The floods crisis affecting Queensland over the last few weeks has shown me how valuable social media can be in informing the public and also mobilising people to a response. For us at 96five it showed again that radio is a great broadcast platform for flood information and that twitter and facebook are useful tools to compliment what we as a radio station can do. This blog is some thoughts on how I see twitter and facebook as useful and perhaps how you maybe able to harness these platforms to your ministry.
Facebook
To me facebook is like a giant noticeboard. It is a great way to paste up information with some limited response from people who are part of your network. It is a notice board that also allows instant sharing of information and comments which is where it differs from a website. While anyone can view a website only ‘friends’ can view your facebook page but facebook is a lot easier to quickly up date information.
Twitter
I think twitter is a valuable social tool for getting out short succinct messages or information. It is not designed for feedback or conversation but to just make statements. The lack of feedback means that unless it is from a reliable source the information can be wrong or at least misleading. This is where it differs from facebook which at least allows people the opportunity to see if a message sent has been shown to be wrong or it has been confirmed by other sources.
Pros and Cons
In my experiences Facebook and twitter are forms of social communication. What they aren’t are advertising platforms. I have yet to see any one company or church use them in a successful advertising or marketing way. They are platforms for ‘followers’ to post their thoughts but invariably those following are already consumers who are passionate at some level to your organisation. So no I don’t think they are helpful to get people to come to your church service on Sunday but they will at least let your congregation know what is happening much like a church bulletin.
Facebook is an invaluable pastoral care tool though because you do see what your congregation is ‘doing’. They may not tell you to your face but they will tell all their facebook friends. Where twitter or facebook is helpful is quick call to action stuff
Eg Mary Smith is ill and needs some help with meals for kids, or looking for some information on a topic xyz can anyone help me.
They are more flexible platforms than websites are, but again I don’t think either will replace a good website. Twitter and facebook are noticeboards not relationships either. Use them for call to actions not friendships.
Love to get your thoughts or experiences and feel free to find me on twitter and facebook too.
Showing posts with label marketing your church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing your church. Show all posts
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Sunday, November 21, 2010
More Christmas promotion ideas part 2
Thanks for your comments and thoughts on part 1 on creating a good Christmas carol concert. Further to my first post here are some more things to consider.
Free media exposure
There are some good free strategic media opportunities your church can harness to promote your Christmas carols. Obviously 96five is a good way of getting some free publicity via the 96five Events Calendar and their community service announcements.
The other good free media you can access is the free suburban newspaper delivered to letterboxes around your neighbourhood. These newspapers are a great resource for a church to promote not just your Christmas events but other events you might be running across the year. For your Carol publicity you need to create a simple media release highlighting the important details of where, when and what is on. In the media release you need to have a simple hook like a ‘Christmas carol concert where the whole family can come and sing their favourite Christmas carols.’ I would keep the media release to one paragraph detailing the vent and then in bullet points the details of where and when. Also list the photo opportunity available prior to the event.
This is important because what you actually want in the paper is a big photo with small copy. That will get readers interest. I think your photo opportunity needs to include a couple of kids and maybe a candle with a song sheet. Make sure you include your contact details especially your mobile number.
Using outside groups
Another way of attracting an audience who don’t normally attend your church is to have other community groups part of your onstage audience. Virtually every primary school has a choir and I suggest you contact them 3 months or even 6 months out and invite them to be part of your event. Allow that choir to do 2 items as a group and even include them as a backing choir to other singers. Every choir member will mean at least another two adults plus siblings and maybe even grandparents. It costs you nothing to have them there and will add to the success of your community event.
Even think laterally about this. Why not host a Christmas carol idol at your local school or schools for solo or small groups to be part of the on the night performance. Heats and semi finals can be held at the school to see who wins. This starts to create a free buzz in the school community about your events.
What can you do out of the norm to get some community involvement and publicity for your Christmas Carol event.
Free media exposure
There are some good free strategic media opportunities your church can harness to promote your Christmas carols. Obviously 96five is a good way of getting some free publicity via the 96five Events Calendar and their community service announcements.
The other good free media you can access is the free suburban newspaper delivered to letterboxes around your neighbourhood. These newspapers are a great resource for a church to promote not just your Christmas events but other events you might be running across the year. For your Carol publicity you need to create a simple media release highlighting the important details of where, when and what is on. In the media release you need to have a simple hook like a ‘Christmas carol concert where the whole family can come and sing their favourite Christmas carols.’ I would keep the media release to one paragraph detailing the vent and then in bullet points the details of where and when. Also list the photo opportunity available prior to the event.
This is important because what you actually want in the paper is a big photo with small copy. That will get readers interest. I think your photo opportunity needs to include a couple of kids and maybe a candle with a song sheet. Make sure you include your contact details especially your mobile number.
Using outside groups
Another way of attracting an audience who don’t normally attend your church is to have other community groups part of your onstage audience. Virtually every primary school has a choir and I suggest you contact them 3 months or even 6 months out and invite them to be part of your event. Allow that choir to do 2 items as a group and even include them as a backing choir to other singers. Every choir member will mean at least another two adults plus siblings and maybe even grandparents. It costs you nothing to have them there and will add to the success of your community event.
Even think laterally about this. Why not host a Christmas carol idol at your local school or schools for solo or small groups to be part of the on the night performance. Heats and semi finals can be held at the school to see who wins. This starts to create a free buzz in the school community about your events.
What can you do out of the norm to get some community involvement and publicity for your Christmas Carol event.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Branding your Church Part 2
Before I start with part 2 let me answer a question that was posed to me off part 1. What is the diference btween a vison statement, mission statement and a postioning statement? Here's my answer. I guess my definations of the three statements are:
Vision statement is what you organisation strives to be;
Mission statement is how you will achieve it;
Positioning statement is how people see you in the marketplace.
For example with 96five:
Vision statement: To be Brisbane's prefered radio staion for families;
Mission statement: Building stronger families, connecting people to Jesus Christ, supporting the Christian community, through excellence in radio broacdcasting;
Positioning statement: Families No. 1
We don't use our vision statement as our branding statement. Our mission statement is an internal organisation message. Our vision statement says that we want to have your family listening to us. Those that already listen to us know that. People who aren't listeners don't know that. Our positioning statement is the brand slogan that helps us achieve our vision statement. Our mission statement then lets our staff now the framework for all programimng decisions.
So in a church context vision statement defines the church's position in the community, the mission statement tells the leadership and congregation how it will be achieved and the positioning statement is short punchy and tells a non member about your church distictive.
Does that help. Your church vision statement should never change - it is timeless. Mission statement may not change either but can be fine tuned to reflect the strengths of the church and the positioning tsatement should rarely change as it always takes a while for the community to actually 'get it'.
Now for Part 2.
Communicating your Distinctives
Just as important as developing your distinctives is to clearly communicate them to your audience. Often a church lets itself down by not clearly articulating what they are doing. Churches have always been guilty of using words that are not readily known by unchurched people. Churches will talk about their contemporary music. There is actually no such music genre at contemporary. Try going to iTunes or a retail music store and asking for the latest contemporary music album. They just don’t exist.
Other use phrases like we are a bible believing church. Well aren’t we all – it is a given not a positioning statement.
Sometimes we will talk about a world famous speaker coming to speak this weekend. I ask the question in whose world are they famous in. Nelson Mandela is world famous but Bill Hybels or even Julia Gillard isn’t world famous, just known in their areas of life.
Also never confuse style with relevance. When communicating you need to communicate from a position of substance not from a position of style. People aren’t looking for something stylish but for something that actually meets their own needs.
Service Delivery
Make sure you can actually deliver your distinctives or promises. Make sure you are actually friendly and engaging. If you call your self a family church do you cater for single parent families? What about singles?
Embrace other churches.
Other denominations are not the enemy or opposition. We are actually on the same team. Notice in your community how all the fast food shops seem to be in one spot. That is because they know that works in a financial sense. So if a church opens up in your area don’t panic. It is actually a good thing. Also there are plenty of unsaved people to share around. The more churches the better. Again embrace your distinctive not the other churchs distinctives and you will be fine. After all didn’t God call you to be there?
Vision statement is what you organisation strives to be;
Mission statement is how you will achieve it;
Positioning statement is how people see you in the marketplace.
For example with 96five:
Vision statement: To be Brisbane's prefered radio staion for families;
Mission statement: Building stronger families, connecting people to Jesus Christ, supporting the Christian community, through excellence in radio broacdcasting;
Positioning statement: Families No. 1
We don't use our vision statement as our branding statement. Our mission statement is an internal organisation message. Our vision statement says that we want to have your family listening to us. Those that already listen to us know that. People who aren't listeners don't know that. Our positioning statement is the brand slogan that helps us achieve our vision statement. Our mission statement then lets our staff now the framework for all programimng decisions.
So in a church context vision statement defines the church's position in the community, the mission statement tells the leadership and congregation how it will be achieved and the positioning statement is short punchy and tells a non member about your church distictive.
Does that help. Your church vision statement should never change - it is timeless. Mission statement may not change either but can be fine tuned to reflect the strengths of the church and the positioning tsatement should rarely change as it always takes a while for the community to actually 'get it'.
Now for Part 2.
Communicating your Distinctives
Just as important as developing your distinctives is to clearly communicate them to your audience. Often a church lets itself down by not clearly articulating what they are doing. Churches have always been guilty of using words that are not readily known by unchurched people. Churches will talk about their contemporary music. There is actually no such music genre at contemporary. Try going to iTunes or a retail music store and asking for the latest contemporary music album. They just don’t exist.
Other use phrases like we are a bible believing church. Well aren’t we all – it is a given not a positioning statement.
Sometimes we will talk about a world famous speaker coming to speak this weekend. I ask the question in whose world are they famous in. Nelson Mandela is world famous but Bill Hybels or even Julia Gillard isn’t world famous, just known in their areas of life.
Also never confuse style with relevance. When communicating you need to communicate from a position of substance not from a position of style. People aren’t looking for something stylish but for something that actually meets their own needs.
Service Delivery
Make sure you can actually deliver your distinctives or promises. Make sure you are actually friendly and engaging. If you call your self a family church do you cater for single parent families? What about singles?
Embrace other churches.
Other denominations are not the enemy or opposition. We are actually on the same team. Notice in your community how all the fast food shops seem to be in one spot. That is because they know that works in a financial sense. So if a church opens up in your area don’t panic. It is actually a good thing. Also there are plenty of unsaved people to share around. The more churches the better. Again embrace your distinctive not the other churchs distinctives and you will be fine. After all didn’t God call you to be there?
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Developing your Church brand
For awhile I have been doing some research in to marketing and branding and in particular how they can help a church effectively reach their community. In the next couple of blogs I am going to attempt to summarise my thoughts and studies on this topic and hopefully give you something to think about as you see how your unchurch community looks at you.
How is your church perceived by your congregation and by the community who don’t attend. These are two distinct groups of people with different needs and different ways of engaging them. Firstly we will look at how we engage our community.
Your Church Brand or distinctive.
Your church brand is how you are marketed or perceived by all people. Good or strong brands are instantly recognised and should create an emotional connection. When you see the Golden arches logo you don’t think McDonalds but you are automatically thinking about their products and how much you enjoy them. When you see the Nike swoosh you are thinking about how it helps you run, or how comfortable their clothes are. Even the logo CE, you don’t know what it means but you recognise it as some sort of quality control.
So what is your Church brand?
How does your community perceive your church? Do they recognise it they way you do. If you closed tomorrow would anyone notice?
Successful organisations work out firstly what message they want to communicate to their community. They identify that market and then look for what are the hot buttons for that group of people. Churches need to decide if their core market is their existing congregation or is it people who don’t go to church.
When you are developing your church’s distictives (brand) you start with what your audience wants not what you think your audience wants. This would include not only programs but what time the activity or even church service starts. Which day of the week you hold it? The church is really a service organisation. The church is the only community organisation that exists for people who aren’t its members. So when you run an activity make sure the people you are running the activity for actually want it.
You need to make sure you have distinctives that actually engage people. Quick check amongst you current church activities. Who is engaged churched or unchurched?
Well who is my audience?
Our radio station has a specific listener in mind when we create our programming. She is Mary Smith 34 year old lady with two kids, one in grade 4 another in grade 1. She has a significant male partner in her life, doesn’t go to church but is not anti church. She drives a family type car, kids play sport and the daughter does dancing. All our decisions on music selection, announcer breaks, copy writing for ads all come from what engages Mary and her life. Our radio station distinctives come from Mary’s life and what would engage her as a listener and a person.
Churches sometimes make the mistake of not being able to define who their Mary Smith is. Consequently you don’t know who you are targeting in your programs or even sermons. The same for departments such as youth or Sunday school. They all should have a core person in their mind when running their ministry.
Once you know what Mary looks like then you can develop your Church’s distinctives. Also be prepared that you Church’s vision statement may change. My experience is that most church vision statements are for the congregation not the lost. Most business vision statements are for the potential consumer not the existing member. That seems to be an interesting difference. I think a lot of churches get their vision statements mixed up with mission statements. Throw into the mix that many churches even use their vision statement as their branding/positioning statement. In reality you actually should have three different statements.
Next blog will look at how do you communicate your brand/distinctives to your community. I am also keen to hear your thoughts on this topic too.
How is your church perceived by your congregation and by the community who don’t attend. These are two distinct groups of people with different needs and different ways of engaging them. Firstly we will look at how we engage our community.
Your Church Brand or distinctive.
Your church brand is how you are marketed or perceived by all people. Good or strong brands are instantly recognised and should create an emotional connection. When you see the Golden arches logo you don’t think McDonalds but you are automatically thinking about their products and how much you enjoy them. When you see the Nike swoosh you are thinking about how it helps you run, or how comfortable their clothes are. Even the logo CE, you don’t know what it means but you recognise it as some sort of quality control.
So what is your Church brand?
How does your community perceive your church? Do they recognise it they way you do. If you closed tomorrow would anyone notice?
Successful organisations work out firstly what message they want to communicate to their community. They identify that market and then look for what are the hot buttons for that group of people. Churches need to decide if their core market is their existing congregation or is it people who don’t go to church.
When you are developing your church’s distictives (brand) you start with what your audience wants not what you think your audience wants. This would include not only programs but what time the activity or even church service starts. Which day of the week you hold it? The church is really a service organisation. The church is the only community organisation that exists for people who aren’t its members. So when you run an activity make sure the people you are running the activity for actually want it.
You need to make sure you have distinctives that actually engage people. Quick check amongst you current church activities. Who is engaged churched or unchurched?
Well who is my audience?
Our radio station has a specific listener in mind when we create our programming. She is Mary Smith 34 year old lady with two kids, one in grade 4 another in grade 1. She has a significant male partner in her life, doesn’t go to church but is not anti church. She drives a family type car, kids play sport and the daughter does dancing. All our decisions on music selection, announcer breaks, copy writing for ads all come from what engages Mary and her life. Our radio station distinctives come from Mary’s life and what would engage her as a listener and a person.
Churches sometimes make the mistake of not being able to define who their Mary Smith is. Consequently you don’t know who you are targeting in your programs or even sermons. The same for departments such as youth or Sunday school. They all should have a core person in their mind when running their ministry.
Once you know what Mary looks like then you can develop your Church’s distinctives. Also be prepared that you Church’s vision statement may change. My experience is that most church vision statements are for the congregation not the lost. Most business vision statements are for the potential consumer not the existing member. That seems to be an interesting difference. I think a lot of churches get their vision statements mixed up with mission statements. Throw into the mix that many churches even use their vision statement as their branding/positioning statement. In reality you actually should have three different statements.
Next blog will look at how do you communicate your brand/distinctives to your community. I am also keen to hear your thoughts on this topic too.
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