Why it pays to invest in Social Media

(This is from www.philcooke.com. He said it all so well, so here's a reprint.)
There's a great deal of skepticism out there about social media from both businesses and non-profits. Does it really add to the bottom line? Does it generate more customers or donors? Does it have an ROI? Admittedly, it's hard to define, but some new research by social media platform Wetpaint and digital media consultant Altimeter Group shows that companies with the most involvement in social media increased revenues by 18% in the last 12 months, while those with the least involvement decreased 6% during that same time. Here's a few interesting things to note from the study:

1. Social media tends to build on itself. Conversations started on Twitter move to Facebook or Myspace. Email discussions are generated. The brand is extended into more and more channels.

2. Companies that scored well had small but dedicated teams working on social media initiatives. It's not enough to have one employee working on social media in his or her spare time. Your webmaster starting a Facebook page isn't the model. It takes a small, but dedicated group to keep the conversations moving forward.

3. Some of the companies reviewed, started their social media initiatives in response to bad PR. Perhaps a computer company was criticized for bad customer service and used social media to address the issue. This is a really strong point because social media is an excellent way to respond to complaints and criticism.

In light of more and more information like this study, it's good to remember that before you can win a gold medal, you have to at least jump into the pool.

Church marketing taken to extremes?

RENTON, Mich. USA - A Michigan church is enlisting Satan in a bid to drum up attendance at services. Metro South Church in the Detroit suburb of Trenton is posting signs saying the non-denominational Christian congregation "sucks" and "makes me sick." (see http://is.gd/2TtLd)
The ads are signed by Satan.
The campaign even has a Web site explaining why Satan hates the church.
Youth Pastor Adam Dorband told WJBK-TV the church is trying to reach out to people and cut through the "noise." Dorband said Jesus "wants us to be creative and he wants us to ... use whatever it takes to reach people."
Pastor Jeremy Schossau said the campaign is meant to be whimsical and isn't intended to upset anyone.
Compare this with the interdenominational campaign, 'Jesus. All about life' about to kick off in NSW and WA in Australia - at least the name of Jesus is prominent.

Jesus. All about life - coming to a church near you

After nearly seven years of planning, the 'Jesus. All about life' (JAAL) campaign is coming to NSW and Western Australia. Developed is response to the question, "what would the church do to promote Christian faith in the media if money was no object," JAAL has already run in Adelaide, Canberra/ACT and Tasmania.
There are over 1,500 supporting churches in NSW and over 250 in WA - the most number of churches who have supported any cross-denominational outreach ever. I was privileged to be involved in the development of the campaign and its great to see it finally coming to 'the big smoke'. You can check it out here: www.jesusallaboutlife.com.au.
There's also a number of promotional videos that take you through the creative changes that will be seen in the NSW and WA campaign. http://www.vimeo.com/5616352; http://www.vimeo.com/5992575; http://www.vimeo.com/6296429
Check them out.

Is Social Networking a passing fad?

Every morning I scan a whole stack of RSS feeds about what is happening in the world of Social Networking and Web 2.0. This morning, Phil Cooke (www.philcooke.com) who lives in LA and is a Christian media producer, linked to a new YouTube video that puts the impact of these sites into some perspective.

• By 2010, Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers
• 96% of them have joined a social network
• It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users
• It took TV, 13 years to reach 50 million users
• It took the internet 4 years to reach 50 million users
• Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months
• If Facebook were a country it would the world's 4th largest after China, India and the US

Fascinating statistics - the challenge is how to use them in your business or organisation. if you need a quote or just want to understand where the Digital World is headed.

What do you think?

Facebook, Twitter and the new media space

If you're like me, you've probably watched the growth of the new Social Networks and seen them as just another fad - no more. They are here to stay and are fast becoming how more and more people communicate with each other, forming their own movements in the process. The use of Twitter in Iran following the elections is the most recent example. I was reminded by viewing a presentation by Clay Shirky, professor, speaker and author of the new book 'Here Comes Everybody', as he gave a TED Talk last month entitled “How Twitter can make history, that the earthquake that hit the Sichuan province in China on May 12th, 2008 was first communicated to the outside world on Twitter.
The US research group Nielsen has also just released a report into 'How Teens Use Media' It's free and well worth reading.
Link this to a presentation I published a few weeks back on 'Gen Y, WMDs and learning from Obama' and you can see a real trend.
What does it mean? Time will ultimately tell, but Clay Shirky makes the comment that for the first time in history, everyone can be both a consumer and a publisher of information. What we do with this will be the real test.
Comments?

Korean technology - check out this lecturn

Check out this 'all purpose lecturn' in the lecture room we're using as a seminar room in a Theological College in Seoul. The base of the lecturn contains a computer (mouse on the right), a monitor and then remote controls for the projector, screen up and down, lighting and level controls for mic, DVD and PC audio.
Amazing piece of technology and the room is only a normal sized classroom. Means the teacher can do it all himself.
Quite remarkable.

Heading for Korea and Hong Kong

When you land in Seoul, Korea you need to take the train from the terminal where you land to the main terminal for customs, baggage collection, etc.
In true Asia style, you're given guidelines on where to stand as you wait for the train ... Seoul is a series of high-rise buildings, one after the other all the way from the airport into town. The Han River divides the city into two which is spanned by myriad bridges - all with arched spans. We're staying up on Walkershill - named I am sure because of the number of walkers (dressed in suitable Korean walking gear) who parade up and down the hill. Enjoying the food and the mild summer weather.

A day at Berrima and the Southern Highlands

We spent today at Berrima - a beautiful Australian colonial village in the Southern Highlands - about two hours south of Sydney.
Home to the Berrima Correctional Centre, great food, jams, pickles and spices and all things antique. (These jars of Apricot Mustard caught my eye - haven't yet tasted it, but sounds fascinating). Lunched at Josh's Restaurant, fabulous food and the coffee in the Southern Highlands. The quality of the woollen goods and the handcrafts here continue to be a delight.

IPhone Update

For three years I used a Blackberry, linked to my exchange server account where I worked. In practice all I did was set up a rule in exchange to forward all my e-mails to the e-mail address associated with my Blackberry. Simple.
At the beginning of this year I started my own business - hence this web site - and had to decide what phone to buy. All my sons had an iPhone as did a few of my friends. I had also made the jump from a PC to a Mac. The dual processor Macbook meant I could boot in Windows of OSX and have the best of both worlds.
This made me lean towards an iPhone, given that I assumed it would work better with my Mac.
There were a few things I needed the iPhone to do:
1. Access my Bigpond e-mail
2. Sync my Entourage diary, notes and To Do list with the same functions on the phone.
3. I didn't think I needed web access or Google maps of a lot of the other things that come standard on the iPhone.

I researched the e-mail synching, using MobileMe, where all your data is stored in a 'cloud' and syncs to your Mac or iPhone or any web based machine. It looked pretty good.

Theory intro practice
I moved my number from my previous provider over to Telstra and decided on a suitable plan. (Since upgraded when I realised how much mobile plans costs - the joys of a company phone were no longer ..)

Calls and texting were as I expected, they worked OK and whilst it took a while to get used to the way the iPhone worked, this was no real problem.

Setting up my e-mail so I could receive it and reply from my phone took a bit longer. I discovered that MobileMe only works with a @me.com e-mail address so I had to set one of these up. Plus there is an annual fee - which I didn't really mind.

In order to then get my Bigpond mail 'pushed' to my phone, I had to forward all the mail using Bigpond's on-line e-mail manager, to my MobileMe account. I suppose this is no different to how I set-up my Blackberry, but it took a while to work out.
So I set up both MobileMe and my Bigpond POP account in the e-mail section of the iPhone.
Whilst the MobileMe mail is pushed to my account, I have to 'pull' the Bigpond mail down my opening up Mail and then the Bigpond account.

After all this, I have decided to de-active the forwarding of my Bigpond mail to my MobileMe account and now just 'pull' down my Bigpond mail when I am out of the office. Being forced to have a MobileMe account was not really how I wanted to work, given that I have had my Bigpond account for 10 years or so.

Calendar/To Do/Notes
Synching my calendar etc between my phone and laptop was another key part of how I wanted to work and for the Calendar part, I use MobileMe's Calendar function. In order for this to work I did need to start using ICalendar on the Mac, but because this can sync internally with Entourage, I discovered this is actually OK. I have also discovered iCalendar's multiple calendar function, which is great.

To Do
This was a real pain as there is no native sync of a To Do list on the iPhone. Seems strange I know, but it wasn't built into the software - at least not yet.
So, the work around is almost as good - I use Appigo's To Do product. It is an App you can download and install on your phone, plus these is a companion program that runs on the Mac and syncs with ICalendar's To Do function.
Synching the two is done via a wireless connection. I have a home wireless network which both my Mac and my IPhone connect to. Once this is done and working, the synching of my To Do list works fine. It would be nice if this was part of the MobileMe service - but at least it works.

Notes
I have a stack of notes in Entourage. All imported from my exchange account. Unfortunately there seems to be no product that syncs Notes in the 'ics' format with the iPhone, so at the moment I have to live with this problem. I do tend to carry my laptop with me everywhere , so that's not too much of a problem.

Other Apps
Air Sharing is a great App that uses the same wireless connection to enable you to put any files on your Mac onto your iPhone. Its easy to do, just as you would with shifting any file from one device to another. It does need a program on your Mac as well as the iPhone

Evernote
Not yet sure of this app and I am currently using it to get around the lack of Notes sync. Its designed to enable you to 'clip' something from a web page, image, text or the whole page and then sync that with the Evernote server somewhere in the sky which then syncs with the Evernote app on your iPhone. It seems to work OK and I use it for copying images, addresses, articles etc from the web to my iPhone.
I'm sitting in the Q Club at the moment and before I left home I browsed to the hotel I am staying at and clipped the address, etc to Evernote using the Safari Evernote plug in. A few seconds later it was on my iPhone.

Overall
My iPhone and I are slowly becoming friends. Can't wait for the promised software update which will hopefully allow cut and paste, To Do sync and a whole lot more.
The keyboard is a pain though - blowed if I can get anywhere near the accuracy I got on the Blackberry. Not sure what it needs ... bigger keys or smaller fingers?

Time till tell.

So - who can't read?

This is my local high school, where all three of our sons went. As I drove past this morning, something about the sign caught my attention. It wasn't the spelling, because that's correct. Ah yes - when did you last see a book with 3,400 pages?
I tried to imagine it - with some airport novels around the 900 page mark, a book with 3,400 pages would surely be too big to carry?
My NIV compact print Bible is 1,000 pages - so such a book would be over three times the size of a Bible! Wow ....
I think either the school has very high expectations of their student's reading ability - or someone has made a mistake? I wonder if the person who put up the sign went to the school? I hope not.
Wonder how many days it will take for them to fix it? I'll let you know. See this story in Column 8 in today's (May 5th) Sydney Morning Herald. Click here >

The Shack - my thoughts

Took the time to read The Shack over the weekend. This is a novel that seems to have taken parts of the Christian world by storm, with over three million copies in print. Its a story about a guy (Mack) who's daughter is abducted during a vacation and how he deals with her brutal murder. Most of the words written about the book are to do with how it portrays Mack's meeting with the Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit back at The Shack where his daughter was most likely murdered. Author Paul Young (He calls himself WM. Paul Young - which is a pretentious way of saying William, I assume) portrays God as a black woman, Jesus as a not too attractive looking guy and the Holy Spirit as some form of free spirit with no real bodily form. The relationships between the three of them and how they then relate to Mack is the basis of most of the book. The key thing of course is that this is a novel - a work of fiction. Some of the stuff that has been written about the book would make you think it was a new version of the Bible. Its a novel.
Is it helpful in understanding the Trinity? In part I think it is - it would be worth hearing a theologian discuss the way this is portrayed in relation to what the Bible says.
Must go looking on the web.

Orange at Easter

We're spending the Easter holidays at Orange, a city in the central west area of NSW, about four hours drive west of Sydney. Orange's altitude means its climate is ideal for cool climate wines and great food. The nearby village of Millthorpe continues to develop as a boutique and antiques centre - this is one of the laneways in the village.
Its a great place to get away from city life for four days - raining now, but very peaceful. Visiting the rural areas of NSW makes you realise how city life forces its hectic pace on you, so its good to get away.
The autumn leaves are just starting to show and the chill in the evening air is quite exhilarating.
Back to the grind this week - but its been a good break.

Remembering 59 DVD

After over two months of not blogging, figured it was time to catch up with what's been happening. Last week the documentary I produced and directed on the 1959 visit to Australia of US evangelist Billy Graham was released. Remembering '59 looks at Australia in the 50's, the person of Billy Graham and then the impact of the four month visit by Billy and his team.
We interview people like Archbishop Peter Jensen and others whose lives were impacted by the Crusade meetings.
We launched the DVD at two public meetings last week, in Scots Church Melbourne and Wesley Mission's Lyceum Theatre in Sydney. Over 400 people saw the DVD and from all accounts, they loved it. Check it out on the web site: www.remembering59.com.au
Also this week on Good Friday, watch Seven at 12.30pm for a half hour program called Beyond Winning. Four Christian sportsmen and women tell their story in a program I produced for Bible Society.

Slum Dog Millionaire - lock it in for an Oscar, Eddie

What a brilliant film. This is what Baz Luhrman's 'Australia' should have been like. Slum Dog celebrates the power of a dream as Jamal discovers his destiny on the Indian version of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'. (Interestingly the actor playing the 'Eddie' role must have learnt how to pronounce 'millionaire' from Eddie - he does it without the 'll's' also)
Slum Dog tells the Indian story in a way that Australia should have told our story. The whole movie is a vibrant, joyous, sad and triumphal celebration of the Indian culture. The sequences in the slums are breathtaking and the wide angle and dutch tilt shots, moving all the time are a delight. The whole film is structured around Jamal being savagely interviewed by the police because they think he is cheating - so good is he on the show. But as he explains how he knows each of the answers by recounting the story of his life, we see his journey unfolding brilliantly.
Superbly done - bring on the Oscar Eddie

A shiny night in the world's most beautiful city

With apologies to my shivering north American friends, the attached pictures were taken last Thursday night as we sat waiting for the outdoor cinema on Sydney's Mrs Macquarie's Chair to begin. With a view to the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge and a reasonably priced take-away restaurant and bar nearby, we waiting with 1,800 other people to experience one of Sydney's great treats.

The movie was 'The Visitor' - the story of how a widower deals with finding two illegals living in his seldom visited New York apartment. It was a fabulous warm summers night and the combination of a great location, good movie and very edible food was a winner. J gave me the tickets for Christmas, so I had to take her of course - but it was a real treat. There's something about sitting outside with a great view of a great city while watching a movie at the same time that's compelling and relaxing at the same time - if that's possible.

The $100 Laptop

The One Laptop per Child organisation is doing an amazing job around the world. I heard Professor Nicholas Negroponte from MIT on ABC National Radio's Science Show yesterday talking about the concept of giving every child in every village in Cambodia a laptop. An amazing project and as someone who has filmed various aid projects in that country, I was well impressed.
Their web site: http://www.laptop.org/en/ is a good place to start. I love this use of technology and the way these guys worked with the laptop manufacturers around the world to get screens that would work in direct sun, for example, is inspiring. (I'd love one of those)
You can donate to this project on www.amazon.com/xo

An athiest confronted with practical Christianity

Matthew Parris is a London Times journalist, born in what is now Malawi. He recently went back and his piece about his observation about the practical impact of Christianity is well worth the read: Here's a bit to whet your appetite, then click on the link to read it all.

"Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good."

Read the rest by clicking here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article5400568.ece

Slowly, slowly - my iPhone and I are becoming friends ..

After 5 days or so now with my iPhone, its only fair to report that I am finally getting used to it and have found some nifty apps to help me. I am closer to solving the To Do list problem with the ToDo app and its associated appigo.com desktop software. You need to plug the phone in, but it does work and pulled all my Tasks from Entourage and all of my iCal calendar tasks.
Looks very neat with lots of options.
Downloaded EmailContact app which enables you to e-mail contact info to anyone from your own contact lists. Works a treat.
Also I have now forwarded my Bigpond mail account to my MobileMe account, set up folders in MobileMe to sort it all out and the whole thing is replicated on the iPhone. Pretty neat.
So ... its getting easier to use and its finally allowing me to work the way I want to.

iPhones - nice, but the basics are missing ...

With my new business venture comes a new mobile and I punted on an iPhone. Not sure if I made the right decision. A few niggles ... Notes. The notes option on iPhone is not syncable with anything. How dumb is that? Tasks. There is no native tasks function and even the task apps are not syncable with Entourage or Outlook. Very dumb.
I'm sure I'll get used to the keyboard - but coming from a Blackberry 8700 - this is also annoying.
If anyone has a solution to the Notes and Tasks problems ... let me know.

January 20th - Obama and MJC are both in business

Today will be an historic day in the US as President Obama is inaugurated. Certainly there will be significant change for the whole world - let's pray that it will be positive. On the home front, our youngest son married the lovely Madeline and they're happily holidaying in Fiji.
January 20th also marks the first day of Martin Johnson Communications - my first step into running my own business. After day one I can say that I survived - plus tonight my marketing e-mail goes out to 250 or so contacts from my address book. Let's hope they don't think its spam.
So - check out my web site and see if you'd give me work. www.martinjohnson.com.au