Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 7–Flickr, YouTube and Other Forms of Sharing and Streaming

This is actually the form of social media and online sharing that I am the least familiar with. I have only had a Flickr account for about 6 months, and I just upgraded to Flickr Pro. How many videos have I uploaded to YouTube? Only a couple. So this is new territory, but a territory nonetheless that I think ministries need to explore more often.

Let me start with a couple of reasons for why you should use these tools:

1. People like watching videos and looking at photos. Period. In my opinion, they are often more likely to do this then read a post or follow a debate on a forum page.
2. I think ministries need to start creating more of their own content. Why? One, because how many churches use stock photos of people on their websites that don’t even attend church. I usually hear, “Hey, I’ve never seen them at our church.” Or my favorite, “Our church is not that ethnically diverse.” That’s usually the typical Bible study photo that has a representative of every tribe, tongue and nation represented, and is nowhere close to the actual makeup of the church. Two, video and photos give great insight into people’s lives.
3. Shooting, editing, creating and uploading video and photo content has never been easier.
4. These tools are so easy to use that anyone in the community can create content and participate. You don’t have to leave it in the hands of professionals or video/photo department people. This does two things. One, allows for community participation. Two, reflects more the reality of a community, than stuff being created by one department. And when communities participate, the content doesn’t have the constant professional look to it, but looks more reality which is nice. Not that professional is bad at all…but raw footage from the community is great also.

 

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 2–The Purpose of Your Website

I think it’s important for college ministries to be forumlating a plan, and developing some ideas about how they can strategically use the internet to best serve their ministry.

There are a lot of topics that I could cover, and maybe 9 posts is too much, so I will try and keep them shorter than my last post.

Last week I posted Part 1–Simplicity, Flexibility, Cost and Speed. Bottom line: You need to have a design and plan that is simple (easy to navigate/aesthetically clean from a design point of view. You also should keep the costs low which is easy to do with all the free and inexpensive tools out there. And speed should be taken into consideration, mainly from the perspective of how fast can you integrate new technology to meet the needs and wants of your ministry. Way too many ministries plunge lots of cost and time into a site, that they no longer can adapt to changes, but are stuck with it for years to come.

Today I want to post about The Purpose of Your Website.

What is the purpose of your website?

This is an important question to begin with. What do you want it to do? What do you want people to come to the site and see and use? What should they walk away with? Sometimes ministries just build websites because they feel like they should have one, but never stop to consider its purpose.

Is it for college students to retrieve information? Is it for them to sign up for Bible studies? Is it for them to be able to visit forums and dialogue?

With these questions in mind we also need to keep in mind that with all the tools out there (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.) a website shouldn’t have to do everything, unless it can do it better than those services (which I doubt it can do).

So here are a few pointers that I have found helpful:

 

Formulating an Online Strategy for College Ministry: Part 1–Simplicity, Flexibility, Cost and Speed

DISCLAIMERS: 1)There are better technical people out there concerning the web. 2) Do as I suggest, not as I do. I’m trying to keep up myself, and our college website reflects almost nothing of what I talk about. That’s how fast things change. 3) There are a lot of college ministries out there, and there are a lot of online tools to use, but it doesn’t seem like many are thinking through how to best utilize the new media and Web 2.0 (and yikes, Web 3.0) in their groups. 4) Knowing that things change overnight in technology, I hope to somehow impart to you some of the things I have been learning and wrestling with in these areas. You don’t need to be an expert in this area, just know enough to think critically about the issue. 5) If you have feedback, suggestions, criticisms, please comment. This is by no means all encompassing.

Starting Out

There are a lot of good books out there on the new media, web 2.0, building web platforms, etc., but no book has challenged my thinking, and convinced me to turn in certain directions as did the “manifesto” Getting Real by the guys at 37 Signals, when it comes to the issues of simplicity, flexibility, cost and speed. I consider it a must read in this area.

Getting Real is about skipping all the stuff that represents real (charts, graphs, boxes, arrows, schematics, wireframes, etc.) and actually building the real thing.

Getting real is less. Less mass, less software, less features, less paperwork, less of everything that’s not essential (and most of what you think is essential actually isn’t).

Getting Real is staying small and being agile.

Getting Real starts with the interface, the real screens that people are going to use. It begins with what the customer actually experiences and builds backwards from there. This lets you get the interface right before you get the software wrong.

Getting Real is about iterations and lowering the cost of change. Getting Real is all about launching, tweaking, and constantly improving which makes it a perfect approach for web-based software.

Getting Real delivers just what customers need and eliminates anything they don’t.

When a college ministry decides to have an online presence there are a few things to keep in mind. Some of these things are:

• student participation
• the fast changing culture of college/university life
• finicky tastes/styles
• revolving body of students and leaders
• budget
• access/control
• etc. (these are just a few)