OK -- so I attended a Breakout on Blogging at the ICC...fun!
Basically, four staff people from Granger Community Church gave the how-to's and why-to's of blogging. I was surprised at how few people in the room not only did not have a blog, but did not read blogs. I mean I know it is a relatively new way to communicate, but it surprised me that I was already addicted to something so cutting edge! : )
A couple of tidbits...
personal guidelines from Kem Meyer, Director of Communications:
*don't apologize for late blogging (did you hear that burningalive?!?)
*don't overlink (there's only three in this post so far...am I doing OK?)
*it is possible to go too far in vulnerability
....from Tony Morgan, Pastor of Administrative Services:
*avoid 'showing too much skin' (the vulnerability thing again because blogs are personal, but not private)
*post daily in order to build an audience (but I guess, don't apologize if you don't?!?)
*avoid blog "flirting" - revealing too much, too often (not sure of the difference between this and number 1...maybe I was confused, but I do remember that this is where he brought his wife up on the stage and they engaged in a full-body embrace to demonstrate the point!)
*reveal idiosyncrasies (ex. Tony apparently has a hotel soap fetish that he likes to discuss)
*build people up to encourage...Don't use the blog to attack
*build a personal brand in order to build an audience
*keep audiences -- both primary and secondary -- in mind when pushing hot buttons (apparently Tony recently used his blog to comment on how unoriginal he feels Christian worship music has become...)
anyway...I also learned a whole bunch of techno-geek stuff about RSS feeds and different blog services and how to study how often and what time of day people visit my blog (Google Analytics...) right now I could probably just ask you guys -- burningalive, healingrain, jhaas and anonymous...when do you visit and how often? : )
So -- cool stuff -- who knows where blogging will lead us next?!? Maybe I'll convince Brian to start posting -- finally!
Have a great day--
T
ps. I forgot to say that I went to this breakout with Michelle and we had a lot of fun giggling over everything together (btw...I WISH I could link her name to something, but she does not yet have a blog, although I keep pestering her to do so!) OH! I also sat in front of Nancy Beach, one of my personal church heroes...I passed her a note in class...
