This past year, our church launched our own social networking site.  I had a few critics as to why we need our “own” social network from the tech community when I first started talking about it.  A lot of people said to simply create a Facebook group.  My response was, “How many people actually go look at Facebook groups?”  From my experience, not many.  They sign up for a Facebook group and forget about it.   Plus, we needed a network that would give us more proximity.  With Facebook, there are hundreds of people we know around the world.  With our own network, we are able to quickly connect on issues relevant to just our Church.

It’s been really great getting people to create profiles, share their testimonies and post photos of church events.   We also use it to mass communicate with our members.   Many members have created their own small groups and have organized some really cool things on the network.  Most churches try to identify small group needs and invent small groups.  This social network is a great place for them to happen organically.  It definitely has been a tool to help people come together and get to know one another.

The tool we used to create our network is Ning.  For premium features like a custom domain and no ads, you need to pay a small monthly fee.  Ning has some cool features for sure, but if you’re looking for a free service, you should try Grou.ps.  I just stumbled across this awesome platform that is totally free.  It’s completely ad-free, and you can even map a custom domain for easy access and ownership.   If you already have a website, you can create a subdomain like:  http://community.mychurch.com and map it for free to your Grou.ps network.  Here are some of the cool features from Grou.ps.

Use your own branding.  Grou.ps doesn’t bug you with their logo.

Unlimited media uploads.

Free domain masking – (Ning charges almost $10.00/month for this feature!)

Integrate popular social sites to bring your members back!

Forum and mailing lists.

Personal blogs.

Real-time chat.

User sub-groups: Members can organize their own small groups!

Crowd Sourcing Wikis: Share documents and collaborate.

Calendaring.

Share files.

Share links.

Map important locations.

Customizable member profiles.

For those more technically inclined, you can even host Grou.ps on your own server because it’s open source!  You can customize it and add your own functionality to it.  Also, Grou.ps comes in over 35 languages, so if your user base needs localization, it’s already built in.

Grou.ps is completely free for the taking.  Start a social network for your church or youth group today!

Here’s a quick look at the admin panel:

Go to Grou.ps

[invite]

Many people don’t see the value of Twitter and the microblog community. I’ve heard people say, “I don’t want to know what others are doing!” Well, that might be true when it comes to casual friendships, but in a work environment, knowing what your co-workers and colleagues are doing can be productive. If you are working on projects or collaborating on ideas, Yammer.com provides one central place for everyone in your organization to communicate.

The beauty of it is that people outside of your organization are not able to join your private network. This keeps communication free from external distractions and allows tracking of important conversations. Another feature I really like about Yammer is the ability to create groups. For instance, during our leadership retreat, I created a group for ideas and the minutes of our meetings. I had several people with laptops join the group and begin documenting the meeting with short posts. All posts were saved in that group and are easy to find when I need them. You can create private groups for more sensitive conversations as well.

You also can use hash tags which help you search for posts later with keywords. For example, one of my posts looked similar to this: “#todo09 Increase the soda machine price to $.75 from $.50.” Yammer then gives you a link to all the hash tags you create and with one click of a button, you have a list of every post where you used that tag. By the way, I haven’t changed the price yet, so come by for a cheap soda.

Last, but not least is the portability of this app.  They have a desktop software that is simple to use as well as the basic web interface.  You can post just like using Twitter or an IM service.  They also have an iPhone and Blackberry app that allows you to submit posts on the go.  Receive SMS updates on your phone or right in your IM client.  This is a free service for companies and organizations. There are a few paid features that you might want to check out. If you need to centralize your team’s communication, sign up for an account and check it out. You have nothing to lose.

Here are a few ideas for using Yammer in churches:

• Creative meetings
• Event planning and coordination
• Weekly staff check-in with posts about what’s going on in their ministry this week
• Corporate to-do lists of things needing completed around the church
• Personal prayer requests group for staff members
• Microblog about missions trips
• Traveling pastors can update staff with minimal effort.

Yammer.com

I’m very excited to announce the latest version of my new plugin for Wordpress.  EasySMS installs right into the back-end admin panel and a simple sidebar form installs by dragging and dropping the widget on your sidebar.   Once people start subscribing, you can categorize them in groups and send SMS messages right from Wordpress.  Another cool feature is automatic SMS messages broadcast your lastest post (optional). I’m very excited about the possibilities for churches to keep in touch with their congregations and leaders right from their websites!  The best part is it is FREE for the taking.  So, what are you waiting for?  Go over and grab yourself some Mister Nifty goodness for your website.  If you don’t have a WordPress site, we feel sorry for you.  Go get yourself one for free!   http://www.wordpress.org

Download EasySMS here

Features:

*   Owner Verification of cell phones with unsubscribe feature
*   AJAX sidebar widget form with custom title and terms of agreement.
*   Subscriber groups
*   Track how many SMS message have been sent to each subscriber.
*   Auto-notification of new posts to subscribers (optional)
*   Custom text messages from admins only
*   Message preview before sending SMS
*   80 default carriers
*   Delete/Add/Edit and Carriers
*   Edit/Delete Subscribers
*   WP Administration compatible interface.
*   Stats snapshot on dashboard.
*   New subscriber notification. (optional)

Screenshots

Sidebar Form

Send SMS

Carrier Table

Groups Table

Subscriber Groups

Settings