapter 6 – To Follow and Be Followed – Learn how to reach just the right people with just the right message and find out who you should follow – and why.
Chapter 7 – Making Twitter Even Easier - An introduction and overview of useful (and usually free) tools to make using Twitter even more useful and easy!
Chapter 8 – Churches Using Twitter - Just like it sounds. Click and see what other churches are doing with Twitter.
Chapter 9 – Unexpected Bonuses – From a list of interesting ways Twitter is being used to cautions and recommendations for what to look for, this chapter is good food for thought and inspiration.
Chapter 10 – Deciding on a Twitter Strategy – Deciding to use Twitter is one thing; how your church will use it – effectively – is covered in this very important chapter.
The entire e-book is, currently, 63-pages e-cover to e-cover. It’s highly illustrated with tons of examples, screen grabs and relevant information that will help your church start using Twitter far beyond the question of “‘what are you doing?”
Simple. Practical. Easy. Oh, and only $5 bucks!
