Ever get that annoying email from a church, friend, and/or family member who ‘accidentally‘ sent a rant to everyone in their address book and/or a group-related email directory? With the recent election, my wife and I have been getting more than our fair share.
And while I’ve written about how to address ‘Christian SPAM‘ in the recent past, I wanted to share with you my most recent response to what I sub-categorize as Christian SPAM email bombing runs (CSEBRs):
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Hi {name withheld to protect the guilty};
Next time we get together, make sure I spend about 5 minutes on my laptop showing you 5 cool — and free — things about the web that don’t rock like it’s 1995. For example:
- Twitter – a “microblog” mechanism that lets you post 140 characters on any topic you want as often as you want. This is especially great as you’re standing around bored, upset, amused, and/or excited about things while equipped with nothing more than your cell phone. For an example, check mine out at http://twitter.com/deanpeters – no great shakes, but I’ve got enough subscribers whom seem interested.
- Facebook – a social networking service where friends and families can subscribe where you can post thoughts like the ones below and then engage people in dialog and/or banter as they can post comments, etc .. It’s also a nice place to throw out some family pix. If you’d like, I can also show you how to “plug-in” a Facebook app that update to your “wall” every time you post on Twitter (synchronization is an amazing thing). Here’s a link to my profie http://is.gd/6MgW … note how I used the http://is.gd mechanism to shorten the URL.
- Blogger.com – now I know Twitter and FaceBook have obviated bloggery to some degree, but I still love it as it allows me to venture deep into topics I enjoy such as healing church websites and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Moreover, less constraints on what I can post – and if you like, you can make some buck$ via instruments like Google’s adsense. Oh BTW, I’ve got my WordPress-driven blogs set up with the ‘twitter tools plugin‘ to update my Twitter and Facebook pages when I post. Best thing, again, people can subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed to keep up to date.
- Google Reader – note I’ve mentioned subscribe 3 times now. All of the above allow individuals to subscribe either through the site’s syndication feed (RSS) and/or through email alerts with links to the juicy and compelling content. And not just from annoying friends like me, but any blog, news wire, newspaper, microblog and/or social network to which you’re inclined to observe.
- BCC – finally … and I can’t stress this enough … if you must use email, that’s cool. But please, do me and others on your distribution one favor – use the BCC mechanism to distribute the email. Blind Carbon Copy is cool in that it’ll protect your friends, family and loved ones from nasty spammers and idiots like me from exposing their email addresses “into the wild.“Oh, and if you use a free email service like gMail, you can create categories for both incoming and outgoing email addresses – which is really handy when you quickly send out email broadcats to select groups of your address book (using BCC of course).
Anyway, have a great Sunday – and give {spouse name withheld to protect the innocent} a hug from us.
Your (annoying) friend;
Dean
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Feel free to use any portion of this email to respond to Christian SPAM email bombing runs aimed in your direction. Or better yet, just send them a link here.
I’ll be glad to respond to their rationalizations and excuses by explaining how the are endangering the tax exempt status of their church by dumping a political kvetch on the Sunday school rolls.
The birds are singing, the flowers are blooming and WordPress 2.5 has been ‘in the wild’ for a couple of weeks. These factors, and the fact that my own blog is getting a bit crufty has me thinking it is time for yet another Heal Your Church Website do-over. That and I’ve been getting some ‘love notes’ that either fall into the category “how do I get started” or “you reviewed my site, so here is why your blog sucks.” I figure success is the best response, so here’s my initial game plan – thinking out loud as some of you may be in a similar situation of having to freshen up your church and/or charity website.