Have You Been Visiting the Blog Tour?

Over 200 have visited this year’s blog tour.  Have you?  It’s not too late.  The tour continues until mid-May.

Every spring, the blog tour helps you discover Campus Crusade for Christ blogs. You may find a new blog that you would like to follow.

Whether or not you choose to follow a blog, these posts were submitted by the authors. Please recommend posts from the tour to your friends through Facebook and Twitter.  Thank you!

TOURS

• The First Annual Christmas Blog Tour
• International 2011 Blog Tour
• Inaugural 2010 Blog Tour
• Out of This World Tour ~ CCC staff  as guest authors on other blogs and web sites

NOTES:

•  Another tour, but shorter, runs during Advent.
• Come back regularly to hop on the bus for a tour of some great sites, or better yet, receive a weekly eMail, with the links to the most recent posts on the tour, by checking the last box on this subscription form.  I’ll send the eMail on Thursday in time for you to recommend these bloggers with #FF on Twitter. (#FF stands for Follow Friday. Late on every Thursday and through Friday, you can use this hashtag to recommend these bloggers, or this tour, to your friends.)
• Photo available on Wikimedia Commons.

Getting Started with MailChimp

Perhaps you have been thinking about sending out your prayer letter by email, or you may already be sending it out through Outlook as an attachment.  However, you can make your emails more impactful by using an email service like MailChimp to send your letter.

I did a survey with my ministry partners and found in general that women like to read the printed letter and men prefer to read by email.  I suggest sending both.  Sending your prayer letter by email should not become the only way you communicate with your ministry partners.  You should continue to send it by mail as well.  Also, using multiple touch points of communication each month enables you to stand out.

There are several other email services that are available, but MailChimp has a generous free option and is very easy to set-up and use.  Here are some of the key features:

• With MailChimp you can personalize each email to your partners using merge tags.  This will make your email standout.
• All your text including pictures and links are in the body of your email (people don’t generally like to open attachments in emails).  You can send both text and HTML.
• MailChimp provides reports for email sent so you can see who has opened your email and clicked on links.

Here are some tips that will help you get started.

1. First sign up for the free version account at http://www.mailchimp.com.  You can have up to 2,000 contacts (12,000 emails sent each month).  Beyond 2,000 contacts there is a tiered monthly fee that includes a 15% discount for non-profits.
2. Fill out all the info and get all your settings in place.
3. Create a list and import your contacts into your list.  You will need to put all your contacts (name and email address) in an Excel spreadsheet to import them into MailChimp.  Click here for instructions on how to do this.   You can export your contacts from Outlook as well.  Click here for more information.
4. Once you have done this then you choose a pre-made template or create your own.  Type out your letter (images and links).
5. Test and Send

Guest Post by Doug Weiss

Doug has been on staff for 17 years and serves as a media producer and digital strategist for The JESUS Film Project.  He is Chick-fil-a and Sweet tea fanatic. He has been married for 13 years to Karen and they both enjoy traveling the world with the ministry.  You can find Doug online on Facebook and Twitter and at his blog Outside The Box Ministry.

NOTES:

• Read more about MailChimp.
• A beta version of TntMPD now syncs with MailChimp.  If you don’t want to wait for the final version, you could just export your TntMPD contacts to Excel (see Step 3, above).

New Blog Ministers to 1000s of New Believers

Guest Post from Marilyn Adamson, director of EveryStudent.com, StartingwithGod.com, and MarilynAdamson.com

So far, about 30,000 people have signed up for “The Spiritual Starter Kit” or other emails series that we offer on EveryStudent.com and StartingwithGod.com.

I’ve been asking God if there is something further he would want me to do to continue ministering to these new believers, not just for their own growth, but to encourage them to share Jesus with others.

This week, through interactions with others, the idea came to start a blog for them. (It’s also a way to communicate to our Campus leaders around the world about new developments in EveryStudent.com.)

After sending an email (to the 30,000 people on any of our email series lists), already 5,000 people visited the blog within just the first 24 hours. So no one would have to learn a new URL, I decided to just stay with my name, which they know from the email series. However, MarilynAdamson.com isn’t about me. It’s a blog about our great God, and how we can make Him known.

If you go to it, scroll down the home page and read some of the comments people have left.  The most touching one is from a homeless man who is really struggling with life and considering suicide. Immediately, four people commented back to him, encouraging him. It’s so great to see people care for him like that.

God’s kindness is so evident. He’s a wonderful God to follow, isn’t he?

NOTE: All the posts will be found in each of these “MAIN MENU” sections listed here. Please click to see:

• New Developments at EveryStudent.com
• Our Great God
• Results/Praise (stories from people who’ve found God)
• Ways To Reach Others using EveryStudent.com

If you want to sign up for an RSS feed or to receive an email when new posts come up, go to MarilynAdamson.com.

3 Reasons Why You Need a Reader

Are you drowning in a sea of information?  Would you like to follow some internet sites regularly, but it would be just one more thing to do? A reader may be the answer for you.  (I’m referring to web-based aggregators, not eReaders for eBooks like Kindle or Nook.)  If you don’t have a reader (aggregator), then I hope by the end of this post, you’ll know some effective ways to follow content on the internet and whether a reader would help.

First, watch this video for a very easy explanation of RSS, feeds, and readers; it’ll help you know how to get started.  (YouTube wouldn’t let me embed it, so please come on back after you watch the video to find out the three reasons I promised you.)

Are you back from watching the video?  Good.  Now ask yourself how much you read (or would like to read) on the internet.

The Minimalist

If you only like to read occasionally, or from random sites, you might just use Read It Later on your computer, tablet, or mobile device.  Instead of being sidetracked by different sites you run across during the day, you mark the page to be read later when you have time.  You can even download what you want to read offline.

Alternatively, you can allow RSS feeds from a blog or two that you enjoy to go into your eMail inbox through Outlook 2007 and some other eMail services.  The posts will appear in separate folders for each feed instead of mixed in with your eMails.  Follow these instructions for Outlook 2007.

If you have a lot to read either of these might not be a good option. (Stay with me and keep reading.)

The Benefits of Readers over eMail Subscriptions

If you subscribe by eMail to a few blogs and receive posts in your inbox, you may want to consider a reader because:

1. Using a reader is safer because you aren’t using your eMail address when subscribing to a RSS feed, eliminating your exposure to spam, viruses, phishing, and identity theft, which can be associated with eMail. (Please see the note about MailChimp and this blog.)
2. When you don’t want a feed anymore, you just remove it from your aggregator, instead of sending an unsubscribe request to stop receiving eMails.
3. Feeds are sorted, not arriving randomly like eMail in your inbox. Each feed, whether its from your favorite blog, news source, or whatever, has its posts automatically grouped under the source.

Getting Started Tips

This post has actually gone long enough, so I’ll continue this as a series.  If you want to for now, follow the advice in the video to start using a reader. I’ve also included some links you can check out on your own if you don’t want to wait for me.

Visually Appealing Readers

• Feedly (recommended – works with your Google Reader – click on the image above for a closer look)
• Pulse

WordPress

• Follow WordPress blogs from within your home page

Twitter Readers

• Paper.li (recommended – you might want to wait for my post about it)

• The Tweeted Times

NOTES:

• I’m encouraging all regular e4e readers to subscribe to this blog using the very secure eMail service, MailChimp.  If you prefer, you can still use a reader or follow with WordPress, but subscribers receive eMails about upcoming events and they help me evaluate what everyone is most interested in reading so I can serve you better (and more efficiently).  So, CCC staff,  please subscribe here to receive weekly eMails of e4e posts, notifications of training, and more.
• The video is also available here in French, Japanese, German, Dutch, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish.

How to Get More Clickthrough Rates on Your Tweets

Dan Zarrella of Hubspot analysed 200,000 tweets containing links to find out the best times, days, length of tweet, and even the best position for the link in your tweet.  And more.

The only thing I had to figure out was about paper.li …  Turns out it’s an online newspaper you create for yourself with the content you’re interested in.  I already was doing that with feedly.com (which I can also read on our Kindle Fire).  So, I think I’ll sign up for paper.li and  follow articles that I’m interested in tweeting (probably info to enhance my blogs’ content).  I think I’ll keep everything else I might read on Feedly.  So, Feedly will be like my own “Reader’s Digest” feed for relaxed, personal reading and paper.li will be similar to “Newsweek” for when I want to keep up with technology and other news.

Original source: Digital Buzz (and a heads-up from my sister!)

CCC staff, so we can better serve you, please subscribe here to receive weekly emails of e4e posts, notifications of training, and more.