Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

 

Four Steps to Crafting a Connection Strategy on Social Media

Monday, January 28th, 2013

The amount of information and the speed at which content is currently produced may seem overwhelming. If you have a message, product or service to deliver to the masses you may wish to use social media to connect with customers, friends or potential buyers.

But you first have to be heard.

How among all the social platforms will your voice be heard above the throng of tweets, posts and status updates?

connect

Katherine Pangaro via Compfight

Step 1: Craft a Plan

The first step to standing out from the crowd on social media is to plan. We know of a jewelry company who thought it was a ‘good idea to get on Facebook.’ After opening a Facebook page and uploading a few pictures of jewelry  they were disheartened to see very few people connecting with their business. They didn’t have a plan.

We’ll get into a few specifics below, but the old saying “if you fail to plan you plan to fail” certainly rings true.

Step 2: Set Your Goals

While crafting your plan, be specific. Use the acronym S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-based) as a guide. Ensure each of your tasks includes each and every S.M.A.R.T. item.

Step 3: Solicit for Feedback

Once a plan is crafted, consider that draft one. Perhaps you want to connect with customers on a social network like Facebook. Once you’ve crafted a plan using S.M.A.R.T. goals to do that, ask someone (and we’d be happy to help) what they think of your plan. It could be that Facebook may be the wrong platform and Pinterest or Google+ may better serve your demographic. Get a second opinion.

Step 4: Remain Consistent and Flexible

Consisten and flexible may seem dichotomous, but they’re not. A good parent is both consistent as well as flexible. The sam remains true for social media. As social media continues to expand, consistently learning new trends and methods of connection enables us not to get in a rut, rigidly refusing to adjust to changes in technological advances.

 

 

The Church on Social Media

Monday, January 14th, 2013

Felt board? Now there’s an app for that. For real.

1,000 pages of noisy onion-skin-like pages? Download this instead.

Stone tables meet your match: an iPad.

When it comes to organized religion, many churches and church leaders have chosen to stay in the dust of the past, while others move forward into the present and the future. With the advent of social media and other technological breakthroughs in communicaiton, churches have more avenues to spread their message than ever before. 

Current leaders in the Catholic church are hopping into the social media sphere, albeit a few years behind.

In December of 2012, Pope Benedict XVI launched a Twitter account, offering tweets in eight languages. He has over 1.4 million followers on his english languange account alone, Twitter handle @Pontifex. 

Following the Pope’s lead, Franciscan Friars launched a platform to allow followers to text them a prayer intention. Yup, you can text a prayer.

Father David Convertino, executive director of development for the Fransiscan Friars of Holy Name Province: “With technology changing the way we communicate, we needed to offer people an updated way to ask for prayers for special intentions and needs either for themselves or others.”

Regardless of one’s thoughts on religion, it’s powerful to see one of the oldest organized religions in the world seeing to connect in new ways.

At the dawn of social media, only the so-called ‘early adopters’ jumped in full force. Until recently, many organized religions seemed to lightly stick a toe into the social media waters, refusing to get immersed in the ever-changing waters.

Now they’re jumping in full force. Apparently the thinking is changing for churches and organizations who are willing to change.

At its core, social media is about making existing connections stronger and foster new connections that wouldn’t exist otherwise.

And though we don’t represent one ideology, religion or creed, we do tip our hat to those church leaders fearless enough to reach out with a handshake…and a tweet.