Online Outposts

Online outposts are key to a successful social media strategy. Outposts (also known as satellites or embassies) are places on the web where you maintain a presence beyond your home base, i.e., your own website, blog, or online community.

Some of the most notable outposts are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Flickr, Ning, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Posterous, Tumblr, FriendFeed, online forums, and even the comment sections of other blogs.

Outposts are great places to grow your ministry’s online presence, and build trust, credibility, and relationships. They can generate ideas, traffic, resources, partnerships, and community. Outposts are ideal locations to engage and interact with persons who might not know of, or visit your home base. 

At outposts you can add content, test ideas, and set up listening posts (e.g., using Twitter Search) to harvest insights. You can use these insights to inform ministry decisions and actions, as well as, share with your home base. Just as your home base feeds your outposts, outposts can also feed your home base!

Maintaining a presence at online outposts can drive traffic back to your home base. It can also build the influence of your ministry online. Activity at outposts can even take on a life of its own where community can emerge outside of your home base.

Outposts are different things to different people. From a ministry perspective, they can be seen as missionary fields on which to engage in Kingdom building!

(Many thanks to Chris Brogan at ChrisBrogan.com, Darren Rowse at Problogger.net, and Cody McKibben at Socialmediamarketing.com for some of the ideas used in this post.)

Until next time, remember, you can do all things thru Christ Jesus!

God Bless,

Kenneth Lillard

Social Media and Christian Community

In “Using the Machine”, blogger Calvin Park* relates a story that reveals some of the amazing possibilities that social media and Web 2.0 technologies can provide a local church community.

One Sunday, the pastor of a local church preached a sermon from the book of James about helping widows and orphans. Near the end of the sermon, the pastor recommended an excellent book on the subject.

The next day, John, a congregant, discussed the sermon with his wife but couldn’t remember the title of the recommended book. So, he logged on to  LibraryThing, where the church had a group, and located the book. John read several reviews and posted them to his Delicious account where other members could read them.

John then visited the church’s website and downloaded a checklist of things his daughter needed for the youth ministry’s annual summer camp. He left a comment on the page recommending the camp to other parents.

A few days later, the church’s youth ministry volunteered at a local orphanage. Some of the volunteers took pictures as they talked and played with the orphans, who really enjoyed the attention!

Some youth volunteers uploaded pictures to their Flickr account and tagged them “orphanage trip” and “fun times”.  Word spread quickly through MySpace, blogs, and other social media platforms about the trip. Other church members were able to read about the trip and see the photos.

The next day a church elder uploaded a video to YouTube commending the volunteers on bringing the pastor’s sermon to life by putting it into practice at the orphanage. The elder confessed he, himself, needed to do more to assist widows and orphans. The youth ministry invited him to accompany them on their next trip.

The pastor realized that his sermon of the previous Sunday hadn’t just lasted for two hours. The church community had stayed connected, active, and engaged the entire week! Digital social media can, indeed, be a powerful tool in helping to build Christian community!

How is your church using social media to build community?

*”Using the Machine”, Calvin Park, Voices of the Virtual World

Until next time, remember, you can do all things thru Christ Jesus!

God Bless,

Kenneth Lillard

Social Media 101 – Flickr

This is one in a series of articles on understanding the basics of social media and social networking.  The church certainly cannot afford to sleep on these social media tools if it is to thrive creatively in the 21st century.

Flickr is an image and video hosting website, as well as an online user community. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photos, Flickr is widely used by blog writers to host images that they embed in their blogs and other social media.  As of October 2009, it claims to host more than 4 billion images. Among other things, users of Flickr can edit, tag, and comment on images.

For more on Flickr see

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLo4355l6QE

To get more of a flavor for what Flickr is all about check out the Flickr blog  http://blog.flickr.net/en

Remember, you can do all things through Christ Jesus!

God Bless,

Kenneth Lillard