How to Use the Web to Build The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Comments(0) 
More tidbits from the Web 2.0 Expo:
Percent of connected consumers who use the feature frequently:
The Internet’s reach exceeds TV’s from 7am to 8pm.
Comments(1) I’m in San Francisco right now at the Web2.0 Expo. Just attended a great session on how to improve blogs. (Oh, no. Now you’ll expect the quality of this blog to improve!)
Here are my notes:
Passion
The most important thing about blogging is passion. If you don’t have passion about your subject, you won’t be engaging enough to keep people coming back nor will you have the stamina to keep it up. (60-80% of blogs are abandoned in the first month.)
Content
Pick a topic that is uniquely you. Focus on your area of expertise. What are you passionate about? Keep it narrow enough so that you are the best there is on your subject. You may want to create your own category so you are the creator of that topic.
Write newsworthy content. Blogs are of the moment; they are event-driven. If it isn’t current, it belongs in a book. Provide exclusive information.
Headlines: Find the most interesting part of the post and put it in the headline. Be plausible sensational, but don’t over promise.
Focused content: Why is your content important? Pick one point about the topic and make your point. It had better be interesting. Respect people’s time by writing what is relevant, timely, and useful.
Linking
Linking causes trackbacks. Trackbacks show up on posts. Posts are crawled by search engines and people click links, especially blog owners.
Moderation
Getting comments is harder than moderating them. Err on the side of openness. Use Akismet to take care of spam. You must read the comments, and comment back. It will build community.
Give back/Add value
Facilitate community. Be a focal point. Participate in existing communities. Give away something for free. Promote your fans.
Promoting Your Blog
Invite people to link to it. Blog regularly so there is something interesting for everyone. Create community wherever you go. Become friends with the friends of your friends. Guest write for other sites.
Distribution: Feedburner is the quintessential distribution channel for blogs. Others: Digg, StumbleUpon, Yahoo Buzz, other blogs, AIDE RSS, FriendFeed, Del.icio.us, Facebook. E-mail newsletters.
Comments(0) We have just posted a job for a Project Business Analyst to work in the Publications and Media Project Office to support the new Clarity project management system used to manage the audiovisual and publications projects for the Church.
You can see the job description and apply online (job listing #0800105).
Please pass this information along to anyone that you feel may be interested.
Comments(1) Watch this video from the LDS Public Affairs channel of YouTube:
Elder M. Russell Ballard urges graduating students at Brigham Young University-Hawaii to use the Internet, blogs, and other forms of new media to contribute to a national conversation about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Elder Ballard suggested that we “join the conversation by participating on the Internet, particularly the New Media, to share the gospel and to explain in simple and clear terms the message of the Restoration.”
He explained that conversations about the Church would take place whether or not Church members decided to participate in them. “We cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what the Church teaches,” he said. Church leaders “can’t answer every question, satisfy every inquiry and respond to every inaccuracy that exists.”
For more ideas on using modern technology to share the gospel, see the category Sharing the Gospel on this blog.
Comments(5) In 2008 and 2009, the book Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith will be used on second and third Sundays for Melchizedek Priesthood and Relief Society class instruction. This book is available online in multiple languages and in multiple media formats, such as text, PDF (original layout), audio, American Sign Language video, Braille, and multiple reader formats for handheld devices.
The language materials are listed on the language pages. In addition to being listed on the Lesson Manuals page, we have also created a single page that shows all the English formats.
Comments(2) In previous blogs, I’ve noted that about half of US households have broadband (also called high-speed Internet) and that many fewer have access to broadband worldwide.
According to Wired, about 3% of the world’s population has access to broadband, but more importantly, the cost of access can vary wildly. In Japan, DSL or cable users typically pay $0.06/100 Kbps (0.002% of their monthly salary) for high-speed access, while people in Kenya pay $86.11/100 Kbps (nearly twice their monthly salary). Note the following costs of broadband access in various countries:
Saudi Arabia: $571.82/100 Kbps
Expect to shell out 58% of the average monthly salary for DSL. Not surprisingly, only about 0.1% percent of the population has a connection.
Mozambique: $361.83/100 Kbps
The nation’s civil war is long over but a high-speed connection costs as much as a private army: 1,400 times the average monthly wage.
Pakistan: $106.98/100 Kbps
Local bloggers incensed President Pervez Musharraf’s support of the US must pay nearly twice the average income to have their say.
Kazakhstan: $52.68/100 Kbps
The broadband prices, it’s nice? Not so much. The 2,000 Kazakhstani users must sacrifice one-fifth of the average monthly salary for access.
Bolivia: $39.06/100 Kbps
There are only about 11,000 broadband customers in Bolivia, but each forks over nearly half of the average monthly wage to get online.
Russia: $28.13/100 Kbps
The 1.6 million users who may want to stream President Putin’s latest judo moves surrender 8% of the average pay for the privilege.
Nicaragua: $14.65/100 Kbps
No wonder this Central American country has only 6,600 high-speed customers, access costs a fifth of the average monthly paycheck.
United States: $0.49/100 Kbps
The nearly 60 million broadband subscribers in the US typically pay 0.01% of their average monthly salary for a connection.
Netherlands: $0.14/100 Kbps
Toptoe through the tulips and you will find 4.1 million broadband customers enjoying some of the lowest prices on the planet.
South Korea: $0.08/100 Kbps
South Korea boasts 12.2 million broadband users, some of the world’s highest speeds, and low prices, second only to Japan.
Comments(7) Elder M. Russell Ballard urged graduating students at Brigham Young University-Hawaii today to use the Internet, blogs, and other forms of new media to contribute to a national conversation about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Elder Ballard asked the students to “join the conversation by participating on the Internet, particularly the New Media, to share the gospel and to explain in simple and clear terms the message of the Restoration.”
He explained that conversations about the Church would take place whether or not Church members decided to participate in them. “We cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what the Church teaches,” he said. Church leaders “can’t answer every question, satisfy every inquiry and respond to every inaccuracy that exists.”
He said students should consider sharing their views on blogs, responding to online news reports, and using new media in other ways. Read his full talk Using New Media to Support the Work of the Church.
Read related stories at the Newsroom, particularly the Additional Resources listed on the right of that page
For more ideas on using modern technology to share the gospel, see the category Sharing the Gospel on this blog.
Comments(11) How usable and memorable is your site’s Web address (URL)?
When you tell people about your URL to get them to go to your Web site, it is typically a small space at the end of a brochure, a single line in a magazine article, or a few words on screen for a few seconds. You have a brief moment to make an impact, tie it to your brand, and make it memorable. So make every character count.
Research has shown that offline media drives people to the Web for more information. So, when you pique someone’s interest, do you provide a URL that is memorable, understandable, readable, and typeable? (Is type-able a word? That means if you have hyphens, forward slashes, back slashes, underscores, etc., the average person won’t be able to type it correctly.) Remember, not everyone is Web-savvy. There is still a significant percentage of the online population that can’t (or doesn’t bother to) differentiate between an address bar and a search box. Two of the top ten queries on Google and Yahoo each month are “Google.com” and “Yahoo.com.”
Give people URLs they can easily remember and easily type. Here are a few best practices (borrowed and adapted from Aaron Goldman and other sources):
Dos
1. CapitalizeTheFirstLetterOfEachWord. For example, HowStuffWorks.com is easier to read than howstuffworks.com. It can also alleviate miscommunications, as in speedofart.com, which is more clearly read when spelled SpeedOfArt.com.
2. UseDifferentColorsOrBoldToHelpEachWordStandOut. For example, SamsungJuke.com.
3. Whenever possible, use YourBrandName.com.
4. If .com is not available, use .org. If you’re really desperate, use .net. If .com, .net, and .org are taken, find a new brand name. Seriously. Don’t even think about .biz and other options.
5. Use YourSlogan.com when running an integrated media campaign.
6. Use subdomains (like temples.lds.org) rather than subdirectories (like lds.org/temples). If you need a specific temple, SaltLakeTemple.lds.org is much better than lds.org/temples/saltlake. These can be set up easily, so NEVER use a convoluted URL. Set up a subdomain that is simple to remember and simple to type.
7. Use subdomains when driving people deeper than your homepage. I recently got a mailing that said “go to http://www.dol.gov/osbp/sbrefa/poster/matrix.htm.” Are they kidding? Why didn’t they set up the subdomain poster.dol.gov?
8. Use alternate URLs or subdomains to track campaigns. For example, in a TV ad for Allstate, they use the name GetAllstate.com instead of Allstate.com so they can track the traffic driven by the TV spot.
Don’ts
1. Don’t include www. Most people know that the phrase “go to LDS.org” means to go to a Web site. If it isn’t clear from the sentence, then say “go to the Web site LDS.org.”
2. Don’t include http://. This just confuses people further. Most modern browsers are able to interpret a Web address without http:// and without www. Don’t make your audience think they have to type more than they do.
3. don’tusealllowercase (canyoureallytellwhereonewordendsandthenextbegins?)
4. DITTOFORALLUPPERCASE.
5. No-hyphens/or slashes. See the comment about subdomains in #6 above.
6. Don’t use acronyms, abbreviations, or numbers unless your brand is widely known as such.
7. Don’t bury your URL at the bottom of a billboard. How many people drive around with a 4x zoom lens to find URLs?
Some good and bad examples of URLs can be found at GoodURLBadURL.com.
In an integrated effort, like Church Web sites, you may not want to run out and get unique URLs for every site. It may be important to brand the sites into a suite or family of sites, both visually, and by URL. In our case, we have a consistent central brand around the domain name LDS.org, and can use subdomains of LDS.org for most things (for example, temples.lds.org, primary.lds.org, ces.lds.org, music.lds.org, catalog.lds.org, and youngwomen.lds.org) without having to reinvent an entirely new domain name.
Church Web sites for members typically use a subdomain of LDS.org to make it clear that the site is an official Church site. Because there are many LDS-related Web sites, this helps members distinguish between Church site and other sites. For example, members cannot know from the name whether josephsmith.net or josephsmith.com is the Church site. (Do you which is the Church site?) Also, there are many sites with names similar to the names of official Church sites. To solve this, we usually tie official Church sites back to the LDS.org brand so it is clear from the URL that these sites are Church sites. For example, josephsmith.lds.org makes it clear that this is an official Church site about Joseph Smith.
Comments(3) This news from Reuters today:
AT&T plans to end its dwindling pay phone business by the end of 2008, as more consumers use mobile phones.The move affects AT&T pay phones in the company’s previous 13-state service area. BellSouth has already exited the pay phone business in its 9-state area.
Pay phones in the United States have declined across the industry from about 2.6 million phones in 1998 to an estimated 1 million phones today.
Comments(3) Amazon has launched AmazonKindle, a new electronic device for reading e-books you purchase from Amazon.
Drawbacks:
Overall, the best I’ve seen yet. Although it won’t have people bringing down Amazon.com’s computers buying it.
