Getting in their stream
I wrote last week that I believe we are now in a “post-website” world, where the organizational website, while important, is no longer the centerpiece of how we interact online. Continuing to think along these lines, the question then becomes: what should be the main focus of our online communications and interactions?
My answer to that question is not simple. I believe that the best way to interact with our target audience is to build relationships with them online. And one way to build relationships with them is to insert ourselves into the “streams” of information that they consume everyday. To have the maximum reach possible, we must understand the streams that our potential audience wades through on a daily basis and become part of it.
New Twitter list: @DaveBourgeois/online-ministry
As I endeavor to stay on top of all the latest news and opinion surrounding online ministry, I have turned to Twitter as a resource. By “following” those who post about Internet ministry, I can keep up to date with what they are thinking and get the latest news and opinion in near real-time. I have a love-hate relationship with Twitter, which you can read about here, but do feel that there are some ways it can be used as a positive contributor to my work. Since I also follow a multitude of other people besides those who tweet regarding online ministry, I have created a Twitter “list” of those who fall into the Internet ministry category so I can better track them.
And you can follow it too: the list name is: ”@DaveBourgeois/online-ministry“. If you have suggestions for others to be on this list (including yourself), let me know in the comments. My only criteria is that those in the list use Twitter to post primarily about online ministry. I will be actively managing this list, so if someone on the list tweets mostly outside of this topic, they will be removed.
Here’s the current list right now:
The technologies, they are a changin’
As I have stated in a previous post, I believe that some of the current social media tools we are using are really just the first successful incarnations of some future technologies. Changes in technology, along with the competitive marketplace, force the software tools we use to evolve and change. Just as Friendster gave way to MySpace, which is giving way to Facebook, so the latest darlings such as Second Life and Twitter will most likely give way to something being created right now. › Continue reading
Using Twitter intentionally
As many of you know, I have been doing an “experiment” with Twitter over the past couple of weeks. My first experience with Twitter last year were frustrating and disappointing and I became a Twitter “hater”. I could not understand why everyone was getting so excited! However, I did decide to keep an open mind and give it another chance.
Last week, Cynthia Ware came to my Internet Ministry class here at Biola. Cynthia shared with my class her vision for the Church and new media. Especially interesting was her presentation of “New Media Values”, which really gave the class, and me, perspective on how our culture and technology are shaping each other. I won’t present those values here, I will leave that to Cynthia (write that book!). › Continue reading
Twitter: Real time access to our least important thoughts…
As many of you know, my Internet ministry class is looking at Twitter this week as a tool for ministry. I myself am trying it out again, but I am not liking it any better. This clip from the Daily Show sums up my feelings on Twitter, here’s a quote:
Twitter offers real time access to some of our most important leaders’ and newspeople’s least important thoughts, 140 characters at a time. It’s no wonder young people love it, according to reports about young people by middle aged people.
Cynthia – save us!
Note: embedded flash player below – if your browser does not support, watch it on Hulu.
Twitter research
I’ve had a couple people ask me how my Twitter research project is going. I saw this picture (via Digg.com) today and I think that it sums up how I am feeling about Twitter so far…
Giving Twitter another try
I joined up on Twitter several months ago and never could figure out what it was good for. I heard about it on the TWiT podcast and it was being talked up like it was going to change the way people communicated with each other. If you haven’t heard of Twitter, the easiest way to describe it is as a clearinghouse for text messaging: you send the text message to Twitter and it forwards it on to anyone who has chosen to receive messages from you. The tools of Twitter are the Twitter web site, your mobile phone, and a plethora of third-party Twitter tools. Twitter allows you to customize how you send and receive messages to meet your needs – if you would rather not involve your mobile phone, then you can use their web site or other software tool. The only real restriction is that the messages must fit within the 140-character limit of a text message.
So I signed up last year and began subscribing to messages from a few people, but the novelty wore off quickly and I pretty much disconnected myself. It seemed that all I got were messages from people telling me that they were having a latte at Starbucks or that they hated the weather or other commentary that was just not interesting to me. When I spoke at the Internet Ministry Conference last fall, there was unbounded enthusiasm among much of the “ministrati” (that is, the ministry digerati) for using Twitter as a ministry tool (though there was also a minority of Twitter haters as well). I tried to understand their enthusiasm, but I just couldn’t. To me, Twitter was just another honk in the vast sea of Internet noise.
Last week, Cynthia Ware visited my Internet ministry class. She has been a big fan of Twitter for quite a while and sees its potential for ministry. Though I don’t (yet) share her views, I think a discussion of Twitter’s capabilities for ministries is important, so I invited her to speak in my class next month on just that topic. I asked Cynthia if she had a resource that could help me understand some Twitter “best practices”, and she pointed me to a new e-book on Twitter called The Reason Your Church Must Twitter, by Anthony Coppedge. This book explains what Twitter is and how it can be used in a church setting. It does a good job of explaining the fundamentals of Twitter as well as giving specific examples of its use.
After reading the book, and further discussion with Cynthia, I am going to withhold judgment on Twitter and re-evaluate it. In fact, I do have one theory about Twitter that I will put to the test over the coming weeks: Twitter could be the breakthrough tool that will bridge the online/offline gap. Every organization that plans on using the Internet for ministry must deal with how to bring the online and offline worlds together. Twitter, with its ability to integrate with mobile devices and web sites, may be the tool that finally allows us to bring those two worlds together.
So, I am re-starting my use of Twitter and giving it renewed effort. I have updated my Twitter username to “DaveBourgeois”, I have begun “following” several more people, I have installed a Twitter “gadget” on my home page, I use Twitter to update my Facebook status, and I have installed a software tool called twhirl which is supposed to make Twitter easier to use. I have even put a Twitter “widget” on the sidebar of this blog that shows my latest “tweets” and gives you the option to “follow” me. I will keep you posted on my thoughts as my experiment progresses, both on this blog and on Twitter, of course!
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Welcome to Lessons From Babel
This blog is where I share the latest thoughts on my research in the world of Internet ministry. Feel free to join the conversation by leaving a comment. For more information on what I am doing in 2010, see my first post of the year. To find out more about me, my company, and this web site, or to see what resources are available on this site, click on the images right below this.
- Dave Bourgeois
