Childrens Ministry Online

Twitter Trends

Posted on06. May, 2009 by Kenny.

Since I use tweetdeck on my laptop, tiny twitter on my phone and twitter phone on my ipod touch, I don’t always know when twitter updates their main page. Just the other day I noticed that they’ve made some cool changes. First of all, you can subscribe to anyone’s twitter feed via RSS. That means someone who doesn’t use twitter could in fact follow your tweet through a reader. Pretty cool. Also, twitter has installed a search box on their main page. It makes searching for someone or any topic so much easier.

However, the coolest new feature is twitter’s Trending Topics. Basically it’s a top ten of what people are saying on twitter. I’m pretty sure you can find trends on tweetie and some other services, but if you don’t have that, just go to www.twitter.com. Two days in a row now I feel like saw the future through Trending Topics. Yesterday I signed in and saw that the top trend was “Star Wars Day.” I’ve never heard of Star Wars Day. Then I sated getting “May the 4th be with you” well wishes. Then today I saw that KFC was at the top of the list. KFC? Why the heck was KFC on the top of the list? Then an hour or two later, I found out that Oprah gave away a boat-load of KFC certificates for Mother’s Day.

Twitter is an over-connected network of people. Word spreads fast. When news breaks, word travels fast across twitter. So, check the trends through whatever service you use… or on the twitter homepage and y0u’ll know what’s hot and what’s not.

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Watching the numbers

Posted on22. Sep, 2008 by Kenny.

Something I’ve found to be true is that our “feeling” often deceive us. Too many times we also make decisions without taking an honest look at the data. One of my biggest pet peeves is when church leadership makes big (sometimes life-altering) decisions before getting all the facts. Looking at the data, interpreting the data and then asking some questions will help any leader really understand what is going on.

Last Sunday was a pretty full house here at Gateway. We’ve instituted the off-site parking shuttles and all the other things you do to “make room.” One of the things I learned last Sunday is that things were not as I had assumed. I learned an important truth. Because our attendance surged so high this last weekend, I was able to see something I hadn’t seen before.

Since coming here I have been told that 11:00 is our biggest service. It’s pretty obvious on Sunday. The lot is more full and people are sitting against the walls in the auditorium at the 11:00 service. Even when I look at my overview of numbers, I do have more kids at 11:00 than at 9:30. It’s always that way. The last 3 or 4 weeks I’ve walked around the early childhood area at 9:30 and noticed that they were feeling fuller than normal. This was odd because elementary seemed about the same as always. It wasn’t until I looked at the report a few hours ago and noticed a trend that I hadn’t seen but makes perfect sense.

At 9:30 the nursery was almost twice as full as it was at 11:00. The preschool was only 5-10% bigger than at 11:00. Elementary? It was about 50% smaller at 9:30 than at 11:00. This was an unusual Sunday, but it caused me to go back and look at past weeks numbers. They all say the same story (although not as dramatic). Yes, 11:00 is a bigger service and we have more kids at that time. But unless you look at individual rooms or areas, you won’t see that the younger ages are busting at the seams at 9:30.

My assumption had been that 11:00 is bigger, so we should always staff that service bigger. Now our team knows that this is true (except for early childhood). My new assumption is that we have a lot of parents of young children getting church in before nap-time. I won’t know for sure until we start asking around. This week we’ll be able to communicate to our parents about ideal service times. We’ve come dangerously close to turning away some little kiddos simply because our facility was at capacity. We can communicate to our parents that if it isn’t a big deal for them to come to 11:00, it will make room for more babies at 9:30.

I love looking at numbers and trends. I’ve learned a lot from studying them. What have you learned from keeping an eye on your numbers?

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