I’m still very new to the social media game, but have made a few observations by reading other people’s articles and watching individual & groups like Starbucks & others.  If you or your organization blog, use Twitter, Facebook or other social media, you better have a social media strategy!  Regardless how long you’ve been engaged in social media, you can always learn and ask yourself or your organization basic questions to get better at what you do!  These questions may or may not be new to you, but they are fairly fundamental to anyone using Twitter or other media in connection with their blog or organization: 

1. What am I trying to accomplish with Twitter or other forms of social media?  If you don’t know what this is, you will be unclear about your message.  Spend some time figuring this out and you’ll have a much better chance of crafting your tweets and updates to bring clarity to what you produce.  Do you have a cause? Do you want to educate people in a particular area?  Do you want to drive people to your site?  Do you want to build relationships?  Do you want to simply express creativity?  Become crystal clear with what it is you are trying to accomplish & then craft your communication around this objective.  

2. Is my message simple & clear?  After you’ve identified what you are trying to do, are you clear about it in your message? Is it clear to others? What are you asking people to do?  Read your entry? Go to your blog?  Ashton Kutcher’s recent partnership with malarianomore.org produced a very clear , twitterable message: “Every 30 seconds, a kid dies of malaria. Nets save lives” - and a clear call to action: $10 buys a net. The goal was to drive people to Malaria No More’s Web site to donate.  The result: 90,000 nets donated for those at risk of malaria.  The message was simple, “go to the website, save lives.” 

3. Am I interacting to encourage personal involvement & buy in from others?  How much do you engage others? Starbuck’s twitter page has consistent question & answer tweets to their loyal followers.  Their social media team is highly involved through twitter in meeting the needs of latte drinkers, particularly in regards to their new “My Starbucks Rewards” program (read about their use of Facebook & Twitter this Christmas).   What has blown me away is how in touch they are with their followers!  Corporations around the world are rapidly following suit to try to meet people where they are  (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and preserve and build their brand.  Are you engaging others?

4. Is my content good?  Are the articles or content you are posting about any good?  Here is another corporate example: Nestle has also recently partnered up with Kutcher to put on a 16 week web-based video series to help sell Hot Pockets (entitled Katalyst HQ).  Katalyst is Ashton’s swankified production company, whose recent parody of the media mogul’s firm has had over a million replays on Facebook, with each video reaching an average of 65 friends.  They are certainly on to something.  You may have seen the video on Facebook.  Kutcher calls it influencer marketing. Why has it been successful?  I believe one main reason: good content.  (by good I mean, accomplishing it’s purpose of entertaining.  Learning from someone doesn’t mean you agree with everything they do).  So, how can you create a following with what you put out on the web?  Create great content.   For Kutcher, the answer is entertaining content. For you it could be teaching someone something, inspiring them to do something or helping to shape their personal values.  It should be built around your answer to the first question above.  Whatever you are trying to do, do it well and other people will find out about it. (Questions 2 and 4 are formed from info in a great article on Kutcher from Ellen McGirt: more info here).  How good is your content?

What are you trying accomplish? Is your message clear? Do you develop interaction with others? Is your content engaging?  I’m sure I missed a ton, what are some other tips you’ve picked up?  What individuals or organizations do you learn from?  What’s missing?  Love to hear feedback!

I don’t use social media because its trendy or because I don’t have anything better to do with my time.   I don’t use Facebook for Farmville, Mafia or Vampire (not that there is anything wrong with playing these).  Here are 6 specific reasons I still use Facebook:  

1. Not everybody is on Twitter.  I really prefer Twitter over FB, but a lot of people I know are still not using Twitter regularly.  I still believe FB has much to offer! 

2. Learning & growing personally.  I like to browse through frequently to see what people are talking about, what trends are out there, what friends are passionate about, etc.  Twitter allows me to do this via search words and other tools, but Facebook is still valuable to me for learning & growing! 

3. Keeping up with friends, friends keeping up with me.  I keep up with several friends & family regularly & vise versa via Facebook.  When I do see them in person, I don’t have to ask, ”What have you been up to?” Instead, I’m often able to say, “Tell me more about your trip!” or “How are you doing with your new project?” Our conversation is usually more fun because of keeping up on Facebook.

4. Helping build community & conversation.  People grow best in the context of community.  Facebook can help build such community. If I can bring other people together around a topic or question, perhaps I’ve played a tiny role in helping them grow or be connected in some way.  While we realize that social media doesn’t take the place of personal relationships, it can be used to enhance both community and conversation.

5. Helping others.  I love to write, encourage and be generally creative.  Facebook allows a way for me to express this stuff for those who are interested, to encourage, inspire and inform.  I’m also able to pray specifically for others when I see needs or requests. It helps me help others.

6. Connecting with new friends & old friends.  I meet a lot of people on Facebook before I ever meet them in person.  When I do get to meet them, I have a much better context of who they are and what they are all about.  I’ve also re-connected with some great old friends from as far back as my childhood too.

Why do you use Facebook?  What can be gained from it? Do share!

Once, I went through this phase where I didn’t know if life was really worth living or not.  A lot of people don’t know that about me, but its true.  It’s not that I didn’t want to live at all, its more that I was having a tough time seeing past things.  Circumstances would come in and they would be so close, I couldn’t see through them- sort of like if you hold your hand up in front of your face, you can’t see around it.  You ask yourself, “Is this all there is???”  

As time goes on that thing, that circumstance, has a little bit of distance from you.  You can see it for what it is, acknowledging that it is still there.  Still, its there, but you can see it now and actually identify what it is.  It doesn’t have to fully control who you are or how you live your life.  It’s not you; its something you’re dealing with and can get through.

So, is there a circumstance or event that you are having a hard time getting past?  See if you can name what that thing is, take the hand away from your face and ask yourself what it is.  Know that nothing is too big to work through or overcome.  The thing may not go away tomorrow, but at least you can make the decision to work through it.  Ask yourself “what do I not have any control over?”  Then, pray and stop worrying about what you can’t change.  Next, ask yourself, “what do I have control over?”  Then, pick a few steps  to take to help yourself get past that thing.  Pray.  Tell a few people what you’re doing.  Then, make a change!

What have you had to overcome?  How did you get past it?  What role did prayer play?

A lot of you guys have asked what I’m doing right now with my time.  I thought I’d take a moment and fill you all in!  Besides being a husband of my amazing wife Macy, a father of a passionate 2yo named Meg, and a friend to as many peeps as possible, I do some fun real estate stuff and I am on staff at the Lifechurch.tv Fort Worth campus. My wheels are constantly blown off at what is happening through a group of normal people in Fort Worth and around the world that have simply submitted their lives to Jesus and asked to be used by God. Here are a few things I noticed about my church over the last few weeks that totally blow my mind: 

1. Every day of the week, people are meeting from all over the world together at LifeChurch.tv’s Church Online to worship, encourage one another, listen to Biblical messages and pray for one another. I’ve been apart of Church Online as an “attender” for some time now and have personally seen tons of lives changed on a weekly basis.  Stop by and check it out some time! 
2. My campus, the LifeChurch.tv Fort Worth campus, has grown in two years from an average weekend attendance of 300-350 people to a recent average during July of just under 1000 people.  Literally hundreds of people have found a relationship with Jesus Christ and countless others have experienced freedom from addiction, healing in a relationship, or significant life change in some way.  Um….wow.
3. A new tool was just launched called Babelwithme.com- anyone in the world can use it for free to chat with people in 45 different languages.  The sky seems to be the limit with this new tool (no pun intended church people).  The walls come a tumbling down… 
4. Small groups of people at Church Online meet both in a physical location on a weekly basis, but often invite others from around the world to join in via Skype, Tokbox or other online chat tools.  Suddenly, someone you meet online can share in community with those in your living room, pass the salsa Брат! 
5. Volunteer teams for one Church Online experience may very well represent several different countries.  Different team members commit to serving and facilitating a Church Online experience once a week from their home or anywhere in the world with an internet connection.   
6. Nearly 30,000 pastors and church leaders from around the world have used or are using free resources from the LifeChurch.tv Open website.  Millions of people around the world have downloaded the Bible on their phone as a result of the heart of a few leaders deciding to give away what has been given to them.   

I’d love to hear comments, questions or other cool things you’ve noticed lately about what’s happening with LifeChurch.tv peeps…

As I was running this morning, I couldn’t quit thinking about being older and less and less “cool” all the time.  Here are a few reasons why I’m less cool and don’t care:

1. 1. I still use the word cool.
2. 2. I write about not being cool, then twitter about it; should I even go on?
3. 3. I get up at 4:30am and run two hours for fun, enough said.
4. 4. I drive a Ford Taurus (used to drive a big truck).
5. 5. I have Veggies tales on my disc changer in my Ford Taurus and I eat a ton of veggies every day.
6. I have a GPS watch as big as my face and I dig it. 
7. I hang out a lot with Kyle Sherman and Robert Wall.

The difference is: I know I’m not cool like I think I used to be, but I don’t care.  I’d like to encourage you to not care as well.  Life’s not about stuff, what you drive, where you live, what you look like or even what you do.  It’s about who you are uniquely designed to be by your Creator; who you are in His eyes.  Don’t be cool and don’t care!  What are some things that make you less cool that you don’t care about?