I just wanted to write a quick post for the new year reflecting back on the blog (for the few days that it has existed) and the social media statistics data that I’ve been collecting for close to six months now.
When the ARUMC Center for Technology staff and I first collected and looked at the data back in July, and I started my efforts to keep up with this data, I never expected it to turn into something that I’ve been updating on a monthly-ish basis, or that annual conferences around the United States would be using the data in a variety of ways from tracking their own growth to using it as a roadmap for their future outreach plans. It’s honestly been very, very cool to hear from conferences from the time that I originally shared this data with every conference head of communications, to the time that I started to share my perspectives on the state of technological usage by those annual conferences.
As for future plans, I hope to keep updating the data and writing here in the new year! Thoughts I’ve had for future ventures include collecting data on non-US annual conferences, collecting data for other denominations with similar church structures, and writing about subjects other than technology on this blog! I hope you’ll stay tuned for those and other projects throughout 2017.
One last thing: I wanted to take a moment to highlight the top 5 conferences on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram in terms of growth over the past six months. Collectively, United Methodist Annual Conferences have added 3,353 followers on Instagram, 4,747 followers on Twitter, and 32,381 likes on Facebook! Those are some great numbers for just 6 months, so it’ll be interesting to see what 2017 brings! Here are the top 5 (in growth) conferences by social network:
- Texas (TexasAnnualConference) – 21,701
- Louisiana (louisianaconference) – 1,091
- Arkansas (arkansasumc) – 939
- Rio Texas (RioTexas) – 488
- Holston (HolstonConference) – 420
- North Carolina (@nccumc) – 183
- Minnesota (@MinnesotaUMC) – 180
- South Georgia (@SGAUMC) – 164
- Iowa (@IowaConference) – 156
- Desert Southwest (@DSCUMC) – 143
- Texas (@txumc) – 894
- Arkansas (@arkansasumc) – 244
- North Carolina (@nccumc) – 232
- North Georgia (@ngumc) – 145
- Missouri (@moumethodist) – 135
As always, I share my thoughts and research in the hopes that this ends up being of some benefit to someone, and as always I appreciate any comments or questions. Please feel free to contact me at me@jacobturner.me, or leave a comment below! I always love hearing your thoughts or what your conference is doing.
Until next time,
Jacob
JacobTurner.me 