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.

Google is changing how it presents search results and here is what your church needs to know and do about it

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device friendly websites
It's essential people for people to be able to search our websites with their mobile phones.

What Google is doing sounds scary and has been termed "mobilegeddon" by some because of the potentially drastic changes it will have on search results on mobile devices. Should your church be worried and if so what should you do about it? You have so many things to do as church communicators, should you bother?  Following I'll explain more what it means and give you some practical suggestions on what you can do.

What it really means

Google is constantly changing the algorithms for how results are shown when you put in a search term. One of the primary reasons they do this is that there are always people who try to game the system and manipulate sites so their sites show up high in search results.

Though this isn't an article on Search Engine Optimization, Google and all other search engines have always said, and continue to affirm, that the primary reason sites show up on the first page or two of results are because of the quality of their content, not just because of artificial Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There is legitimate, intrinsic SEO, that systems such as WordPress make easy to use and search engines benefit from that. Artificial, SEO which consists of key-word loading and other false and always new ways people try to beat the system without the legitimate work of creating valuable content is what they are fighting against.

Sites with a depth of good content will always be found when people search for the topics they are about.Though this is a purely personal and anecdotal comment, I have always found that to be true. Ever since the earliest days of the Effective Church Communications ministry, I've always been too busy to concentrate on any Search Engine Optimization strategy. I've simply tried to create as much useful material for church communicators as possible and because of that, the Effective Church Communications website comes up early in many results related to church communications.

Though a depth of good content is still important, this algorithm change with Google is different because with the current changes Google is penalizing websites that are not mobile friendly and it specifically relates to when a search is done on a mobile device. This change doesn't care about the content of your site--what matters is how people access your site.

The changes do not affect searches people do from their desktop computers. Many of the articles written about the changes don't make that distinction clear (here is one that does).

One conclusion some churches might draw from properly understanding that this big change only affects searches made on mobile phones is that it really doesn't matter to them because they might assume that few people look up their church website on a mobile phone. That conclusion is incorrect and it's important we understand why.

Why this is important

In the NPR article cited above it says that 48% of search traffic now comes from mobile devices.

If we truly want to be all things to all people that we might win some, we definitely need to make sure our websites are easily accessible to the people who want to use them, no matter what device they use.  In many ways this action by Google is a great wake-up call for all churches.

We may not personally do searches on our phones (or even have a smart phone that allows us to do searches), but more and more people have them and constantly use them to look up everything). Many churches lament that they don't have young families coming to their church, but if you truly want young people to come, you have to communicate in the way they communicate. That means everything you want to tell them HAS to be accessible on their phones.

In many ways Google is simply helping us do what we need to do to share Jesus with our world.

What you should do at your church

First of all, check to see if you have a problem. The link below takes you to a very quick and easy test to see if your website is mobile-friendly. Just enter in your URL and in a couple of minutes you will get a quick evaluation of if your site is mobile friendly or not.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?utm_source=wmc-blog&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=mobile-friendly

Second, be sure you understand this issue. To do that, this article will be helpful:  A primer on responsive websites, what they are and why they are important

https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/2012/09/a-primer-on-responsive-websites-what-they-are-and-why-they-are-important/

I wrote this article and did a short 4-minute video to explain what it means to make your site mobile- device friendly. "Responsive" was the term used in initially. It means the same as device or mobile-friendly today.

Practical suggestions on what to do

Before I get specific on some practical recommendations, it is worth repeating—this Effective Church Communications  site does not take any advertising. Also, we do not take part in ANY affiliate program or do anything in exchange for any product or service. If I want software or hardware,  I buy it (if I can afford it). I get no discounts or special deals. The important point of the preceding comments is that when I recommend something, I do it because I genuinely feel there is something of benefit in it for church communicators.

I'm bringing this up now because a number of articles I've seen about the Google changes then lead into a sales pitch for some tech group to help you make your site mobile friendly. Some may be genuinely helpful and if you have a person, a service, or website building system that has worked well for you in the past, you may want to keep using it. But if you are thinking about redoing your website or doing it at your church by an in-house person, here is one suggestion:

Learn WordPress and use a device-friendly template

Yes, there are many other great systems and companies, but I think WordPress is the best way to build a website, for many, many reasons, too lengthy to detail here. Also I think it is a skill every church communicator (and most staff members and pastors) should have. I have built many sites with it over the years and I continuously am amazed at all it does and what features are added to it. It is also free. You have to pay for hosting, but that can be minimal and instead of being locked into a proprietary system and cost, once you learn (and it is easy to learn) WordPress, it is one of the most cost-effective way for a church to have a complete and flexible site. If something else is working for you—great, but if you are checking out systems for websites, make WordPress on the top of your list.

This is an encouragement because now might be a time to take a deep breath, learn WordPress, and finally take charge of the website at your church.

HERE IS THE BEST RESOURCE for Google Changes and a great thing you can do for your church

The resource below is a WordPress church template company.  Their themes have all the mobile-friendly features you need for the Google changes built-in and you don't have to do anything extra to make them an intrinsic part of your site.

Church Themes http://churchthemes.com/
Though I've known about this group for some time, I recently did an extensive search to find new templates for several sites (including this one) that I am redesigning. After spending way too much money trying templates that had great marketing examples, but were impossible to replicate in my office, I was very frustrated.  One group actually said something like this "we know you can't build a site like our example and for several hundred dollars more we'll help you do that." I felt this was wrong and even if I did have the money to do that, it wasn't anything I could later recommend to other churches.

I didn't have personal experience with this Church Themes products, but I knew churches who spoke highly of them. I'd corresponded with them and felt they were genuinely people of integrity. So I decided to try a template—I was at the end of my rope and thought, what's one more frustrating trial? But things were radically different here.

Finally here was a beautifully designed template that did all I wanted it to do! But best of all were their tutorials for how to use their themes. The theme creator walks you through each step; they made sense and worked!

I am still working on some things behind the scenes that I am building with these, but I'll share them as soon as I get them done. I didn't want to tell you about them or the company until I did, but this Google situation required it.

Their templates can really work for any church and for staff with very little tech experience. You don't have to be a tech genius to create a fantastic, contemporary looking site with these templates. Plus all the tools you need for church sites:  great looking slider header, sermon text, podcasts, video, events, blog, photos, videos, staff, locations, calendar, and donations are all built-in and best of all—demonstrated and explained!

You can either build your church website from nothing using them or switch your church website to one of their templates. It will take you more than a couple of days to do it, but the results will be worth it, device-friendly and something you can update at your church.

Now for ways to learn WordPress or more about it

WP101, https://www.wp101.com/
This is one of the best ways to get up and running quickly with WordPress. It has easy-to-follow and understand tutorials. Sure, you can view a million of them on YouTube, but you never know what version they are demonstrating.  I have had some training on WordPress on the Effective Church Communication site, but I can keep up with changes. This site constantly updates their training. In addition to basics, more advanced topics easily explained.

Note: http://www.Lynda.com,  that I recommend for a lot of other training, does have a number of WordPress tutorials—but for some reason, I think they are some of her weakest courses—this company is much better for learning WordPress.

WP Beginner, http://www.wpbeginner.com/
Not only beginners, but everyone who uses WordPress can benefit from the blogs and resource links on this site. Not terribly advanced, but very useful materials.

"a free WordPress newsletter" http://wpmail.me/
This is the geeky newsletter with the latest news from the WordPress organization, developers, and gurus. However, it has a lot for ordinary users, including great articles about plugins and overviews of new themes that have passed the WordPress standards. It comes out once a week and I always find something useful in it.

In conclusion

We don't make changes on our website because we're bored and have nothing else to do, nor do we do them just because Google makes a big change. For this change, making our sites more device and mobile friendly, may be one of the most important changes we can make to help unchurched people find us and ultimately find Jesus.

 

 

Can your congregation read your newsletter on their mobile phone?

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Make your newsletter mobile phone compatible.
We rely on our mobile phones for so much of our communications today--be sure your website works on them.

You may have noticed that this newsletter came in a new format –and this was much more than a simple design decision. It was a change from a simple layout using a newsletter template to a text-only format and it was from a non-responsive to a responsive format.

I actually feel pretty dumb it took me so long to do this about this because I firmly believe in the present and growing importance of mobile phone communications.

I'm far from the only one who thinks this. According to a recent article in Litmus.com, a site that tracks email effectiveness:

It’s official: mobile now accounts for the majority of email opens, with a 51% share. That’s an increase of three percentage points since the previous record of 48% from September and October. Desktop opens now make up 31% of opens, while webmail has dipped to 18%.

https://litmus.com/blog/mobile-opens-hit-51-percent-android-claims-number-3-spot

In spite of knowing the importance of mobile and working very hard to make my website compatible with mobile phones and tablets, and making it a responsive site, I forgot all about making one very important part of my communication ministry compatible with mobile phones: my newsletter.

Ways to make a newsletter easier to read on your mobile phone

Below I'll share with you what I'm doing to make the newsletter easy to read on a mobile phone. This includes some of the changes I made before this last week.

  • I decided to have my newsletter be a blog broadcast of the latest articles on my website.  What this means is that the newsletter program I use (AWeber) sends the newsletter out automatically.
  • I use AWeber as my newsletter creator because it does blog broadcasts better than the other programs I tried.
  • AWeber has recently created templates for mobile phone newsletters, but to use them, you have to create your newsletter using them. Here is the article about them: http://www.aweber.com/blog/email-marketing/mobile-responsive-email-templates.htm
  • Because I use the automatic blog broadcast, that doesn't work for me.
  • Currently even the templates for the blog broadcast aren't mobile compatible. This is where I made a mistake—when I switched to the blog broadcast, I tested the blog broadcast template I chose on my computer, not my mobile phone. This week I was reading an article about making sure your newsletters are compatible on your mobile phone and I realized I hadn't tested mine on it.
  • When I did, as they say, "my bad!" –I realized how hard it was to read. The template was not responsive. It was a shrunken version of a computer screen-complatible newsletter. It was hard to read and none of us have time to pinch and move the screen around.
  • I went back to AWeber and after trying other templates and modifying them, I realized that the text-only format was the only one that would work.
  • That was fine with me because on a mobile phone, we don't really need graphics for a quick newsletter skimming of topics that go back to your website for longer articles for the complete article. The purpose of most newsletters is information--not to share great artwork and this format does that well.

If you are reading this on your mobile phone, you see the result. If you don't have a mobile phone--borrow one and check it out.

The bottom line is that making our newsletters easier to read on a mobile phone is simply one more tool to help us better share the messages on our websites and ministries that will help people find Jesus and grow to maturity in Him.

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

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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.