Effective Church Communications

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and a Biblical Perspective to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. Our tools constantly change; our task doesn’t; we can help.

Shop til you drop for Backpack Ministries and Christmas Shoe Boxes!

By Leave a Comment

Shop the summer sales to get great supplies for Backpack ministries
Shop the summer sales to get great supplies for Backpack ministries and to save for Christmas Shoe Boxes--here are links to free Bulletin Inserts to encourage your church to be involved.

If you are the kind of person, male or female who considers shopping one of your favorite recreational activities, this time of year is perfect for you to combine your love of shopping with significant ministry.You can do that by shopping for school supplies at the greatly discounted prices this time of year and using them for Backpack Ministries and saving them ahead for Christmas Shoe boxes. To encourage and inspire the people in your church to take part, Effective Church Communications has links at the end of this article to entries that have church bulletin inserts in a variety of illustration formats. Some are free PDFs that you can personalize on the back. There are more designs available in editable MS Publisher format that you can download and modify if you are an ECC Member. The first two links are for Backpack Ministry Inserts, the third one encourages people to shop for your Christmas Shoe boxes when the fall sales are on, and finally a personal article on why this ministry is so important to me.

Click on any title to go to the articles:

Back-to-School Backpack Ministry--an opportunity to bring joy to needy kids A new set of designs with templates for Effective Church Communications My personal reasons why backpack ministry is so important to me Bulletin Inserts: Shop for Your Christmas Child Boxes in August--Samaritan's Purse shopping Tips!

Communication implications for those who “live their lives on mobile”

By Leave a Comment

For a generation that lives on mobile devices, you many need to adjust how you communicate.
For a generation that lives on mobile devices, you many need to adjust how you communicate.

From the Quote & Commentary Series:

Quote:

"Entrepreneurs in places like Cairo live in chaos and therefore, are not afraid of chaos. Out of that often comes innovation, she says. "Secondly, kids in many of these countries don't have much broadband, so they bypassed computers and live their lives on mobile. I expect to see great leaps in mobile coming from those places. "From Marco della Cava, "A not-so-crazy goal to find, nurture talent" USA Today, 7-16-2013

Commentary:

Though the immediate challenge is for missions and how they can use mobile technology to communicate the gospel, following are four implications for all church communicators.

Implications of increased mobile/smart phone use:

  1. Realize the computer-based communication is often ignored. If it isn't a text message, it may not be read and it doesn't matter who it comes from (this means pastors and other church leaders—you position matters little in online communication). For people who communicate primarily through their mobile phone, sitting down to a computer, turning it on, finding and reading email through the sea of spam that floods email in boxes,  is something they rarely do. And this isn't all age-related—it's more a technology preference, so check with your audience to see what they prefer.
  2. No-brainer: make sure your website is mobile-friendly. This doesn't mean you can see a tiny site on a smart phone and can pinch it to make it bigger. Your website has to be responsive, which means it automatically optimizes for reading on any device used to use it: phone, tablet, laptop or desktop.
  3. Consider creating a content-rich, minimal to no graphics, mobile-friendly site with WordPress. Most WordPress templates are already optimized and need no more work on your part to make them accessible on any device. Even if your main church site is a complex, graphics –intensive one that you don't have the time or money to change now, start a blog on a WordPress site and link to it. Even if you don't publish it to the world or link it to your church site—this is a great way to practice creating a site and it's all free at http://www.wordpress.com.
  4. You can talk directly to people through podcasts on mobile phones. Podcast listening is dramatically increasing especially on smart phones and experts predict continued growth.  Create podcasts to niche ministries in your church—encourage workers, challenge youth, read to the homebound. You may need to show people how to use them, but the one-to-one potential impact is worth the effort.

We're in for another big shift in communications and our God who sees the beginning and the end and is surprised by nothing in-between is still ready to give us wisdom and strength in the mobile communication world.

Why print isn’t dead and what it means for your church communications

By Leave a Comment

Print or digital for churches
Is print outdated for church communications? Not at all--and this article explains why

The Apostle Paul encouraged us to be "all things to all people that we might win some" and in today's world that means using every communication channel possible to reach people for Jesus. Recently however, I've read a number of articles that encourage communicators in how to combine print and digital channels for maximum communication effectiveness. Following are some quotes from them and then applications for churches.

Use print and digital side by side

Quote: Maybe it really isn’t about print or digital first, but leading together, side by side. The mantra of the web has always been more powerful and successful when it is collaborate, not compete. Why compete with each other? Why should any product go first, when both can cross the finish line at the same time if they work together?

The smart answer isn’t putting digital or print first, but to put design and usability first, using each product for what they do best and let them do it together.

From: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/10/digital-first-print-first-both-should-work-together291#sthash.vMK0cUur.dpuf

Practical application:  One of the best ways print and digital can work together in the church is when your church bulletin mentions an activity or event for the print notice to link to the church web for background information and explanations. In addition, your social media can remind, link to the website material. Your print (business cards, bulletin, and postcards) would also have the URL for your website and links to your social media.

This can work especially well for seasonal celebrations. For example, at Christmas your church will probably sponsor a variety of events. On your website you can have explanations of why Jesus really is the reason for the season, what Advent is all about, suggestions for how you can use the season to train children, a Q & A section for people unfamiliar with church. In addition you can use your social media to remind people of what is available in more depth and encourage them to invite their friends.

Print and digital mix works best to market events

Quote: Not only does a mix of communication mediums enhance brands, they can effectively work together to create a marketing solution, which adds real value by engaging customers with measurable results. An example of this is using variable data printed pieces that are specifically targeted and personalized to engage a customer, combined with digital solutions for example a corresponding personalized web page that enables further interaction. This kind of communication has proven results to increase response rates and improve customer retention giving a far better return on investment than static printed or passive digital communications alone.

From: David Allsopp, director, ASAP Digital: http://www.thedrum.com/news/2012/07/24/paper-and-print-print-v-digital

Practical application: To use Christmas as an example again, create print material such as postcards and invitation cards, for your congregation to give out that once again link to expanded digital explanations. Even more effective, if you have the communication volunteers who are able to do this, would be to create blog or web sections for specific groups in your church, for example: "Parents ideas to teach kids at home about Jesus at Christmas"  and hand out flyers in Children's Sunday School classes and send out emails and social media to parents. Another idea would be a series of tweets going to teenagers directing them to a blog or Facebook entries about "How to invite your friends to church without being embarrassed about it."

Creative Print can make your church stand out (2 related quotes here)

Quote:According to marketing experts, there is a new resurgence of print marketing from forward-thinking business people who recognize the revenue potential of direct-mail ads and other print promotions. In a crowded online market in which users are bombarded with banner ads and display ads, people are becoming jaded by internet advertising. Print is becoming a legitimate alternative.

It’s sometimes difficult to differentiate your business in a crowded online market. However, it’s not so difficult to make a difference with a posters, flyers, or other print promotions.  A large proportion of companies have yet to take advantage of new digital technologies. By optimizing your print promotions, you can create print promotions that not only stand apart, but also do a great job of bringing customers from a print ad to your website or sales offer.

Since working for print companies for the past 5 years, I can honestly say that print never went away for a lot of businesses. Especially small business and local chains that completely rely on direct mail offers and local print ads for their walk-in business.  I also see larger businesses starting to return to print to take advantage of new technologies that make it possible for customers to interact with them via smart phones. Thanks to the gigantic leaps-forward in smart phone technology, we are now able to bring customers to smart phone optimized web pages, social media pages, landing pages, and even to our checkout pages – directly from a print ad.  QR code technology is fast becoming an effective bridge between these two worlds.

http://www.lawtonprinting.com/blog/Integrating_Print_and_Digital,_Print_is_key_to_success_in_a_digital_world/75

Quote: Nowadays, printed materials such as books, brochures and magazines frequently direct readers to other digital media sources to supplement their experience with sound or moving image. A recent example of this in action is Jodi Picoult’s novel ‘Sing You Home’, in which readers can scan a QR code at the beginning of each chapter to hear a soundtrack intended to ‘bring the character of Zoe to life for the reader by giving her a real voice’. 

http://www.fespa.com/news/industry-news/when-two-worlds-collide-how-print-and-digital-can-become-complementary.html

Practical application: A key application here is how posters, flyers, and other print promotions can drive people to your expanded digital resources. No matter what any SEO "expert" tells you, you need more than the savvy use of keywords to get your church website found. One way to do it is in the same way that we check out the website from any company when we get an advertisement in the mail or Sunday paper that looks interesting, print in the form of postcards, mailers, invitation cards, or posters at the local coffee shop can drive people to your website.

The creation of QR codes added to creative media has many exciting options for the church—imagine an outreach postcard or poster with a QR code taking you to a your praise band, podcast or video that was specifically designed for an unchurched audience.

Finally—though we may often wish we didn't have to create so many channels of communication, to reach our world today we need a mixture of print and digital to be "all things to all people that we might win some."

A reminder of the importance of living our life to please God

By Leave a Comment

"We do not and cannot know when the world drama will end. . . .This seems to some people intolerably frustrating. . . .We do not know the play . . . the Author knows. . . .We are led to expect that the Author will have something to say to each of us on the part that each of us has played. The playing it well is what matters infinitely."
C.S. Lewis, The World's Last Night

How to link your PDF Church Bulletin to your Church Website

By Leave a Comment

Many people who cannot attend church every Sunday may still be interested in attending many of the events that go on in your church during the week. Since the church bulletin is a primary way of telling people about events coming up in church, if they don't get the bulletin they miss out.

Many churches make a PDF of their bulletin and put it on the website and that is a great idea--but to make it even more useful, you can put in links in your bulletin that will serve as live hyperlinks to your website information from the Bulletin PDF. This video shows you how to do this.

Yes, it does take additional time and effort, but we need to do all we can do to involve people in the ministries of our church that will help them become mature disciples of Jesus.