Here’s 3 keyboard shortcuts (for a Mac) that I get asked about consistently. Learn to love the command key! Hit these combination of keys to make your life easier.

• Hit Command +, or Command – to increase or decrease font size.

• Hold Shift, command, 4 to bring up the cross-hairs for you to highlight (click and drag) an area to take a screenshot. It automatically saves to your desktop.

• Hit Command, spacebar to bring up the Spotlight feature to search for an app, document or whatever

I know you experts out there have these all dialed in, but what other shortcuts do you get asked about on a weekly basis? (I just used command-i to italicize)

Now is the time to post photo’s on Facebook pages.

Photo’s are ranked higher in the Facebook newsfeed algorithm. This means if you want what you’re promoting to be seen amongst all the noise on Facebook you must think about adding photo’s to your page promotion strategy.

For example, to promote our Cru Conference I posted a photo with the event information on it, invited people to share it and then commented on it with the event link (comments also drive up the rank). Apparently there are terms for this now…Newsfeed optimization and edgerank. How’s that for nerdy?

This is the result after a few days….5 shares, 1,177 views.

The number of page views isn’t off the charts…but what’s even better than page views is that people are posting this picture on their wall doing our promotion for us. Check out the shares and the corresponding comments….

I’m still playing around with this, but I like the buzz it makes. So think about adding pictures to your Facebook page and think about making a simple call to “share” the image.

If anyone has any other ideas on how to do this better please let me know!

Did you know that during a video call you can share your screen?

Hmmm, maybe I was the only one who didn’t know this fact of awesomeness. No more trying to explain with words…now I can show you. If you’re on a Mac all you gotta do is hit this little button and the person you’re talking to can see your screen.

This is how I make the internet work for me to gather contacts during the summer for our context. If you haven’t figured it out yet, Christian students are searching for groups of other believers to get connected with before school even starts. Be the first ministry that they find on google and the first to contact them!

• I have a “homebase” that is our ministry internet real estate and have created a “Connect with Cru” form that interested people can easily fill out. The “call to action” is in a prominent position on the homepage too. Their answers then get forwarded to my email, where I can collate their information and enter it into Missionhub.com. At that point they get assigned to a staff person to follow-up.

• I also have a fairly established facebook page that is active, although small. It has a landing page with a link to the “Connect with Cru” form when you first visit the site.

*I use a wordpress plugin powered by cforms for the “Connect with Cru” form

**Homebase terminology originated with Chris Brogan. I did a seminar on it last year.

***Here’s an old screencast on why we use a wordpress site for our ministry.

…this would be it. A terminally-ill mother watches married daughter’s first dance via Skype.

I couldn’t agree with this statement any more! Thanks Matt Turkington for this comment on google+.

 There are some times technology amazes me more than others. Chatting with people around the world via Skype has become completely normal and I don’t think it impresses me anymore. But when something like this happens and technology enables a once-in-a-lifetime interaction that would have never been possible otherwise, it blows me away. The next picture in the stream shows them with headphones on chatting for a few minutes. The mother died a few weeks after the wedding.

If IT had a PR campaign, I think it would use pictures and stories like this, along the lines of the “Plastics Make it Possible” campaign. This moment sponsored by IT.

Sheesh, I’m getting teary eyed just writing this post. Makes me want to rethink how we recruit to operations. What do you think?

Every staff member I know has walked around campus carrying the literal weight of hundreds of contact cards filled out by willing students interested in hearing more about Jesus. Sometimes they get followed up in a timely manner, other times they sit on the desk in the dorm room waiting for those students to follow them up.

Enter Missionhub.com.

This application debuted at our national staff conference a few weeks ago. It’s a great first step in re-imagining what it could be like tracking contacts. There is an iPhone app available as well.

I’m testing it out right now and our team will most likely use it this fall.