Here are my notes from Tony Morgan’s breakout at Unleash at Newspring Church. Tony started off the session by saying that his gift wasn’t speaking but rather writing. I thought he did a really flamboyant job during his breakout (that’s an inside code word from the breakout). He entitled his talk “The 10 Steps to Becoming Blogging BFF’s”. The BFF is in honor of his teenage daughter. So if you’re a blogger or thinking of entering the blogging world, here are some tips:

1. Determine your primary audience. His blog for example, tonymorganlive.com, has two primary audiences: Church Leaders and The Newspring community.
2. Post Regularly. Need to post almost daily. If you’re not out there sharing your life and inviting people to joint the dialogue, then you’re missing out on the community and networking aspect of blogging.
3. Keep your post short. People are busy. People want quick hits and not your life story. Use bullet points where possible. Not a bunch of paragraphs where people have to scroll and scroll to read.
4. Don’t sell yourself. Be honest and tell real stories. Shouldn’t be about all of your successes. People flee from people who feel like they have it all put together.
5. Use humor. Be careful here. Self deprecating humor is better. Don’t take shots at other people or attacking them.
6. Stop attacking other people and ministries. Do people know you for what you are for or for what you are against? Don’t point fingers at specific people and churches.
7. Remember that blogging isn’t private. There are some things that are appropriate and some that are not for blogging. Some people have blogged something 8 years ago and it come back to bite them. You would be surprised who reads your blog at times: media, family, other churches, etc. If in doubt about a post, have someone else that you trust read it.
8. Be a thought leader. Some blogs all they do is transfer info from other blogs and that’s it. People want to hear “your story”.
9. Don’t listen to all of your critics. Ask what is their relationship to me and what is their motivation toward me.
10. Reveal the real you.

Some other quick hits:

• Engage the community
• Reveal authenticity in your ministry
• Make growing ministries/churches seem small through using social networking platforms (myspace, facebook, etc.)