1. SO, WHAT
EXACTLY IS
SOCIAL MEDIA?
AN INTRODUCTION TO TWITTER,
FACEBOOK, BLOGGING AND MORE.
DR BEX LEWIS
RESEARCH FELLOW, CODEC, DURHAM
UNIVERSITY; SOCIAL MEDIA CONSULTANT,
DIGITAL FINGERPRINT
5. LOVE THY
NEIGHBOUR?
What does it mean to „love your neighbour‟ in a
world in which a „friend‟ might as easily be the
kid from down the street you grew up with as a
woman in Botswana whom you‟ve never seen
in person and only know in the context of
Facebook status updates, photos, and notes?
… How can we negotiate spiritual interaction in
these contexts without losing sight of basic
elements of Christian faith expressed in
traditional embodied and geographically
located practices of prayer, worship, and
compassion towards others?
Tweet if You Heart Jesus, p.xiv
20. TWITTER
SPOKESPERSON:
Twitter brings you closer to the
things you are passionate about
- and for millions of people
across the globe that is faith.
http://news.sky.com/story/102280
0/senior-bishops-to-tweet-
christmas-sermons
22. WHAT‟S IT GOOD FOR?
• New connections through shared
interests
• Building your “brand”
• Pre/During/Post Event Conversations
• Breaking news
• Asking questions
• Sharing pithy statements/quotes
• Being “polemical”
Image Credit: Stockfresh
43. FACEBOOK FUNCTIONS
IN MINISTRY?
Encourage Community
• Whole (life) Church
• Groups (e.g. 20s30s)
Give others insights into „church life‟
e.g. photo sharing
Offer pastoral care
• *Youth: PM‟s, CC parents/another
leader in
Advertise Events
54. PREACHING
How might our
approach to
preaching change
if we understand
that we have two
audiences – the
faithful who sit
close to us and a
broader public,
listening-in from a
distance?
Image Credit: SXC.Hu
56. BLOG
CHARACTERISTICS?
• A reverse diary (most recent entry first)
• A publically accessible personal journal
• Reflections, comments and hyperlinks
• Commentary/news on a particular subject
• Text/Image/Links including media
• Interactive, especially comments
• Potentially informal tone
57. IDEAS FOR CONTENT?
“See what we‟ve been up to”
Thoughts & Reflections
Reviews (Books, films, websites, etc)
Challenging ideas for debate
Interviews (Text, Audio, Video)
„Best Of‟ Content
„How-to‟ Posts
10 things you can…
Guest Posts
Image credit: RGBStock
Quick exercise- hello to each other – 30 seconds each way … Emphasize this is because Social Media = all about RELATIONSHIPS, find connection points – essentially what we do on Twitter (my favourite social media tool) …
Commonality – finding a starting point & getting to know each other – essential building blocks of any evangelism, etc… with a strong focus on LISTENING! You’re looking to provide information, engage in dialogue, listen to your audience … build a community who will be interested in the other things that you do .. Remember the word SOCIAL rather than the word MEDIA…
Clearly, what you’re here for today – same as if you were going to work in another country… get to understand the culture…
Apologise to those of you who may already have seen this … seem to produce a new one each year, and last year it was June, but I think it helps set the scene really well as to why this online space is SO important to engage with! (2-3 minutes)
Is this your experience?
Qualman – 4 mins (business focused, but worth thinking about…)
DISCUSS briefly – 60 seconds – then feed in… Right, so we’re going to see what else we can do with this…
Within the church we need to think about how we engage more - this is the model many churches have now… (as a educational developer, I note that many teachers do this too….)
Can we move towards something more like this – what does this mean for church leaders, especially you as youth leaders…?
Ever seen this? Quite old now (last year!), but quite helpful in demonstrating the purpose of different spaces online and which aspects you may emphasise.. E.g. on Twitter looking to build relationships around common interests, whereas Facebook to develop those you already have – will change the kind of things that you can say… We’ll come back to this after the break!
Online/offline = REAL – not the same, but real!
Always remember that there is a human being at the other end of the keyboard - each uniquely created by God… and as is noted by many communicators is not what you’ve said, but what others have ‘heard’ … not everyone receives the message that you send in the same way .. And one message definitely doesn’t fit all… we’re in the world of what is described as “the long tail”, where rather than being able to send out a mass message, we have to have more concern with individuals (which I always hope we as Christians do anyway, but…. ) – Google searches for ‘niches’ (small keywords/multiple entry points, etc.) So…
Scary – so many, or encouraging as you clearly can’t use them all, so think about what you need to do, and which tools might fit that…
Did a brief overview … likely to have another look in the new year….
Lots of people have this response to Twitter, but it’s got a growing user base … a couple of years ago had about 100 million active users, now nearly 300 million… http://www.landingnet.co.uk/blog/the-truth-about-all-this-twitter-ing-twoddle/
Celebrity culture – be aware that power structures from “offline” (note online/offline) also work online – e.g. you’ll trust something from the BBC more than from someone’s blog… so need to build up credibility…
Straightforward…
Thinking through how things have changed – we don’t PUSH the message at people – we seek to be intriguing and draw them in…
Piggyback followers, etc.
e.g. creative use…
e.g. creative use – how built offline story around it, then went back online
Phil… summarised entire Bible in around 9000 characters… makes you think about what it’s really about. Note also, many Bible verses = v tweetable…
More humourous – but makes such a nice change from “dour” impression of Christians
Explain send one small message and cascades out .. Message gets bigger with each RT – I have 5k followers, someone with 30k RTs – they are saying message is worth listening to .. And all their audience may see it too.
ModeratedRetweet (esp to make it shorter), and Hat-Tip … all about collaboration, acknowledging the source, etc…
Who is going to do this? When aka “how often” (twice a month = lost)? What content is worth sharing – each tweet doesn’t need to be a mini “War & Peace” but also let’s not have too many breakfast tweets…
Great tool (others might use Tweetdeck) – allows you to preset tweets, across accounts – free up to 5 accounts!
Another worksheet…
Here’s some help…
Don’t forget that it’s all PUBLIC! Original image sxc.hu
What about Facebook … incredibly busy site .. Noting that biggest number of new signups in past year have been Grandmother’s wanting to look at grandkid’s photos…
It’s not uncommon for a pastor to live in an entirely different neighborhood or community than the people in their church. So, if there’s little opportunity for face-to-face interaction throughout the week, it’s only natural for pastor(al team) to find ways to immerse themselves in the online communities that their congregation is spending so much time in. Zuckerberg – community
Networks of networks
Public info
How much can we find out about people – how many people can we reach – not the hugest of numbers, but think compared to average congregation… is a bit of a game of numbers..
3 types of groups .. Open, closed, private… more sharing ..
Many of us are not ‘preachers’ – but we may have those who we think want to listen to us, but also our other friends…
Look at other people’s blogs – what do you like/not like about them – incorporate that into your own thinking.. Couple of e.g.s that I love…
3:41!! Probably would have worked better at 30 seconds …
Interesting – viewing numbers – lots re weddings (always a good touchpoint for the church), from Alan Wilson – blogging bishop/celeb … much smaller/more typical numbers for other videos…
If you want to see what people have enjoyed in the past year … what will people watch?! Yes,… cats… no we’re not going to look!! Think about what YOU like to share… funny/vulnerable – make something you’d enjoy watching (like buying art!)
1:47 – what puts this kind of smile on a child’s face – and would you guess the brand before the end if you didn’t already know?
Worksheet – we can work through this at the end if time… but it’s fairly straightforward … and thinking about WHAT you put on a video is more important in many ways…
.. And this ties into an increasingly ‘visual turn’ online – particularly with the advent of Pinterest which gained popularity at the beginning of 2012 – with people sharing inspiring pictures (and the picture links to the website behind it).
What is Foursquare? Use it for e.g. setting up a trail for people to follow…
Social Media shouldn’t be an add-on, but should be considered in everything else that you’re doing… put links to the pages/Twitter name, etc. in church notice sheets, and publicity, etc…
If you are working for an organisation – e.g. a church – ensure that people can feel ‘free’ to go ahead and represent you …not having
… and don’t forget the cat.
Remember what we said about importance of person to person … our #digidisciple(s) get far more response from personal shares than organisational shares… but if you can get the original share from an organisational page, etc…
Really important to be aware of…!!
Takeaway to think about… http://kezi.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/fruit-of-the-spirit.jpg
Couple of Bible verses that are the ‘Social Media Version’ to get you thinking… This is something we’ve done a couple of times with Big Bible – love to see more – great way to get people to engage with the Bible – think about how to “change” the words to apply in the digital age…
This was kinda summed up at a recent conference…
Prayers appreciated as this is due 9th July (revised deadline!) … covers a lot of digital culture, designed to take the fear out of using it – seen as the biggest sticking point for most… so useful for all, but with particular focus on those aspects that affect kids
Final word – remember – there is always a human being at the other end of the keyboard… think before you type…Questions?