Good News

Talking about spreading the gospel through the use of technology is really a conversation about speaking good news to people. People want to hear good news. It's instinctive for us to listen to good news and then want to share it. This can make sharing good news online even more difficult.

It might sound counter-intuitive to say that human beings love to share and hear good news so sharing good news will be tough, but it's the medium that affects the message here. Everyone is free to post whatever they want on Facebook or Twitter or Blogs. Because of that there's no shortage of news coming in. A lot of the news will be good. So the amount of noise that can drown out your message is huge. You might have the best news in the world, but it gets lost in the din.

One strategy that people will use online is to post more often. That can work, sometimes and in short spurts, but if you keep doing it people will tune you out, un-follow or de-friend you. Another way that people try to share good news online is through linking and quoting. Posting links to news stories or inspirational quotes from famous people or the bible is thought to lend authority to the claims of good news. The trouble is that most of the time it does the opposite and allows people to doubt the source.

Good news isn't best shared through blasts of information or through quotes and links online. Those tools are more likely to cause people to be numb to your voice on the internet rather than to hear what you have to say.

So, how do you think people can best share good news online?

P.S. I'll talk about this more tomorrow, but I wanted to hear your thoughts first.