Marketing, Social Media

N00b Guide to Online Marketing

June 3rd, 2011 by Matt Haff

Social Media

Simple Facebook Connect

May 12th, 2011 by Matt Haff

When I first started adding Facebook to websites and blogs it was tedious and barely ever worked like it was supposed to. Even when I was using Facebook’s own tools, they still didn’t work right.

One bug in particular that I kept running into was that the generic “Like” button wouldn’t show the number of likes until it had more than 3 likes. I happened to run across a site that showed the full view even when there was “0″ likes. After picking around their code I found the plugin they were using, it was called Simple Facebook Connect and it’s a WordPress Plugin.

Once I installed the plugin it required that I create a Facebook App to attach it to. It was a breeze to setup and the plugin walked me through every step. Since then I’ve used this plugin on every site that we’ve built and haven’t had a problem yet.

 

Social Media

Social Media Strategy

December 20th, 2010 by Matt Haff

Just some thoughts that I had while I was brainstorming and thinking of a social media strategy. Would love to hear some feedback based on what you think will work and what won’t and why.

• Keep it simple – The objective is not to give tons of details, it’s to peak their interest and get them asking the questions they need answered.
• Keep confusion down – If you have multiple campuses make sure to differentiate in your posts
• Don’t expect RSVP – Facebook’s RSVP is never accurate, it helps to build the buzz but don’t count on those numbers as accurate.
• Don’t re-invent the wheel – Use it for what it’s already being used for. Don’t try to come up with a new way to utilize Facebook, it won’t work.
  • Share videos
  • Share pictures
  • Share stories
  • Talk about “post event”
  • Easier to invite others wall to wall not event invite.
• It’s still new – Don’t worry about getting it perfect the first time, it’s a work in progress and you have to be fluid to adapt to new technologies and the culture shift.

I feel that it’s all about inspiring people to do great things rather than just promoting an event. It’s so much better for people to see the spread of a campaign, the extent of the impact.

Social Media

Handling Negative Comments

December 6th, 2010 by Matt Haff

Lately we’ve had a lot of negative feedback and comments by a couple individuals on our Facebook pages. These were not your typical “church sucks” type of comments, they were more of a modern day pharisee type of comment like “this is unbiblical” or “Sadly this is all Christmas is about to most people, I don’t think this video on a “Church’s” website helps. Nor do I believe the Lord has been glorified at all in this.” How do you combat such things? Do you delete the post? Do you let your members back you up? We’ve tried a number of solutions but every negative post has a different solution depending on the nature of the comment and that persons reputation for posting such things.

It’s very difficult to read some of these comments and I would offer a word of encouragement that when you are following God’s will that is when Satan will become more aggressive at attacking you.