Ministry and Business Marketing News - Ministry and Business Marketing, Media and Strategy Blog

A couple of quick items for your Happy Monday...

Media Execs See Multiplatform in Their Future
Ignore the headline of the linked article and skip down to the part about future sources of revenue growth. If you want to maximize your effectiveness, you have to think about messaging across your website, TV, radio, blogs, and more. That may seem like a lot of planning, but it's easier than you think.

Your church can show a video in Sunday services, which is then made available on your website (if you own the copyright). Your website can publish great articles and further offer them in shareable widgets to be placed on blogs, Facebook profiles, and more.

That's My King!
Click on the video below to enjoy this classic short film on Jesus. If you don't know Jesus, drop me a line through the "Contact Lucky Rock" button to the left of this blog. I'll be glad to tell you all about Him.

Proximity Marketing Ministry Case Study Update and Internet Evangelism Day - Ministry & Business Marketing, Media and Strategy Blog

Howdy all?!? I'm in the thick of my own personal case study on bluetooth broadcasting and I should have something concrete to report in the next few days. In the the meantime, I bring you news of a coordinated worldwide church focus on internet evangelism...

Churches to Hold Web Focus Day April 27
"How can we use this new-fangled Internet thing to share the gospel?" Christians are asking. A worldwide "web evangelism focus day" is helping to provide answers. Sunday, April 27, has been designated as Internet Evangelism Day. Churches can download free materials from the Internet Evangelism Day website. These materials make it easy for churches to create a short presentation about online outreach on or near that Sunday. A PowerPoint, video clip testimonies, drama scripts, music and handouts can be used to create their own customized program lasting from one minute to 50.

Church leaders who have already used these materials are excited. "This is a huge help for small churches such as ours," writes a church leader from California.

The Internet Evangelism Day team emphasizes that web evangelism is for anyone, not just the technically gifted. "There are many ways to share your faith online, without any technical background at all," says IE Day Coordinator Tony Whittaker.

Christian leaders are also enthusiastic: "I am glad to commend Internet Evangelism Day," says Dr. John Stott.

Churches can start planning their focus day now. More information is available at:
www.InternetEvangelismDay.com

Free Church Website Tool Released
The people behind Internet Evangelism Day also provide year-round resources about online outreach. The ministry explains many ways that Christians can share the good news, including through church websites. Churches often find it difficult to create a site that will engage with outsiders in their area, and find themselves asking, ""How can our church website help us reach out into our community?"

A new online tool released by IE Day provides churches with a free 15-page evaluation report. Users assess their own website by answering 55 simple questions. Their customized report is immediately displayed online, ready to print or save. The report's recommendations are tailored with specific practical suggestions, based on the questions that were ticked. View the evaluation tool here:
www.InternetEvangelismDay.com/design

A church site which has been prioritized for non-Christian visitors can be remarkably effective in reaching the community. "Week in, week out, more visitors turn up at our church on a Sunday because of the website, than anything else," writes one growing church in London.

The tool also provides the parable 'A Tale of Two Golf Clubs' (which is available to republish) to illustrate the principles of effective church websites: www.InternetEvangelismday.com/golf

Church leaders have welcomed this new resource. "This competent evaluation tool provides a valuable service to churches that will help them strengthen their effectiveness in outreach through the Internet," says Dr. Sterling Huston, director of North American Ministries for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Gary McClure of LifeWay Ministries agrees, saying, "This checklist is an invaluable tool to identify critical areas for improvement. Every church should study this regularly and act on it!"

For more information on IE Day, visit
www.InternetEvangelismDay.com

Contact: Tony Whittaker, Coordinator, Internet Evangelism Day
Tel: +44-1283-702334 (GMT office hours)
email: InternetEvangelismDay.com/feedback
IE Day is an initiative of the Internet Evangelism Coalition, a group of online ministries, at Billy Graham Center, Wheaton, US, and is coordinated from WEC International's Derby UK office. It is completely free with NO fund-raising component.
Leaders available for interview: InternetEvangelismDay.com/publicity
Photos: InternetEvangelismDay.com/photos
Leaders supporting: InternetEvangelismDay.com/supporting
More article ideas: InternetEvangelismDay.com/free-articles

Big Picture Time - The Church and Culture - Ministry & Business Marketing, Media and Strategy Blog

Today I ask you to step back and consider the big picture and the context within which you minister. Check out the excerpt below from today's blog post by Dr. Albert Mohler--host of a radio show heard in about 100 U.S. markets. Though his column deals specifically with American culture, Dr. Mohler's biblical insights should also help those of you ministering in other Western countries...

"The Church has constantly been perplexed concerning its proper relation to culture. H. Richard Niebuhr traced five different patterns of cultural response in his famous work, Christ and Culture. The book over-simplified the issues and now looks awkwardly optimistic, but some of the patterns Niebuhr described are still evident. The Church has at times withdrawn from culture and sought refuge in attempted cultural isolation. At other times and in other contexts the Church has simply abdicated to the culture, thus reflecting the culture rather than proclaiming the cross. A myriad of patterns and be traced between these two extremes. The fact is that the Church has often exhibited several patterns at once, capitulating to culture on the one hand and seeking isolation on the other.

In candor, we must admit that the Church has been displaced. Once an authoritative voice in the culture, the Church is often dismissed, and even more often ignored. At one time, the influence of the Church was sufficient to restrain cultural rebellion against God's moral commandments, but no longer. The dynamic of the culture-shift marches onward. On the Protestant left, leaders have simply capitulated to the revisionist ideologies and surrendered revealed morality. On the evangelical wing, however, the greater temptation is to affirm biblical morality in principle, and wink at infractions as matters of merely individual interest.

The displacement of the Church is characteristic of the process of secularization, which has now so thoroughly altered the landscape of American culture. Though sociologists point to continuing high levels of religious activity and statements of belief--both of these in sharp contrast to other western nations--the truth is that very little of this activity translates into authentic discipleship, active church membership, and bold Christian witness."

Read the rest of Dr. Mohler's excellent post here. It's well worth your time. As you read, pray that the Holy Spirit will lead you to understand your culture and preach the good news of Jesus Christ "with great patience and careful understanding."

Has Your Ministry Sprouted Lately? - Ministry & Business Marketing, Media and Strategy Blog

I know, strange headline. But the question pertains to a new technology that you don't have to possess an advanced computer sciences degree or be the church "techie-in-residence" to use to greatly impact your ministry.

Sprout is a new web-based program from the makers of ChipIn. ChipIn produces cool widgets to enable folks to give to ministries and other non-profits online. See the eye-popping Chip-In widget to the left of this post, through which you can give to Lucky Rock Ministries and keep this blog rolling. Check out a short video of the Sprout Builder demo launch here.

Sprout is nothing short of awesome! If you're like me, you want to create cool, interactive stuff for your website, emails and more that the Spirit might use to push believers and non-believers alike toward Christ. Unfortunately, even the best software, such as Flash CS3 doesn't make it easy to create "rich content." Thus, most ministry folks are left out in the cold.

Enter Sprout.

Sprout allows you to build jukeboxes, slideshows and other cool stuff through a simple drag-and-drop interface. Sprout even allows you to upload "assets" such as pictures, music files and sermon audio/video. For an example of what you, yes you, can do in just a few minutes with Sprout, check out the audio player found at the top-left of the recently-created Crown True Financial Freedom Stories blog.

Some of you more tech-savvy readers will find Sprout doesn't let you do all the really cool Flash fly-ins, etc. But Sprout isn't for the ministry tech gurus who know ActionScript, Flex, and Flash. It's for folks who want to create cool content on the fly.

Though Sprout is still in beta-testing, this program delivers. I strongly encourage you to sign up for a free account today and have some fun. And if enough of you ask for it, I'll soon post a mini Sprout tutorial.

Sprout often. . .

Your Website - Is It The Taj Mahal Nobody Knows About? - Ministry & Business Marketing, Media and Strategy Blog

One of my biggest frustrations as a sometime web designer and full-time ministry consultant is the near-universal tendency of ministries to spend all of their web budget on a killer-looking site that nobody outside of their members/friends ever sees. Ministries usually don't realize that optimizing their sites to be picked up by the major search engines, especially Google, is just as important as building a fabulous web home.

Before I dive into quick fixes for your website search rankings, let me say that search engine optimization (SEO) is not just about adding a couple of things to your site and watching it zoom. You must feature a solid amount of content people actually want, organized in a way that's easy to navigate and keeps people coming back for more. That said, and no offense to the SEO pros reading this, you can make some simple changes to your website that will make it pop in search engines. How do I know? Because these changes have done wonders for me.

1) Page title. Check out the top navigation bar in Internet Explorer or Firefox the next time you visit one of your favorite websites. It doesn't just list the organization name; it describes the ministry. Churches should include their geographical area, ministry distinctives, and denomination. Parachurches should detail their location (if pertinent) and ministry focus, in general terms like "Evangelize Africa," or "Feed America's Poor". Keep your title to just two or three key phrases that people are most likely to use when searching for your kind of website, then list your ministry name.

2) Description and meta tags. For those of you who don't know, meta tags, often in the form of keywords, feed information about your website content to all the search engines and crawlers that visit you.

I can't tell you how many times SEO experts have declared, "Meta tags are dead!" If that's the case, why do all of the best-optimized websites still use them? List the keywords that describe your ministry, such as "Orange County Baptist Church, biblical teaching, poor ministry, financial ministry, web ministry, web outreach, free plumber, free auto repairs." As with your page title, the trick is to use keywords and phrases that people are most likely to punch in when searching for your website.

3) Label all your photos. You do have lots of high-quality photos that tell your ministry story, don't you? Use alt tags to label all of your ministry photos.

Search engines don't read photos, they read text. And alt tags give Google and friends something to chew on and will pop up if your photos don't load. Consider tags such as "Heights Calvary Chapel in Chicago city-wide baptism," or "new Northpoint Atlanta community center opening."

4) Make your site contagious. Offer ways for people to subscribe by email, mobile, rss reader, and whatever else and be sure to include means for people to forward your page to friends by email, text message, etc. "Viral" websites get linked to more often, which leads to hire search engine rankings. Which brings me too...

5) You like me. You really like me! Links are a great way to boost your search engine ranking. In search engine-think, if other sites like you, you must be important. If you support or partner with other ministries, be sure to swap links with them. And if you have a blog, list it on all the major blog search engines (put in a Google search to find them).

Hopefully these tips will greatly improve your site's visibility and ministry reach. (For quick fixes to your website itself, check out this recent post.)

If you implement these changes and they work for you, I'd love to hear about it. In that event, I'd also love for you to send a few bucks our way so we can help other ministries.

I freely invite any SEO pros to add their suggestions/corrections via commenting on this blog. Let's work together to improve ministry websites, to bring God glory and advance His Kingdom...

Internet Evangelism Day - Ministry & Business Marketing, Media and Strategy Blog

Quickly...Check out the Internet Evangelism Day website. Though they obviously focus on a once-a-year push for web-based ministry, IED also offers great resources on all sorts of ways to use technology in ministry. Enjoy.

I'll post another column later today...