The other day I was meeting with the head of an IT company and spoke briefly about their social media offerings. I then preceded to ask what their Twitter handle was and followed right away. Their account had over 5,000 followers, and they were following slightly more than that. I always get suspicious when a company is following more people then follow them, smells like automated Twitter spam. Minutes later I received a follow back and a DM saying, “Thanks for the follow, let us know if we can help serve you in any way.”

The auto-follow back was nice, and the automated DM I’ve seen before. Throughout the rest of the day, their account started regularly tweeting hourly, or twice hourly with links to blogs and articles having to do with social media, IT, etc. And the text accompanying these tweets were obviously not from a real-time human being. I’m all for scheduling tweets and posting links with meaningful content, but a completely automated account is grounds for an un-follow.

In addition, during my conversation with the company owner, he proceeded to show me some social media services they provide for churches and other businesses. I asked if it was a “Hoot Suite” style web app or equivalent? He said it’s strictly for auto-management of your Twitter account. No Dashboard to manage or schedule tweets, no tools for responding to mentions, nothing. Just pay a monthly fee and forget about your Twitter account. It will manage itself.

Services and companies like these guys miss the point of social media entirely. Sure, you can get 1000s of followers, but if you’re not actually engaging your audience in real time, who cares? I rather have 200 actual people following me that I can engage and hold meaningful conversation with, then over 10,000 mindless followers that I know nothing about. The best practices for social media include learning about your target audience (through engagement), responding to your followers with human interaction, and encourage brand loyalty.

A company that completely automates its social accounts is difficult to trust. I rather give my loyalty to a smaller company who truly cares about their followers and customers than a company who sees automation as the ideal social interaction. If you’re a small business or entrepreneur struggling to understand and utilize social media, don’t use services like this to automate your accounts. Follow some people and businesses using social media the right way and gleam what you can from them. I’m also reading a book called, Guerrilla Social Media Marketing by Jay Levinson. It’s a great how-to for those of you new at social media, or for seasoned users that want to grow their skill in using tools like Twitter and Facebook effectively.

http://c3churchpodcast.podbean.com/2012/01/25/all-staff-faithful-vs-loyal-dianne-wilson-newport-church-ca/

And the king said to the people, I also will surely go out with you myself. 3 But the people answered, You shall not go out! ….But you are worth ten thousand of us now. For you are now more help to us in the city. 4 Then the king said to them, Whatever seems best to you I will do.

2 Samuel 18

What greater honor could there be, but riding into battle with the King at your side? For David’s men, the greater honor was to fight for their King. They did not think him a coward or envy his position; instead they honored him with unflinching loyalty and readiness to serve.

During my first full time position at a church, I learned a number of valuable lessons. The greatest lesson came from observing the Associate Pastor and his extreme integrity and loyalty to leadership. Funny how integrity and loyalty go hand in hand. At first I struggled with this seemingly blind trust and thought it to be a fault. Then I realized that this loyalty was a key to success, especially within a church staff.

Many times church staff members believe that their ideas or plans would be more effective than those being asked of them from leadership. Even if they truthfully are, submission and loyalty create a platform for these ideas to be heard. Division and insecurity only destroy any platform of credibility a staff member might have, and frustration sets in.

A friend once told me that sometimes creativity flourishes the most when placed within strict boundaries and guidelines. We were speaking of music; and just think of how many #1 hits there have been on the basis of four simple chords?

So when an objective is given, let’s not focus our creativity on finding a different end goal or seemingly “better” project then what was appointed by leaderhip, but rather focus on the most effective way to get the job done with excellence. Submitted creativity can produce many more #1 hits than unfocused, dissented ideas.

David’s men acted on submission before it was even required of them. Those in church staff positions, are you running into battle or asking for a way out? Do you say it can’t be done, or focus your creativity on making it happen?

Someone posted (on Facebook no less) how much they dislike the new Timeline and how they believe it’ll fade away like so many services before it. The issue: no other service has claimed 901 Million users or successfully filed for IPO. By 2013 Facebook will be publicly traded and claim a billion people, with over half of those users accessing it every day.

Whether you love it or hate it, Facebook is here to stay, especially with new services like Spotify heavily integrating with Facebook. Many services are also allowing users to login with their Facebook credentials, giving Facebook more information about you and making that login your access key to other services.

While many people have yet to embrace social media, I truly believe that when used correctly, it can be a positivie service. I have had more positive customer service interactions via Twitter and Facebook than I have ever had over the phone. And even though people claim you can’t have “meaningful” relationships on Facebook, I’m able to keep up with the friendships from childhood that live far away and would otherwise be nonexistent.

To read more about how Facebook is taking over the world, here’s Mashable’s article on Facebook’s 901 Million Users:

http://mashable.com/2012/04/23/facebook-now-has-901-million-users/

If you own your own business or provide a service/sell a product, you need to get Square. For my web and audio production clients it’s been invaluable. Check it out at: squareup.com and the video below.

]]> http://stephenrobles.com/2012/04/20/epiphany-orlando-magic-2011/feed/ 3 http://stephenrobles.com/2012/04/18/entrepeneur-lesson-from-caines-arcade/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=entrepeneur-lesson-from-caines-arcade http://stephenrobles.com/2012/04/18/entrepeneur-lesson-from-caines-arcade/#comments Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:34:30 +0000 Stephen Robles http://stephenrobles.com/?p=73 Caine is a 9 year old boy who made his own arcade. Crazy story, but there’s also some wise lessons to be learned. This article by Ron Dawson picks apart 7 valuable insights into Caine’s business practices and also the noble work done by the videographer.

Read it here: http://daredreamermag.com/2012/04/16/7-valuable-lessons-from-caines-arcade/

Link: http://www.churchstagedesignideas.com/

My mission is to help ministries, entrepreneurs and churches get on the web affordably. I see how much people pay for a new website and it really shocks me. I also feel bad knowing I could do comparable if not better work, faster and cheaper. To find out more, you can visit the just re-designed illuminatedesign.com and follow on Twitter here: @illuminatedsign