Here’s an excerpt from a press release I sent out today for a project I’m working on right now — The Adoption Journey Project (www.adoptionjourney.org)

There’s two factors of this example I’d like to highlight.  .  .

But first, here’s the content about the campaign first:

This year’s football fans gathering at various watch parties will have access to one Super Bowl coach’s personal thoughts during halftime. A free downloadable video kit is available to local game watching party organizers which features Super Bowl winning coach Tony Dungy and his wife Lauren.

The video message includes a personal appeal to Americans on the subject of the current orphan crisis and adoption. Dungy is involved with The Adoption Journey Project (www.adoptionjourney.org) to help influence more couples to consider adoption.

“The big win on Super Sunday would be to raise awareness about the millions of children who need a family. I would love to see thousands of local community groups and circles of friends gathering together to stop and consider how they can help,” said Dungy, the winning head coach of the 2007 Super Bowl Champion Indianapolis Colts.

“With more than 100,000 children in need of a stable and loving family in the US, if just a fraction of groups gathering to watch the Big Game influence just one family to adopt, we would make a huge dent in this social crisis,” said Marc Andreas, Vice President of Marketing at Bethany Christian Services, the largest adoption agency in the country.

 

Basically, we’re asking anyone that’s hosting a Super Bowl watch party to play 3 minute Tony Dungy video message sometime during the halftime.  Dungy is the Super Bowl winning coach of the 2007 Indianapolis Colts team.  PLUS, the 2012 Super Bowl is being hosted in Indianapolis this year.  And Tony & Lauren Dungy are also Christians as well as adoptive parents.

The downloadable video file is available at www.adoptionjourney.org/dungyhalftime — along with instructions to burn it to DVD or stream it to TV set-top boxes like AppleTV, Tivo or WD Live devices.  Hosts can also download a printable conversation guide with some suggestions on how to set it up and spark some discussion.

So what are the two factors I wanted to highlight about this campaign?

(1) The usage of press releases and a resource-filled landing page is a tool most non-profits and ministries really should be considering.  The release is being sent out over PR Newswire and Christian Newswire.  We’ll see for sure over the next week or so if utilizing these outlets will gain us positive coverage and exposure.  But in general, using a tier-1 wire service can really help the cause.

Once the release is published it will also help us in approaching bloggers and other influential leaders by pointing to a media resource page with some or all of the following:

• clean full text copies of the published press release — both as text on the page as well as a downloadable PDF.  For example, you can find the PDF of the full press release on the Halftime video campaign landing page
• listings of early media hits for the story to give social proof
• downloadable and embedable video clips that relate to the story
• static images / photos that help tell the story — with captions
• background on your organization, sometimes called “boilerplate” ABOUT US type info
• FAQ’s that anticipate the basic questions a writer will have about the story
• contact information so media can reach out to you to coordinate interviews and quotes

(2) See how this campaign takes advantage of timing around another public event — with this example, it is a national event that is brings with it a lot of pre-existing top-of-mind and awareness related to the advocate talking about the cause.

Over 100 Million people will be gathering around TV’s to watch the Big Game on Feb 5th, so it is a rare opportunity to reach tons of local groups huddled around the TV set on a single day.  If just a tiny portion of a percentage of game watching parties actually showed the video, having the Dungy give this appeal to Americans about the orphan crisis could make for a huge win for adoption initiatives.

Keeping tabs on current and upcoming trends will help you jump on the bandwagon and take advantage of topics that have built-in enthusiasm from the media community.  If you build your story properly, you’ll be able to get your message played in front of the audience others are already building for you.

If you still aren’t sure about press releases in general, I’ve written before about why I think press releases are a good tactic to use in your communications mix.

QUESTION: How can you start using press releases to draw supporters, participants and simply more awareness to your programming efforts?  Leave your brainstorming comments below.

In the last post, I shared a useability testing secret everybody who has a website should know about.

The quick answer to the question of how much testing you should do is . . . “5 is the magic number.”

The inevitable question now is – how do you go about actually testing the 5 users you can easily round up in a flash?

There are a couple of options, but one of the services I know about and have used is www.openhallway.com — in short, it’s a site that lets you assign a task to a user, who then goes through your site and narrates what they are thinking and doing the entire time so that OpenHallway.com can record the screen, mouse movements and the users’ narration for later review.

(TryMyUI.com is another service that does similar kinds of screen-recording of user sessions with your site.)

OpenHallway.com was birthed from the same idea as what Jakob Nielsen is promoting:

A hallway usability test is where you grab the next person that passes by in the hallway and force them to try to use the code you just wrote. If you do this to five people, you will learn 95% of what there is to learn about usability problems in your code.

Basically, all you have to do is go out and recruit 5 people to test your website.  This should be a no brainer — get on Facebook, Twitter, Email, or literally, go down the hallway and ask the next 5 people you see.

The next part is the fun part. . . (more…)

In my last post, I wrote about  WHY your church should be putting out a press release about the great things your church is doing out in the community.

Press releases are something most churches have no experience with. . . Partly because it’s a craft that’s engimatic and not very easy to understand.   And partly because of a conceptual allergy to practices that are embraced by the marketplace.  “The church has no business doing business,” some might say.

Since most churches don’t have people on staff that have really done much official PR before, the big question that arises usually is:

So just how/where do you send out a press release?

Well, I personally recommend that you try at least once with one of the Tier-1 press release syndication services.  I’ve used PR Newswire numerous times in the past, each time with very good results.

(1) Here’s an insider’s tip though:  If you’re a non-profit organization (501-3C, or listed in Guidestar), you qualify for non-profit discounts for PR Newswire press release distribution.  Yup, churches qualify for this discount too.

eReleases newswire service acts sort of like a reseller of PR Newswire and they have a product called CAUSEWIRE that offers the non-profit discount.

For example, I just picked-up a pre-paid credit for a press release for $179 (for a standard 500 word press release.  It costs $100 for each additional 100 word block of words in the release).  This goes out over the national wire service via PR Newswire as well as two industry specific lists.  In past jobs, I’ve had to pay extra for these industry lists (and that alone cost more than $179).

The only catch is that you have to schedule the release 3 days in advance of when you want it sent out.  If you need immediate release scheduling, you have to pay the regular rack rates, but even then, the standard pricing is cheaper than if you went to PR Newswire directly.

(2) Another option is Christian Newswire, which prices several sub-lists separately a la carte style from $65 (for 400 words, then 50% more for each group of 100 words over 400 words) and up each.  It’s much more affordable, but know that this is not an apples-to-apples comparison to using PR Newswire.

(3) I’ve also been considering using a service called PR Web.  They were originally a free press release web distribution service, that grew up, and then got bought out by a big company called Vocus.  Now they partner with BusinessWire, which is a competitor of PR Newswire.  Just as eReleases sends your press release over PR Newswire, PR Web sends your press release over Business Wire.  Does that make sense?

Anyway, PR Web offers various levels of service.  But the lesser priced ones aren’t really worth much since they are simply auto-syndicating/posting your release on a bunch of partner sites that take their feeds and push them live.  This might yield decent traffic results in the short term, but as Google continues to move toward weeding out all that duplicate content out there, content farms and similar strategies are going to loose their visibility in the search engine rankings.  PR Web  does have discount pricing if you commit to volume — one package I know of offers 2 releases a month for under $140 each.  That’s pretty affordable, and I’ve asked PR Web to let me test out the service under these packages to personally see what type of results they bring.  Stay tuned on if they respond.

I’ll add some details about what else you need to consider for a basic pr campaign in an upcoming post, but for the time being, these are the 3 biggie newswire service options that non-profits and ministries should consider.

Does your church work with any outside community groups on a service or outreach project?  That’s where I’d start with crafting the story to tell the world.

QUESTION: What is your resistance to sending out a press release about an upcoming event or program your church is planning?  Can you articulate it in a comment below?

There is one marketing tactics that I believe most pastors think should be off-limits (or rather don’t ever think about) for getting the word out about the great stuff their ministry is doing.

What could that be?

It’s the basic press release.

But a press release will accomplish several things at once.  In addition, what you think might be newsworthy only on the local level might actually be interesting to national media outlets in telling the story of what’s on the pulse of the nation.  One press release we sent out recently got the attention of 175+ local news stations across the country.

Consider just a couple of the following benefits, and let me know what you think:

1) Press releases gets your news out on the web.  Everyone talks about search engine optimization and marketing, and press releases in a very efficient way to get your ministry and corresponding links to pages on your website sprinkled across the web in front of new audiences.  This benefit is for more than just the immediate timeframe, as the links will help drive incremental traffic over time as people find the older releases and click through to your site, even years after you have sent the press release out.

2) If you want your local and regional community to take notice and talk about your ministry, a press release alerts local papers and hyper-local news outlets like the Patch, and radio stations.  Without a press release, it would be almost impossible for them to proactively find your ministry efforts so that they can share with their audiences.

3) If you write your press release in a very targeted manner, you will be able to insert yourself into the conversation people are already having around the water cooler about what they find in various media outlets.  If you are able to be strategic in relating your news or activities to the current zeitgeist, you’ll find yourself become immediately relevant to new audiences in a fresh and interesting way.

By the way, did you notice something that’s common to all three points above?  How about the fact that one of the major benefits of sending out a press release as a part of your church marketing activities is that it gets your ministry in front of new audiences.

If you start with this objective in mind, you might find that a strategically planned press release distribution and follow-up plan might do your ministry some good in getting new people to cross that threshold.

Have you considered sending out a press release regarding your church?  If not, what questions do you have about press releases and your ministry?  Leave them in the comment section below and I’ll try to answer them in the next post on PR.

This weekend, I’m excited about being on the top floor of 7 World Trade Center.

It has a spectacular view in a totally green building — the first to go up amongst the WTC buildings.  When you are there, you can see up, out and down all around you when you are peering out the ceiling to floor windows.

But the view that I’m more excited about is regarding the discussions and activity that’s going to be going on at Redeemer‘s Entrepreneurship Initiative 2011 Forum conference — carving out a collaborative vision for what gospel entrepreneurship looks like on a practical basis.

It is always refreshing and at the same time challenging to hear  Tim Keller share his theological vantage point and then interact with others marketplace practitioners about how we are to go about faith and work integration.

I’ve been asked to help lead a session on social media for non-profits and for-profit organizations on Saturday — so glad that Guy Richards of Abiah will be my co-pilot so that we can both share case examples of social media in action.

I’m looking forward to reviewing with the group some of my own approaches to digital engagement across the web — including the Five C’s for Social Media Success framework I’ve been developing through my client work over the last couple of years.

If there’s enough interest, I’m willing to walk through the presentation again online via a webinar. Just drop a comment here if you’d be interested in hearing what I have to share.

Email is still the killer app in terms of marketing communications tools.

While everyone is going crazy about social media, email marketing is the good old standby that works well if you know how to work it well. But which email list building service should you be using?

Constant Contact, iContact, Aweber, MailChimp all are popular and widely used. But there’s one more option that I am highlighting that non-profits and ministries in particular might want to take notice of.

Why? Because this email vendor has released a non-profit version of their commercial email marketing services and a price that is non-profit friendly — $0.00.

That’s right! A full access account that’s priced at. . .  free.

There’s only one limitation with this offer, but for the majority of ministries and service organizations that qualify of this free email service account, it won’t be a factor at all.

Here’s a video where I walk through some parts of their website including the application page so you can see what I’m talking about:

Tools That Rule Links:

• Program information
• Application

QUESTION: What email service is your organization using right now? How often do you send out emails to your list(s)? Would it be helpful to learn more about using email list building and marketing more efficiently and effectively?

I was excited at what showed up in my mailbox today.  Psychology Press sent me a copy of The Science of Giving which I’ve been wanted to read ever since I first heard about what Daniel Oppenheimer and Christopher Olivola have assembled in this text.

Why am I interested in this book? Because raising money so important to any ministry, cause-related or non-profit organization.

Learning why people give, how people give, when people give, etc is critical to fundraising success — especially since success in fund raising has no direct connection in the actual efficiency or urgency of need that the organization is focused upon.

Here’s one important difference between this book’s content and what’s out there already on the topic:

Our understanding of charitable giving is based primarily upon the intuitions of fundraisers or correlational data which cannot establish causal relationships. By contrast, the chapters in this book study charity using experimental methods in which the variables of interest are experimentally manipulated. As a result, it becomes possible to identify the causal factors that underlie giving, and to design effective intervention programs that can help increase the likelihood and amount that people contribute to a cause.

In 2007, charities raised over $300 BILLION.  But the two editors think that if attention was paid to the science of the giving process and action, they could do much much much better.  Worthy causes need to pay attention to some of the learnings found in this preliminary text on the matter.

As I go through this book’s 14 studies you’ll be hearing more from me about what jumps out at me and some of what I’m learning about the science behind the decision making process of giving. . .

The Science of Giving: Experimental Approaches to the Study of Charity

• Hardcover: 274 pages
• Publisher: Psychology Press; 1 edition (October 21, 2010)
• ISBN-10: 1848728859
• ISBN-13: 978-1848728851
• Top 100 book in Amazon’s Philanthropy & Charity category

QR codes are those 2D square black and white bar codes that are popping up in different places.  First they were used in manufacturing and UPS started using them for tracking of packages before they were embraced by the retail & marketing community.

Now you’ll find them on posters, brochures, and stickers. . . These days, they are popping up in printed materials of various church communications.  You probably have seen one — since over 50% of the population supposedly has seen or knows what a QR code is at this point.

The big question is are we at the tipping point yet for QR code adoption? Or is this just a passing fad?

Are the ones using QR codes right now trying to force geeky hipness into daily routines while there is still some notable friction in using them?

Well, according to a couple of recent studies, it isn’t so clear.  Here’s two specific data points that might make you think again about QR codes:

Less than 1/3 of people have actually scanned in a QR code.  28%.  Yup, that’s it.  That’s not a huge percentage of people.

And if you look at the actual usage patterns of people who do scan QR codes, the data is not in favor of this hip tech trend amongst communicators to use it.  After all the native cell phone camera applications don’t recognize QR codes yet.  You have to proactively download a QR code reader, launch it and then scan the code.  This can take a couple of minutes and in all that time, you have no idea what you’ll find once the QR code is decoded by your app.  Is it a promo code?  A website?  A call to action?  Just another big fat advertisement?

The other practical downside is that you have to remember — while QR codes are small, they are usually placed in what is typically considered valuable real estate on the actual marketing collateral piece.  Is it worth utilizing such precious space for something that most people who see it won’t actually use?

That said, it really depends on the audience whether or not it is useful.  In a way, the church community is one place where adoption could be successful if you are intentional about both promotion of QR codes as well as what is delivered to the audience once it is scanned.   Because the church assembles on a regular basis, and there’s recurring publications (like the bulletin!) that are published, QR codes do lend itself to this type of environment where once you expose and train people to use it once, the chances of long-term adoption are high.

Paul Steinbrueck over at OurChurch.com suggestions 10 different ways for ministries to integrate QR codes into their communications practices.  One of my favorites from the list is #3 – where you use QR codes to link to media offerings that delve deeper into the subject of the sermon, or offer sermon notes or recordings for on-demand playback.  The other one worth considering is integrating them into event invitations so that they are easily passed along and the landing page has details, maps, directions for the event you are promoting.

QUESTION: Have you EVER scanned a QR code?  When was the last time you actually spotted one?

Spring is in the air! After over 70 inches of snowfall around here this winter, I’m ready for spring.

Even though there’s still melting snow in our driveway, it’s time to get busy with spring time activities — including some spring cleaning.

So today, I decided to clean house a bit…online. And the first place to attack was one of my Twitter accounts. There are many different strategies for who to follow or followback. But one rule that’s probably agreeable to most is to remove people from your follow list that are inactive or MIA from Twitter.

I personally like UnTweeps.com since it lets you filter your Twitter Follow list for people who haven’t sent out a tweet in ____ days.

If you really want to be conservative, you can try something like 180 days (no activity in 6 months kind of makes them as good as any other non-user, right?). But I go for the 30 day threshhold and see how many come up.

In one fell swoop you can chop off dozens and dozens if not hundreds and hundreds of inactive twitter accounts from your follow list. While some people might want to hang on to everyone on their list, this actually does help your twitter friend ratio of following to follower ratio which is used by some measurement apps out there.

AHHHH….that feels better.

TOOLS THAT RULE:  UnTweeps.com

Part of effective ministry work is learning how to maximize your efficiency.

There’s tons of angles on this topic, but one of them is to find the right tools that help you be your best.   As someone who wears the technologist hat at times, I am asked quite often about which iPhone apps people should download and utilize.

While I’d normally post this kind of content over on my personal technology tips blog, I’m going to try and share a selection of technology tools and resources I personally reply upon here on Godvertiser.com.  The hope is that you begin to reconsider your own workflow processes as you do your ministry work and strive to find iterative ways of improving your personal productivity.

So here goes, first in a series of posts sharing what works for me. . .

When you’re constantly on the go, it’s imperative to find ways to be productive when and where you can.  Being able to block out the world and focus on a task right in front of you is key.  Location is key.  But sometimes, you don’t have much of a choice.  Even Starbucks can become a party zone with chatter that distracts beyond belief — not the conceptual “break time” place you were hoping for when you walked in the door.

I’ve been using a white noise generator app on my iPhone for awhile now, and it’s one of my most used utilities.  In fact, I turn to it almost on a daily basis because it really helps me mentally drown out all environmental distractions and just focus.

The paid version is awesome with 40 different sounds and mixing capablities, but White Noise LITE is good enough with 10 free background noises.  You can adjust pitch, volume, balance, etc.

If you need some zzz’s and are using the white noise app to zone out completely, you can set a sleep timer to shut off automatically after a period of time.

There’s even a digital clock that you can put on the screen while you are listening so that you have a clue as to how long you’ve been in another world.

They have versions for the other major mobile platforms in addition to the iPhone/iPad iOS – Android, Crackberry, Palm, and Window Mobile. Here’s a video that gives you a peek at the app directly:

I personally find the Crashing Waves and Rain sounds the best for my own use, but others like Airplane and Fan are good ones too.  There are 10 to try out and adjust.

At my desk, I’m running it right now through my iPhone dock sound system.  It really has upped my game when I want to sit down and work.

QUESTIONS:

(1) Have you ever used a white noise generator?

(2) What do you do or use to get focused when you sit down to work?

Please share your comments and suggestions below!