Sermon Excerpts/Highights

Joshtong 2015-08-16 18:51:56 UTC #1

Hi there,

We've started creating short sermon videos that highlight excerpts from the full-length sermon videos. They tend to be about 2-3 minutes and are more suitable for sharing on Facebook and other causal consumption channels.

Are there plans to allow multiple videos to be associated with a sermon? I.e. the full-length video and then a few sermon excerpts?

In the meantime, has anybody found a good way to organize these shorter clips on the Sermons.io platform? I'm thinking of associating them with a "Highlights" series for now, but am curious if anyone else has a better recommendation.

Josh

Jeff 2015-08-16 22:19:39 UTC #2

Josh,

We've talked about doing this, but right now it isn't really on any short term roadmaps. If enough people are interested we could have another look at it.

For now I think your best bet would be to add them to a Highlights series like you suggest. If we do end up rolling this out in the future I think we could help you move them over if they were all together.

Anyone else interested in this functionality?

-- Jeff

Joshtong 2015-09-05 18:05:24 UTC #3

Jeff-

Got it. Thanks. We'd be happy to beta test a version of that feature whenever you do decide to build it.

Related to this, where is social publishing (specifically to Facebook) on the roadmap?

Best,
Josh

Jeff 2015-09-05 18:26:02 UTC #4

Josh,

What level of publishing/which features are you wanting?

-- Jeff

Joshtong 2015-09-05 20:56:21 UTC #5

I think initially it could be pretty simple, it would be great to be able to post a sermon (or in our case, a sermon excerpt) to our Facebook page from the sermon creation page.

In terms of the post itself, you'd just want users to be able to see the video thumbnail and metadata (title, description, etc.) and be able to play the video in their news feed. When they clicked on the sermon title it would be nice if it took them back to our Sermons.io page (instead of our YouTube channel).

In the future post scheduling would also be nice because we be upload on Sunday and would prefer to post to FB during the middle of the week.

Jeff 2015-09-15 21:06:19 UTC #6

Josh,

We are working to improve some of the aspects of Facebook sharing; I think you've got some more great ideas in here.

Right now, if you post a link to a Sermons.io sermon on FB, you should get all the proper meta data showing up properly. (Example: https://www.facebook.com/gracechurchaz) However, we just got reports that using the actual share to Facebook button on the sermon page isn't having the results people expect. We're digging into this.

We had auto-posting to FB setup at one point, but had nothing but trouble with the Facebook API flaking out constantly. It may be time to revisit this; you aren't the only one asking for better integration.

I especially like the idea of auto-posting at a certain point in the week. That would serve me too, since I prefer to post to FB on Monday mornings as opposed to Sunday afternoons.

So, it looks like we need to add another look at Social Sharing to our list, in addition to Scripture Browsing, some iOS 9 updates that are coming, theme support that we're working on, as well as a long list of smaller improvements.

-- Jeff