Greg Atkinson

Wednesday, I spoke at Career Day at my kids’ elementary school. I spoke on my current job in social media marketing. I decided to take the angle of first teaching them what marketing is and then introducing them to how that relates to social media.

I showed these 3rd through 5th graders cards with logos from various companies and they knew every single one of them. It’s amazing to see how effective the branding and marketing efforts of major companies have been for these young kids.

What shocked me was finding out that several of these kids are already on Facebook and they all knew about Twitter. The times – they are a changing. This generation growing up knows Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and blogging. It excited me and scared me at the same time.

What are your thoughts on the prevailing influence of social media on children? What do you think about elementary school kids being on Facebook?

LifeChurch.tv (through their OPEN Network) has done it again! Known for years for offering free resources to the Church, now they are helping you with your church’s Facebook page through a series of training videos.

With training videos on how to do events, extras and configurations, fan updates, insights/metrics, moderation, notes, photos, videos and wall updates – they have you and your Facebook team (which can be made up totally of volunteers) covered on how to create, manage and lead an effective and attractive Facebook page for your church.

Check out their resources and videos HERE. Now you have no excuse for not having a great Facebook presence!

Greetings friends and readers of this blog. You may or may not have realized (depending on if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook) that I took the last 2 weeks off from technology. I haven’t blogged, done Twitter, Facebook, any social media or even really used my laptop for the last 2 weeks straight. It’s been wonderful.

The past 2 weeks of blog posts were done way in advance and set to post automatically. The next 2 blog posts this week are guest blog posts, too. I’ve been trying to free my mind and heart up to focus on God and hear from him. I’ve blogged about this numerous times over the years and even wrote an article for Relevant Magazine entitled “Noise” where I reflected on how nice a break or fast from technology can be.

A friend and I decided to fast and pray for an extended period of time and I told him that for me to totally focus on God and hear from him, I needed to fast from social media, too. This proved to be a pleasant experiment. I was more present with my family, more productive throughout my day and more prone to hear from my Creator.

One of the things I’ve talked about all over the country when I talk about social media is setting up boundaries and having a dark day. You may not need to take a long break from social media (maybe you do), but all of us could use one Sabbath or dark day a week. For me, sometimes it’s Saturday – sometimes it’s Sunday.

So, friends – when was the last time you took a break from social media? How did it help you hear from God? If you’ve never tried a break from technology, I encourage you to give it a shot. You won’t regret it!

It’s been a little over a year since I first blogged about “Digital Real Estate“. Was I right? Did you take me up on my plea and dive into social media for your organization? Let’s see what’s happened in the last year and what changed with the examples I mentioned in the first blog post. Basically, I showed you the concept of digital real estate and gave you some examples of people or churches that weren’t actively twittering at the time, but had reserved their space/name online.

The first example was of worship leader Matt Redman. When I first blogged about him over a year ago, he had created an account, but was not using it, yet. He had a total of 310 followers.

I’m writing this blog post on August 11, 2010. As of today, Matt Redman is twittering regularly and has 21,135 followers. Wow! Look:

The second example I pointed to was LifeChurch.tv’s Twitter account. Now LifeChurch.tv is active and has 3,586 followers as you can see here:

The next example I gave was of Willow Creek Church. Willow now has 3,774 followers on Twitter and tweets regularly. You can check them out here:

Lastly, I mentioned that Rick Warren had reserved his spot on Twitter and had 5000 followers before ever writing his first tweet. Now Rick has 130,463 followers and is a regular on Twitter and encourages church leaders daily.

So… have you claimed your digital real estate? Have you grabbed you or your church, business or organization’s name?

Throughout the past couple of years, I’ve made my pleas about giving Twitter a try. This is another plea for you to claim your “digital real estate” and get on Twitter for your church, business, non-profit or organization. We’re past the point of Twitter being a fad. Twitter now has over 50 million users and has gone mainstream. Businesses everywhere are using Twitter to be seen and get heard. They’re using Twitter to get by the roadblocks of old media and create a powerful presence online. You have the same opportunities and potential for an effective online presence with your church or organization.

The best part about Twitter users, unlike Facebook or YouTube, is that most Twitter users are over the age of 30. What does that mean for you? Paying Customers in the business world or your target for your church. Most modern churches target young couples with small kids – this is who is on Twitter. Make sense?

The 2nd reason? Laser Targeted Marketing:

When you use Twitter to build your brand online, you’re not relying on random Google searches. You’re not relying on expensive PPC methods that bring lukewarm consumers (in business) or people that aren’t located near your church and will never visit. You are using Twitter to filter out the tire kickers and bring you the people that want to hear your voice. Enter – a surge of traffic that is hungry for what you have to offer!

Now, I realize that a lot of what I just said is exactly what I tell my clients. Again, I’m just trying to share with you for free what I get paid to share with others. Please know my heart is to reach people for Christ. I’m not pushing a consumer-focused church or trying to scratch itching ears. I’m one of those, like Perry Noble, that will do anything short of sin to see people come to Jesus – realizing that it’s the Holy Spirit that draws men and women unto Himself. I’m just referring to the part where we are partners of the Gospel and work with the Spirit to share Christ and reach out to our community.

Still not convinced you should be on Twitter? Tomorrow I will blog an updated or revised version of my “Digital Real Estate” plea. Stay tuned. In the meantime, how many of you have a Twitter account for your church? How many of you update it regularly? Are you conversational and not just a broadcast mechanism? Please share.

In last week’s blog post “An Introduction to Social Media Marketing”, I referred to SMO. (SMO) Social media optimization, sometimes known as social media marketing, is a branch of search engine optimization that isn’t as mainstream as it should be. Every business and church can benefit from some form of engagement with social media networks, but not every business (or church) does engage. In the very near future, any business ignoring SMO will do so to their severe detriment. This is why I do my social media marketing company (GTK Solutions) and something I help educate business owners about.

Here’s just a few of the functions an SMO campaign serves:

*Exposure. This is the main thing most businesses aim for when they engage in social media optimisation. Many companies let increased exposure remain as the limit of a campaign’s advantages. A little thought can make social media work harder for your website optimisation campaign.

*Customer service. As more of the average businesses can be contacted through social media than in any other forum, it makes sense to use social media networks as a kind of customer service line. The publicly viewable nature of social media communication means that positive customer interactions get your business some excellent coverage, although for the same reasons negative encounters are best taken offline.

*Brand and reputation management. One of the major changes social media has wrought upon the internet is the need for results in real time. This aspect of social media comes in as an advantage when your brand needs a little support. Businesses are using social media to respond to bad press in their own words, getting in before the media does too much damage.

*Media coverage. The social media can be used as your own little media network, without the trouble of bothering with journalists.

*** I hope you know that my heart is to educate, inform, train and equip you as Church leaders. Any mention to my company (GTK Solutions) in my blogs is just a passing reference to what I do during the day. Please know that my business is not geared to churches (they can’t afford it). I’m not writing this for any other purpose than to share for free what others pay me to tell them. My clients for GTK Solutions are businesses only.

However, I do offer consulting (not marketing) to churches and am passionate about teaching and equipping church leaders and pastors about social media. Let me know if you’d like to talk with me about consulting with your church or organization for SMO. I also include social media and online strategy in my report when I do a secret shopper for a church. If you have interest in that, go HERE for more details.

I thought this was a great article/blog post by Michael R. Macias on that I came across on the Small Business Tech blog. This is what I try to get across to clients that I work with: social media marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. Just like I said in my older blog post “Diving into Social Media” – you have to be in it for the long haul. Read what Michael had to say to business leaders:

Far too often in the business world the term return on investment (ROI) is used to justify actions or strategies. Though the term certainly has a place in the small business sector, it doesn’t fit everywhere. And there is one place it should never be used-social media. Imagine if all of us treated our “real” friends based on the concept of “ROI” like we do with our “virtual” ones. Chances are it would look a little something like this: “Today I hung out with Billy, but got nothing in return, so I won’t be doing that again, even if we’ve been friends for 20 years.” We’d all end up without any friends if we lived our lives that way. Well, the same rule should apply to any social media efforts your small business engages in. Using Facebook shouldn’t be about tracking ROI, or measuring the benefits of your friends.

Granted, there are metrics or insights, available to show you how effective your messages are, but that shouldn’t define your efforts. Social media is about more than just sales conversions or coupon deliveries…it’s really about relationships. Today’s consumers want to feel connected to a brand, and have a personal relationship with it. It’s about engaging people, inspiring them, motivating them, and encouraging them to appreciate your brand. When you decide to dive into social media, think about treating it exactly as you would a new friend. As you get to know them, and they get to know you, you start to like each other more, and the next thing you know, you are introducing each other to new people. I believe in the business world we refer to that as word of mouth marketing. So before you try to rate your “virtual” friends, or create a system to track their value, stop and think, “Would I do this to Billy?”

This was a guest post and thank you Michael for taking the time to write this great post. You can find out more about Michael and his business at his website www.insidethecube.com . An impressive website and it is worth taking the time visit. Also you can follow Michael and his business on twitter http://twitter.com/CreativeQube.

Did you know I do social media marketing for businesses? I never really talk about my day job on here. I consult with churches from time to time and do secret shoppers at churches on weekends, but during the week I run a social media marketing company called GTK Solutions. The “GTK” is named after my three kids: Grace, Tommy and Katie. By the way, if you want to get social media and social media marketing tips and quotes and links to blogs that educate and inform, follow my company on Twitter: https://twitter.com/gtksolutions.

I consult and market for clients in the social media realm, dealing with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SMO (Social Media Optimization). I thought I’d do a couple of blogs on here that educate you on things like this and share with you what I share with my clients.

If I can help out doctors and businesses, you know I want to help out Church leaders. So what do I do with businesses? I first do a discovery meeting with the client to learn more about their business, their target (who they want to reach), their existing online presence and their goals. The discovery process and questions I ask are some of the following (these are things you need to think through in your situation):

GTK Solutions Discovery Questions

1.         Do you believe in what you do?

2.         Would you buy what you are selling?

3.         What social marketing are you currently doing? Even unintentional communication about your business.

4.         If I searched social media sites today what would I learn about your business?

5.         How do your customers use social media?

6.         What is your brand?

7.         What is your reputation among those you serve?

8.         What social media marketing seems to be working?

9.         What social media marketing seems to not be working? What will it take to stop this?

10.       Who is your target audience?

11.       What date are you thinking of going public with this new campaign?

12.       What goals do you hope to see met as a result of this social media campaign?

***  First, things first. If you’ve never read my blog post “Diving into Social Media” – stop and read that. It’s a great place to start. So before I start answering questions you’re not asking: What questions do you guys have about social media marketing and how it can benefit your church and boost your online presence? Of course, I’m assuming you’ve seen the Social Media Revolution video, know how important social media is, how many people can be reached by it and that you want to reach more people for Christ.

I’ve traveled the country teaching on social media and the changes happening all around us. I’ve tried to educate, inform and challenge listeners. This video does all that and more in a matter of minutes. Watch it!

The following is a great (and informative) video that Maurilio, from The A Group in Nashville, showed at the BUG Conference. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.