Mass Bay District Spring Conference
Location: First Parish Church of Weston
The following are links and references from my presentation at the Mass Bay District’s 2010 Social Media themed Spring conference. This page will be updated following the conference with additional information, such as resources that come up in Q & A and large group discussions. Have follow up questions? You may email me at peter@uuplanet.com. — Best, Peter
The Social Media Revolution
This video shares great stats about social media, its rate of growth, and communicates the extent to which Social Media is here to stay.
Social Media Sites/Tools
WordPress: blogging platform very popular among UU congregations
http://www.wordpress.com – host a blog on their site
http://www.wordpress.org – download and host on your own server
Facebook
http://Facebook.com
Twitter
http://www.twitter.com
Share This: add share button to your site
http://sharethis.com/
Hootsuite: Multi user Twitter account management
http://www.hootsuite.com
Feedburner: Allows you take an RSS feed from any site and make an enhanced feed with stats and other features. Using Feedburner also allows you to make a “permanent” feed, changing the source as you shift around blogging sites.
http://www.feedburner.com (added 7:30pm May 1)
Yoono: Update status across social media sites
http://yoono.com/
Yelp: Reviews about anything and everything including your congregation
http://www.yelp.com
Foursquare: Location based “Check-ins” using mobile devices GPS. Connects to other social media sites and says “I’m here and this is what I’m doing.”
http://www.foursquare.com
UU Growth Blog post on Foursquare by Rev. Naomi King
Google Search: Claim and update your listing
UU Growth blog instructions
Quotes, Articles, Books & Related Sites
With social media it’s not a choice whether you DO social media, the choice is how well you DO it.
– Erik Qualman
Why Should Your Church Invest in Social Media?
This article from “Ministry Best Practices” website shares three quality goals for faith communities using social media – Communication, Connecting, and Call to Action.
Growing Your Religion Through Social Media
by Cole Lewis, Unitarian Universalist Community of Lake County.
Mashable Guide to Facebook
Mashable Guide to Twitter
The Myspace / Facebook Racial Divide (added 7:30pm May 1)
The Church of Facebook by Jesse Rice (amazon)
http://churchofFacebook.com
The Blogging Church by Brian Bailey with Terry Storch (amazon)
UUA Social Media section
http://www.uua.org/socialmedia
UUA New Media Blog
http://newmedia.blogs.uua.org
UUpdates directory of UU blogs
http://uupdates.net
UU Podcasters: Includes how to
http://uupodcasters.com
Iphone App Maker
http://www.appmakr.com/
Unitarian Universalist Example Sites
The following sites represent a range of congregational sizes and approaches to using social media. URLs and membership data based on April 2010 information.
UU Congregation of Smithton, PA
Number of Members: 12
https://sites.google.com/site/uucsofsmithton/
Includes “What’s Happening”
Facebook Group
Thomas Paine UU Fellowship
Number of Members: 104
http://www.tpuuf.org
Facebook
Twitter
First Universalist Church of Rochester
Number of Members: 136
http://uuroc.org
Facebook Fanpage
Tapestry, a Unitarian Universality Congregation in Orange County, CA
Number of Members: 148
http://tapestryuu.org
Facebook Fanpage
Tapestry Blog
Twitter
First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, PA
Number of Members: 218
http://philauu.org
Facebook Fanpage
Twitter
Rev. Nate Walker – Youtube
Rev. Nate Walker’s Website
Members page “We are pleased to announce that on June we welcomed our 100th new member in two years! And a super-majority of our pledging units met the high-five challenge! Congratulations, everyone, for a very meaningful year.”
- 44,524 visits to their webpage of which 34,760 absolute unique visitors;
- 27,044 visits to their Podcasts;
- 10,682 subscriptions to their Podcasts;
- 5,428 visit to their YouTube Channel; and
- 1,316 fans on Facebook (1002 visits last week).
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Phoenix, AZ
Number of Members: 372
http://www.phoenixuu.org
Facebook
Twitter
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta
Number of Members: 684
http://www.uuca.org/
Facebook Group
Twitter
First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque, NM
Number of Members: 762
http://www.uuabq.org
Facebook Fanpage
Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, VA
Number of Members: 924
www.uucava.org
Facebook Group
First Unitarian Church of Dallas
Number of Members: 1096
http://dallasuu.org/
Facebook Fanpage
Unitarian Universalist Association
http://www.uua.org/
UUA Blogs
Main Facebook Fanpage
Twitter
The UU World Magazine
http://www.uuworld.org
RSS Feeds
Facebook Fanpage
Twitter
UUA Congregations on Twitter List
http://twitter.com/uua/uu-congregations
Somecity UU Church (Imaginary )
This is an imaginary church used in Peter’s social media trainings.
Somecityuu.org
Facebook page
Twitter
UU PLANET TV
http://www.uuplanet.tv
New Video RSS Feed
Facebook Fanpage
UU video alerts via Twitter
UU PLANET 