Social Media is everywhere.

Blogs. Facebook. LinkedIn. Twitter. YouTube. Flickr. The list of social media applications continue to become entrenched with modern life and its user base keeps multiplying daily.

So what does this mean to you? If you plan events, we hope this post will help you in considering how to integrate social media into your agenda. Social media sessions at conferences – whether breakouts or keynotes – are some of the most-attended and highest-rated. Here are some quick ideas to get you started.

We frequently get asked by clients what the difference between Facebook Pages and Groups are and which one they should use. For organizations, the response is very simple: Use Facebook Pages. Here’s why:

1. Have a Poor Content Strategy

Expired Content

What happens when website visitors run come to your site and find and information that is expired and/or irrelevant? They leave. However, more importantly, typically they won’t come back.

Useless Content

What happens when website visitors run come to your site and can’t find what they’re looking for? They leave. And, once again, they typically won’t come back. Utilize analytics software (Google Analytics) to track what information is not utilized whatsoever. Remove it. Place your most popular content easily accessible on the homepage. This includes service times, the church address and phone number, and driving directions to the church.

Content that’s not written for the Web

Copy for your website should be short, scannable and to the point (not full of “church-ese”). People do not “read” on the internet, they quickly scan the site to find what they are looking for.

In a recession economy, marketing is more important than ever. To many business owners cutting marketing when sales are declining seems logical, but if you look at history companies that increased marketing dollars reap greater long term results than companies that scaled back. A recession forces management to make tough choices, not simple cuts. While I do recommend eliminating the fat from your budget, here are a few items to consider before you start any serious pruning...