As ministers, it’s important for you to recognize those who you are ministering to. You need to be able to interact with them and take their suggestions in as open of a way as possible. A simple rule of thumb to keep in mind is that a good minister is an accessible minister.
Being open and accessible transfers from your in-person ministry to your online presence. There are a variety of tools available online to help you with a variety of methods of staying accessible. However, there aren’t many tools to help you figure out what you should write about and the types of content that those who you minister to are most interested in you providing. That’s where Skribit comes into play – it takes reader participation to a whole new level.
What Does Skribit Do?
Skribit helps you get suggestions from readers and then others can vote for them. For example, one reader could suggest that you video-blog and other readers who like the idea can vote for it. Readers have a chance to easily drop in their questions/interests, and you get benefit as a blogger too – yes, you can get ideas for posts! Skribit can aid in beating writer’s block.
How Do I Get Skribit?
Upon signing up for Skribit, you’ll be taken to a page from where you can add your blog by clicking on the “Add New Blog/Website” option on the left side of your dashboard, which is pictured below.
You will then be directed to a page where you will enter the details of your blog or website. Enter a quick “elevator-pitch” of your blog in under 200 characters. Be sure to enter some tags that describe your website or blog so that your site can be found among other Skribit users.
You will next notice three checkbox privacy options below your blog details. Feel free to fill these out according to the level of privacy and security that you would like.
If you leave the “Allow Anonymous Suggestions” checkbox checked, you’ll be able to receive suggestions from all readers – even readers who don’t want to register themselves at Skribit will be able to vote and contribute suggestions to you using the widget. I highly recommend allowing anonymous suggestions.
On the next step, you’ll be presented with a variety of options to customize the widget that will appear on your website or blog. There are two options, a Sidebar Widget or a Floating Suggestions Tab. We have the Suggestions Tab on the New Media Ministry, which you will see floating on the right side of your screen.
Once you decide how you would like to present Skribit to your readers, make sure that the correct tab is chose on the right side of your customization screen – either “Regular Sidebar Widget” or “Suggestions Tab”.
To customize the widget, you’ll fill out the variety of options under the “Customize Your Widget” section on the left side of the screen. The options are fairly self-explanatory. This is where you will change the way the Skribit widget looks on your blog.
As you can see from the screenshot above, you can change the number of suggestions, the order of suggestions, the header text, the colors and basically “skin” the widget and make it blend in with your blog’s template.
You now need to get the code for the widget and add it to your page. Skribit provides a nice tool to easily copy the entire code segment by clicking the website.
If you are not very familiar with any type of website coding, you’ll want to follow the detailed instructions link provided below the box.
If you are familiar with website coding, you’ll need to copy and paste the entire code segment in your <head> field somewhere before the </head> tag. That’s all you have to do.
Readers who visit your blog or website can now leave their suggestions using your Skribit widget. Clicking on your respective Skribit widget, a text box will appear where they can type in their suggestions and click “Submit”. Once that’s done, the suggestion will appear on the widget. Other visitors will be able to vote for their favorite suggestions by clicking on the “Vote” button next to each suggestion.
You’ll be able to see the suggestions left by readers from your Skribit management page after you’ve logged in. Furthermore, you can also see who’s left the suggestion (must be either a Skribit user or an anonymous reader) and also check how many votes each idea has got.
Skribit will also email you every week with a report of suggested reader topics and votes. You can now estimate reader participation and interest, and what kind of posts your readers would want – thanks to Skribit.
How Can I Use It?
Skribit is a valuable tool. It’s original use was to provide a resource to help readers suggest content for you as a well to help prevent “writer’s block.” But from a ministry perspective, Skribit can also be utilized in a very valuable way. We all know that in the teenage years, different teens are at different stages in their comfort levels, so there may be a teen that is too nervous or lacks the confidence to come talk to you to suggest an idea or activity. Skribit helps to solve this problem because it is a medium to help present a way for teens to suggest, either anonymously or not, potential topics and activities that they would like for you cover in your ministry as well as on your website/new media sources.
How Much Does It Cost?
Skribit has both a Free Version and a Paid Version. However, if you use promo code “PSTAM”, you can get 1 year of the Pro account for only $1. This is only for a limited time so act fast.
So what are you waiting for? Sign up for Skribit today!
