In addition to being shown locally in Atlanta, Your Move will be shown nationally on the Gospel Music Channel and FamNet.

According to nationmaster.com’s media statistics, The United States is tied for 1st place for the amount of hours people in our country watch television per week; 28 hours per person per week. Nielsen Media Research reports that 99% of American households have at least one television set. I’d say the majority of households have more than one. As a whole, the United States television networks are the largest and most syndicated in the world.
Millions of people tune in to SNL every week, so what an incredible opportunity for people to hear the gospel.

So… what does this have to do with social media?
Well, I’d say if the ratings are up, Your Move could go national. That means we need to tap into our amazing communication resources like our blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, and make sure people know whats going on!

If we can maximize our influence to let people know where to tune in, we can maximize the amount of people who may be hearing the gospel for the first time, or even the 100th time, but either way, it’s good news.

In the article, Eric breaks down the differences between responsive design and a native app, and how a native app runs local on your device, something that a mobile web site can’t do. He writes,

Mobile web sites are a great way to deliver details about who you are, but struggle to deliver a high quality visual and audio experience since everything is dependent on the users connection.

Native apps on the other hand run local on the device providing fast response sharp graphics and an overall experience users love and expect.  They do this by taking advantage of local device resources that a mobile web site can’t.

Finally, it’s interesting to note that Marc Jeffery, Director of Social Media and Technology for The Potters House — TD Jakes Ministries, said,

Are you trying to build an interactive and informational website on a platform that is easy to update and feature rich? We are huge fans of WordPress and highly recommend you consider building your church or organization’s website on the WordPress platform. If you don’t know what WordPress is or how it works, here’s a great intro video that will give you the 4-1-1 in less than two minutes:

Now, let’s dive into our suggestions for top ten plugins for your website. These suggestions aren’t the only plugins you should use, nor do we suggest you need all of them for your website. But we highly encourage you to take a look at them and see how they would help you connect with your visitors and expand your message.

Top 10 Plugins for your WordPress website:

1.) WordPress SEO by Yoast

This free plugin gives you complete control over the SEO properties for your website. It covers the main site descriptions as well as giving you SEO controls for each page and post you create. This plugin is crucial for helping Google index your website and crawl through your content so as to boost your ranking in Google searches.

2.) Google XML Sitemaps

Sitemaps are highly favored by search engines like Google and Bing as they give a central location for search bots to know how much content your website has and where it is all located. This plugin automatically collects all that data and provides the information to those search engines.

 3.) Contactme.com Contact Form

There are a lot of WordPress plugins for Contact forms, but one of our favorites is the Contactme.com contact form. This versatile form allows you to not only have a contact page with a robust contact form for collecting information with plenty of options like uploading your own logo, adding social profiles, creating new tabs so people have options in what kind of information they are requesting, but they also give you the ability to add a contact button to the left or right side of your website. This button is a non-obtrusive way to give people a way to contact you at any time they are on your website. And the best part of it all, Contactme.com will email you as soon as someone submits a question; plus they have a Contact Management System (CMS) that captures all of the emails and keeps them in a beautiful database for you. This plugin is free once you sign up and they do have premium options if you want to remove their branding or add some advanced capabilities.

4.) Google Analytics Dashboard

What good is a website if you don’t know who is coming to it and how they are interacting with your page? If you don’t already, you should be using Google Analytics to know how many visitors your website is getting each month and learn what pages get the most traffic as well as what pages cause them to leave your website the most. This free plugin tells you all of that and more. The best part is it brings you all that information to your WordPress Dashboard so you don’t have to go to Google Analytics and get the most important information. It also integrates with all your pages and posts to tell you how many views they get and how many times people exit your website from those specific pages.

5.) Blackbird Pie

Do you want to show tweets in a sharp way? This free plugin showcases individual tweets with the user’s profile and presents them in a professional way. It’s a much better option if you want to embed tweets into your posts instead of just copying and pasting the tweets or using screenshots.

6.) Broken Link Checker

If you have a lot of links on your website, this free plugin will be a great resource to help you know if those links ever stop working. It constantly keeps track of all hyperlinks you’ve posted and will notify you immediately if they ever break down. It then gives you the option to remove the link, turn it into plain text, or update the link if you need a new URL address.

7.) Slick Social Share Buttons

Giving readers the ability to share your content on social networks is one of the most important features your website should have. If you want to significantly increase your web traffic and make your content viral, then use this free plugin. It creates a column of social sharing buttons on the left hand side or bottom of the posts. We encourage you to only use this plugin for your posts and it may be a bit overkill if you use it on your pages as well.

8.) Shareaholic Bookmarks

Want more options on what social networks viewers can share your content on? This free plugin allows you to choose from a massive variety of channels as well as giving you the ability to add counters and track how many times your content has been shared. Easy to set up. Easy to use. We definitely recommend this plugin!

9.) Full Throttle Calendar

If your theme does not have a calendar option, this is a great, free plugin that allows you to add a calendar to your website. It easily gives you the ability to turn any page or post into a calendar item, create categories for your calendar that are color coded, as well as robust features like making calendar entries repeat. All it takes to set up is inserting a shortcode to the page you want the calendar to show and then the plugin does the rest of the work.

10.) Backup Buddy

What could be worse than spending all the time creating your website and having it crash for unknown reasons? While WordPress is a beautiful platform, it does have a host of hackers who want to hijack your site, embed viruses and take over the control of your site. This is rare, but it is important to be protected. Furthermore, if you are the type to play around with your theme, editing the PHP files, adding custom CSS, and trying to customize your site, you can screw it up mistakenly. Having fresh backups is important before you make any of these changes. Forgive us from deviating from free plugins, but when it comes to backups, you really get what you pay for. While not free, Backup Buddy is the best at creating complete backups of your site. Most free backups only save your content (ie posts and pages); this plugin saves your database, your theme, your plugins, your customizations, and all of your content. It is definitely worth the price of investment.

What plugins do you currently use?
Have you found one you could not live without?

We’d love to hear about it!

We had a great time with you at the conference, and would love the opportunity to help you

be heard in your ministry. If you picked up one of the free t-shirts or iphone covers at our booth, be sure

to look for yourself in the video! The photos are also up on our facebook and twitter. Enjoy!

What do you get when you combine thousands of kids and youth leaders, unlimited free coffee, and three days of incredible kid’s ministry training intermixed with zombies dancing to Thriller? Orange Conference 2012.

Over 5000 attendees filled the Gwinnett Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, from April 25th through April 27th, to learn how to become a “game changer” in the lives of children, students, and adults. With over 125 workshops and keynotes from leaders like Reggie Joiner, Andy Stanley and Craig Groeschel, the conference delivered nuggets of practical training and thought-provoking challenges on how we lead in ministry.

In the opening keynote, Reggie Joiner demystified the idea that leadership is something you signed up for, but rather a calling and that calling requires embracing people as they really are. He said, “There is no way for you to do what you do without getting messy…you cannot make disciples without getting messy or them getting messy. The best way to equip the next generation in our church is to allow them to get messy in the gospel with us.” The notion that leadership is clean and spotless was quickly blown away and he shined a light on what a true game changer looked like.

Andy Stanley helped reposition leaders’ focus on who they serve and why they serve. He gave insights to how to create best practices in creating and maintaining a culture of mutual submission where people recognize that they are called to serve, not to be recognized.

Throughout the conference, Orange interwove game-changers that have drastically changed culture and impacted how we interact with each other. From historical leaders to advancements in technology, we looked at what profound impact game-changers made. Workshops like Matt McKee’s, Prioritizing Social Media in Your Ministry, introduced innovative ways to communicate what was happening in the youth ministry and provide opportunities to connect with parents outside of Wednesday night.

Overall, 5000+ attendees went home with practical ways to revamp their ministries, rethink what they do, and become a more effective leader. For more insights from the conference, Smalltownkidmin.com put together a great collection of notes from the official conference bloggers and speakers. Find these notes here.

We had an incredible kick-off to the Orange Conference 2012 with pre-conference breakouts all day long. Tons of incredibly gifted pastors, teachers, and trainers spoke on everything from prioritizing social media for your kids ministry to training on how to work with children with special needs. Workshops were practical, informational, and really delivered value to those attending.

Speaking of attendance, there are over 5000 registered for this week’s conference. Tonight’s keynote kicked off with Reggie Joiner speaking on how to bring the Gospel into your kids ministries and not being afraid to let things be messy. His message was heartfelt and opened your eyes to seeing where the message of the Gospel may have become polluted with religion and rules instead of Jesus’ natural way of taking in people just as they are.

If the rest of the week is anything like how we began tonight, we’re in for a real treat! Not only was the keynote convicting and encouraging at the same time, but it was filled with a great lineup of musical parodies, special presentations from contestants on The Voice and comedy routines. And if you’re at Orange right now, we’d love to hear from you how your first day went!

Now, the special announcement you’ve been waiting for!

For Orange attendees only, we have two promotions that are only valid this week!

That means you can get an app for as low as $250! You can’t beat the price or the quality!

With monthly services as low as $200 a month, let us help you create a practical social media strategy that brings your community to life and your message beyond Sunday’s four walls. To get these discounts, just drop by the ROAR booth at Orange to sign up, or mention the code “Orange 2012″ when ordering via email.

Interested in mobile apps? Sign up here

Interested in social media? Sign up here

And if you’re at Orange, come by the Expo Hall in the Arena and visit us on the second floor to grab a free t-shirt as supplies last and learn more about ROAR!

Our own Matt McKee, CEO of ROAR, presented twice today at Orange’s preconference. Here is a recap of his sessions and links to the slides he used. We would love to hear your feedback if you attended one of his sessions.

Session#1: Prioritize Social Media in Your Ministry

ROAR is heading off to Atlanta, Georgia, tomorrow to participate, sponsor and speak at the Orange 2012 Conference. This year’s conference is focused on “Rethinking What You Do.” Over 125 workshops from over 120 speakers make up an nonstop week of learning, relationship, and advanced training. This is gonna be a great time that we really believe will help shape how kids ministries are looked at and how they serve the body of Christ.

OUR own Matt McKee will be speaking at Orange too! He will be speaking on how churches can utilize social media to connect their kids ministries to their local communities and share the good news of what God is doing in the lives of the children.

If you aren’t already, make sure to follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook as we’ll be posting snippets from workshops, pictures of the fun events, and sharing recaps of what we are learning while there.

AND if you’re coming to Orange 2012, then let us know in the comments below or on Twitter! We’ll have a booth in the Expo hall and would love to meet you. We got a lot of fun prizes to give away too so come meet us and let’s be friends!

In the article, Geri shares insights on how new businesses are finding new ways to get work done. She writes,

Continue reading the rest of the article here!