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studied creative writing at Arizona
State University, Vo knows Osteen’s
fans better than most. She’s helped
manage Osteen’s social profiles for
six months, and spends an hour
or two every day responding to his
followers’ comments or drafting
status updates to send from the
pastor’s accounts. The posts, based
on lines from Osteen’s sermons and
books, are each screened by Joel
Osteen Ministries’ media relations
chief, Andrea Davis, before they’re
published. Osteen is against personal updates and insists on short,
motivational phrases: “It’s hope,
it’s inspiration, it’s stuff that they
can use,” the pastor explains. “That
has helped us be effective.” Though
Osteen doesn’t tweet himself, he
has a separate, private Twitter account from which he monitors his
official feed. If Osteen sees a tweet
go out that doesn’t sound true to
him, Davis can expect a call.
“I eat, breathe and sleep Joel at
times,” says Vo. “I speak Joel now
… You pick up the voice and it’s
like, ‘Oh, God bless you’ and ‘Would
love to pray for you.’”
And yet, much like the majority
of the congregants who gather via
social media, Vo knows Osteen
primarily as a digital experience:
She has met him in person only
HUFFINGTON
06.09.13
once — the day before.
Osteen’s Facebook and Twitter
posts are relatively standard fare,
but their reception is anything but
typical. A tweet sent earlier that
morning advised his 1.6 million followers, “Today, find something to
be grateful for. Every day is a gift
from God.” That message has been
retweeted more than 6,000 times,
about average for Osteen, who takes
a personal interest in his retweets.
By contrast, Whole Foods, which
boasts twice as many followers as
Osteen and in 2012 was named the
most influential brand on Twitter, is lucky to see one of its tweets
retweeted a dozen times.
Retweeting and “liking” on Facebook amount to an effective way to
convey the Word, as believers disseminate Osteen’s message through
their genuine social networks.
“It opens up the doors for a lot
of unbelievers,” says Alisha Brooks,
one of the in-person attendees
at the Night of Hope who follows
Osteen closely online. “Through
social media, I might have a whole
bunch of people who follow me that
may not be into the Word or anything like that. So if I see something
[Osteen] tweets and I retweet it,
now it has access to an extra 100,
200 or 300 people that didn’t have