A new study released by ExactTarget finds consumers who are active on Twitter are three times more likely to impact a brand’s online reputation through syndicated Tweets, blog posts, articles and product reviews than the average consumer. Here’s how that breaks down:

Reason to Twitter Company or Brand (% of US Twitter Users)
Reason to Twitter	% of Users
Get updates on future products	38%
Stay informed about company activities	32
Receive discounts and promotions	31
Get updates on upcoming sales	30
Ger free samples, coupons, etc	28
For fun or entertainment	26
Get access to exclusive content	25
Learn more about company	25
Show support to company to others	23
Share ideas, provide feedback	20
For education about company topics	14
Recommended	14
Get direct message from company	10
Source: ExactTarget, August 2010

While the information is focused on these tweeting consumer habits, the correlation between tweeting about a company/brand and a local church is very similar. In both instances, the experience determines why they’d tweet about either entity.

In the survey above, it’s worth noting that of the 13 ‘reason to Twitter’ the top 8 – over half the list – are because of a benefit to the consumer. In church speak, this means that the person is interested in what you’re doing and is motivated to tweet about you. The implication for churches is to have a constantly updated, useful Twitter feed(s) so they can follow and discover benefits for themselves.

According to the report, daily Twitter users are about three times as likely as internet users on average to upload photos, four times as likely to blog, three times as likely to post ratings and reviews, and nearly six times as likely to upload articles. Church translation: your Twitter followers are sprayers – people who will talk about their experiences with your church, share their thoughts, and generally make their feelings known online. In other words, your Twitter users are highly influential and worth your attention.

I think it’s also important to note that, given some love and attention, these people can be fantastic online advocates for your church and ministries. Raving fans who spread your message for you are exactly the kind of viral messaging you want online.

Content/Research sources: ExactTarget and the Center for Media Research

The way I see it, email & social media often go hand-in-hand. It’s not either/or – it’s both/and. The right tool for the right job, with the caveat that sometime the right tools need to overlap and play nicely together.

Google’s recent announcement of Wave is also a boon, as it’s shaping up to be the next killer app that rethinks email as it should be today, not how it was intended when it was invented.

Here’s a quote from the article about Strongmail Solution’s new thinking:

StrongMail, which enables direct marketers to integrate social media into email marketing programs, has developed a social media framework that consists of three core functions: Social Programs, Social Direct and Social Share. As direct marketers struggle to fit social media programs into their overall marketing strategy, Ryan Deutsch believes the tools that integrate both will become the hub that supports strategies.

Among the tools being introduced into the market today, Influencer Ad enables marketers to create direct-response campaigns. The tool is being offered through a partnership with PopularMedia, which focuses on developing social and viral campaigns.

The biggest challenge then becomes making the campaign interesting to drive it virally. For example, rather than send a coupon in an email for 50% off a bar blender, the email would include a link and message to “mix your friend a drink.” Clicking on the link would enable the person to virtually make a strawberry margarita and send it off to share with Facebook friends.

The pages that allow consumers to mix and share drinks are served up by StrongMail. Technology tracks the message and the people who concoct the drinks. It lets marketers identify “influencers,” Deutsch says. Based on behavior, the marketer can target people with specific promotions.

This is the beginning of a new way of online marketing and communication to collide and converge. I can’t wait to see what’s next!

Here are two compelling quotes from the brief article:

My advice is to plan now. Don’t wait for that communications crisis to take place before planning for how you’ll handle the fallout when something bad (inevitably) happens.

Here’s #5 from the list of things to do:

5. Don’t overthink. Running through committees, endless drafts and approval processes to get a response out there can cause far more damage than good. As long as you have taken the time to assess the situation and can take a rational, respectful tone in your response, even an awkward response is OK to start with, and buys you time to continue to respond to the problem.

Here’s a brief quote from the article, which you can find online here.

“There exist religious-themed alternatives to most social media specifically targeting people of faith — Tangle.com provides a Christian alternative to YouTube, while Saddington’s pet project Gospelr is a Christian-themed Twitter analogue. While they may be good for uniting the faithful, some are skeptical of services that allow believers to segregate themselves from the wider world. Saddington said that both secular and religious services had their uses, but that people should keep in mind that they were unlikely to spread their faith if they confined themselves to online communities that consisted only of fellow believers.”

I found some of these stats to be very educational. They show us, as local churches, the impact and signficance of leveraging texting, such as Twitter, as an important strategy for these key demographics (and beyond).

• Nearly 60% of mobile phone owners use their phones to text
• 94% of teens make up the largest user group - 13 to 19 age group remains the most active, sending more than 500 texts per month on average
• 20-somethings at 87%
• Those in their 40s, usage jumped from 56% in 2008 to 64% this year
• Those in their 50s it jumped from 38% to 46%.

Despite the popularity of mobile data services, of those surveyed:

• 41% do not text
• 70% do not browse the Web on their mobile phones
• 73% do not use email on their mobile phones
• 74% report that they would use voice enablement as a way to make text messaging easier

These trends show a lot of what is working and the growth and adoption rate of older demographics. These trends will continue and make it impossible for churches to ignore the importance of instant communication and conversation via text messaging.

Twitter’s free service, ease of use and meteoric rise in popularity make it one of the most effective tools for churches to use in leveraging text messaging. If you’ve not read it yet, go download a copy of the E-Book, “The Reason Your Church Must Twitter” for only $5.

What say you about this data?

Time magazine’s

Here are some of Steven’s observations and predictions:

“as millions of devotees have discovered, Twitter turns out to have unsuspected depth. In part this is because hearing about what your friends had for breakfast is actually more interesting than it sounds. The technology writer Clive Thompson calls this “ambient awareness”: by following these quick, abbreviated status reports from members of your extended social network, you get a strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routines. We don’t think it at all moronic to start a phone call with a friend by asking how her day is going. Twitter gives you the same information without your even having to ask.”

“Twenty years ago, the ideas exchanged in that conversation would have been confined to the minds of the participants. Ten years ago, a transcript might have been published weeks or months later on the Web. Five years ago, a handful of participants might have blogged about their experiences after the fact.”

I personally believe that what Twitter has done is create an in-road for leveraging Text Messaging (SMS) in a new way. Regardless of Twitter’s success or demise, what they created will continue. Twitter is the new email.

A few solid quotes from the article:

Twitter provides another opportunity to maintain and encourage community amongst people who they would otherwise not have the opportunity to know.

If there is one thing that has suffered in our age it is relationships. People have very little time to cultivate relationships, share concerns and hopes, and make their needs known. When we do see one another, it’s hard to know what to say, because we simply don’t know where anyone is coming from. Instead, we spend most of our time hanging out, trying to get to that point where we can find some frame of reference or connection.

While we need to acknowledge that a virtual, internet relationship is really no relationship at all, we also need to be honest and acknowledge what can be the real world benefit of knowing, for instance, that I’ve been thinking of doing some freelancing work, playing PS3 a LOT lately, and meditating on the vanity of life. This sort of knowledge makes the conversation a heck of a lot more meaningful and challenging when we come together on the weekend. By knowing what’s happening in one another’s lives, we know how to speak truth to one another, how to pray for one another, and how to serve one another.

The article uses Scriptural references in additions to quotes from pastors and lay leaders, a first that I’ve seen in these news reports. Here are a few key quotes from the article, which you can read here:

“It doesn’t replace a lot of things — it doesn’t replace church, community or being with people — but it is another way to keep connected. We view it as a way for a leader to communicate with a lot of followers without a lot of extraneous (effort).” – Dale Swanson, Victory Church, Executive Pastor

“The Rev. Dave Evans, 53, senior pastor of Highland Baptist Church in Moore, OK, said he realized 150 to 200 members of his congregation were members of Facebook. He said he decided to try Facebook and Twitter for the outreach opportunities. Evans said Twitter has allowed him to follow the day-to-day lives of others and lets them do the same with him. “It is a way to offer prayer, support and encouragement to each other,” he said.

The Rev. George Back, 67, longtime dean of St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, said his church, 127 NW 7, has about 70 people connected to its Facebook page. He said each day, more people are following its tweets on Twitter, though the church only joined the latter a few weeks ago. He said social networking seems to meet a need in a society where lots of people don’t know other people in their immediate vicinity very well. ”If you think back 100 years, people were meeting in the store or the bank. Now people are driving from place to place; they’re pressing the button and going into the garage and not seeing their neighbor,” Back said. ”Today, they are encountering one another in different ways. This enables a process that has been short-circuited by modern times. In that sense, it’s not brand-new; it’s a resurgence of something that was lost and now is found — that ongoing connection.”

This is my favorite quote from the article:

“If worship is about creating community, Twitter is an undeniably useful tool. The trick is to not let the chatter overshadow the need for quiet reflection that spirituality requires.”

What say you? Do you agree or disagree?