One of the very practical things that you can do to protect your brand image is to develop a style guide for your organization. Just in case that’s a foreign term/concept for any of you, let’s start with a definition of what a style guide is as explained on Wikipedia:
A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for design and writing of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication or organization….
Style guides can range from being all about the treatment of a logo to governing how to write for a publication - even down to the level of what and how many metaphors to use in your writing.
We have created many style guides for our clients, but being a firm that is really strong in design our guides tend to focus on specifications for logo treatment, organizational colors, fonts & sizes thereof and the imagery that can be used in printed and/or online communications.
The overall goal with a style guide is to create a set of standards that the whole organization can adhere to so that when a communication piece goes out to your audience, they are immediately able to identify it as coming from your organization. The reason that’s a big deal is because brand identification, even on a subconscious level, brings all the (hopefully positive) brand impressions your audience has of your organization to the top of their minds. By leveraging that brand familiarity through the subtlety of consistent design, you can then more quickly get on with the business of communicating the purpose of the piece. It also reinforces that you care about quality and consistency, which reflects on all your work.
But although a style guide is a fairly simple document to put in place, the real work will always come in getting your whole team to understand the importance of it and then get them to remember to use it on a consistent basis. As such, as with any new process, adoption of it can often take some effort and time.
We are pleased to announce that most AdvancedMinistry 2.0 templates are now compatible with Internet Explorer 8! The only 2.0 template that is not yet compatible is The Narrow Road, which we hope to have fixed within the next 2 weeks.
More major improvements and fixes are on their way… stay tuned!
One of the messages that we find ourselves having to repeat to our clients often is the idea that your belief about how your organization is perceived by outsiders isn't always right - in fact, it's often at least a little bit, "off". As such, we're big advocates of getting an outside perspective.
Enter this video which gives us a really interesting look into a mindset towards Christians and the Evangelical Church in Canada that you might not have been aware of. One of the many nuggets in this video that caught my attention was when Kevin Newman said that "these new Christian churches were everywhere I looked, but I didn't know how to look for them". That kind of feedback is incredibly useful to know as churches and ministries in Canada seek to strategize about their communications.
A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about my concerns with Godwitter.com (which as of last week, is no longer in existence). My two main points were:
A. The church in general can’t seem to come up with its own creative ideas.
B. By building these types of communities, we segregate ourselves from the very people we are called to get into relationship with.
A few days later someone named Jason left the following comment on that post:
“RAY - so what you're saying is that what's wrong with Godwitter is what's wrong with eletricurrent and the xpirimental blog, right?”
I won’t lie - this comment got my back up a bit. But after chatting it over with some of the team here, in spite of the sarcastic tone of the comment, we wanted to honor our commitment to openness in our conversations on this blog and so I asked Jason to clarify his comment so we could better understand exactly what the comparisons were that he was making between Godwitter and Electricurrent/Xpiritmental. I presume that he doesn’t have a problem with the first part of my argument since we’re a creative firm and a big part of Xpiritmental is all about encouraging high-quality design (e.g. check out our free desktops). So his comment must have to do with the idea of Christians segregating themselves into communities.
Unfortunately, after a number of days we never heard back from Jason and so while I still want to respond and deal with what I think are some pretty major misunderstandings about who we are and the difference between Xpiritmental and Godwitter, I can’t be sure that I’m fully addressing Jason’s concern. So, I’m leaning on Jason’s good graces as I try to respond. I also want to be forthcoming in explaining that although the words in the two posts that make up this response are indeed “my” response to Jason, I did talk these things over with the team here and have them edit this post in order to keep myself accountable to responding in a helpful manner.
But, Jason’s comment does tell me that there is at least one person out there that doesn’t fully understand who we are and what we do and if there’s one, there’s probably others so I felt like it was worth my time to respond in a new blog post in hopes that it helps our audience get better acquainted with us. I’ll address Jason’s question in a second post, but for now I want to highlight one quick lesson from this experience that will undoubtedly help you all as you seek to contribute to online communities.
As far as blog etiquette is concerned, it’s always bad form to simply leave a challenging question on a blog and then not stick around to be part of the conversation after. In Jason’s defense, we don’t currently have an email notification service set up to alert him that a comment was added to that post (something we’re hoping to add soon), so we’re giving him the benefit of the doubt here.
But this does remind me of the importance of recognizing that the best way to be a help to an organization, especially if your post or comment are challenging, is to stick around long enough to see the conversation through. Otherwise, the feedback just comes off as the kind of thing that simply deserves to be ignored.
Let’s start with Electricurrent, or EC as we refer to it around here. Electricurrent is the ministry/non-profit arm of Gateseven Media Group Inc. EC provides brand management services like brand development, logo design, print design, web design & development and strategic planning for marketing/advertising campaigns to organizations like: World Relief Canada, Teen Challenge, The Salvation Army, Alpha Canada and more recently, The Meeting House. The other arm of Gateseven Media Group Inc. is Bark Communications which services for-profit organizations like the Toronto Maple Leafs, Bayer (Environmental Sciences), NBA and Ontario Mutuals. But all those names boil down to the same team of individuals who provide the same services to both sets of clients.
The reason for the separate brands is as follows. Up until three years ago, we were solely and legally known as Electricurrent and both sets of clients were lumped together under one umbrella/portfolio. About four years ago, we started to get feedback from our corporate clients saying that they were concerned about having their names on a portfolio with so many ministry organizations as they need to be careful not to be perceived as supporting or being aligned with a given religious group. So we honored our relationships with those organizations by creating the separate brands.
But l want to be really clear in communicating that even though our names changed, our hearts did not.
In absolutely every aspect of the work that we do, we aim to impact the lives of those around us for the sake of the Gospel. When we deal with non-Christian organizations (both for and not-for-profit), we seek to live, act and speak in a way that shows Christ to those organizations and we don’t shy away from the fact that we are Christians, as evidenced by the fact that I’m writing and posting this blog on the Internet where it could easily be found by any of our Bark clients. And when we deal with Christian organizations, we consider it our job to help them succeed in their ministry even if that means saying something tough – like in my original Godwitter post.
The other thing that needs to be considered about Electricurrent is that we have and continue to employ non-Christians, and as God leads, we will always continue to do that.
As far as Xpiritmental is concerned, this is where I think Jason’s concern probably has the most chance at applying. Xpiritmental is a community of people that for all intensive purposes are very likely all Christians. But there is a significant difference between the purpose of Xpiritmental as compared to what’s going on at Godwitter. Godwitter is a direct copy of a generic social media platform. It doesn’t add anything new or different it just serves to provide people with a Christian version of an existing platform that works just fine. The only common theme that brings people together on Godwitter is that it’s “Christian”.
The common theme on Xpiritmental though is very different. As I’ve already said, yes it’s probably 100% Christians, but the purpose of Xpiritmental is to further facilitate an already existing community of people who are either clients of Electricurrent or Electricurrent’s product, AdvancedMinistry. I think that makes the comparisons with Godwitter completely moot. We don’t provide a “Christian” alternative to another blog just like ours with the goal of segregation. We’re providing more resources to our existing community – so that they can go out and get their message to the world, which by the way most often includes the message of Jesus Christ’s death, burial and resurrection.
Any fans of the old show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air will no doubt appreciate the clever video above for the song "The Old Prince Still Lives at Home" by Shad.
Shad is a friend of our very own Mark Morrison and grew up right here in London, Ontario (as evidenced in the slightly revised Hollywood sign in the video). Since we're fans of Shad's immense talent, we wanted to mention him on our little corner of the Internet. As one of his lyrics in another of his songs goes:
I Tunes, eye-patch
I'm in the same boat where the pirates be
Tell'em I'm down with that pirate stee
They don't buy it, I say don't buy it - pirate me
If it's ill, it'll spread virally
There's a guy that get's the power of the new marketing.
Thanks to everyone who has completed the AdvancedMinistry survey to date! We have received a tremendous amount of feedback and encouragement, for which we are very grateful.
As we continue to dream about the future of AdvancedMinistry, we would love to hear from you if you haven’t yet completed the survey. We’ve noticed some common elements within the submissions so far, and we’re looking for more. Here are a few of the improvements that have been requested thus far:
GENERAL USABILITY
Create an easier way to manage the homepage (which also includes separating the current tie between one’s navigation and repositioning homepage elements)
Ability to expand the menu system (i.e. in some cases it would be great to have one more menu item on the homepage)
Ability to remove / reposition the HOME button on a website
Simplify (for non-techies) the Admin Panel
Add spell check
Ability to change the date format (especially for UK customers)
DESIGN / TEMPLATES
More template options (including the ability to change fonts / background colors / number of columns)
More / better templates
Ability to have a fully customized template (see AMDL)
Better template compatibility with the IE8 browser
CALENDAR / EVENTS
Ability to have recurring events
Ability to change the colors of the new calendar
PHOTOS / MEDIA
Ability to delete an entire photo album
More media integration (i.e. flash / media players)
More options available for Podcasting (instead of having to sign up for the Purple Suite)
FORMS
Ability to print forms, export all entries and archive forms for later use (so that they can be re-activated)
Ability to receive payments through the Forms Wizard.
STORE
Ability to purchase downloadable material (i.e. audio / video)
SOCIAL NETWORKING / MEDIA
More social networking elements (i.e. Facebook)
Ability to feature an actual blog post on the homepage
THUMBNAIL GALLERY
Ability to “jump to a page” in the thumbnail gallery instead of scrolling one page at a time
NEWSLETTER ENGINE
Make the newsletter engine a little more intuitive
HELP / SUPPORT
Tutorials built into each section (including a “Getting Started” tutorial)
A spot on the website with helpful tips (on top of the newsletter that gets sent every week); i.e. embedding YouTube/Flash files, photo editing, etc.
A little bit better responsiveness when it comes to submitting a support ticket
Offer paid telephone support
OTHER
Ability to remove “Powered by AdvancedMinistry” at the bottom of the page (even if costs a small fee)
Find out “What’s New” in AdvancedMinistry (as that section has disappeared)
Ability to purchase individual components rather than upgrading an entire suite (i.e. Store)
Ability to have custom meta tags on a page-by page basis
The deadline to complete the survey is next Tuesday, May 26, at which point we will begin knocking out walls and getting to work. Thanks for your continued support and feedback. We are here to serve!
"If you don't get noticed, you don't have anything. You just have to be noticed, but the art is in getting noticed naturally, without screaming or without tricks."
From time-to-time we throw out recommendations on Xpiritmental for applications that we are big fans of. Today I am taking the opportunity to hail the merits of TweetDeck.
I finally broke and created a Twitter account a few months ago and started Tweeting (www.twitter.com/avanderploeg). After about a dozen tweets, I went silent – I literally didn’t know what to tweet about. Then, about three and-a-half weeks ago, I installed TweetDeck and my Twittering took off. Reinforcing what I said in part 2 of my blog series on writing, listening to what others are saying and how they use Twitter inspired me in my use of it.
Beyond some issues with it not playing well on a system with multiple monitors, I love this program. I was never a fan of the look of the Twitter website and thanks to the column-layout in TweetDeck, I can see the tweets of the people I follow, the replies that I get, the Facebook status updates that happen for all my FB friends and I’m able to update my FB status simultaneously to posting a tweet.
Truly a case of having the right tool for the job.
Electrticurrent is looking for AdvancedMinistry users to provide their thoughts on our future. As we continue to grow, we want to get your opinions on how we’re doing and what we need to improve on.
The survey should take about 5-10 minutes of your time and will greatly assist us in generating new components, ideas and strategies for the future.
If you would like to participate in the survey, please click here to begin.
In responding to the question of how I write for Xpiritmental, Facebook, Twitter, etc…, the overarching thought that strikes me actually has nothing to do with writing. It had to do with the fact that the exchange that led to this post is an awesome example of a “win” in social media terms. The comment I left on Twitter/Facebook, wasn’t simply a post that died on screen. Rather, in generating a response that has led to four blog posts, it’s created something bigger than me just telling a bunch of people something about me - it started a conversation - a conversation that could yet continue from here in the comments on each post or via some other medium (hint, hint, nudge, nudge :)
As I wrote that original tweet/status, I had no idea what the needs of my audience were, but in posting, I came to understand a way in which I could share something useful.
This is the reason that companies and organizations can and do get into social media. It helps them understand their audience better and gives them an opportunity to create a relationship with them – and that is the most powerful marketing tool in the arsenal of a ministry and non-profit.
And if it’s not already clear from other posts on this blog, let’s be clear that when I say “marketing”, I don’t mean salesy manipulation. I do mean clear communication to help you and your audience get involved in something mutually beneficial. We anticipate that the people that frequent this blog are based for the most part in the ministry and non-profit world. As such, we are speaking to people whose whole calling and purpose are about helping and serving people. Social media fits perfectly in the fulfillment of that calling.
Now you just have to get writing so we have something to talk about.
In part 3 of my response to the question of what my approach is to writing, I want to talk about directives – that is, the set of constraints and goals that you set up when beginning to write in a social media context. To do that I need to come back to the conversation that was the genesis of this series, the full comment from my friend was: “I'd like to know how you approach [writing]. Everyone must have a plan“.
It’s that last little bit about people having a plan that I want to touch on in particular. You see, while I can fully appreciate why that presumption is made, I don’t believe it’s the case.
To my mind, there really are two groups of people out there that are writing in a social media context:
Group 1 - Those that essentially treat it as an online journal, broadcasting the details of their lives in order to keep those around them up-to-date on the happenings of their day. This type of usage, although an incredibly effective method for people to keep in touch (i.e. see Facebook), doesn’t present much value to organizations whether they are for profit or not. It is also undoubtedly one of the biggest presuppositions we have to overcome when trying to communicate to ministries and non-profits that there is value in tools like Twitter. I’ll touch on this more fully some other time, but suffice it to say, when people hear “Twitter”, they immediately seem to conjure thoughts of tweets like:
7:22 AM - “Leaving to walk the dog”
7:28 AM - “Dog at fire hydrant”
7:29 AM – “I just realized why fire hydrants are yellow… makes sense.”
Group 2 - Use social media to achieve some measurable goal. They are people who are striving to use, or figure out how to use, the tools that comprise social media (Twitter, Facebook, blogging, etc…) to grow their constituency or their donor base or bottom line. And it’s not that this type of usage can’t also include an element of personal information (allows your followers to connect with you on a personal level which can be hugely powerful). The trick for this type of usage though is to write purposefully and stay on point over time. This is where the ideas of directives and strategy come in.
I’ll offer two ideas to accomplish this:
1. Establish a Voice – You want a consistent sound/tone coming out of your writing. Is your organizations brand humorous and irreverent? Is it reserved, passionate or compassionate? The voice you aim for needs to represent who you are. This can become a real challenge when you’ve got multiple contributors to the same blog, as is the case on Xpiritmental. But by establishing a voice, you create a body of work that will help guide you over time to stay “on voice” and if you have multiple contributors, will help them to write consistently. One great example of this is the corporate blog for 37Signals called Signal Vs. Noise.
2. Develop a Strategy - Write out a strategy for your social media interactions. What is the purpose of your personal or organizational time online? Who are you trying to impact? What can/are you going to write about (please pick something your passionate about)? These need to be defined at the very least in your mind but better yet in some documented form so that you can make sure that you don’t get off point. It’s easy to rally a group of interesting people around a point that they care about and you’ll benefit from that relationship.
Companies and organizations are made up of people - seems obvious doesn’t it? And yet…we miss the implications. It’s important to note that whether you have an organizational goal of using social media or not, chances are, your people are using it on a personal level and work being what it is in our lives, they will likely start talking about their place of employment. As such, in response to what has grown into a massive phenomenon that happens regardless of whether it is organizationally sanctioned or not, employees are representing their organizations online. In response, many organizations have rushed to create a social media policy. IBM had one of the first and most comprehensive statements for a major corporation – it can be found here.
Obviously, for those of us that are thinking in terms of writing for personal reasons, the guidelines need not be quite that formal, but I believe the concept of directives still applies and can be transferred.
We didn’t start Xpiritmental until after I had spent about a year regularly reading a number of blogs by authors in varied industries/spaces. It’s not that spending a year reading blogs is necessarily a mandatory precursor to starting a blog, but to some degree, a healthy dose of listening needs to be part of your prep before you start talking – and if it’s not obvious, it also needs to be an ongoing part of your social media strategy.
It’s a general truism that listening breeds wisdom and as such can only help with our communication. But with regards to social media writing, listening also has the very practical outcome of helping you train your mind to see a blog post or tweet in everyday situations. So many times in our lives, we can get on auto-pilot and sail through a day without thinking or learning from the day’s events. But if you read the posts of the most influential bloggers out there, you begin to pick up on a trend that they have established in their lives and writing – that is, that they have attuned their minds to what’s going on around them and really think about/apply those experiences.
This isn’t to say that you’ll never have writers block – from time-to-time I have days or weeks where writing something for this blog is a difficult task. That’s when I’m thankful that my year of listening led me to this post.
I was/am a HUGE fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation TV show. However, I have always, I believe, had at least one foot still firmly planted in reality. So the clip we are posting this week excites me because it’s Star Trek, but still makes me laugh because I don’t take the show too seriously.
The “reporters” do an awesome job of reporting this bit as if it were completely real. The punch lines are delivered quickly, and in perfect dry humor. So be sure to pay close attention and enjoy. (That said, you don’t have to be a fan of the show to find the humor in this).
Lastly, you’ll notice this clip, by complete coincidence, shows scenes from last week’s Casual Friday…which makes it all the more awesome.
Let me pre-empt this post by saying that I am good friends with Greg Gordon, founder and creator of SermonIndex.com, a great resource for downloading audio and video sermons. Yesterday Greg sent me a link to his latest project “Godwitter”, a knock-off of the popular social media site, Twitter. Our Facebook conversation went like this:
Greg: Coming soon! http://www.godwitter.com/ The Christian Twitter. Signup and beta test this, saints. Post bugs and things that don’t work.
Ray: Is this for real or is this a joke?
Greg: Ray this is the real thing :)
Ray: :) No comment. :)
Greg: Let’s see Ray join this godwitter.com thing and share his comments :)!
Ray: Greg... I LOVE SermonIndex but I cannot support Godwitter. I'm happy to share my comments, but I'm afraid it would be more of a rant, probably better done between 2 brothers and a cup of coffee. :)
<end Facebook conversation>
Greg and I got on the horn a little later on and we had a conversation about my concerns with Godwitter, and if I were to be completely honest, Christians as a whole. In Greg’s words, “"wittering could be the next stage in the social media status update war." I’m not so sure; the jury is out for me.
In our chat, we talked about the idea of me discussing our conversation in a blog post and he gave me his blessing and encouraged me to do so.
So here are some of the concerns that I raise:
1. The church seems to have the inability (in most cases) to come up with it's own ideas.... GodTube, Godwitter.... for anything that has done well in the secular side, you can pretty much guarantee that a "God version" of it is coming out soon. I’m not saying that these services don’t provide value, but the lack of creativity shown by the very people whom God has called and equipped to be creative disheartens me! It’s one thing to build upon ideas that the world has generated, but it’s another thing to copy something just because of its popularity and stick the word “God” in front of it. Not only might you get sued, but it also provides a saddening representation of one’s viewpoint toward Christians as a whole.
2. As Bill Hybels notes in his book “Just Walk Across the Room”, as Christian's increase in years, their number of non-Christian friends decrease at a rapid pace. (I may also argue that in looking at that graph, it would seem to me that we’ve completely gone astray in modeling a life after Christ… but we’ll save that for another post!) Twitter and Facebook are one of the few tools out there that enable Christians to build relationships with their non-Christian friends.
More and more, Christians are finding unique ways of segregating themselves from the rest of the world, completely forgetting that Christ dined with sinners. I believe that we need to find more ways to communicate and evangelize with non-Christians... not build "Christian-only communities" that discourage interaction with people that don’t know the Lord.
I’ll stop there… I think that’s enough to chew on for one day. Thanks again to Greg for allowing me to post this conversation in a public forum! He’s undoubtedly agreed to allow it because he’s humble enough to understand how these kinds of conversations can help us sharpen each other in our respective callings. I applaud his example of willingness to be open and I hope to be as receptive to any feedback from Greg or any of the readers of this blog that might come as a result of this post.
P.S. I came across a site the other day that is a great illustration of what happens when Christ-followers get creative and do the best they can for the sake of the Gospel – www.iamsecond.com… a great example of the work of Christ in people’s lives!
This past Monday, I posted a Tweet/Facebook status that read: “Working on a blog post for Xpiritmental - man, do I love writing...” Shortly after, a friend of mine and I had a brief exchange on Facebook about writing which culminated in him asking how I approach it.
As I was thinking about how a Facebook comment section probably wasn’t the best place to address his question, it occurred to me that my response to him could be of interest and value to the readers of Xpiritmental as well, so I committed to respond to him via blog post.
Then I started writing the post and quickly realized that this was a big enough topic to warrant a few posts. So, I’m going to start with an outline of where my inspiration comes from for the things I write. Then I’ll move on to a couple posts on the more formal strategies for maintaining consistency/direction and finally, I’ll close off with some general thoughts. To be clear, I’m not completely sure how many posts this series is going to end up being, but at this point, it’s looking like four will cut it.
So…regarding my writing inspiration:
Frankly, the exchange that initiated this series of posts is a wonderful example of where I get my inspiration to write. Basically everything that I write on this blog and in my Twitter and Facebook accounts is based on the things that occur to me in my day-to-day life/work. More to the point, the inspiration comes from things like:
Situations that I find myself in with clients.
Conversations I am part of (or party to).
Things I read online on other blogs/tweets or offline (yes, paper-based books and magazines still exist and they are WONDERFUL!).
Conversations that occur as a result of my blogs and tweets.
Etc…
I believe that our daily circumstances have a wonderful way of bringing relevant topics to the surface and it’s for that reason that I lean on them to drive my writing.
There are risks with gathering my inspiration from daily events though.
One of them is that repetition sets in. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing (within reason). Topics that repeatedly come up in my life, and in turn my writing, do so for very good reasons. The repetition seems to indicate to me that they are either a topic of great enough interest that they warrant further attention or are challenges that, although I’ve already addressed them once, haven’t seen any change and therefore could use another highlight.
The other risk that comes to mind in getting my inspiration this way is that I could be writing about such widely varied topics that the body of work as a whole no longer resonates or carries value for my readers. For that reason, it’s only prudent to put safeguards in place to ensure that you remain on point.
I’ll tackle some ideas on setting up those safeguards in the coming posts.
Electricurrent is pleased to announce three new Xpiritmental desktop wallpapers entitled, Wonderful Light, Press On and Child-Like Faith. We’ve also created a new Archive gallery which will help reduce the time it takes for the site to load while still letting you catch up on all the past wallpapers!
I was in our local Christian bookstore on Saturday and I’m guessing that the gentleman in front of me in line at the checkout was a Pastor. I say that because as he was purchasing a Bible, there was some conversation back-and-forth between this gentleman and the lady who was serving him and from that chatter, I picked up that he represented a church that was going to be trying out a new version of the Bible for their use. As the man finished paying for the Bible, the woman explained the information he needed in order to return it if the committee that was reviewing it decided against that version. That comment gave way to an exchange between them about how challenging a decision by committee usually is.
As I thought about that exchange, it struck me that most anyone in a church context could relate to the fact that by the very nature of what they are, committees are difficult to drive towards an agreement. It takes real processes and safeguards in place in order to come to a successful conclusion – and yet, so often in our work with churches and ministries, we see so many of those safeguards not in place.
The biggest pitfall we see many ministries falling into is allowing too many people to have input. This is a challenge for two reasons:
The more people you have involved, the more risk there is that you are leaning on opinions of people that haven’t been involved in the process all along. Without the confines of the project goals and the context of the project process to date, those people are commenting simply on the basis of you asking them to provide feedback. Keep in mind too, that when you ask someone to provide feedback, they will always find a way to give you something critical, constructive or otherwise.
An inability to distill the feedback down from a mass of varied responses to a single, pointed set of directives for the project. Someone has got to be the person that can corral the feedback of the group (and in some cases, the group itself) and process all their feedback into something actionable.
Include the right people and give them the tools to understand the project. Then, encourage/exhort them to work together and to accept that getting “their way” may not be what happens in favor of hitting the project goals. Then move on the project while at all times seeking out the common denominators in the feedback you receive. You’ll set yourself up for not only a successful conclusion, but a successful process in getting there.
Well, it’s not typical for us to upload two blog posts on the same day, but since it’s Casual Friday (and we had to show you the Worst Fight Scene Ever), we’ll make an exception.
I am pleased to announce that you can now keep all of your users up-to-date on your Twitter status through your website. This means that any time you make an update on Twitter, it will immediately reflect on your AdvancedMinistry website (if you choose to do so).
To begin, login to your AdvancedMinistry account and scroll down to Twitter Updates. Edit your Twitter Settings to the way you want them and then enable the page on your website.
Inevitably, I know there are some of you out there that will say, “I just have a Facebook page… but not a Twitter account”. Although we’ve opted not to integrate Facebook statuses, there are many ways in which you can get all of your Facebook updates sent over to Twitter in real-time, which will then display on your website. We’ve created a support article for some options.
Let's be clear - it is not the official position of Electricurrent or AdvancedMinistry to condone fighting. That said, we love this video around here and frankly, it hardly qualifies as violence. Unless of course, you consider the assault on our collective Canadian ego - given that it's our very own Bill Shatner in the scene.
Xpiritmental is a resource. It's a place to learn and to share thoughts on marketing, ministry, design, service, the Web, culture and more. We'll start the conversation, but we're looking forward to hearing what you've got to say.
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From time-to-time we throw out recommendations on Xpiritmental for applications that we are big fans of. Today I am taking the opportunity to hail the merits of 
Let me pre-empt this post by saying that I am good friends with Greg Gordon, founder and creator of 
2. As Bill Hybels notes in his book “
This past Monday, I posted a Tweet/Facebook status that read: “Working on a blog post for Xpiritmental - man, do I love writing...” Shortly after, a friend of mine and I had a brief exchange on Facebook about writing which culminated in him asking how I approach it.
Well, it’s not typical for us to upload two blog posts on the same day, but since it’s Casual Friday (and we had to show you the 
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