Creating Tipping Points
I read The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
The first was when I posted a blog entry about meeting Jason Castro from American Idol. I also Twittered it. Suddenly, my blog was on fire. It turns out somebody must have had a Twitter feed showing Tweets about Jason Castro which led them to my blog post. This fan then posted a note about it on a Jason Castro fan site.
In addition to this, Josh Griffin of MoreThanDodgeball.com posted a link to my post Counseling: Helping Families Through Conflict. He’s got thousands of blog readers so that was giving my stats a boost, too.
Between these two events, the hits started pouring in. It’s easy to see by the spike in my blog stats pictured below:
The second Tipping Point I witnessed was this morning. I saw a Tweet from a friend who saw the movie Watchmen last night. He’ll see anything and find a way to love it. When I read his comment, I knew this is one movie I would not be seeing.
However, just in case my friend just had a case of bad nachos at the theater which was influencing his dispassion for the movie, I looked to see what others were saying on Twitter. Either there were a bunch of bad nachos served at the movies last night or everybody was coming to the same conclusion. The movie is not worth the time or money.
The reason I’m so interested in these two Tipping Points is that these represent powerful and immediate responses to how people feel and communicate. Suddenly the thoughts of the masses can come together and send my blog stats higher or send a movie straight to DVD. There’s so much power in the social exchange of ideas.
As a youth ministry volunteer, I want to find a way to harness the power behind social networking among a very specific target to make a big impact in the area I serve. For me, that would specifically involve high school students in South Orange County, California. Getting students excited about what our ministry is doing and using social networking (Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, etc) to get the word out can help my ministry make a giant impact.
To excel in the business of changing young lives for Christ, how can I not tap into the effect I’ve seen in the last 24 hours with these two examples? Getting my students and their friends to use these tools can be as important as any other challenge I pose to them. Friendship Evangelism is taken to a whole new level when we can use social networking to boost our ministries like a wave through the minds Tweets and status updates of students.
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