I was honored to lead two workshops at the recent National Religious Broadcasters convention. Thanks to my fine friends Jenni Catron, Matthew Paul Turner and Michael Buckingham, the workshop UnChurched was both intellectual fun and tremendous motivation.  And my fabulously talented and beautiful wife Kat shared the teaching and motivation responsibilities with me for our Digital Storytelling workshop. Thanks everyone!

Getting tons of new ideas from workshops (like mine) is one of the great benefits of really good conventions. There’s a real downside, however…

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Not long ago I blogged about Twitter [click here to read it] and wasn’t really all that complementary.  But what a power peer pressure is!  Some of my best friends are active twitters, or is it tweeters… check out what Michael “Holy Cow” Buckingham and Mark “Hardly Normal” Horvath are up to [ @holycowcreative and @hardlynormal ].

So scroll down the page a bit and glance over to your right and you’ll see a new feature… a Twitter box where you can read my latest Twitter post, which I think is really called a Tweet.  In fact, click at the bottom of the box and you can follow me and see what strikes me as interesting throughout the day.

My Twitter highlight so far is having Guy Kawasaki, one of my marketing / evangelism heros, reply to my comment about the high frequency of his excellent tweets. (I’m just learning this stuff, I didn’t know the tweet would go to him just because I listed his contact name in my message! Sorry Guy!)  Who knows, maybe next he’ll comment on one of my blog posts!

Uber-Designer, Michael Buckingham, wrote a great post on his blog today in which he talks about the risk of promoting what you cannot deliver. It’s a good reminder.

As I was writing a response, I said to myself, “self” (I said) “this would be a great post on your blog, ergon agathon.” So here it is, not a rip off of Michael’s thoughts but just a spin on what he wrote.

Jesus said (as recorded by Matthew in chapter 12):   “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.  You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.  The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.  But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.  For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”

What we say (promote, market, write, produce…) matters. Jesus said all that stuff (our creative output) comes out of what is in our hearts. Our words (ads, spots, postcards, fliers…) will either condemn us or acquit us.

Tell the truth in your marketing. If you find yourself embellishing, maybe you shouldn’t be doing any promotion until you help fix the underlying problem, then go wild and promote the snot out of it.

Trout like real trout bait. They hate the stuff that looks like a juicy worm but tastes like rubber. Your target audience hates stuff that tastes like crap. Give ’em the real thing.

I love technology, I’m not on the bloody edge of tech, but I’m usually an early adopter.  That being said, what’s up with Twitter?  I’m not sure if it’s cool or just weird.  (But that didn’t keep me from signing up!) http://twitter.com/joesindorf

I mean, I love Michael Buckingham, but I’m not sure I couldn’t live without knowing that he was “off to coffeeshop to work on HOW stuff”.  Oh wait, that was a Twit (or is it a Tweet?) from yesterday.

Oh no!  Where’s he now, and what’s he doing?  I must know!

Help me out.  Has anyone found a good reason to twitter your life away?