One more incredible TXT tool
On my last post about great texting tools for youth ministry, Lex commented about another great way to send announcements to to your teens via text messages, this time for free.
She created a Twitter account for her youth group and then told her students how to sign up for mobile updates. Whenever she posts to the main Twitter account, every student gets a text message! Great for announcements, reminders, and encouragement. And because it’s web-based, parents and other adults who want to stay in the know can just go online to the profile page and see the latest posts.
Ready to do it? Here’s how. To create the youth group Twitter account:
- Go to www.twitter.com.
- Click “Join the conversation!” and follow the steps for creating an account.
Easy right? Now here’s what you need to tell your students to do:
- Start with the same thing you just did–go to www.twitter.com and create an account.
- Once created and logged in, go to “Settings”
- Click on “Devices”
- Follow the steps to add your mobile device (for US phones, in step one, enter “+1″ followed by your area code and number, no spaces).
- Go to the youth group’s main Twitter account (i.e. www.twitter.com/your_twitter_name)
- Click on “Follow”
- Click on “Device Updates Off”
- Click the “On” option
Sound complicated? It might be to us, but 99% of your students already use Twitter daily and could probably do a better job than me explaining how to do this ;)
Give it a try and let me know how it goes!
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The students don’t have to get on Twitter at all. If they never plan on using Twitter, they can set it up right from their cell phones:
1- Text “follow [username]” to 40404. In our case, they text “follow switchstudents”
2- You’ll get a text message to confirm, asking for your name. Reply with your name.
Simple. -er, even. :)
(Sorry, I’m totally addicted to Twitter. They should pay me for all the advertising I do.)
Do they already need to have a Twitter account to do that or can anyone just send in the text to sign up?
They don’t need an account, but when they send their name in the second text message, it will effectively set up a Twitter account for them. That’s why, on Twitter’s home page there’s a smaller button that asks if you’ve been using Twitter from your phone already.
If someone fancies using Twitter someday, it’s best to sign up for an account, add a device, etc. If not, just text, text and go!
Twitter are a MUST for webmasters!