kylegilbert

We’ve seen our church’s engagement on Facebook go from 200 to nearly 3,000 individuals over the past two years.  Here are a few tips that I’ve  learned along the way:

1. If you’re still using a group for your church or organization, don’t wait another day to make the move to a Facebook Page.

There are tons of benefits of pages over groups.  My favorite benefit is that when you post to your organization’s wall, that post will show up in the new feed of the people who like your page.  My second favorite thing (and this is a new feature of the updated Facebook pages) is that as an administrator, you can receive all new Wall posts via email.  This is especially helpful if you maintain multiple pages.  These email updates will keep your Facebook spaces from being polluted by spam wall posts for Russian brides and mail-in pharmaceuticals, and it will also help you to respond to to people in a timely fashion.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing automatic about making the change from a Facebook Group to a Facebook Page, but it’s fairly painless.  Set up a new Facebook Page and then message all the people in your existing group to let them know that you’re making the switch.  Make sure you provide a link to the new page, and let them know that you’ll be shutting down the old group in a certain number of days (a week seems to work nicely).

2. Give the responsibility to the right person.

While you’ll probably wan’t to hand off your Facebook admin rights to someone who is technically savvy, make sure that their love for people exceeds their ability to write code or navigate the internet.  Responding to people’s questions and concerns in a public setting requires tenderness, compassion, and discernment.  Pick someone who will represent your church well.

3. Make sure that your updates are interesting and engaging.

If you can, post videos and include photography. Posting short highlights from past weekend messages and upcoming events has worked very well for us (I would guess that 75% or more of our wall posts include graphics or video).  None of these things require new video footage – we just re-purpose existing video.

Also, when you post content, spend some time crafting the words.  There are many ways to say the same thing, so try to craft your phrases in a way that they elicit curiosity and spark interest.  This takes practice, but even a little effort will take you a long way.

Note: If you find yourself posting the same wrote message over and over again, or if you only post times changes and cancellations, you’re on the wrong track.  Always ask yourself, “Is this lame?” before you post something to your church’s Facebook Wall.  If the answer is yes very often, it’s time to change your strategy.

4. Don’t mess with your logo.

While you may be tempted to think it would be good to update your Facebook Page profile image to reflect a current sermon series or upcoming event, I would highly suggest that you reserve the profile image only for your church’s logo/brand.  Sermon series graphics are great, but post them to your wall instead.

5. Be strategic about your communications hub.

While Facebook is an excellent tool, I think it’s a good strategy to keep your church website, not Facebook, at the center of your communications. For Faith Promise, we’re deliberate to keep our website and blog at the core of our communications.  Facebook is one of the many tools we use to engage the congregation and open up dialog. (For some of the other options, check out our “Updates” page.)

What about you? What features make a Facebook Page compelling?  What can we do to better engage our congregation through Facebook?

Not sure how long I would survive riding one of these things, but the acceleration is amazing.

Late last week we rolled out a brand new look to the website and blog of Dr. Chris Stephens, my Senior Pastor.  I felt that it was time to simplify the navigation of the site, bring the blog to the forefront, and implement more of a minimalistic design.

The design was created by Ryan Myers at uberdm.com, who also did the design work for the 2011 LIT Conference site.  From his designs, I built out the site using WordPress.

I’m very pleased with the final result.  You can check it out here.

I’m pretty much a productivity junkie, but until recently, I’ve never come across a to-do app that was helpful, simple, and awesome enough to have on my home screen.  That has changed with Wunderlist.

It’s not often that I post about apps that blow me away, but the aesthetics and interface on this app make me want to share it with others.  It’s packed with features, but check out some of my favorites:

• You can make updates and changes on the Mac or PC app.
• The mobile version is available for iPhone, iPad, and now Android.
• They’re nearly finished with the development of a webapp.
• And my favorite feature: You can share lists with other users, making it very helpful for a team to stay on the same page with regard to priorities and project lists.

Oh, and it’s free.  Yeah.

Now, I’m not going to lie to you – it’s new, and it’s still a little buggy.  But even still, it’s an awesome app.

OK.  Enough talk.  Go get the app now, let me know you did, and get some stuff done.

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UPDATE: The Wunderlist web app was launched just a few hours after I posted this.

One of my favorite things about my job is getting to watch graphics come together for upcoming sermon series.  As we finalize designs and begin to implement them in print and on the website, my excitement about the series builds, and I begin to imagine the impact that those weekends will make in people’s lives are changed through their encounter with Jesus.

Over the past few days, we’ve finalized a couple of new graphics, and I wanted to share them here:

I’m pretty sure the graphic above is the first graphic I’ve ever personally created for a sermon series.  I used a photograph of a typewriter and drew it out digitally from there.

Our Graphic Designer, Heather Burson, creates 95% of the graphics around Faith Promise, and as usual, she knocked it out of the park with the graphic above.

Since my kids are really into drawing, and because we still had a wall undecorated in our bonus room, I decided it would be fun to put up a big cork board wall.

We purchased the cork board at a hobby store, and cut it to fit the space.  The biggest challenge was figuring out the best way to affix the pieces to the wall.  Rather than using an adhesive, I opted for using a pneumatic brad gun.  Around six brads in each section seemed to hold it well, and if we ever need to take it down, we’ll be able to do that without having major damage to the wall.

Installation was quick, and it gives the kids a large area where they can display their work.

If you’ve read my blog for very long, you may remember me mentioning my friend Brad Roberts.  Brad has volunteered a ton of time at Faith Promise Church, and together we’ve built our church website and the Internet Campus.  Brad is an amazing website developer and a fantastic friend.

You might not know it, but he’s a part owner of a company called AgentBlaze, and he builds websites for real estate agents.

I did a little bit of contract work for Brad for several months last year – helping as a consultant and project manager as Brad built out the new version of his product, and it’s amazing.  Really.  I’ve seen some terrible real estate websites (both the design and usability), and AgentBlaze is making huge headway to revolutionize the real estate industry – starting in Knoxville and Nashville.

They just released their new product, and if you’re a real estate professional in the Knoxville or Nashville area, do your customers a favor, and check it out.  The best part: you can try it out free for 30 days to see what you think.

Check it out here

Disclaimer: I’m not currently doing contract work for AgentBlaze, and I’m not being paid for this post (in fact, Brad doesn’t even know I’m writing this).  I just believe this product will be a breath of fresh air for many in real estate industry who are looking for something new.

In case you wondered what I was doing in E. Asia last week:

Special thanks to Heather Burson for the video and the title.

For a few weeks, my daughter and I have talked about making a tree house for some of her toys.  This weekend we decided to go for it.

Total material cost was about $20.

This was a fun project, and I anticipate building additional elements over the next few months.