How to market your brand / book / website on social media:

Set up a Facebook page and/or group where you will post regular news items (from your site and those of other relevant sites). Attract attention to it by posting it in other related Facebook groups (search in Groups for related keywords for your topic). Keep it updated regularly.

Set up a Twitter feed where you will post regular news items (from your site and those of other relevant sites). Attract attention to it by following other similar Twitter accounts (search for related keywords for your topic) and retweet and reply to their tweets. Keep it updated regularly.

Set up a blog where you will post regular blogposts about topical items in your subject area. Attract attention to it by adding other similar blogs to your blogroll (search for related keywords for your topic) and post comments on their blogs. Keep it updated regularly.

If you don't "get" Twitter, there's a remarkably succinct and clear summary of what it is and how it works in today's verdict on the Twitter joke trial. (PDF)

Using HootSuite (a paid service), you can also automatically send your blogposts to Twitter and Facebook.

Report by Sue Woolley

Lifespan Religious Education Conference 2011
Star Island, New Hampshire, 16 – 23 July 2011
Report on Social Media Workshop by Sue Woolley

Thanks to the generosity of the Manchester Academy Trust and the Hibbert Trust, I was able to attend this conference. The basic structure of our own Hucklow Summer School is based on this Unitarian Universalist conference, so many elements were familiar to me: the morning devotions, the daily theme talk, the compulsory morning workshops, optional afternoon activities, and lantern-lit procession to evening worship.

The morning workshop that I attended was led by the dynamic Peter Bowden, who is a “church growth consultant and Unitarian Universalist change agent” (to quote himself) who has dedicated his life to helping UU congregations to understand social media and to use them effectively. His blog (which is well worth looking at) is UU growth. I am writing the workshop up without much comment, as the things he was telling us are just as relevant to Unitarian congregations in the UK as to UU congregations in the US, if not more so.

Read the rest of the report →

What's a favicon?
In some browsers, it appears before the web address in the address bar; in others, it appears on the tab where your blog is displayed. It also appears next to the name of your blog if it is listed in someone else's blog-roll.

Making your favicon
You will need a graphics package such as Gimp to do this.

1. Find or create a square image - usually your logo. 
2. Reduce it in size to 16 by 16 pixels.

Darling Buds is the blog of Nelly Hench, from Octagon Unitarian Chapel in Norwich. She blogs about life, spirituality, home education, church services and much more. She is also a fan of Julian of Norwich, it seems.

Rev Gill from Rochdale has started a blog called Living in the Question. The name comes from a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke:

'I want to beg you, as much as I can . . . to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves. . . . Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.' -- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I always enjoy reading her pieces in the Rochdale church newsletter, so I am sure that her blog will be equally full of gems!

The title also reminds me of the character George in Room with a View by E M Forster, who paints a question mark on the door of his room. And of the quip about Unitarianism being the religion where all your answers are questioned!

Rob MacPherson, Unitarian minister-in-training, has started a blog entitled "Will preach for food". There's a wonderful post about religion and humour, which really needed saying. It's also written in a lively and engaging style.

A presentation by Zan of Mixtape Communications given to the Unitarian Ministers' Conference.

1. Comment on other bloggers' posts - if your comment is interesting and polite, they might drop by to read your blog
2. Add other blogs to your blogroll - they may return the favour (but never ask to be added to someone's blogroll, it's really tacky)
3. Follow other bloggers and add them to your Google Reader
4. Get yourself added to Unitarian Universalist and Unitarian blog aggregators
5. Have a Twitter account, link it to HootSuite and have HootSuite update your Twitter and Facebook accounts automatically whenever you publish a new blog-post

Danny Crosby, minister of Queen's Road, Urmston and Dunham Road, Altrincham, has started a blog, I Dream of the Ocean. He writes eloquently and with an accessible style, so I am looking forward to reading his blog.

The North East Indian Unitarian Church has a blog, maintained by H Helpme Mohrmen. It has some lovely photos of the scenery around Shillong, especially the living roots bridge, and accounts of the church's activities in the area, including pictures of a new school.

Sue Woolley has set up a new blog, "Still I am one". The title is from a quote by Edward Everett Hale, a 19th century Unitarian minister and writer.

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something I can do."

It's very exciting to see more UK Unitarian bloggers and twitterers, and I look forward to reading Sue's blog.

Rev Daniel Costley, the minister of Sevenoaks Unitarians, has started a blog, and is also adding MP3 podcasts of his sermons.

So far he has blogged about Ascension Day, Harvest, Living in the Now, and Prayer.

It looks as if this will be a really interesting blog.

The Chief Officer of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, Derek McAuley, has started a new blog for those who want to know what the Chief Officer has been up to and get an insight into some of the issues facing the Unitarian and Free Christian denomination. Followers might even find out what inspires and occasionally shocks Derek.

Once you have created your blog, you might like to add a list of blogs that you read. This is called a blog-roll. Here's eHow's useful step-by-step guide to adding a blogroll.

In order to get to the bit where you can add a gadget, you need to click on Design at the top of your blog.

Rev Bob Pounder, the new minister of Oldham Unitarians, has started a blog, entitled Faileth Never, and his first post is a beautiful prayer for Advent that he has written, which includes lots of Nature imagery and the idea that the Christ child is waiting to be born everywhere and in every heart (so more like a universal avatar than a particular incarnation). I look forward to reading more.

The title of the blog is presumably a quote from the hymn, The King of Love my Shepherd is, by H W Baker.

Here's a video from Blogger about how to set up a blog.

I have just created a Yahoo Pipe which pulls together content from UK Unitarian blogs (I can't figure out how to get the blog name and author in there, as they don't appear to be stored in the blogpost bit of the RSS feeds) but it does at least only take an excerpt of the post, and then you click through to the original blogpost). If you go to the Pipe page, you can get a badge for your blog or website which pulls in the latest posts from UK Unitarian blogs. Click on the "Get a Badge" link and follow the steps in the popup.

There is now a page on this blog dedicated to blogposts from UK Unitarian bloggers, as well as links to them on the sidebar on the right.

Louise, who is secretary of Newcastle-under-Lyme Meeting House, has started two new blogs, Developing Spiritual Community and Governance for Unitarians.

On Developing Spiritual Community, she writes:

This blog has started from my desire to see the development of Unitarian communities in the UK. Many of the approaches that have been suggested recently take a marketing approach where Unitarianism is a product and if we only marketed it differently we would 'sell' more of it. The model adopted in this blog is one which sees local Unitarian communities as just that - communities - which most community members are committed to developing.

On Governance for Unitarians, she writes:

This blog is born out of a desire to make a positive contribution to UK Unitarians' continued discussions (or not) about how good governance works and to offer some hints and wrinkles about how to make it work for Unitarian communities wherever they are, however big or small.

Another new blog, entitled Any way the wind blows - Thoughts of a Unitarian from Shammy Webster, who is Lay Person in Charge at New Chapel, Denton. Again, the quality of writing is high, and the topics vary from forgiveness to politics to tidying up the spare room. The title of her blog is a quote from Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, so she obviously has excellent taste in music too.

Someone just sent me details of another new Unitarian blog, New Meeting Minds. It's a group blog by the members of Kidderminster New Meeting. It has some excellent posts; there's one pondering on the existence of God and the pleasures of heretical viewpoints; another on spirituality and religion; and one on aid workers and the insight they give into human nature. It's very accessibly written, and a good read.

If you have a UK Unitarian blog that isn't listed on the blogroll on the right, please let me know and I will add it.

I have just discovered a very interesting and well-written new Unitarian blog, entitled Live Unitarianly. The name comes from a phrase that Michael Dadson uses, which was promoted in Stephen Lingwood’s book. The site is aimed at people who are attempting to live by Unitarian values; want to improve Unitarian gatherings and groups, and share Unitarian ideas.

Andy Pakula, minister of New Unity (Newington Green and Islington Unitarians) has started a blog, called Throw yourself like seed. The title is from a poem by Miguel De Unamuno translated by Robert Bly.

Also, three of my blogs (dance of the elements, Stroppy Rabbit and the Bluestocking are on his blogroll - I feel honoured.

He started it in February, so we still have time to catch up with all the posts.

Welcome to the blogosphere, Andy!

The UU Growth blog has a fantastic collection of resources to help congregations grow. There is a similar section on the GA's Unitarian website called Congregational support.

The arrival on the scene of a new Unitarian blog has just been pointed out to me. It's called Urban Unitarians, and it shares words of inspiration in the Unitarian spirit of tolerance and hope for the contemporary world. It's run by the urban Unitarians of Rosslyn Hill Chapel, London.

They've got some great posts up already, including book reviews, thoughts for the day, information about mandalas, reflections on liberal religion and humanism, and more. Check it out.

24 ways is the advent calendar for web geeks. Each day throughout December they publish a daily dose of web design and development goodness to bring you a little Christmas cheer.

Now all they need to do is find a way of sending chocolate through the internet...

There are two interesting Unitarian and UU blogposts about Advent:

• Advent – A Humanist Adventure (1984) from The Sermons and Musings of Carl J. Westman, DD.
• Celebrating Advent without misrepresentation, sentimentalism or parody (and a couple of recommended books) by Andrew Brown

And Stephen Lingwood has posted a video: Advent: How long shall we keep God waiting? It's very good.

The first thing to realise about writing for the web is that people tend to skim-read pages, looking for the salient facts. Therefore it is best to write in an inverted pyramid style, with the most important information and a summary of the article first. Another important guideline is to avoid information pollution (the inclusion of redundant information, like "don't use your hairdryer underwater").

Since people only skim-read on the web, it's a good idea to break your page up with headings, bullet points, and the use of bold to emphasise key points.

Stick to the main topic of the page (don't digress) and include only one idea per paragraph.

About.com has ten guidelines for web writing.

Many Unitarian Universalists have blogs, and there is more than one blog aggregator for them. (A blog aggregator is a site that gathers content from other blogs - just a snippet of the text, the title and a link, and not the whole blog post, as that would be plagiarism.)

Unitarian Universalist blog aggregators:

• UUpdates.net: the latest content from many UU blogs and websites
• Philocrites' annotated guide to UU blogs
• UU World: weekly round-up of blog posts
• Discover UU: blogs section - imports snippets of many UU blogs

There are many Unitarian Universalist blogs and several blog aggregators (sites which bring UU blogs together). There are also several Unitarian bloggers in the British Isles.

Bill Darlison has a blog where he posts his sermons (he updates it regularly but he is using it more as a website than a blog); Stephen Lingwood blogs at Reignite; Andrew Brown blogs at Caute, and Yvonne Aburrow blogs at dance of the elements. If there are any other British or Irish Unitarian bloggers out there, let us know and we'll add your blog to the sidebar.

The Communications Commission met yesterday and decided to have a blog to share good practice and useful resources. Blogging is a great way of communicating and sharing ideas, and we want to encourage more Unitarians to start blogging. Blogging is a way of sharing ideas and thoughts, poetry, sermons, and conversation.

There are many people out there who may well be Unitarians without knowing it - in other words, they already share our outlook on life, the universe and everything, and may be looking for a community to share their spiritual life with, but have never heard of Unitarianism.

This is just a quick post to say that I've been writing less for this Rev. Cyn blog in part because I've been writing for other locations.  If you want to be reading more from me than you're getting here, I'm writing for Loved For Who You Are approximately once a month, and you can read my posts here:

• http://www.lovedforwhoyouare.org/you-are-whole/
• http://www.lovedforwhoyouare.org/cottleston-pie-and-love/

I'm also beginning to write for Tom Schade's blog, The Lively Tradition.  The rate at which I'll be posting there is yet to be established.  You can find my first post here:

• http://www.tomschade.com/2014/07/water-water-everywhere-and-not-drop.html

Both of these blogs have a very specific focus, so the posts that you'll be finding there are the ones that meet with their missions, and what I'll be posting here at Rev. Cyn are those posts that do not.

Oh, and I also have an upcoming article at the UU World about spiritual practice -- watch for it! 

I'm leading a workshop at SUUSI this year on "Blogging for Beginners."  My mom (herself a former director for on-line learning for a university) pointed out to me that I should have handouts of my PowerPoint slides for the participants.  Handouts for a class about blogging?  That's so low-tech!  But I was trying to decide, indeed, how to share these -- whether to upload the file and share the URL or to e-mail them, or what.  Finally, I thought, "Why not just blog them?  The class is about blogging, after all!"  I remembered that I had found a way to do this once with some web-based application.  Turns out it's even easier now than it was before.

If you're not in the workshop, keep in mind that these are just slides for some basic information and URLs that I thought might be helpful.  It's not everything we'll cover.