Differences Between Websites, Blogs & Social Media

Posted by David Drinnon on Mar 17, 2010 | 6570 commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.equipthem.info%2F2010%2F03%2F17%2Fdifferences-between-websites-blogs-social-media%2FDifferences+Between+Websites%2C+Blogs+%26+Social+Media2010-03-17+18%3A00%3A38David+Drinnonhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.equipthem.info%2F%3Fp%3D657

Recently, we have been discussing the role of blogs in our web strategy. We have several staff who already blog (view list). We encourage that, but we also wanted to begin incorporating blogs into our church’s web presence. These blogs are different from our staff’s personal blogs. They are more refined in scope and will add another layer of rich content for our church family that our website does not offer. In preparation for that roll-out, it was important for us to understand the differences in these mediums so we know best how to utilize them. I created a helpful chart to guide our staff.

As you can see, websites, blogs, and social media each have their respective functions. By confusing their place in social media, we endanger our relevance and effectiveness with our intended audience. As for our church (Second Baptist Church, Houston), blogs will be used for spiritual formation by providing ministry resources, Biblical perspectives, encouragement, leadership development and/or ministry best practices. Each blog will have a defined audience whether it is for SBC members and visitors, SBC leaders, or Christians and church leaders worldwide.

We also have used blogs for special events such as our annual Beach Retreat (read more). We limit event based blogs to mission trips, Beach Retreat, etc. where the event occurs out-of-town and over the span of several days.

On a technical note, we are using WordPress MU and hosting them internally on our servers. Thanks to Clifton Griffin, we also integrated the WordPress MU  login with Active Directory to give our staff a single sign-on experience.