In my last entry I shared about the lagging trend of churches and ministries to enter into social media. Today on the Catalyst blog I found a video they posted from Collide Magazine that shared this video yesterday on twitter.
By simply sharing staggering stats on shocking growing trends of user growth in social media it communicates the revolution happening globally beyond what I would have even dreamed is actually happening right now. I'm guessing for many of my readers this will also come as some what of a shock as I don't have a large following of techies on my blog.
How is your church or ministry plugging into social media?
Having now converted DLM's website over to being a social media ministry wired site and taking time to learn how these technologies work my eyes have been opened up to a huge door for ministry unlike any I've ever seen before. While it is easy for governments to police TV, Radio and Newspaper it is much harder to police the internet on social media sites. The cost is considerable and the adjustments hard for missionaries to physically go to other countries, but the door into those countries through social media is cheap and will be difficult to be monitored and controlled. Of course interaction with people face to face is far more personal and in all honestly likely far more effective, but the influence of social media and the opportunities in social media ministry are by sheer numbers simply staggering.
DLM now has a fully interactive website designed to make interaction as easy as possible for people and while relatively still a new active online presence it is likely to grow because of user input and interaction far beyond what it would without those functions. Social media is from all signs not a trend and expected to become more of a requirement and less optional for a ministry or church.
The foreseen concern of ministries and churches will likely be losing control of their image and reputation from social media hecklers. Having protected it for decades or more the social media revolution is going to be unlike any era they have gone through before, but it is none the less one that needs to be approached proactively and not reactively.
From past experiences in larger ministry and church organizations the concern their leaders will have likely to cause hesitation in implementing functions for interaction with social media is the loss of control. Social media changes the format of most ministries and churches from being input to the masses from a few to input from many more and less controllable sources to the masses. The good thing is in having an official social media presence your leadership can take a proactive stance to producing content of which others react to so you are not put in a reactive stance with social media.
Either way churches and ministries will have a reduction in the ability to control what people say about them with social media. Christian organizations and churches compared to other types of sites also tend to attract more hecklers who will lash out at them, but in also moving your ministry or church base online with you the negative effects of hecklers can be offset. Your church's marketing from phonebooks, postcards, radio or TV ads tend to have a small impact on the impression people have about your church or ministry, but if the come to a social media site with hundreds or thousands of people discussing and sharing about their experiences about your organization you will have created a powerful tool to reach others.
Whatever you do, the risk your church or ministry runs in ignoring this trend of social media and trying to maintain 100% control of what is put on your official website will make it easier for a social media hub to pop up on another site of which you have zero control over.
You must ask yourself as a church and or ministry do you want some control over your social media presence or zero control? The days of 100% control are ending with the revolution of social media on the internet and it is better to be proactive in your ministry approach than reactive.
If your organization is well established and has a growing influence I would suggest you find a volunteer who you trust from your church or ministry with a strong social media IQ to head up the development, implementation and management of your social media as soon as possible. If you have no one then consider hiring someone for a part time or full time position or hire a consultant to aid your organization with social media development. While I have limited time for consulting on new projects I will consider new projects for client's whose missions are in align to DLM's lifemap model.
Also the Wall Street Journal has published an article that I found on the Catalyst blog entry with similar conclusions from this video.
Wow that is a powerful video.