Yesterday, my friend Rob Thomas of Igniter Video posted this video on Facebook. I checked it out and was blown away. This moves me on so many levels. From the old, old story told in new, relevant, contemporary ways to the creativity, innovation and hard work that went into creating something like this. I’m absolutely amazed and encourage you to purchase it HERE and use it at your church this Christmas season. You can check it out below:
My friend downunder, Steve Fogg, inspired this blog post or at least encouraged me to write about it for my readers. When I create a secret shopper report for churches, the first thing I report on is the church’s online strategy and the first thing I look for is the church’s Facebook presence and specifically is they have a custom landing page.
Why is this important? To put it simply: If you’re trying to reach people, Facebook is your mission field. Facebook just passed 500 million users and if it was a country it would be the third largest in the world! By the way, if we’re not already friends on Facebook, we should be. Add me HERE.
Instead of giving you a step by step ‘how to’ on this post, below are some links which others have used as a tour guide to getting it done and also getting started on Facebook. Any and all of these can more than help you.
Darren Rowse from Problogger gives the clearest step by step instructions for creating a Facebook landing page here.
Brandon Knight provides an another excellent step by step guide.
DesignM.AG shows who they consider the best landing pages on Facebook are.
Smashing Magazine gives some insight and help here.
If your church isn’t on Facebook yet. Get on. ChurchCrunch provides 4 tips to help you get started.
Here are some great Facebook landing pages:
Soul City Church – this Facebook landing page was recognized by SmashingMagazine.com
Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit
I created one for my secret shopper company HERE. If you’re not a member of the page, please join for special tips, insights and resources for your church.
Have you created any custom functionality in Facebook? How would you rate your church’s Facebook presence? Also, do you have some other awesome church Facebook landing pages that I need to know about and list? Share!
The following is a guest blog from Vineet Kothari. Vineet is the CEO at MyCorporateLogo.com, which provides custom logo design and website designs and offers affordable business logo design prices. Vineet graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and has worked in the digital design industry since 2005.
Branding your business is all about telling people who you are and what you do. A business doesn’t become successful unless it is noticed by others. You need to stand out from the crowd and leave your competitors behind. For this you have to develop a unique and original online brand. A brand should reflect the reliability, professionalism and quality of the company and its products or services.
These days there are a multitude of ways in which companies can practice Online Branding – Corporate Websites, Banner Advertisements, Articles, Blogs, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube etc. have all been used at one time or other to further the awareness of brands on the web.
Here are a few tips for online branding to make your business successful.
Your website should actually spell out what your brand stands for. When a visitor views your website he should get to know what your business is all about. Many companies crowd their web pages with unnecessary graphics and taglines without defining the objectives of the business.
Write about the history of your business and its purpose. Provide a detailed account of your products on the web to give visitors a virtual feel for the products or services on offer.
Your website should have a design scheme that suits your business. Images, graphics and colors are appealing to the clients. Which visitor would like to browse a web page that is devoid of color or design? Your business website shouldn’t appear dull. It has to attract the viewers and keep them interested in you.
As the old saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words, so use appropriate images wherever possible to highlight services or products. Research has found that graphics/images with a human element (picture of a person) are more likely to attract visitors to the products on display.
Your web page is a combination of images and words. So, be sure to balance the graphics and imagery used with textual content. As a designer one tends to focus on the graphics as much as possible and the content gets neglected. While the imagery may get a visitor’s attention, it is the content that will keep the visitor coming back for more.
A conversational tone works best and personalizes the content, keeping interest alive. Regular updates of content and articles to your website leads visitors to believe that you pay attention to the website and this perhaps translates to the services and products produced. Try to be witty and crisp, so that the readers don’t get bored. Your purpose is not putting them off to sleep but making them crave for more.
Go beyond just your products and services. A good web page should contain articles about every thing that is related to your business. You can discuss in detail the type of products that your business produces – their utility and origin. Link out to other resources with more detail on similar products. Create photo galleries, message boards and try to come up with other interesting concepts to keep the visitors glued to your website.
If you have not included Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in your marketing strategy, you have made a big mistake. SEO will optimize your site such that it appears higher in internet search results. People who search the internet by your business name are already aware of your presence. What about the ones who search by the products or services you supply? Specialist SEO consultant firms can help increase the visibility of your website on the internet through various online strategies.
You can contact other websites to promote your products. This will help you reach out to a wider circle of viewers. Advertising your website is a good idea for online branding. Post articles, submit press releases and write blogs on your behalf to make online branding successful. You need to keep track of the sites that your customers visit and engage with them at a regular basis. Including banners on these sites keeps you visible and links visitors back to your site.
Your business logo embodies the vision of your company, the reason you do what you do and where you are headed. The message should be clear and unambiguous. Often designers get caught up in the aesthetic appeal and forget the message of the company.
Fonts and colors can be bold or mellow to go with the nature of business. Logos with a mix of graphic and textual elements work best.
The logo should be prominently displayed on all your online branding efforts from your corporate website to the advertisements and even the articles/blogs you write. It should be prominent but not overbearing and should always link back to your website.
Recently businesses have started using social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to further their online brand strategy. Innovation in advertising and branding is constant and one must keep pace with all the avenues available to increase ones business presence online.
Do not underestimate the power of online branding as it can reach far beyond the boundaries of traditional advertising and marketing to people and places you may not have even considered.
This video from Central Christian Church moved me. Well done! You can get it HERE.
Do you have stories in your congregation that need to be told? Get after it!
In July of 2008 I was speaking to a group of Church leaders in Santa Cruz, California. I held my phone (this was just before I got my iPhone) up in my hand and I said, “This is the future.”
It’s been a year and a half and mobile technology is the “now”, not the future. My friend, Bobby Gruenwald, Innovation Pastor at LifeChurch.tv, constantly encourages his staff to think global and mobile – global and mobile.
I’m currently working with churches and organizations on helping them to create, dream and plan strategies around mobile technology. Your people are constantly becoming one with their phone (for good or bad) and it’s a reality that we need to be intentional about speaking their language. Again, as I’ve said before: we are digital missionaries.
As you know, I work often as a Secret Shopper/Mystery Worshiper. The first thing I check is the church’s website. The second thing I do is pull up their website on my iPhone. I have recommended several times that church’s follow the lead of Seacoast Church and get a mobile version of their website. I applaud and praise Seacoast for blazing a trail in this area. My hat’s off to my friend Shawn Wood and his team. Well done! If you have your phone handy (and I know you do) – pull up Seacoast’s website on it.
My church (and many others) send out text messages to attenders and members that opt in. My church also encourages you to text in questions and decisions that you may make as a response to the message. Many churches are utilizing text and SMS during services as an interactive piece. As I’ve blogged about before, many churches are using the free service from YouVersion Live.
I’ll be talking more in the near future about other mobile strategies and tools. In the meantime, if you and your church would like to strategize and put together a comprehensive plan that includes Web 2.0 tools, mobile technology, social media and social networking – give me a shout. My only goal is to help and equip you to speak the language of the people you’re trying to reach (digital missionaries).
After two years of creating quality content as eight20eight, they decided to change their name. Now known as Soul Refinery, they will continue to create quality media that they hope will ignite the heart and refine the soul.
To celebrate the change and launch of soulrefinery.com, they are giving away two free Christmas motion loops.
While you can find their content wherever quality videos are sold, they hope you’ll consider supporting us directly by visiting soulrefinery.com. There you’ll find their entire collection, including films that feature stars from hit TV shows as The Offce, Community, Reno 911, Saturday Night Life, and others.
They also now offer the entire motion loop and countdown library that they recently purchased from our friends at Eleven72 — revamped and available in HD!
Please visit their new site today and let them know if you have any questions or comments. CLICK HERE TO ADD FREE LOOPS TO YOUR CART
Tuesday we met with a surgeon at UT Southwestern and praise God, he doesn’t want to do surgery, yet. He wants to watch things for 3 months and then do more testing then. So for now, we’re not having surgery and there’s always still hope for healing.
IF YOU’RE IN DFW:
We’re having a prayer, worship and healing service this Friday night (tomorrow) at 7pm at Fellowship Dallas. If you’re in the Dallas area, you’re welcome to join us. If not, just pray from where you are. Thanks!
IN OTHER NEWS:
YouVersion launched http://onebillionminutes.com to celebrate people reading over a Billion minutes of the Bible on the JUST the YouVersion mobile apps. Pretty crazy to think how engaged people are in the Bible through their phone!
EVERYTHING you need – Christmas carol sheet music, keyboard underscores, chord charts, PowerPoint and narrations – all for your Christmas Eve Service.
*** 70 pages of sheet music, charts and narrations, 22 MP3s ***
My good friend and HymnCharts.com arranger Don Chapman has composed beautiful “movie score” type keyboard underscores for Scripture narrations that weave together his unique HymnCharts Christmas carols to create a worshipful Christmas Eve service unlike your congregation has ever experienced.
All you need is a capable pianist and a sermon from your pastor, and you’re ready for a musical highlight of your church’s Christmas season.
Download More Details About the Service Guide:
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Click to download a PDF with more detailed instructions about the Christmas Eve Service Guide |
My friend, Don Chapman, just shared about his experience of looking for an inexpensive video solution. Here’s his latest article:
Video is the wave of the future – and here’s how your church can inexpensively get in on the action.
Since YouTube and other video sites have exploded over the past few years I’ve wanted to try recording some videos for WorshipIdeas (if you’ve noticed I’ve put several up in the past few weeks.) Even in the past few months I’ve noticed more and more video clips turning up in Google search results and on news websites.
I started my research in late August. It seems there are two extremes in HD video records: $200 and under (inexpensive) and $800 and over (expensive.) Since I just wanted to dabble in video (and didn’t know if I’d even like it) I wanted to go cheap.
The little Flip cameras are popular, but I tend to shy away from the popular as experience has taught me there’s probably something out there not as well known but twice as good.
I learned that a key to great video is to have an external microphone for the best sound quality. Internal mics produce crummy sound with lots of room noise. Unfortunately all the mini, cheap HD video cameras have only internal mics – except one!
The newly released Kodak Zi8
Most of the new WorshipIdeas videos (except for the Kristian Stanfill video) were created on the Zi8. And unbelievably, my latest clip of the Jamestown church was aired yesterday on CBN News!! Let me restate that: a cable news channel just broadcast my clip made from a $180 video camera!! Here’s the clip:
The possibilities are endless for a church – man on the street interviews, skits, website greetings, sermon illustrations… great, clear and crisp Hi-Def video at an affordable price.
The Kodak Zi8 is not hassle free. If you want to shoot videos of your cat dancing and upload them directly from the camera to YouTube, you’ll have no problem. If you want to edit video (on a PC,) you’ll have problems.
I spent an entire day bashing my head against the wall trying to figure out how to get video out of the Kodak into my editing software. Here’s the problem: the video shot is proprietary – it’s in a modified QuickTime MOV format. But even though I installed QuickTime I still couldn’t get the video to work in my Sony Vegas
I bought a $30 lapel mic from Radio Shack. Anything with an 1/8 inch plug (wireless, etc.) will work.
Buy memory. The Zi8 needs a memory card, purchased separately. I got a 16 gig SDHC card and have nowhere near filled it up yet.
Shoot video in 720p (the camera will shoot in 1080p but will not export in an editable form for Sony Vegas.)
Buy a “steadicam.” This is a contraption pros attach to their cameras to make the image steady so they can walk around and get action shots. Even though the Zi8 has image stabilization built in, you really need a steadicam if you’re going to move with the camera and want smooth and professional footage. I bought an amateur steadicam that works wonderfully – the Manfrotto ModoSteady
Once you have shot your video, plug the Zi8 into your computer’s USB slot and copy files to your hard drive. The first time you plug your camera into your computer it will ask you to install the proprietary software.
Convert to MP4. The camera’s videos are in the QuickTime MOV format. Even though I installed QuickTime the videos would play but without sound in Sony Vegas. Launch the MediaImpressions software you’ve installed from the camera and use it to open your videos (browse videos.) Select the videos you want to edit, then click “Media Converter” at the bottom of the screen. Convert settings: Manufacturer=Sony, Select Device Model= Sony PS3, click the edit button, resolution=1280×720, Audio Bitrate=128bps. The software will convert the MOV files into MP4 files.
Convert to AVI. Now that the videos are MP4, Vegas will play sound but not play video! So I found a weird little program, probably coded by some kid in his dorm room, that will strip something or other out of the file and turn it into an AVI file. Download MP4Cam2AVI Easy Converter here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mp4cam2avi/
Now, finally, the video is ready to edit! Sony Vegas works much like Sonar in that you have different tracks to play with – video, audio, music, etc. I create a little bumper graphic, pick the videos I want, fade them in and out, add some compression and EQ to the voice to make it stand out, and throw in a little background music.
If you want to upload your edited video to YouTube, that’s yet another step. A YouTube help page offers rendering suggestions (I render to MP4) and a Google search for “Sony Vegas YouTube” found several settings. I tried a few – one setting rendered fine but when I uploaded the clip to YouTube the sound was out of sync. I tried another and it worked fine.
Whew! If somebody ever figures out how to easily shoot video, edit it and upload it without the hassle of codecs and converting, they’ll be rich.
Bottom Line: The Kodak Zi8 has opened up the world of video to me. Did I mention that within a month of shooting my first video I had a clip on a cable news network? It’s an affordable HD video camera with knockout, broadcast-quality video at a rock-bottom price. It’s the only mini HD recorder with an external microphone jack. PC users will have to jump through hoops to edit videos, Mac users may not have as many issues.
As you know, I’m in the air (traveling) a lot. Lately I’ve been bringing some magazines with me to read during the flight. Magazines that I’m reading currently are:
What magazines are you reading?
