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Dear Colleagues:
The following are resources I have found helpful that I may or may not have had time to tell you about at the Day of Renewal Presentation. It is not an exhaustive list but it will help get you started.
Pastor Joelle Colville-Hanson, Director for Evangelical Mission, ELCA
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Blog Posts: So you want a Facebook Page for your church? What not to post on Facebook Buying Facebook Ads for your church Cover photos are 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall. If you upload an image that's smaller than these dimensions, it will be stretched to this larger size. The image you upload must be at least 399 pixels wide and 150 pixels.
Profile Photos : Page profile pictures are square and display at 160x160 pixels on your Page. The photo you upload must be at least 180x180 pixels. Rectangular images will be cropped to fit a square. |
What is with all the Hashtags?? ### 
Many of our events now have hashtags. This means you are invited to tweet these events and share what we are doing on Twitter. When you place the hashtag (#) in front of a word or group of words, you turn them into a searchable link that allows people to find all the tweets on that topic. Hashtags are used for chats, so that you can see only tweets on the topic of that chat. They are also used for events, conferences and meetings as a way to share what you are experiencing and involve more people in the event.
If you tweet anything about church, be sure to use #ELCA. This helps connect ELCA people.
- Buffer: Allows you to schedule both tweets and Facebook posts. It also provides helpful analytics about your posts.
- Tiny Url: Long urls (web addresses) make it difficult to to tweet links and add any comment: This site will make your url shorter.
- Twubs: Can make it easier to follow a tweetchat, just put in the hashtag for the chat
- Storify: Great and easy way to make transcripts of tweetchats or collect live tweets from events and make a story out of it.
- #CHSOCM: Every Tuesday night at 8 pm CDT church leaders from different traditions show up on Twitter to share ideas and experiences with church and social media.
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Blogging
- Blogger.com: This is what we use for Synod Blog. Very user friendly
- Wordpress: Requires a little more work and tech savy but the look is preferred by many bloggers
- Weebly: Also very user friendly for blogging
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Other Apps & Platforms
- Pinterest: I think this is a great platform under utilized by congregations. It is a way to share resources and ideas.
- Instagram: A way to share photos. This is where the teens and young adults are.
- Linkedin: This is where the professionals are.
- Foursquare: A way of letting folks know where you are. Good for pastors whose folks think they only work on Sunday. Use it to check in at nursing homes, meetings, give people a snapshot of what a pastor does during the week.
- Google+: Still unclear if this is going to take off and be used but it does seem to be helpful for sharing blog posts and getting views.
- Dropbox: Free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. No more emailing yourself stuff.
- Constant Contact: For e-letters. They have an ELCA template. Nominal monthly fee.
- Picmonkey: Excellent free online photo editor.
- Create your own QR Code: This site allows you to put in the link to your PDF file and it will make a scanable QR code from it.
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