How The Nines Online Christian Leadership Conference Dominated Twitter on 9/9/09 With Over 5,000 In The First Hour

What that is most likely in return doing is drawing in a huge surge of free untargeted traffic on the conference from people all over the world not just outside of Christian leadership, but projecting the conference into world media. Given those speaking not only a platform to speak to other Christian leaders, but to speak to world leaders interested in learning how they were able to do this through Twitter. While the majority of them may not be followers of Christ - they will in the process of checking this out be hearing leaders speak on their passion in serving Christ to reach others. That may end up producing fruit for this conference with large scale evangelism and or sowing in that process and that may or may not have been an intention of the leaders who organized it.

The planners behind this with the @CatalystLeader and @leadnet networks have done what few (if any) have been able to do in any ministry circles as far as I know in successfully tapping into the power of social networking and reaching a huge audience with some what limited resources on a scale this big and this fast. 

Now it's true both of those networks have fairly large established networks of followers and supporters already from multiple efforts and years of ministry events. However, in the past 2 weeks they added over 5,000 online registrants of Christian leaders through what I am guessing was largely the use of Twitter and social media. That count was more than 24 hours away from the launch of the conference this morning so with all the buzz about The Nines on twitter today I'm guessing the amount of traffic they will generate to their website with a live video feed all day long that hosts 9 minute talks from Christian leaders is going to be several times over the last count of 8,500 people.

The great thing with Twitter is even a newbie like me can plug in and connect with it. While I joined Twitter many months ago I have only started getting active in the last month and have just under 500 people following me. I have also learned a lot and gained a lot of insight from those I am following and by simply putting myself out there. I have met new people with similar interests and it's been an enjoyable and fairly simple process.

Developing leaders and visionaries in DLM through the process of the restoration of the heart and the renewal of the mind through the life map model with the hope of empowering vision in people's walk with God is my focus in ministry. Part of being an effective person of vision is being able to communicate that to others and you must get your message to them to do that.

What has been of particular interest to me in watching The Nines is seeing how they have used Twitter to reach so many and with limited resources. What is going to be of interest of many Christian (and non-Christian) leaders is in seeing how The Nines this morning got on the top of Twitter's buzz list. Leaders and organizations in learning how they can likely replicate the processes through viral tweeting within their peer groups in their area of passion can signigicantly benefit from Twitter.

If you have the desire to take your ministry or organization's message to the masses on Twitter by getting it on the Twitter Buzz list this is how I would go about doing it:

First, you need a targeted and passionate base group of peers and supporters on Twitter who are active and use it frequently. I suggest doing what I did to form my base following of just under 500 Christian leaders in the past 30 days. You will need far more than just 500 followers though to do this (Catalyst alone has over 10,000). Find other leaders in your subject or area of focus and then follow their followers. Start with following a 100 or so and then many of them will start to follow you back after looking at your twitter bio and seeing your common interest. It will take some time, but you can grow your following by just staying active on Twitter and seeking to find and follow others with similar passions.

Here are a few tips for new twitter users to make the process faster and easier. First, make sure you have a picture of yourself or organization posted on your twitter profile. It is best to make the profile for you personally and not your organization. Also use your name and put a link to your blog, facebook, etc. and then share a little about your passion or your interests. 

Then when people click on your profile if it is one for you personally more people will tend to follow you back. What you must realize is Twitter is not going to work as well for you if you make your profile and your focus about promoting your organization or ministry. It is called social media because you are to be social (don't self promote alone) and that's what works the best and your passion or organization will in time gain followers and traffic from your personal twitter page. 

You want to follow about the same number of people who are following you although at first you are going to be following more because you are starting new on Twitter. If you follow more people than who follow you out of proportion then you will find fewer people follow you back.

Once you build up your follower base stay active and get to know others by giving feedback and interacting with your followers. As you grow your follower base you will get closer to being able to launch an event like The Nines. 

Then of course you need a live event to promote and sponsor for which to start the buzz around it on Twitter and it needs to be something people will rally around and get excited to attend online. Again, you will need to use live media or at least have your event done as a launched and limited time event. You want to drive the thousands of people to it at once and create a buzz around it and that's what gets people tweeting about your event on Twitter.

You want to build the anticipation for your event weeks in advance and once you have a large following on Twitter you can over time share bits about your planned event to do this.

I suggest having multiple people who give input in your live event and or who are on it because this will add more excitement to the event. The Nines brought in multiple Christian pastors and leaders and made it in 9 minute segments so its a low commitment level for people to tune in for just a 9 minute segment if that's all they can do. 

In a online event you want to build the excitement and make it easy for people to plug in and yet keep the commitment level to a minimum because online people don't stay in one place very long. This wasn't done to be like a regular conference or with powerful moving speeches, but was more of a spread the word on the movements and of course the sponsoring networks will benefit from hosting this event. It has been a well executed plan and very entertaining.

The 9 minute talks is genius because it's enough time for someone to give a good message and yet brief enough that people are going to logon because it's a short time commitment. Most likely though many people will stay on for more than just one speaker and or come back through out the day. 

The organizers also in registering people for this were able to add a lot of targeted people to their lists and I suggest you do the same in having people register for your event. Make it free, but have a simple form to capture a name, address and email list. This way you can continue to communicate your organization's vision to those who attended after the event is over.

Now how to come up with an event to create the buzz on Twitter.

What ever your cause or focus is you need something that isn't targeted on just one mirco niche or you won't draw a lot of people to it or get this kind of buzz on Twitter. The live page for the event The Nines had built in twitter feed and the ability for people to submit it with the #thenines hash tag automatically added to them it appears from what I have understood from their live page thus far. This is part of how they had over 5,000 tweets with that has in their first hour on Twitter from what I can tell and it was well designed.

You may not be able to replicate an event with speakers on leadership like this, but you can find many themes for your own live event. You could host a day long musical festival with different bands and guest speakers. 

The time commitment to your viewers is then small as they can come for one song or two and yet if you have dozens of bands and types of bands you will appeal to a wide range of people.

If you have everyone register you capture their name, email and address and could simply have a survey with the registration form on their interests within your focus. Let's say your organization raises money for orphans, you could then have the bands playing throughout the day and a registration form with a few questions about orphans so you can get an idea of what your audience knows, thinks and believes regarding orphans. 

Then during the event have a few speakers in between and or people who have sponsored orphans through your organization share about their experience and or the stories of those impacted by your organization. Simply having a button for people to click and give while watching the bands and or speakers in having drawn a live audience for the day with tens of thousands of people could be your method or goal.

If you are on Twitter you can follow me @epicwalk.