Jenny and I have been diving into Facebook, Twitter and Blogger trying to figure out the best ways for churches to use them, along with their OutRighteous website to connect with people. Here are two of the ideas that crossed our minds.
- Automated Site Update Announcements
- Facebook Photo Album Integration
Automated Site Update Announcements
So you just went into OutRighteous Site Manager and added a whole new section to your website dedicated to the new children's ministry at your church. How do you let people know it's been added?
If you're the pastor you can mention it during your next sermon, add it to the newsletter or maybe pop a link to it up on the homepage of your website. Chances are if you do all three you'll get folks to visit the new section to learn about your new ministry.
Another method of getting the word out is to send Twitter announcements. Twitter users who 'follow' your church will get text messages, emails, etc. informing them of the new addition. Since they reach them digitally, it's very convenient for them to just click on the link in the announcement to get right to the website.
Through OutRighteous Site Manager we're considering adding a Facebook and Twitter notification system. When you save a page, upload a new sermon, add a photo gallery or do anything else of interest to your website you'd be asked to enter a notification message (don't worry, you'll be able to easily turn it off if you don't want to be constantly reminded). If you enter a message it will be posted to your Facebook Wall, or sent to your Twitter account to be 'tweeted', or both.
We think this will be a good way to keep your congregation informed and actively using your website and your social networking outreaches.
Facebook Public Album Integration
You can already create a photo gallery in OutRighteous Site Manager and pop them up on your website with ease. One thing you can't do is have your congregation easily post photos to the gallery.
Facebook has a great tool that enables people to collaboratively create a photo album. Let's say you have a big event and you notice a bunch of people taking photos with their digital cameras. When you mention the event during the next service offer up the suggestion that anyone who took pictures head over to the your church website to share them with the rest of the church. Guide them to the page where you want to collect the photos and display the album, and link off to your church Facebook page from there with instructions to add to the photo gallery for the event.
It's great that the album is now up on Facebook and being filled up with pictures by your congregation, but you generally direct newcomers to your church website and would want them to see the album show up there as well. This is where the OutRighteous Site Manager integration comes in. We're planning to add a global snippet, similar to the gallery snippet, that will tie right into one of your Facebook Photo Album's. You'd edit a page, pop in the snippet, type in the name of the Photo Album on Facebook and it would automatically pull in all of the photos from that album right into your website.
