Over the past year I decided to add twitter as a tool for ministry. Prior to giving a workshop on Social Media and The Church, I went on a rampage to reach 500 followers in an effort to show my class the impact and influence that social media could have on society.

At the time, the audience I spoke with was an older audience. I would say that although they all used email, the majority of them were not on social media or did not see the importance of it from the church’s stand point.

Not wanting to waste the time and effort I put into doing the research and actually reaching 500 followers, I decided to ask other church leaders how they were using twitter as a tool for ministry. One youth leader informed me that he used twitter to primarily be a positive voice amongst the daily negative noise that his teens faced online through the day. His idea was that one positive message could change someone’s life. With that in mind, I decided to dive all in to twitter although I had been apprehensive to using it in the past. In a years time I went from roughly 500 followers to 23k followers. My idea was to follow anyone and everyone in an effort to be a positive influence in digital world of craziness.

Currently, there are over 231 Million active users on twitter. On top of this studies show that there are over 5k tweets per second. As I acquired more followers I noticed a lot of people posted negative remarks. Heck with 5k tweets per second just imagine how much negative information our young people are subject to in week. Eager to combat the negativity I followed more people at a higher rate. This strategy caused twitter to suspend my account multiple times, 4 times to be exact. After my latest following day, of only following 186 people, I realized twitter was cutting down on the aggressive following. Not phased by my latest suspension I decided to come up with different game plan.

My new strategy will included tweeting more. I can admit my focus was on gaining people and not necessarily putting out more content. I also realized that by myself it will be impossible to start a positive revolution through social media so the only logical step is to train others to be a positive influence through social media. I’m finding that people use twitter and all social media for business purposes, personal gain and for just posting random negativity. Why not use these valuable tools to spread a good word?

Do you need up developing a twitter vision? Is your church or ministry in need of a great social presence? If so contact us here.