Social Bookmarking & Networks Can Help Churches
March 18, 2010 by Mike Knapp
Filed under Popular Articles, Practical Helps
Despite the title, this has nothing to do with president Obama, socialism or politics in any form! So relax, this is just about some fun and useful internet tools. Since I’m fairly new to this subject, I am not writing anything in depth. I’ll just give you a simple overview and some helpful resources. I hope you can find some good uses for some of these tools for your own church.
What is it?
It is marking or tagging a website and saving it for later use. Rather than saving sites in your web browser, you are saving them online. Since your bookmarks are online, you can more easily share them with others.
What is the benefit?
These sites automatically organize and file your bookmarks for you according to how you label them when saving. You can also look at what other people have found interesting enough to tag (I enjoy this). Typically, social bookmarking sites allow you to browse through the items based on most popular, recently added, or belonging to a certain category like Christianity, shopping, technology, politics, blogging, news, sports, etc.
You can even search through what people have bookmarked by typing in what you are looking for in the search tool. In fact, social bookmarking sites are being used as intelligent search engines.
How does it help others?
Bookmarking and rating websites is a nice help for those sites you enjoy. As I have worked very hard at promoting our website and blog I have learned that the more people who bookmark us on such sites, the higher our Google search rank! In other words, our website appears higher on the list when someone searches “churches at lake of the ozarks” or something similar.
How do I do it?
I’m so glad you asked! You simply explore some social bookmarking sites, choose one or two that you like, get a free account and get started. My favorites at this time are Stumbleupon and Delicious, and I am a member of several others. I am getting into the habit of marking my friends’ and fellow church planters’ websites because it will help them. The buttons on the right side of this blog are the sites I use. I invite you to use them on our behalf if you have enjoyed any of our blogs!
If you use the Firefox browser, they offer an add-on called “shareaholic” which makes it quite easy to share your favorites with others, and it’s fun checking out these kinds of social sites.
Can this really help new churches?
Absolutely, as long as the church is seeking to reach out via the internet. Anytime you bookmark a church’s blog or website, anytime you join their groups on Facebook or MySpace, or when you add them on Twitter or LinkedIn — it all helps! As a church planter myself, I want to extend my network of people both online and in the real world as far as possible. Our network is a major part of our sphere of influence.
So in the words of John Wesley, founder of a movement that brought entire continents to God, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”
You can read more about social bookmarking here: About.com, and here: 7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking
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