Join me on Twitter!
Twitter is this amazing little web site that is a conversational “one to many” tool. It allows an element of networking with brief messages. Anyways, it would be awesome to build a network of young leaders and youth ministers who could ask a question or have a quick conversation through this great tool.
So, if that sounds like something you would like to connect to, my twitter is at twitter.com/tonysteward, click to add me!
Who Are These Guys Yackpack
Yackpack.com rocks, if you haven’t checked it out yet, well, you should. But moving in that spirit, we are going to “try” a YackPack group instead of a forum. So, if you want to be in our group send me your email and I will send you an invite!
Rock on!
Top 5 Web2 Sites for Ministry
- Highrise: This Contact Relationship Management tool has a free version that will work for most ministries, and is very flexible for your preference of organizing people. With reminders, tasks, and tagging – as soon as you start using it you will realize the power it gives you to care and pastor the people and leaders around you.
- WordPress.org: As easy as it is to use a hosted blog service (blogger or Wordpress.com), Wordpress.org’s free blogging platform will give you a ministry website and blog that is very flexible and useful. With loads of helpful plugins from podPress for podcasting to SEO tools (Search Engine Optimization) that help your blog show up in search results – this is a no brainer.
- Google Analytics: Google’s free web statistics tracking site is the best bar none. And it is the best price of all, free!
- Meetup.com: Social Networking is everywhere, but sites like MySpace and even Facebook are just time sinks that require you to always be online to connect. Meetup.com is a social networking site totally focused on getting you offline to “meetup”. If your ministry wants to enter the public square in social networking, but in a way that helps people actually connect to you, this is the tool to use!
- Google Reader: as a pastor you need to keep up on world events, local events, and anything else you can get your hands on to be informed, to get illustrations, etc. Google Reader helps you subscribe and share the articles you read through RSS feed subscriptions from blogs, websites, etc. Having this database of information all sent to you, instead of having to go to all the different websites out there is a time saver. There are even sites like icerocket.com that will give you RSS feeds for searches you make, so you can stay apprised on issues relevant to your ministry.
Audio “one to many” tool: YackPack
In “The Huckleberry Sin Pre-Episode #4” I brought up an audio one to many tool that could be used in stead of a podcast. The name of that service is YackPack. I was sceptical of it at first, thinking it was probably just another “wanna be” web service in the ever growing land of Web 2.0 web sites.
But YackPack is not only unique, I can see it being tremendously useful in situations where you need to communicate to a group or community on the fly, with audio. Now the context that I am most familiar with when it comes to smaller communities are youth ministries between 15 and 100 students. In that context there are a number of ways that YackPack could be used:
- To communicate to Parents (events, updates, details of events and activities, etc.)
- To communicate to your Volunteer team
- To communicate to your student leaders, or groups of students
Actually, most of the ideas that Josh and I had on the podcast. But here is the only catch, but it is a biggie. With podcasts, all people have to do is click on a link and subscribe through iTunes - which many of them already use and have. There is no “new” adoption of a new technology. And with YackPack anyone who is going to connect to the service has to be signed up to use YackPack. There are ways to embed “running conversations” with some YackPack features that might work well. But the hurdle of having people adopt a new tool, when they aren’t asking for one, usually ends in it never happening.
Anyways, I mentioned it on the podcast, and I am using YackPack in a couple of ways and wanted to share!
[Oh and the reason why audio communication should appeal to most guys in ministry is because they are primarily verbal communicators!]
Site Highlight:. FeedBurner
If you have ever had to explain what an RSS feed is to a person in your church, then you know that a lot of people don’t know WHAT they are, WHY they are helpful, and HOW to read/subscribe to them. Now, as time goes on and they start to realize the best part about RSS feeds is that you are in control of whether or not you receive them, the more they will like them.
Until then we have FeedBurner to the rescue. FeedBurner is a site that can help your (in their words) Analyze, Optimize and Publicize your RSS feeds. For a free service it has an unbelievable amount of enhancements that it offers you and your feeds, but there is one in particular that we are looking at today.
RSS to Email! As painful as it would be for me to think about taking the beauty of an RSS feed and retro fitting it into an Email, it is actually one of the most powerful features of the service. Here is why:
- Most people in a church are already familiar with email, and would prefer to receive your articles this way.
- FeedBurner provides you with a nice form and/or link to place on your blog or site for people to put their email addresses into and subscribe. It looks professional, and is super easy (just copy and paste).
- FeedBurner keeps track of the database of emails that have been submitted, meaning you don’t have to! You don’t have to keep track or maintenance anything. If people want to opt out, FeedBurner takes care of it. You didn’t get into ministry to figure out servers and email lists, and now you don’t have to!
- FeedBurner doesn’t end up in spam! Mass Email systems and getting to people’s Inboxes is a whole Industry, you don’t have time to learn it, or even care. But with FeedBurner, all the emails are sent from their servers, and are optimized to make it to people’s “inbox”.
- The titles in the email link back to your blog or site, so if people want to read more or comment they can.
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