Get up to speed in less than 5 minutes

Unless you’re very well informed, you may find these numbers surprising:
Ten million people watched the big three broadcast networks (still ABC, CBS & NBC) last month. These networks have been around for a combined 200 years.
Two hundred and fifty million people visited Facebook, YouTube and Myspace in the same time. None of these social networks [...]

Facebook, twitter & more for churches

Weekly Web Tip from Friends of Ministry
Twitter Your Way to a More Prosperous Ministry
Facebook… twitter… LinkedIn… unitysocial.com… 
You hear about these online social networks nearly every day, and if you’re not using them you’re probably wondering if you should be.
 
The answer is an unqualified “yes.” Through social networks, the internet has provided very powerful new tools that [...]

Protect yourself from Conficker C

A worm that has infected the computers of millions of unsuspecting users will activate Wednesday, April Fool’s Day, allowing hackers to take control of all infected PCs.
This is not an April Fool’s joke; you can find CNN’s story about the Conficker C computer worm here: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/24/conficker.computer.worm/index.html. 
Microsoft has offered a $250,000 award to experts who catch [...]

Being Social

Among internet gurus, 2008 has been dubbed “the year of the social network.”
Why should you care?
Google and other search engines are giving high rankings to social network web pages, affecting the way everything else (including your website) shows up in searches.
So if you want to hold or improve your website’s Google ranking, it’s (actually past) [...]

Getting the Right Answers

Does your church need a blog?
Considering the cost, is it really worth it to offer podcasts on your church website?
How can you attract internet seekers — those cruising the internet for spiritual nourishment — to your church’s website?
Answers to questions like these are hard to come by. Finding the answers that are right for your [...]

Finding the Help You Need

When I was the volunteer director for one of the larger Unity churches in the Southeast, I would have been thrilled to have LinkedIn.
We had a church full of people every Sunday morning and, over the course of an average year, 350 volunteers.
But we didn’t have a clue about the professional qualifications and abilities of [...]

Keeping your company in mind

While a website can be a terrific internal communications tool — a great way to connect 24/7 with your members — its potential as an outreach effort for your church is even greater and much more important.
So when you write for your website, write not for your members, but for your visitors — people who [...]

Welcoming diversity

What does your church website say about diversity? Does it clearly communicate that you are open to people of all races and ages, male and female? Even if your church’s makeup is 80% white and 70% female, you can say through pictures that you welcome and value diversity. Here’s how:   

• When you photograph people to be featured on [...]

The times, they are a-changin’

The way people practice their faith has changed so much that The Barna Group, which has been tracking church attendance for nearly 25 years, has had to come up with new categories to explain what’s really happening as attendance at Sunday services continues to decline.

   According to Barna’s latest study, “Various new forms of faith community [...]

You have a website; now what?

You have a fabulous church website, but it isn’t getting much traffic. What can you do?
 
Here are a few ideas:
 
• Have your web address printed on bumper stickers and give them away to everyone who attends your church.
• Buy movie screen stills, the ads that are displayed in theaters before a movie starts. Make sure [...]