Ready to go....announcement time

The church was supposed to send out an announcement this past week and at today's service with an insert to the bulletin. But everything got put on hold due to an annual conference being hosted by our church. My fault- if we would have been ready before, it would have been something that we let churches that were visiting know about and how they could have the same for their community.

This past week we had a past client call back to ask for their neighborhood back. But since they had a civic club lined up, several sponsors and banner ad sponsors they were willing to pay for the rights. So we signed them up. And they are off. They already have enough lined up to pay the monthly fee (remember they get 75% of the revenue) and still be able to be the REALTORS that represent the neighborhood- and they appointed the civic club as the Neighborhood Ambassador. I know this is a little different than the plan that starts with a church or civic club, and they pay nothing and the sponsors they approve pay to support the site. We are convinced this model will insure the best participation and make sure that each neighborhood hold true to the real goal - to help the residents of the community.

So we gave them a chance and know it can work. But we are more able to gamble with a church.

Stick around and we will let you know how quickly this gets off the ground. Soon.....

While developers worked I thought of stuff.......They hate it when I do.

Now that they were at work I realized a couple of things. Things I haven't talked about before.

First, a few years ago we developed a service for our customers on the neighborhood websites that was very unique and very expensive. Tiny Web People. You've seen them; a live person walks out onto a site and talks, informs, and directs the site visitor to information or things of interest.

When we first saw it about 4 or 5 years ago, it was a grand or more to have a spokesperson video taped and made into a walk onto your site greeter. So we learned how others were doing it, (there were only a couple of companies doing it then), we developed our own software to do it our way, built a studio, recruited actors and developed a cast and began to have people on all our neighborhood sites greet site visitors, talk about sponsors, what each page was for, and just made things more lively.

From that point the service grew into what is known today as Tweople.com - Tiny Web People. Companies and website owners all across the country use them to bring their sites to life every day.

So how can we use that to help our neighborhoods, churches and sponsors better connect with the neighborhood? Well since we have the actors coming in to shoot videos for paying customers of Tweople.com anyway, why don't we have them do them for each neighborhood and the sponsors at no charge?

So that is what we are going to do - offer the church to have one of our spokespeople do a new video for the announcement page to introduce the Neighborhood Ambassador.  And for each of the 3 Channel Sponsors, they can do the same thing at no cost.

So I am writing a script for a new announcement page spokesperson that will tell visitors about First United Methodist Church of Winter Park being the Neighborhood Ambassador.

The second thing I thought of was wouldn't it be really cool if people could set up their own groups within Front Porch Chat and people could be invited to join or request to be a part of a group. Each having their own interest or purpose, like WP High students that are part of Elevate or WP Business Owners talking about employee relations, or Friends of Tom, whatever........And each group could meet on their front porch on a set day or time and talk online in private, or message each other or the group....and the one that set it up would be the admin for that group, approving or inviting others, and if someone did not belong removing them and even sharing or passing admin to others that he or she chose?

Now it would be a real social network- but within the community. After all who would you rather talk to? Your neighbors, or someone across the country that you didn't know and they may be just pretending to be who they say they are.

So I have now sprung it on my developers. And it's going to happen too.

Anyone else have any wants, needs or ideas?. Let me know. It has to be something that will make each neighborhood better and work across the board for all.

Back to work for me. And if you see a bunch of geeky guys chasing this old guy down the side walk- that's probably me in the front.

Getting ready to kick it off

So over the holidays we went to work here at My Online Neighborhood. Knowing that one person was going to monitor and manage Helping Hands, another to manage the daily content of the entire neighborhood site, and now 3 sections with multiple pages, or channels as we like to call them , for different sponsors with their own logons to change their pages - we had some work to do. When we make changes like this it has to work for our entire network of sites. And it has to make it easy for people to log in and change things just by filling in a box or two.

So our task list was set and we got to work. The goal was to send an email to the entire congregation by the end of the month and start signing up sponsors as soon as we could. So we also set up forms for those who were interested in being a sponsor and advertising their business while at the same time helping their community and the church's youth group. Those inquiries would come to us and we would help each in getting going. We didn't want to burden the church with having to explain everything. That was our job.

Next meeting with Chris at the church

Diane and Gary met with Chris and went over the next steps. We felt it important to do things orderly and to make the best impression when it is announced to the congregation. The old adage - You only have one chance to make a first impression- was certainly true here. So we set up a task list and started to work.
1. Go through the merchants and make sure that each listing is current and accurate.
2. Decide who would monitor front page news and announcements and add new content as needed
3. Assign an administrator of Helping Hands.
4. Plan on sending out the announcement via the church weekly email newsletter.
5. Set up a table in the court yard after the announcement to give out fliers and bumper stickers
6. Send email invitations to parents of youth group to ask for sponsors to help fund youth group projects and activities

We divided tasks and set off to get going. It's nice to have a team to get things going.  We also decided to kick this off after the holidays. Now we at MyOnlineNeighborhood.com had time to build some new systems to make this even better and easier to administer.

Hi Ho- Hi Ho- off to work we go.........Sorry about that. It's the Disney influence.

Helping Hands is re-established

A couple of weeks later we were in church and the sermon was on helping others- reaching out- and making a difference in others' lives. And how it was done was pretty dramatic.

Two people stood behind the 2 podiums. One at a time they began to read letters from people that had written the church asking for help. They told about one family where the Dad was still unemployed and he was trying to get back on his feet. He was only asking for $100 to get his plumber's helper license.
Another was about a gentleman that was alone since his wife of many years passed. It was hard for him to get out and all he was asking for was someone to visit once in a while, maybe sit on his dock and fish and just talk.
There was the single mother with 4 children. She worked long and hard to provide but when she finally got home there was little time or energy to put together a meal for the family. She was just asking for help.
The stories went on and on. No matter who was listening, there was not a person that no matter their circumstances that could not help someone. If you had no extra money you could spend a few minutes of time driving someone to their chemo treatments or just sitting and talking.
There were wet eyes all over the church. And then there was a call to action. One by one nearly everyone walked forward and dropped a slip of paper into waiting baskets to tell how and who they would like to help.
It was an incredible thing. But then it hit us. Even though we already had a Helping Hands section- we had not given it much thought. It was just part of the whole.
But it didn't start that way. It was a big part of our first neighborhood site.
This does not have to be just every once in a while. Others' needs do not have to wait until there is a call to action. If we make this the focus for the community site - this can be happening every day! Yes, every day!
Now we couldn't wait to point out a part of the community site that we should be featuring and using to change the community - Our Winter Park. - Sure we mentioned it before - but now it could be the focus!
What a great place to live!

It is a go- our church wants to be the Neighborhood Ambassador!

First, sometimes we are the last to know.

Our son is very involved with the Youth Group. He also plays in the contemporary worship band. In fact he is at the church 2-3 times a week. So it was not any wonder that he knew before we did.

One night when he came home he told us how excited both Andy and Chris were about the church being the Neighborhood  Ambassador and they wanted to know what was next. Excited! Wow, this could be great!

So now we are on and it is time to get this going. So I sat down and looked things over to see if there was anything else we needed to do. And I decided we could even make this better for everyone. But first things first. Time to draw out a schedule of what everyone was to do to kick it off right and get a whole community behind this.

We are excited too. This can make a difference.

Met with Church leaders next

So far this was taking longer than we expected. But looking back, it should have been anticipated. Care has to be taken that this is good for all, that there is a definite advantage, and that it cannot hurt the reputation of a church or its members in any way. Just the fact that it could help fund programs or groups or that it was a way to help the community was not enough.

And that was what this meeting went over. Questions were raised. And some we had not thought of previously.

But onto the meeting.

Gathered together were....
Chris Sell - Interactive Web Designer and IT, Carol Smith- Director of Lay Ministry, Andy Cartee- Director of Student Ministries, Murray Wilton - Director of Operations and Judy Arnett- Director of Communications.

Then there was us - Diane and I and Gary Ramey - Neighborhood Ambassador Coordinator.

After we went over what a community web center was and the history behind it, we started to give our vision of how a church could make an impact in the community as The Neighborhood Ambassador. But we didn't need to. They had done their homework- with Chris and Andy in the lead - they explained how they thought it could give the church a pathway into the community to reach out and make a difference. And the rest of the gathering understood. So now it was time for their concerns and questions.

There were 2 completely different functions for the church to consider taking on- being The Neighborhood Ambassador and/or being the Neighborhood Manager.

We pointed out that the church did not have to be the Neighborhood Manager if they did not want to take on this responsibility. We could bring in another to manage the Neighborhood Web Center. After all, the Neighborhood Manager would get a portion of all the sponsor fees in exchange for the things they would need to do to keep the site moderated and active. So we went over what a Neighborhood Manager would have to do.

Simply, the Neighborhood Manager would approve or disapprove all submissions to the discussions, announcements, videos and news, and update and approve all business listings on the site.  They would also help promote and manage the inclusion of site sponsors.

So what did that really mean?

It meant we would teach the Youth how to make sure the site stayed current and active and give them print ready fliers to give out to their parents, neighbors or friends telling them about their Neighborhood Web Center and inviting them to be a sponsor- thereby staying in front of the entire community  as a business or service that cares, and also helping the Youth raise funds for upcoming needs and projects- Everyone wins!

It also meant the Youth would do little attention-getting things to keep the community involved and informed about their neighborhood Web Center. Things like - manning a table in the court yard on a Sunday every once in a while and give out fliers and bumper stickers to get people visiting and using their Neighborhood Web Center. How about spending a Saturday afternoon in front of the local supermarket promoting their Youth Group and giving away those same bumper stickers? Or standing at a major intersection every once in a while holding up signs telling passersby to "Find Everything In Their Neighborhood - Visit MyWinterParkFl.com.
All these and dozens of other community friendly promotions, that are easy and fun to do, are developed by My Online Neighborhood and ready for instructional downloads.

So if the Neighborhood Manager did all these steps, the Neighborhood Web Center would be active - the community would be using it every day and it would be a place that Sponsors would want to be seen.
Now I do not want to go over numbers here but in reality if there were 3 major sponsors and 10 front page sponsors- the Youth Group would get $927 each month. They would not collect anything or have to sell anything. It would all be done online between My Online Neighborhood and the sponsors. EZ stuff.

So now they had a good overview of what was involved in managing the Neighborhood Web Center and Andy thought his youth could do it.Great!

What about the Neighborhood Ambassador? What do they do?

First, they set an example in the community. They manage Helping Hands and they let the congregation know that they are the Neighborhood Ambassador and encourage participation in being an active part of the community. Really, that is it.

Everyone is excited and on board it seems. But there is a question- a big one.And we had not thought about it yet.
Sponsors- If they allowed Sponsors(and the benefit was the Youth Group managing would get the majority of the sponsor fees) could they disapprove any? You know- what if it was a business or service that would reflect poorly on the church that was selected as The Neighborhood Ambassador?

Good question- Our answer- ( and it did not take much thinking on our part- in fact we had been denying certain types of sponsors for years) -They should and would have final approval  on any that wanted to be displayed as a Sponsor of the Neighborhood Web Center.

In closing the meeting we were told it all sounded good and they would get back with us.

Good things take time, don't they?