The Pageless Book

Photo by Todd Huffman

Did you notice the point at which Wicca became a world religion? There is a definite period when this religion started taking on adherents at a rapid rate. In the early 1990’s, this religion, which seemed destined to be little more than foot note in history, was suddenly exposed to a vast number of spiritual seekers. Wiccans kept their religion quiet in fear of persecution for forty years up to this point; the religion seemed to be waiting for the right time to make itself known.

The Dawn of the Internet

Then, the information age dawned, which changed everything for this small religion. The internet seemed tailor made for Wicca. It gave them anonymity so to avoid persecution, allowed them the freedom to reach spiritual seekers in large numbers, and gave new (and often solitary) practitioners access to a community. This is a religion that doesn’t proselytize - they don’t actively seek out new members. In ten short years, it went from virtually unknown to a growing world religion, all as a result of the internet.

Today, there is a similar surge in Atheism. Again, they are using the internet as a vehicle to get their message out. I read a number of Atheist blogs, mostly because I enjoy debating with them, and have noticed that they have a vibrant growing community. Witnessing this, I have to ask why the liberal religious online community isn’t like that?

Marketing Liberal Religion

Recently, the answer was made clear to me through a fellow Universalist’s blog. Shelby, the webmaster of LookingForFaith.org, wrote an article regarding religious identity and marketing. She points out the trend among evangelicals to use product marketing techniques and asks if religious identity can be synonymous with brand identity. She poses the question as to whether or not liberal religions, such as Unitarian Universalism, should be marketing themselves through clothing, music, television shows, movies and other products. While I would argue against blatant consumerism, we should be marketing ourselves. When it comes to online communities, that means social media.

From what I’ve seen of our blogging community, I don’t think we are using social media services to promote ourselves. Perhaps some in our community do not even know what social media is or how it can it can improve traffic to your blog or to other blogs in our community. Social media is nothing less than another opportunity to share you opinion of what makes a good website with others.

Social Media is - ?

Social media sites essentially give you an up or down vote on content that is generated by other users. In many cases, the user generated content that is being judged are individual web pages. While your single vote may not seem like much, that one vote makes it far more likely that someone else will look at and vote for that web page. The effect is cumulative; the more up-votes a page receives, the more voters likely to read that page who will, if they believe the content is good, give another up-vote.

Now, I will be honest and admit that I don’t use social media as much as I should, either. But at the same time, I want to watch this community grow. So from now on, I will have a regular column on Sundays regarding my usage of different social media sites in my attempt to promote liberal religion blogs, other than my own. Each week, I will concentrate my efforts on one social media site and ask other bloggers to weigh in on it’s usefulness

The Grand Experiment

I encourage everyone to join me in this grand experiment; the more of us using social media, the more power we have as a community to bring in new readers. Why should you care? You have several very good reasons to care. Liberal religion needs to grow in order to survive; we need new petitioners. There are untold numbers of people who are fed-up with the politics of more conservative religions, but do not know that liberal religions such as ours exists. We need money in order to accomplish the good deeds on which we, as a denomination, set our sights. And if none of these reasons are enough to persuade you to participate in social media, than please consider this question: What good is your blog if nobody reads it?

I believe this endeavor is worth the time an effort, and I hope to see you here again next Sunday when I report on my use of StumbleUpon. Until then, I’ve included the following links on how to use StumbleUpon for your reading pleasure:

• How to use StumbleUpon like a Pro
• Building Your Blog with StumbleUpon
• A Comprehensive Guide to StumbleUpon

Namaste.