Church Strategy v2
I've been thinking about a different strategy than the one I originally proposed. This one is a bit more interactive for the members and leaders of the church.
#1) Facebook - everyone is on Facebook and a "fan" of the pastor and church. They're part of the church group and RSVP for all events via Facebook. All social interactions and most updates go through FB.
#2) Tumblr - create a Tumblr for everything you need. For video and audio, have a church Tumblr that posts it all. Every leader in the church has their own Tumblr where they can post pictures/thoughts/music and more so they can keep all their members up to date on what's going on. All members have a Tumblr and follow each leader and group within the church that they want. Leaders can have their own blogs but they make sure to import them into their Tumblr. Give all leaders iPhones so they can snap pictures and send them to Tumblrs instantaneously.
Beyond those two things, you can do other cool stuff. They include:
* Stream video via qik or Justin.tv.
* Send quick updates to members using Twitter (this gets aggregated into Tumblr though)
* Aggregate EVERYTHING into FriendFeed just for fun.
* Upload all photos to Flickr and create sets.
But the two core things to use are Facebook and Tumblr I think. Everything else is just gravy...
Ok now I need to get a church to test out this strategy to see if it could work. Any takers?
Church Website and Internet Strategy on a Budget
Churches have horrible internet strategies across America. The only church that I know of that has really gotten it right in my opinion is Mars Hill Church, but they've got the resources. Here's a cheap way to do things right on the internet if you're a church on a budget.
Social interactions: Facebook
Put your church group and ministries all on Facebook. Make a Facebook group and have all the members of the church join it, then run events and updates through that. Utilize the discussion board to hear feedback from people that go to the church. Make sure the officers are up to date, so this can completely replace the About page and all that garbage that go on most crappy church websites.
Events: Facebook
'nuff said
Website: Tumblr
Nobody's built anything worthy of mention here. I would actually say to use Tumblr, and just make it really lightweight. Post basic information on the page, and let people subscribe to the RSS feed to get updates about things that are going on (link to events on Facebook and stuff). Let the pastors post updates and write about the upcoming week etc. Also post videos on this (on Vimeo). Tumblr would be cool because you can 1) put it on your domain and 2) customize it like crazy.
Video: Vimeo
Upload all the videos that are made for the church (announcements, sermons, etc) to Vimeo and if you have the resources, use Vimeo HD to have all of your videos stream in HD quality (it's beautiful).
Photos: Flickr
Post all photos to Flickr after an event/conference and put them into a set. Would be really cool.
Podcasting: ???
I don't know anything about podcasting because I think it blows.
That's the advice I'd give, just pounded this out really quickly so comment if you have ideas.