With all technology, there is always this push/pull towards new technology or away from technology. Twitter is no exception. Ask 100 people in a public place and the responses to Twitter’s viability will vary. The danger is to simply dismiss it. No, Twitter will not magically grow your church. Twitter will not replace your outreach and evangelism efforts. Twitter won’t disciple people, baptize people, marry people, or any of those things. But it is a tool to help facilitate those things. Here are some examples.
Let’s say you or your church are on Twitter. And you follow 10 people in your congregation on Twitter and those 10 people follow you. Anytime one of these 10 people send you or your church a twit, all their followers have now been introduced to you or your church. Let’s say you have a compelling comment. You might get a comment from all 10 of those individuals. At one time, you have now shown up on all the updates of all their followers. If you stood on a street corner and yelled out that same comment, you couldn’t get that kind of attention. Granted all of these individuals followers are not going to come to your church or may not be anywhere close to your area. But you have, in a sense, just cast a very wide net in areas you hadn’t already.
Here is another example. Let’s say you are planning a killer outreach event. You are taking over a park, bringing in inflatables, and you have a band and food. In addition to your other marketing efforts, you could send a twit about that event and ask your buds to retweet it. Instantly, all those that follow you on Twitter can instantly inform all their followers about the details of your event.
OK. One more example. If you blog at all, no doubt you do it so people will read it. You can have Twitter update each time you put up a blog post. The people that follow you can instantly know when your post is up.
As noted earlier, Twitter is not meant to replace your efforts. Twitter is not a pastor or a leader. Twitter is a tool to reach a different group of people. But Twitter is a tool where you can actually engage people in real time with minimal effort and expense.
pic by batega
July 14th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Your examples remind me of the old Fabrege (sp?) commercials where they would say, "And she told two friends, and so on, and so on," while the screen became populated with people. Same concept–word of mouth 21st century style.
September 9th, 2009 at 11:39 am
What can I do with Twitter?
September 14th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Dolphy36. You are right. Not a lot of people remember that commercial I bet. But I think Twitter has the amazing capability of getting information and news around much quicker than it takes to gather all your friends together and telling them. Who knows. Maybe Twitter will come out with their own brand of cologne.
September 14th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
sektoro
Great question. There are a ton of uses for Twitter. As a church or ministry, here are just a few ideas:
- Remind people of upcoming events
- Provide short comments on current events that impact the church
- Point to interesting new or blog posts
- Drop in pictures using Twitpic
- Respond to people using Twitter in your church
- Solicit feedback on a topic or ask questions. Feedback is pretty quick
Feel free to email me and I will be happy to help!