Digital Evangelism Issues

Social media can be a confusing and fragmented communication niche. Facebook, for instance, is an almost ramshackle accumulation of features and counter-intuitive usability options. For example ‘Like’ means three things depending on context. ‘Like’ a fan page means ‘become a fan’. ‘Like’ a webpage or blog post means posting a summary on your own Facebook Wall. ‘Like’ a Facebook post means little, and doesn’t share that post with your friends. To do this, you need to click the ‘Share’ link instead.

Help is at hand! Here are some useful Facebook resources:

• The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Marketing
  Vital useful collection of 70 online articles on everything FB.
• Digital Mission Blog.
  This is our June blog of the month. Why? It provides excellent
  introductory ‘how-to’ guides to a range of digital ministry tools for
  churches and individual Christians. You can also follow using
  @DigitalMission on Twitter.



• Different people use social media in different ways. Who is the ‘me’ in social media. Click on graphic to view in full size ▸
• Why Call To Action Matters in Social Media
  Important principles, especially relating to fan pages.
• Ed Ross has brought together a range of Social Media and Web Articles.
• Latest Facebook stats and other web-related figures, for country and region. Sign up for the newsletter.



• Check the status of social media in Asia. View full size infographic and read analysis from TheNextWeb.com.
• Is ‘Ooh, Shiny!’ Destroying Your Blog? asks ProBlogger.
• Make your site or blog post ‘likeable’ on Facebook. When someone clicks a ‘Like’ button for a page, Facebook posts details of that page drawn from the page’s title and meta description tags (the invisible code in the page header). If these are missing or very short, or generic site-wide wording, no meaningful information will be posted. Ensure that every page has its own enticing title of about 60 characters, plus an amplifying explanation of around 160 characters in the meta description.
• Facebook will also attempt to find a graphic to include next to the post. Ensure that there is an enticing graphic that relates to the page, which Facebook can use. Free-to-use graphics are available at Stock Exchange or do an advanced image search on Google using the dropdown ‘labelled for reuse’ which will give you Creative Commons graphics, or the similar Flickr advanced search with Creative Commons option ticked. Flickr members will also often give permission for a non-profit to use a picture which has not been tagged as Creative Commons.
• Also make clear what options you are offering site or blog visitors. Facebook or Twitter icons need explanation. Does the blue bird graphic mean, ‘follow our Twitter stream’ or ‘tweet about this page’? Is a Facebook icon asking someone to ‘Like’ the page or join a Fan Page?
• If you are using a third-party ‘Tweet this’-type add-on, check it still actually tweets! Twitter recently changed the coding requirement for the URL string for a ready-made tweet, and some services and plug-ins no longer work.

  Here’s a great javascript to add to your individual pages for a tweet button with ready-made page-specific wording. This has the old non-working code, which you need to edit to twitter.com/?status=. Tweaks to this code will enable you to insert your own ready-made hashtags if you wish.

• Is Google’s new +1 ‘like/share’ button going to become significant? As it could contribute to your Google page ranking, it seems wise to install it anyway on your WordPress blog or website. Please click ours below – and anywhere you see it on any of our pages! And the Facebook ‘Like’ and ‘Tweet’ buttons too.
  
• Sharing faith on Facebook
  Ideas for doing this effectively, including posting video clips with one click.
• Check our other recent posts on social networking.

This week’s infographics:

First, from Cool Infographics gives insights to social networking usage. By the way, for valuable help on using social networks, follow JustinWise.net blog, and for more detailed stats on Facebook and other web stats, subscribe to the Internet World Stats newsletter – read the latest.

Search stats

Second from Tech King below, an infographic showing top search words for different countries. However I think what this mainly shows is that a majority of web users do not understand the difference between a browser search box and the navigation toolbar – ie. that you can type an URL directly into a browser! So they just use the search box to find sites they are already aware of, or because they can’t remember the URL (or are unaware how to bookmark and retrieve a page), or don’t know how to enter an URL anyway. Chrome is the only browser to ‘go with the grain’ of average users, and offer a single text area to use for either search or direct entry of an URL.

This same issue can be seen at the Google Zeitgeist tool and in Most Popular Keywords (long term), which also demonstrate that relatively few people understand how to use multiple keywords for a more focused search. Google Trends gives current topic searches without seemingly including searches for known websites.

None of these tools show much evidence of spiritual keyword searches, contrary to the occasional claim you may hear from Christians, that religious web searches are the second most numerous online. Unless anyone can come up with research stats to back up this claim, it must be just another urban myth that Christians unwittingly, though in good faith, persist in passing on.

Even among the top 500 words on the Most Popular Keywords list, there are surprisingly few relating to health or felt needs issues. Almost all keywords that might relate to evangelistic or bridge strategy websites are in a Long Tail of millions of lower frequency keyword searches.

The Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization is a free download about a vital subject. Many Christian sites receive only a fraction of the visits they deserve because simple optimization techniques have not been applied to them, such as using a carefully written <title> tag containing an enticing title full of appropriate keywords, followed by a carefully worded <meta description> to amplify the details. (Other site promotion techniques are listed here.)

The Plain English Campaign (based as it happens in the town where I grew up) offers wise advice on jargon-free communication, with several free downloads.

And our free printable style guide explains pitfalls of punctuation and grammar.

Access these e-books here along with recommendations for other communication books.

Interesting to notice that commercial companies (including new film releases) are now featuring Facebook Fan Page URLs in their TV commercials. Rather than initially point to their website, they use their Fan Page as a landing page which then links directly to their main site. The advantage is that people may become fans, thereby:

• opting in automatically to further news
• displaying to their friends the Fan Page link and its posts
• enabling discussion about the product or service featured in the Fan Page

Fan Page (and Facebook Groups) are highly strategic opportunities, either to make known your ministry to other Christians, or to creatively connect with not-yet-Christians. And, starting today, Facebook are introducing a new Community Page option, and they advised that Fan Pages would no longer be chosen by a ‘Like’ button (details) though within minutes they restored the ‘Become a fan’ button. (Hey, would you like to click the ‘Like’ or ‘Become a fan’ button on our IE Day fan page.) These could be very strategic. Read more on sharing the good news with outsiders on Facebook.

Other social networking news

May 15 sees a live webinar from Tony Steward: Social Media: Is it worth it?
. (11.00am US Eastern Daylight Time/ 15.00 GMT)

GMO has a webinar on 21 April: The Internet’s Effect on Online Missions. (10.00am PDT/18.00 GMT)

Seems there’s barely room for more than one main networking site. Bebo is up for sale, and most unlikely to survive.

For lots of helpful news and ideas on social media, check Mashable.com. Learn more about Facebook privacy settings and other safety issues.

No-fly zone

On a different and personal note, what a difference a week makes. If a few days back, someone had predicted a Europe-wide no-fly zone unrelated to terrorism, they would have been ridiculed. Yet now, almost everyone in UK knows someone who is stranded abroad or unable to travel. My sister-in-law is unlikely to have an easy return from Iran at the end of the week. (Three weeks earlier, and I could have been stranded in Lithuania – though my £5/$8 online travel insurance could have helped to get me back by rail.) How conditional all our plans should be (James 4:13-16)!

On the positive side, we are enjoying the sort of outdoor peace unknown since the 50s. Although not quite under the main flight path, I live near enough to UK’s largest air-freight depot to be occasionally woken at night by some aged and very noisy freighter. The millions of people living under the Heathrow flight-path are currently experiencing sheer bliss, with unbroken sleep at night and the sound of birds and bees in the day. This will be surely the final nail in the coffin for the projected third runway at Heathrow, already virtually dead in the water due to public opinion and legal challenges. It will strengthen the case for building greener high-speed rail links, and will also highlight the vision of a new London airport built on reclaimed land within the Thames estuary. In a future more enlightened age, perhaps we will realise how barbaric it was to damage the physical and mental health of millions of people through incessant jet noise.

I reported in our latest Web Evangelism Bulletin how Google can predict a flu outbreak in a particular town or area long before the medical authorities, based an upsurge in geographical searches about flu. Google has a unique*, mind-blowing direct line into the minds of the planet. (*With the exception of God, of course.)

Try Google Insights for Search. Steve explains at Communicate Jesus just how strategic this tool is.

You can check how people have been searching over past days or years. For instance, look at a search for meaning of Christmas. Then check which country searched most for this – and surprisingly it is Philippines. What this tool does not appear to show is actual numbers of searches.To find these, use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Or you can find out, for instance, what was on the collective heart of China last week, or Poland last year.

These tools give us ways to find bridge topics and areas of common interest for evangelism, both offline and offline. How could these tools help you – add your comment below?

Contact cards are a great way to communicate with someone one-to-one, leaving them with a way to contact you, visit your church website, or learn more from an outreach site.

It is possible print your own onto cardstock, if you have a good option for accurate cutting. However there are many online companies that enable you to choose ready-made backgrounds, and edit the text (even add your own graphics) online, using draggable resizable text-boxes that you may be familiar with from desktop publishing programs such as Publisher or Serif. They can be very cheap – even under 10 dollars/euros/pounds for 250.

Churches can print contact cards in bulk for members to use. You can design your own personal address card with recommendations for outreach sites you feel are appropriate, and/or your church website.

Read more:

• Tips for using Vistaprint and other online design systems
• Using contact cards – ideas and strategies
• Yvon Prehn offers e-books on card design, and other church communication ministry ideas including Halloween and Mother’s Day.

Please share your stories of positive outcomes resulting from contact cards, using ‘leave a comment’ option below.

Frank Johnson recommends Kent Shaffer’s video about search engine optimization for church websites.

Communicate Jesus blog points out the potential of Wordle to create ‘word clouds’, and suggests that using Wordle to create a word cloud from your church website “will be helpful in understanding how ‘outsider friendly’ your site is, what takes prominence, and whether the content on your website accurately reflects what you would like to be communicating.”

Our church website promotion self-assessment tool provides a free evaluation report on how to make sites more outsider-friendly as well as suggesting search engine optimization techniques. Please could you link to this page from any website or blog.

What happens if you google on John 3:16? Frank Johnson has blogged on the huge lack of appropriate search results, because outreach sites have not optimized any pages for such a search, or created specific landing pages for that search phrase.

Read more