SnapShot Web is partnering with R04R.com to provide a mobile solution for your church website.  To celebrate this great new partnership, we're giving away an iPad 2 for every 20 orders that come in.  I'm no mathmatician but I'm pretty sure that's a one in twenty chance of winning an iPad.

Here's a quick explanation of the process: Once you signup for either one of the two packages, the folks at R04R will take about a day to take the content from your website (whether that's a SnapShot Website or a website from another provider) and they will create a mobile fiendly version of it so that when someone pulls up your site on thier mobile device (iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Andriod, etc) they will see a slick looking and easy to navigate version of your content that's optimized for their fingertips.

Check out the video demo to get a sense for the feel of the mobile site.

Do you have a blog going on your church website? I have a handful of pastor friends that have not yet jumped into the world of blogging (at least not on their church websites.)  When I ask them why not, here are some of the answers I get:

• I simply don't have the time to add something like this to my to-do list each week.  I'm busy with ministry - I want to spend my time doing things that really matter.
• I don't have enough to say to fill a blog?
• I fear that I would start strong then a few months would go by and visitors to the site would see that the latest post is from sometime last year.
• Once people start commenting on blogs, won't it get out of control really quickly? I fear that we won't be able to manage it all.

What I have told these friends (and what I will tell anyone who asks) is that none of those excuses hold much water.  In fact. there are a few great reasons you need to have a blog on your church website.  Here's the beginning of a list:

1. Foster Communication - A blog is a wonderful way to foster communication with people inside your community and beyond.
2. Subscription Options  - With the options for RSS or email subscriptions, a blog can be an great way to get information (announcements, event info, sermon teasers or reminders, etc) into the hand of the people who care.
3. Help People Find Your Church Online -  That's right, incorporating a blog on your church website is one of the best ways that you can improve your Search Engine Status or Google Ranking.  More on this in a future post...
4. Easy to Setup and Manage - With the tools that are available to you, blogging doesn't take a whole lot of time.  In fact, you can have an amazingly effective blog in just a few minutes each week.

Setup a risk-free 30-day trial and test out the blog feature yourself.  Check out this video tour of the new blog feature at SnapShot Web:

If you have a blog on your church site, we'd love to see it in action (and interact with you there.)  Post it in the comments and we'll take a look.  Have you got other reasons to add to the list?  Post them here as well.

Tommy Foster is the Associate Pastor of Students at First Baptist Church of Mountain Home. He has used SnapShot Web for a few years to power his Student Ministry Website at 180uth.com and his church website at myfbcmh.com. One of the things that Tommy is doing really well on these websites will be noticeable as soon as you visit the home page. On both sites, you will see an eye-catching, layered, and interactive slideshow that will highlight some of the most important things going on in the community. He's using SnapShot's SlideShow feature to pull this off.

Well Done Tommy.

Check out the latest feature for adding great social elements to your church websites.  With the new year, we're set to launch some new ways of sharing and the Fancy Social Bookmark feature is the first.  With a few clicks of your mouse, you can offer your site visitors options for sharing a page via facebook, twitter, linked in, google buzz, and about 100 other bookmarking tools.

it's included with the Plus and Pro levels at SnapShot Web.  If you don't yet have a SnapShot Website,  Sign up for a 100% risk free 30-Day trial to test it out yourself.

Check out the video tour that will show you the Fancy Bookmark Feature in action and test it for yourself at the bottom of the page.

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Sign up for a 100% risk free 30-Day trial to try out a SnapShot Website for yourself.

When I was in college, I went to a local church with fantastic teaching. At the back of the sanctuary, there was a audio cassette rack where you could pick up a copy of a previous sermon for a one-dollar donation. I loved this cassette rack. I loved that if I had to miss a week of church I could grab the cassette from the rack and play it in my car on the way home. I loved that if there was a sermon that I thought a friend or family member would especially enjoy that I could grab a copy of it and hand it to them.

The days of the audio cassette are over (in most places, I'm assuming.) Most churches made the jump to CDs several years ago and then to the internet. With the technologies available today, sharing a sermon with those you love is easier than ever.

If your church is not already recording and sharing your sermons through your church website, here are four quick reasons that you should start right away:

1. It's a helpful way to archive sermons - I'm going to teach a 3 week series on Luke 15 this coming summer as our pastor will be on Sabbatical. I know that our church did a series on Luke several years ago and instead of simply wondering what the focus on the series was, I can simply listen to it. Brilliant.
    
2. It's an easy way to make a sermon available to a church member who had to miss the worship service for some reason - My wife and I have three kids under the age of 5.

We've had lots of people asking about easy ways to add video and audio podcasts to their church websites.  We've had the Advanced podcasting feature for several months but we're now ready to announce that things just got a whole lot better.

The New Flow Podcast Feature is here.   Sign up for a 100% risk free 30-Day trial to test it out yourself.

There are all sorts of features that you are going to love.

Check out the video tour that will show the player in action.

Here are a few of our favorite features:

1. Easy Video Integration - If you are video recording your sermons, you can host the files on services like vimeo.com or blip.tv for free.  Now with a simple click of a button you can have your video popup right from your website so that people can watch and share.
    
2. Social Integration - Imagine that I came to your church on Sunday and heard a message that I loved.  I loved it so much that I wanted to share it with a friend (or all of my friends.)  Now, I can go right to your website and click on the email or tweet button for the sermon and just like that, I have shared the blessings with others.
    
3. Sermon Archive - Do you want to keep several years (or more) worth of sermons available on your site? With the new Flow Podcast Feature...

The Twitter Feed feature has been out for a few weeks now and we're getting lots of great feedback.  So far our favorite way that we have seen it used is as a simple and elegant newsfeed on a church home page.  It's an easy way to let your community and the rest of the world know what's going on at your church.  Check our current favorite instance of it.  

If you are using it on your site, let us know so we can take a look. If you have yet to get it set up, just send us an email at support@snapshotweb.com with the word TWITTER and your domain name and we'll have it configured for you so you can drop it on your site right away.

As always, you can follow the latest from SnapShot Web on twitter, facebook, and our blog.

We've just released a sweet new twitter feature for your SnapShot Websites.  It's included will all three plans.  If you don't yet have it on your site, just send an email to support@snapshotweb.com or a direct message to @SnapShotWeb with your domain name and the word TWITTER.  We'll add it to your site right away. Check out this quick demo to see the New Twitter Feed in Action...

I have been a fan of Snapshot for a while. Years ago I used it as a youth minister and now that I have "grown up," I use it as a pastor. Right now, I serve a wonderful and friendly small rural church in the panhandle of Texas with a big vision -- we desire to reach the un­‐churched and de‐churched and make disciples the best we can according to Scripture. I believe that Snapshot helps in this process. Here are some practical ways it has helped us:

We use the website for information/PR -  Snapshot has many great features that allow us to get info out -- from calendar events, to scrolling flash images, to Facebook/Twitter helps, to podcasting. We use these all. I would like to see the website be the go‐to for all information rather than the church bulletin. This would be better because it can be edited/updated anywhere at any time and there are quicker, real‐time updates. We have done community wide mailers and the main way we want to interact and get the word out about church is through our website. Snapshot also looks good and clean which has allowed residents of the town to take notice (and even motivated them to upgrade their web pages!).

We use the website to streamline - instead of calling the office or telling me in the hallways of the church on Sunday that I inevitably forget, we have used the website for members and ministry leaders to submit announcements and events to put on the calendar. It has really helped in organization of our office and calendar. This helps us focus more on our purpose and mission rather than just adding "stuff" to the calendar. Snapshot also makes PayPal easy with its module and has greatly helped in online payments for events.

Snapshot really has so many qualities that have helped our ministry this past year. The staff at Snapshot have always been an email or phone call away and have been quick to help in our times of great peril (i.e. PayPal changing everything during our sign-up for a conference!). If you are considering Snapshot, sign-up now without thinking - it will provide helpful tools to fulfill your vision to reach and disciple a generation that is desperately seeking truth.

By Paul Stohler
Pastor, First Baptist Church
Canadian, TX
www.fbccanadian.org
pstohler@fbccanadian.org

Adding Widgets and Social Bookmarks to your Church website is a great way to increase traffic, improve your SEO, and allow people in your community to easily share your website with their friends and followers.  If you are new to all of this, here are six ways to get started:

1. Add a twitter or tweet this option
   
   You'll certainly want to make it easy for visitors to your site to tweet about your site with s simple click.  You can embed the javascript that you will find at a service like http://www.tweetmeme.com/
    
2. Add a Google Buzz button
   
   Google Buzz is a way to "share updates, photos, videos, and more."  You can generate the embed code to drop the Buzz Button on your site here http://www.buzzcounter.net/

To make your church website more social and improve your Search Engine Optimization, you'll want to add the newest Social Bookmarks Feature from SnapShot Web.  Add bookmarks to Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, Linked In, Yahoo Buzz, Email and over 30 more.  You can also add a Follow Me On Twitter button and a Tweet This Page button.

Check out the quick demo that will show off this great new tool.

It's Day 4 of the 90 day Bible Project for First Student Ministries.  A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to read through the Bible in a year.  It was a good year.  These guys are doing it in 90 days.  They've done the math and they say with just about 45 minutes and 12 pages a day, they can pull it off.  I love it.  What a amazing feat.  Their encouraging the students in their ministry and their families to join them.

Not only that but they are cataloging the journey on their website.  Each day at midnight they put up a new video, a new key verse for the day and a link to to a new resource that will help people in this adventure.  Each week's message at their program night will focus on the scripture reading for the previous week.  Check out their site to follow the daily updates. Check out their sweet video archive.  Join them if you dare. 

Lots of people have asked recently about how to set up a splash page for their church or ministry website.  A splash page is, in essence, a page that shows up before your home page and often offers people the chance to enter into different sections in your site.  We would say that sometimes this is not the best option as you are requiring an extra click for people to get to the content of your site. 

Other times though, people can make it work quite well.  We came across this site - www.ampedyouthonline.com - recently that has set up a make-shift splash page right from within the SnapShot Web tools.  They've done it in a way that looks good and is very easy to understand (two essentials for a splash page.)

With this amazing new postcard feature, you can set your SnapShot Website up to send eCards.  What this means is that someone from your community can come to your site, enter a friend's name and email, and send them an invitation to an event or a service.  We put together a quick demo to show you the feature in action.  Check this out.

Check out this Church site that has the Postcard module up and running.

This feature is included with SnapShot Pro or can be added to a SnapShot Plus or Lite site for $50 a year.  Send us an email at support@snapshotweb.com if you want us to get it set up for you.

We just talked with Eric from Mountain View Bible Church.  He's new to SnapShot Web - he's had a SnapShot Website for a church for only a few months and it's not totally finished yet.  Even though he's still working on finishing up the site, we had to show you the podcast that he's got up and running.  It's amazing.  Click here to see it for yourself.  Here are some of the ways that he has made it especially cool:

• For each message, he has added a series name, a sermon name, an image, and some notes
• A clear and simple description for his users on how to interact with the podcast
• Two archive options so that you can find a sermon by series or by date
• A simple way for you to search all the sermons if you know you are looking for something in particular
• An RSS feed set up at feedburner so that people can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes or another podcatcher
• Tweet option enabled so you can share a sermon over twitter if you'd like (you can see this by clicking on one of the sermon titles.)
• Email this sermon to a friend set up

Wow.  We're impressed with how well he's using the new Podcasting feature.  Well done, Eric.  Keep up the good work.

If you are interested in getting your Podcast set up like Eric's just let us know at support@snapshotweb.com or 877-549-1900 and we'll have you up and running in no time.

SnapShot Web keeps getting better.  Check out the new advanced podcasting option.  There are all sorts of sweet options included with the module, including "email a friend", subscribe, play now, download, and retweet.  You've got to see this one in action.  Check out the video that will give you a quick tour.

A few years ago a church could get away with having a website that was nothing more than informational – a site that merely answered basic questions about the time and location of the weekly service. A strictly informational website like this is called a “brochure website” because its content is static. It basically serves the same purpose as a tri-fold brochure that you might pick up in a hotel lobby.

The time for brochure websites has come and gone.