Help for Young Life Leaders NOW

Text messages – Bulk Text Program for Treo

Everyones doin’ it! They are text messaging. No big surprise, sorry. Lots of you might already have a flip phone, a Blackberry, a Motorola Brick, and some of you might even have an iPhone, but I know a lot of you have a Treo. I do.

For the last year or so I have been using a group or bulk text messaging program with my Treo 650 and then Treo 700

(they replaced the 650 when I dropped it… oops). It is fantastic. I have several groups, my club team, the other leaders in my area, my campaigner group. But best of all, a group called “Monday”. I text all my kids on Monday in about 30 seconds. BTW, here are a couple tips for texting…

Try to keep it guys-to-guys, girls-to-girls… I’m sure you learned that in training.
Use abbreviations, they do. So should u.
At the end ask a brief question so you can interact with them either knowing if they are coming, what’s going on, or simply to just know they got the text.
Within reason it is a good idea to text them while at school, maybe during lunch (don’t get them in trouble in class), so they can spread the news.
Don’t text too much to kids who stop coming… it can be annoying.

Anyway, here is the link to the file. Another leader uses it and it works pretty good for him. About 5% of the time it doesn’t work though. Overall it is a great tool.