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Crafting Your Communication Plan: Part 3 - Know Thy Audience

Over the past two weeks we’ve been laying the groundwork for your communication plan. Hopefully by now you’ve done your research and identified and sharpened your focus.

This brings us to step three which is considered the golden rule of communication: Know Thy Audience. So before you start making brochures and updating your website, spend some time examining the audience you want to reach with your message. A classic rookie mistake is to dive headlong into a campaign by assuming you know what your audience needs/wants to hear. Which brings me to an addition to this rule: You reach people by going where they are, not where you want them to be. Duck hunters don’t go to the desert; neither should you focus your efforts reaching people in the places they’re not simply because that's where you hang out.

Think about this one for a long time. If you want to reach people, you have to put your messages in language that is common to them, focus it around topics that are important to them and target it in the places they are going to be anyway. Incidentally, Jesus was really good at this one.

Here is your assignment. Find a few people that fit the demographic you want to reach. While it’s tempting to use people already in your church to pull information from, don’t solely rely on them. They’re already part of your community and therefore biased. For that particular group, find out what helped them to connect. For people outside of the ministry, find out what kind of things would cause them to consider connecting with your community. Don’t feed them answers. Let it come out in a natural conversation. Figure out where they are in life. What are their distractions? Do they feel as if anything is missing from their lives? What are the things that inspire them?

Now compare those answers to the answers you found about your own ministry and see how well they line up. In some cases you may feel the need to adapt some of your ministries, but avoid trying to be all things to all people. Primarily focus on the places where their desires line up with your strengths. Once you have identified those places and developed a strong understanding of the group of people you want to reach, you are now ready to start crafting your plan.

Crafting Your Communication Plan: Part 2

Last week I gave you a homework assignment to figure out what it was that your congregation believes is the focus of the overall ministry. If you’re examining all those pieces of paper and notes with their answers (that I’m sure you collected) and it’s a razor sharp ministry focus, then congratulations you’re in the top .05%. If it’s consistent with my experience in other churches, you may be looking at something that’s a little less than focused… or a lot less than focused.

This brings us to step two. It’s time to define your focus. This one may take some time, patience, energy and more patience. Let me offer a warning. This is the time to pay attention to all the feedback you received from step one. Your job now is to find a commonality among the answers and find your focus among them. This is NOT the time to ignore all the congregational thoughts and throw down your own vision.

This is one of the places that communication ministry runs right into the overall ministry leadership. If you don’t have a ministry focus, then it’s next to impossible to have a clearly defined communication plan. This will take collaboration. Let me say that again. This will take collaboration.

Solid work by the communication team/person can be worth its weight in gold to ministry leaders. Understanding what the congregation feels is the focus and comparing it what they actually do helps establish what are the unedited values held by the members.

In other words… we know what the leadership’s focus is. We know what the congregation says its focus is. And we now know where their actual focus is. Where all three of those intersect, that’s where you start building your plan. Ministry and Communication. Or as we like to say around here… the intersection between ministry and technology.

You have work to do. We’ll talk again next week.

Crafting Your Communication Plan: Part 4 - Know Where You're Going

Continuing with our communication plan series, we’ve identified your ministry’s core values, and we have identified your target audience and where the two paths cross. Armed with this information, it’s time to start crafting your communication plan.

In any form of storytelling, it is crucial to consider what you want the audience to walk away with. If there is a point or question that you want them to truly consider, then it helps to identify it from the beginning. Afterward your task is simplified and your objective is to get the audience to that point.

Communication plans aren’t any different. You need to define what your ultimate goal is for the plan and then break it down into manageable benchmarks. You’re not necessarily laying down specific solutions yet, but rather drawing a map of how to achieve the destination. But if your goal is to reach 1,000 Facebook fans in six months, then you need to have a firm understanding of monthly benchmarks to hit that number by the deadline. Or if you want to start a YouTube channel with regular video posts, then consider what it will take to establish that channel, content creation and publication.

Next week we’ll put it all together.

Have questions or comments? We'd love to hear them!

Crafting Your Communication Plan: Part 1- What Do You Do?

There is a great scene in the movie Office Space where two corporate efficiency experts are grilling a middle manager about his job responsibilities. After he fumbles around for a while without being able to give them a straight answer, one finally leans over the table and asks, “So what would you say that you do here?”

With any good communication or ministry plan, it’s hard to know where you’re going if you don’t know who you are. Though it seems obvious, it’s surprising how many organizations and ministries don’t really know the answer to that question. Here’s a test -- go around to the staff and congregation of your church and ask the following question:

What is our ministry’s focus?

If your leadership has never addressed this question, then you’re probably going to get a lot of variety in the answers. If your leadership has addressed this, then you’re probably going to get consistency in the answers. If your leadership has really done their homework, those answers can be delivered in ten seconds or less.

A little warning if your mind has already started twirling the term “mission statement” around in your head. That is not what our goal is for this process. Mission statements are too often wordy, generic and seldom adopted by entire congregations. We’re looking for specific and tangible. Think in terms of the things the ministry is great at doing. An example is, “We’re fantastic at small groups and children’s ministry.”

Here is this week's assignment: Figure out what your congregation believes is the ministry’s overall focus. Write down all the answers you get and group them according to the focus. You may be surprised at what your congregation thinks, especially if it doesn’t line up with your ideas. We’ll pick up next week on sharpening that focus as the next step to crafting your communication plan.

Recognizing the Church Communications Labor

Happy Labor Day! We wanted to take this day to talk about a church position which is gaining popularity in recent years. This would be the role of a church communications coordinator. The position may not carry the same name as we have lined out above; however, the job description carries through almost exactly the same for each person.

This person is typically in charge of all technology, design, and aesthetics. This is a large responsibility. The coordinator position should typically involve a highly skilled individual who receives a very decent salary. Most of the time, however, this is not the case.

There are several ways that church communications coordinator positions are filled which are less than ideal.

The Volunteer (with no experience)

This person has probably heard of Photoshop. They can log onto a computer and run basic functions. The person may be a teenager who has a “knack for that sort of thing”. This position can be good for a church that doesn’t have the means to place any other sort of person in the position.

The Volunteer (with experience)

This is typically an individual who owns or works for a local business within a category that fits communications coordinator. This person is a big help. However, they tend to stay stuck in their comfort zone. They do what they can but get stressed if a church begins to expect too much. This is a great help as long as the church doesn’t overwork the person.

The Committee (with no experience)

Churches love committees. However, a committee with no experience is a train wreck waiting to happen. They can do great to cast vision for the church; however, unless they go to training for the equipment, they probably won’t be useful for much else.

The Committee (with experience)

This is great because they can work together as a team. The hardest part is getting them into a room together. Also the church must remember that they have real jobs too, so don’t ask too much.

The Part-Time Individual (with no experience)

The church had some funds they could afford to pay an individual to work on the communications. The hard part is knowing what to expect since they have no experience. Working with their schedule can also sometimes be tricky.

The Part-Time Individual (with experience)

This person is great because they know what they are doing. Don’t overwork them, though. They do have to make money elsewhere. The hard part here is knowing how much to give them for a budget while also compensating them for the time they work.

This can be compounded down into a full-time individual also. Regardless of the position, make sure that they (or you if this is who you are) are respecting the Labor Day holiday as well and taking a break. Church communications coordinators are often the unsung heroes of the church.

The Social Ministry: An Introduction

In recent years we have seen a lot of growth online. This includes growth of ministries moving online. Some have reaped the benefits of moving online. Others are waiting around wondering when online will show up. There are also those who have seen the brutal end which moving online too quickly can put on a ministry. There is an entire spectrum of outcomes a ministry moving online can see.

A segment of that online movement deals with being social. In case you have not noticed, social is the new big word nowadays. It’s the happening thing online. So maybe instead of a ministry being completely integrated online they are thinking about becoming a more social ministry.

Over the next weeks we will look at what a social ministry should be comprised of, how a social ministry should handle itself, and what others will be expecting from said social ministry.

What must be understood is that social ministry is not for everyone. Social ministry is not something which is as simple as creating a Facebook page or a Twitter account either. These are simply steps to becoming a social ministry.

We will look beyond the typical social media thought and line out what a social ministry should and should not be. Ministries will be able to know through this series how to better serve through being social.

For some reason with the move online some churches have lost the social aspect. This series will help ministries see that to be a social ministry is more than just what happens online. This is an idea which must become a way of life beyond just online. To be a social ministry the ministry must embrace every aspect of ministry.

As we prepare to start this series, be considering what a social ministry would look like to you. What would you think a social ministry structure would consist of?

Today what are your thoughts? Have you stepped into social ministry or seen someone who has? What was it like?

We would love to see some dialogue happening here in the blog!

The Social Ministry: The Social Question

As we delve into this new series, there are a few definitions and questions which must be brought to the table and dealt with: What is a social ministry? How does it work? Who participates in social ministry? Why should an organization have a social ministry? Where do we start?

What is a social ministry?

A social ministry can be a few different things. The first requirement is that it must be outgoing (social). Whether this is in-person outreach and visitation or online, it must be willing to reach out. Second and more specifically to what we are speaking on is that it deals with online communications. It means having an active presence reaching out and communicating to everyone through social media forms.

How does it work?

Typically, volunteers and staff work together to run a social ministry. Only in larger ministries is there a staff member who heads up the social ministry. These people work diligently to connect with organization members, visitors, and prospects online through ministry communication sites. As they build these connections, they are able to stay in touch at all times to strengthen ministry outreach and follow-up.

Who participates?

Though there are a select few who are in charge of the social ministry, it takes everyone. If only one or two people are being social online then the ministry seems very small or inactive. It takes everyone being willing to reach out to those who they connect with naturally to be social and draw them into the physical ministry.

Why should an organization extend itself into social ministry?

As we know and can see through reading this blog, the world is moving online. Ministries must be cutting edge. The in-face visitation is nice, but it’s quicker and more time-conducive to connect through an online social form first and then reach out in person. More people are going to be searching online before they begin to search in person. When a ministry puts itself out there first, they have the potential and opportunity to reach a person before they even know they need to be reached.

Where do we start?

That’s the kicker, right? What is it that we can do to begin to be social? We would love to begin the conversation here. Drop us a comment with questions or ideas, and we would love to dialogue with you about the possibilities. Obviously the first step is prayer to see if that is where God is leading you. The next step is going before the organization and seeing if it is something viable not only to them but their ministry goals. If these things line up, then begin lining out a plan. This way the organization has a set path and goals to adhere to. Then become familiar with the tools you will be using. It is important to know what you are getting into first before you dive in. Remember don’t take on too much in the beginning, start slow and see what God has in store for your ministry!

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