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.

Your church marketing worked.

New people that have never been to your church before walk through the doors.  So what do you do?  

Do you accost them and demand they fill out the “visitor card” so you can stalk them or nag them like a telemarketer?  Do you have a committee that instantly has a dozen people “friend” them on Facebook out of the blue?  Do you ask them to stand-up in front of everyone during service and make them stand out literally like a sore thumb with the intention of making them feel “welcome”?

One tactic that is widespread is the first time visitor bag. . . A goodie bag filled with marketing collateral that probably hardly gets read, along with some tchotchke or knicknacks that are are usually branded with your church logo or carries a cross or a dove or an icon of the bible.

Here’s some ideas to keep this tactic fresh:

• Get Out of Offering Card
• Digital Media Download Card
• Chocolate Bar
• Shirt
• Sunglasses Visor Clip
• Coupons for services by church members (like babysitting)

What did you find in a first time gift big when you visited your currently minstry? Anything out of the ordinary”

This is the third in a series of guest posts by Howard Freeman – Founder and Principal of Zoey Creative Development, a charitable giving consultancy in NYC serving both organizations and also individual philanthropists.

He is also the author of the upcoming book on online giving called, ‘Making A Difference 2.0’ (Skyhorse Publishing, May 2012) and can be reached at howard@zoeycreativedevelopment.com

GARDENING IS ACTUALLY THE WORLD’S OLDEST PROFESSION

During the last two segments, we’ve looked at finding more money and raising more money.

This week, we look at tending to what we’ve found and been entrusted with.

Wise farmers, and smart geneticists who deal with environmental issues, know that over-farming or farming the wrong crops can all but permanently ruin a piece of land.

Those of us in ministry who ask our people to give need to consider them not as ATMs but as living, organic beings who are created in God’s image (Gen 1), are fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps 139) and in fact are God’s very handiwork (Eph 2:10).  If we truly took these truths to heart, we would fully engage in the top two tasks yet not fail to do the last.

Let the ground ‘lay fallow’ sometimes.

One of my favorite ministry leaders sends monthly letters that one might expect would ask for support but instead tell a story and relate one of God’s truths.  They bless me.  I look for them in the mail, and I have given to this organization simply because it refreshes me, in addition to the good work I believe it does.

Likewise, the national political campaigns that have raised the most money online since 2000 have been the ones that emphasize building community first and ask for money second.  (They want money, no doubt, but they know what must come first in donors’ minds.)  The most successful of these to date solicited one time for every nine news items or community messages.

Refresh your donors.

Thank them often.

And trust the sovereignty and goodness of God who—when you selflessly invest in the spiritual growth of your givers, whom he has made for a purpose—will provide for you to carry out your purpose as an organization.

This is the second in a series of guest posts by Howard Freeman – Founder and Principal of Zoey Creative Development, a charitable giving consultancy in NYC serving both organizations and also individual philanthropists.

He is also the author of the upcoming book on online giving called, ‘Making A Difference 2.0’ (Skyhorse Publishing, May 2012) and can be reached at howard@zoeycreativedevelopment.com

GIVE TO GET

Last time we looked at how to find more money.

Christian organizations should avail themselves of select professional tools like prospect research, because fundraising and engaging donors in a vision is a profession and should be approached with professional standards and ethics.

This week we look at raising more money. Our recommendation is not exactly ‘orthodox’ by traditional fundraising standards. But it is biblical.

Most organizations try to employ increasing numbers of tactics to make people give larger gifts and more frequently.  Some of these techniques are certainly useful, such as one- or two-click online giving, multiple methods of giving, fundraising events, classes in budgeting (to reduce debt and free up income for giving), etc.

But the truly radical way to get people to give is to teach them what the Bible has to say about money, who Jesus is, and calling them to live a holistically generous life.

What makes it radical is to do it with no expectation of return.  (Try passing this by your church finance team!)

One group doing this very well and offering programs almost free to Christian organizations is Generous Giving.

Their ‘Journey of Generosity’ (JOG) events now have metrics to show that the transformation of attendees is not just deeper discipleship but—to make those finance teams happy—fuller coffers.  Of those surveyed:

• 75% say that the JOG “changed their perspective or practice related to generosity.”
• 43% say they have already made a new gift they would not have made before the JOG.
• 76% say they plan to make a gift in the next 12 months they would not have made before the JOG.
• 97% say they have talked about the impact with someone else.
• 77% say they plan to attend another GG event in the next 12 months.

The key, though, is that it must be done for them, and not for your organizational budget.

While space doesn’t allow here, studies by George Barna and Brian Kluth show that regularly talking about the budget from the pulpit can increase giving marginally, but teaching on generosity can increase giving exponentially.

In the next and final post, we look at something—stewardship—that the best secular and faith-based organizations both do well.

And I use the metaphor of the world’s oldest profession.  (It’s not what you think…)

We’re in the 11th hour before Christmas Eve services here at Liquid Church and our Church Online team is totally pumped about our first ever Christmas Virtual Choir that we’re pulling together.

What started as an interesting idea to allow our Church Online community to participate in our church-wide services, has become a great tool to talk about Christmas at church — and invite family and friends to one of the 6 services being held on Saturday at our campuses as well as 2 services for Church Online.

Since there is some novelty in a webcam- or “YouTube Christmas Choir” it has to potential to draw in some people that might be sitting on the fringes of the crowd.  I love that aspect of it.

So our video producer and media team has been rocking it all night since the deadline for submitting individual renditions of Silent Night over the web. . . And here’s a first peek at the Virtual Christmas Choir which will sing Silent Night:

Yes, we’ll have a traditional preached message and live worship band, etc that go along with a church service, but this one of the small ways we’re aiming to mix it up a bit… keeping the church experience fresh and inviting for those that walk in the door — some for the first time in a long time, others for the first time ever.

QUESTION: What is your church doing to mix it up this year at Christmas?

As we have pushed forward into the information age, ministry has followed suit in many ways. . . ministry work has evolved so that it isn’t strictly about counseling, facilitating discipleship, teaching on a one-to-one or one-to-some basis. Sophistication in communication resources has allowed growth-oriented ministries to find themselves planning, producing & presenting more content, running more outreach programs, serving more people by collaborating in teams and more.

This has changed the daily routine of ministry work a bit for some.

Have you ever had meetings to plan volunteer training, or leadership lunches, or ministry team retreats?

I’m sure you have at some point, if its not already a regular occurrence in your work.

Are you aware that you’ve gotten to the point where you are meeting about meetings?

Today is a Monday, and it’s typically a meeting-heavy day here.  I already know not to schedule any meaningful calls or meetings with new people on Mondays because I’ll be consumed with various standing meetings.   In the end, Monday’s are not really a day where I “get work done.”  Have you ever felt the same thing?

How do you change this? At least for the people you manage and interact with?

Before you figure it out, here’s a great TED talk where Jason Fried discusses “Why work doesn’t happen at work?” to put it into context:

One of my colleagues at work, Rich Birch, has offered up this response:

The author, Al Pittampalli, is trying to dig one layer deeper than usual to figure out how to radically change our work habits around meeting and productivity.

Rich has arranged an opportunity for us to sit down internally with Al this coming January, and I’m excited to read his book, READ THIS BEFORE YOUR NEXT MEETING — and then interact with him to see how I can activate some of the insights for my own praxis in year ahead.

I definitely want to ramp up productivity in the next year, what about you?

QUESTION: Are you sick of meetings? What do you do *during* your inefficient meetings? Got any tips to make meetings radically useful to everyone that comes? Share your rant or tip below in the comments. I’m looking forward to hearing all of it!

I’m excited to share a little project that I’m involved with at Liquid Church of New Jersey — through which we’re hopeing to bring a little joy to the world this Christmas Eve.

How — you ask?

How about by organizing the world’s first virtual Christmas choir made up of singers from around the world wide web.

Whether they’re soldiers in the Middle East, moms in Estonia or students in Phoenix, Arizona, the church will leverage technology to synchronize individual singers into a unified choir rendition of Silent Night.

The sermon message for Christmas eve will touch upon how the body of Christ can come together as one voice.  And so this project is a nice tie-in to the message while providing something fresh at Christmas.

The project actually arose from the fact that Liquid not only has over 2,000 people who attend our church services each week, but thousands more come to church online or download any of the hundreds of podcast files each month.  One question that we asked ourselves was: How do we increase interactivity and sharability at the same time?  Well, a guy named Eric Whitacre recently presented at TED about a virtual choir he assembled by harnessing the connectivity of the web.

And in a simliar way, we decided to ask our people at our campuses and across the web to help spread the Christmas cheer together this year with us by getting involved.

Singers are given access to sheet music, music tracks and a video-recorded conductor so that anyone can record and upload their contribution to YouTube. Liquid Church’s media team will then assemble a composite video production that integrates all of the individual videos into one large-scale synchronized video rendering for the Christmas Virtual Choir.

Participation in the Christmas Virtual Choir is open to everyone around the globe.  And it’s easy-peasy.  Here’s my own video submission for the Silent Night song:

The deadline for those who want to participate in the choir is December 15th. Instructions are available at http://www.lqd.ch/xmasvideo.

The Christmas Virtual Choir’s performance will occur at six live Christmas Eve services in New Jersey on December 24th held by Liquid Church as well as church online services that weekend.

If you’re a Christian techie, two of the big names to take note of might be:

• Tim Keller
• Google

Well, what happens when they intersect?

Basically you get Tim Keller speaking at Google HQ in their Authors@Google series.

Dr. Keller has spoken there before, and it’s one of the the more popular videos (approaching 200,000 views) on the web featuring Dr. Keller.

The latest book out of Redeemer City to City‘s Content Labs is The Meaning of Marriage.

So Google’s invited him back to talk about the book and the Christian view of Marriage.   Take a looksie at the hour long talk . . .

One of the interesting (perhaps controversial) tidbids he puts out there in this talk is about gender and marriage. He touches on the Christian view of marriage — is for character building. Meaning. . .to bring to bring the two diametrically different genders together — they “clash” in a way to rub off the edges that each other carries. But we also “mesh,” in complementary ways. And it is in those two ways that we complete each other. Much of what marriage is supposed to do can only happen within traditional husband-wife unions.

For those of you missed his first visit in 2008, back when he published The Reason for God, here’s the video of that appearance:

Speaking at gigs like this is very different than preaching 3-point sermons. But he certainly employs the Tim Keller approach to presenting.

What did you notice about this talk?  Leave a comment below.

This is the first in a series of guest posts by Howard Freeman – Founder and Principal of Zoey Creative Development, a charitable giving consultancy in NYC serving both organizations and also individual philanthropists. 

He is also the author of the upcoming book on online giving called, ‘Making A Difference 2.0’ (Skyhorse Publishing, May 2012) and can be reached at howard@zoeycreativedevelopment.com.

There is not a ministry which I’ve heard or read about that doesn’t need to raise more money, or raise more money this year than last year.  If you’re in the group that still needs to raise money, here are tips to find more, raise more, and sustain more. 

A METAL DETECTOR WILL FIND THE NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK

Most ministries and even churches go to “the same pockets,” leaving these individuals and families worn out and even discouraged, especially if they hear from the leaders only around the end of the fiscal year or during campaigns. 

What most organizations fail to do, though, is look at steady givers deeper in their database or even to do research on them.

Considering “prospect research,” however, appalls a lot of Christian organizations.

But just as some churches should consider a press release, even though that seems counter to “what churches do,” organizations of all types should know what giving capacity their constituents have.

image: vichie81

At the last two organizations I worked for, we used a research tool that my firm now uses with our clients.  At my most recent organization, using this at the beginning of a campaign translated into more than $100,000 of unanticipated gifts in the first two months, making the tool cost less than $0.03 per dollar raised.  It became cheaper as more gifts came in.

If you don’t want to invest in using a research tool, consider these measures to find more gifts and more donors among older and younger constituents:

• Ask people to make monthly gifts, not end-of-year only gifts.  Monthly gifts can accumulate to be larger, and it develops their spiritual discipline of giving.

• Ask older church members or constituents to consider a charitable gift annuity (CGA), even a deferred CGA.  They can name themselves as beneficiary, or they can name one of the pastors as beneficiary to benefit years from now.  A portion of a deferred annuity can potentially be written immediately to the bottom line.

• Ask your younger constituents to volunteer for something.  Studies show that most people aged 35 or younger who make a financial gift to an organization have first volunteered at that organization.

Next time we’ll discuss ‘raising more’ money.  Our recommendation is a bit unorthodox—according to fundraising textbooks, that is.

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. . .

Then have them try to accomplish one task that you set-up with a service like OpenHallway.com.  Perhaps it is to find information about what you do specifically in one area of offerings.  Or it might be to try to find directions to your place.  Or to figure out the schedule for one of your programs.  Think of tasks that any given user would be thinking of accomplishing by going to your website.

Then sit back and wait for the recordings to come in.  Almost every video I’ve reviewed has uncovered an “Really?” or “Ah-Ha. . .They’re right about that.” whether it be small or big.  It’s always something to consider in improving the site experience.

Once you get 5 user tests completed, you’ll see that some of the issues will be repeated by more than one person.  Those are the problems you want to address immediately.  You’ll probably discover some one-off issues too.  Here you can ask 1 or 2 more people to do an OpenHallway test that tries to zero in on that issue to validate the concern or throw it out.

Sometimes the problem can be fixed with better navigation to the final spot on the site.  Other times, it is how you describe or represent the issue or process.  And some times you have to throw out what you have existing on your site and start from scratch.

They guys at OpenHallway.com recommend the book, Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug.  It’s an easy read, and much of it seems like common sense.  But probably worth you picking it up if you’ve never done anything in the user testing arena.

After you make your quick fixes (or biggies too), it’s time to go back and find 5 more people to test it again.  You’ll crack a big smile if those problems do disappear in the next round of testing.  It means that the testing worked.

QUESTION: What is the ONE area of your site you would want to test this week if you could?  Be specific!  Leave your answer or questions in the comments below and I’ll try to address them (or hopefully others will jump in too).

Whenever an organization sets out to tinker with the website to improve it, or even go for the complete revamping of the site, it’s based on some feedback that the site isn’t doing what is intending to do.  This can be based on internal feedback, implicit or explicit comments from site visitors, a gut feeling that the site can communicate better, or the plain facts that your site conversion goals aren’t happening.

So what happens next?  Most often than not, a group of people go into meetings and set about reconfiguring the site structure, improve navigation, updating the aesthetics to reflect current Web 2.0 and beyond trends, and revising the content.   Hopefully they do it in a way that is strategic in nature or bring in someone that can help with that.

But whatever the process, when you finally flip the switch, only the actual usage by site visitors can tell you whether you succeeded or not.

Here’s the part where most groups drop the ball.  One of the most critical milestones in site development happens right here — not before when you’re whiteboarding the site and its contents.  This is where you need to do some usability testing.   Qualitative and quantitative research will guide you on what works and what doesn’t.

But because focus groups and user testing seems so sophisticated and enigmatic, most site owners don’t ever go through with the steps that can radically impact how your message is received by the visitors coming to your site.  The superficial pushback on this area seems to be in two immediate areas beyond the lack of comfort / knowledge for how to preceed:

(1) We don’t have money for that!  Testing dozens and dozens of people would cost more than we can afford.

(2) We don’t have the time for rounds of user testing.  That would delay our website project too much, or we have so much other stuff to do now that we’ve finished the website revamping.

But here’s the kicker, it doesn’t have to be expensive nor time-consuming to get the critical feedback you need to communicate better with your visitors.

And here is why 5 is the magic number in useability testing:

According to Jakob Neilson, the usability guru (seriously, you should check out his site, www.useit.com), the ideal scenario usually warrants 76 users for comprehensive quantitative testing that addresses the typical outliers that come through.  And a more manageable 15 users need to be tested in order to get at all the qualitative usability issues in the design of a site.

But in reality, the magic number is really 5.  That’s it.  FIVE people. . .

Jakob sums it up in this sentence for me:

The cost-benefit analysis of user testing provides the optimal ratio around three or five users, depending on the style of testing.

The other tip that goes along with this research is that you need to approach it as an iterative process.

It’s better plan for multiple tests of small batches.    Instead of getting the 15 people to give you absolute confidence in finding all usability problems with your site, he recommends that you rather do 3 rounds of testing 5 people with each update of the site.  This will get you much further along in the end.

So how do you do the actual tests?  His site and other places on the web can help inform that process.   I personally have been using a site called OpenHallway.com which allows me to set-up a task to test and offer it to multiple users.    I’ll share more about it in the next post.

It’s your turn to share: Have you ever done user testing on your site?  Have you ever participated in feedback testing?  Leave your answers in the comment section below.

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.

For the 10th Anniversary of 9/11, Liquid Church commissioned a new song by songwriter/singer Dave Pettigrew. Its called “There Is Hope”

You can find the lyrics and free mp3 download form on the Liquid website here.

The song itself received great exposure, making its way to Sirius/XM Sattelite Radio and beyond. Some of the feedback the song received was amazing. It has touched a lot of hearts and helped in healing for many that have heard it to date.

Now, the song has lived on beyond September and has broken into the Top 50 at IndieHeaven.com. Would you help the song reach more people by clicking a few clicks and vote up the song?

Here’s exactly how to do it:

Music is such a big part of people’s lives and it takes on meaning of its own for many of them. Seeing the journey that this one song has taken is been wonderful. This is just one of the innovative ways we are trying to reach more people outside the walls of the church, and it seems to be working.

Do you have a song that has been meaningful in your life? Would you share your story with a comment below?

In 10 days, we’ll arrive at the 10th Anniversary of 9/11. I don’t think many people have thought about it much yet. Here in NJ, we just got through a mini-earthquake, Hurricane Irene and still struggling without power or flooded main streets.

But it’s been 10 years. Yup 10. Many of us are still living like it happened just recently.

While the Gospel is not patriotic to our red white and blue stripes, there is a call to attend to the healing that is still going on. And it’s not just “our people” in the pews every week. This is one event, may I say especially in the northeast, if not NYC Tri-State Area, where 9/11 touched almost every family personally or via someone they know.

Most communities and churches are planning to do something on that date in this country. The question is just who are you trying to remember, and re-unite? This seems to be one of the rare opportunities where the church has the chance to be in a position of leadership within the public square — isn’t this when we can reveal the beacon of light on a hill that we have found in our faith?

Liquid Church is trying to embrace the widest definition of that word “community” and trying to reach out to anyone that wants to walk in the door that Sunday morning, planning six different memorial services for 9/11 in three NJ cities, geographically located in three different counties. The intention is to provide a meaningful way for people to gather and bring loved ones with them to hear a message that, perhaps, only the church can share: hope is something we have to hold onto, even in the darkest hours of our time together here.

I think many churches tend to limit themselves in thinking that by default, they don’t have a chance to the attract *everyone* in a given community to their programs and outreach events. But if we start with such a self-defeating posture, what chance do we really have for a really big win?

This doesn’t mean you have to hype it up and be all splashy in order to gain the the broadest reach, of course. Here’s one creative way that this might be expressed. . .

Since so much of our generation is almost surgically tied to our iPods, and iPhones, music has become a powerful and meaningful way of expression and common experience. American Idol has shown us a little bit of this.

One example of trying to reach outside the normal boundaries that church signals reach is a project that was hatched this past year. Here’s a video that was created to accompany a new song titled, “There is Hope” by Dave Pettigrew. (You can download it for yourself here.)

With music, it seems that there might be less friction for word of mouth to happen. In addition, the spread-factor takes an entirely different route as well. Here’s the song being shared right now:

As you can tell, this message of hope is also something that comes across well via songwriting medium. Hopefully it is one additional means to reach someone that may not normally be in proximity to or responsive to typical communications messaging from churches, but really needs to hear it. Do you see how in this one instance, trying to reach someone on their own terms and inviting them into the fold this way is at the same time — expanding the boundaries of what we might envision the total potential *community* we can engage with?

Is this the message that your church is prepared to send out during this time of need and gathering? If not, where are you going with your 9/11 Sunday message this year?

Hurricane Irene stole the stage this weekend as everyone and everything was mobilized on account of the incoming storm of the decade.

New York subways, mass transit, airports, etc have all been shut down. Even Redeemer Presbyterian Church cancelled Sunday services on the East Side and West Side.

Many, many churches cancelled services this weekend. The only services that were left untouched seemed to be the 160+ Internet Churches including Liquid Church Online and LifeChurch.tv. That’s where I personally plan to go to worship with others in community this weekend.

But Tim Keller’s congregation wasn’t left high and dry with this storm in town. Irene might be able to shut a lot of things down, but apparently not so for heralds of the text. . .

Redeemer church published their worship bulletin as well as a free mp3 download of Tim Keller’s sermon, LORD OF THE STORM.

If you are stranded, cooped up inside, or just able to take in a great sermon message, CLICK HERE to download the timely sermon message where Tim Keller preaches from the Book of Luke.

There’s an app for that.

We hear this about everything these days, right?

Websites are catching app fever too, as more specialized single-purpose websites are being created.

Faith life is not immune to this trend either. Let’s take prayer for example.

If you have ever journaled your prayer life, you already know how amazing it is to witness the journey you take — not to mention that you are able to see how many prayers are answered over time.

Well, those that are allergic to pen and paper in this digital Google age, can find some peace knowing that a new website is transferring the experience of prayer journaling online.

FRVNT.com is a website app for prayer lists.

And they are adding a social component (of course!) to it as well.

You can enter your own prayers — made them private or public.

And then you can also see other people’s public prayer requests and respond, letting them know you will be praying for them. A great feature is that if you raise your hand to pray for someone else, you’ll be notified if they come back and mark it “answered” — a great feedback look that helps encourage all of us to keep on praying!

FRVNT.com just came out of beta recently, so it will be interesting to see if new functionality will come online over the next few months ahead. Facbook integration or some other way to better integrate it into your daily habits online via other web properties might be nice.

But as-is, this is a neat site to explore and see if you can fit it into your daily praxis and faith walk.

Check out www.FRVNT.com and add your own prayer request or better yet, pray for someone else right now.

[HT: ChurchMag.com]

Kinetic Typography — that’s the official name of the motion graphics you’ve been seeing pop up all over the net these days. It’s powerful when done right.

Now you’ve seen a lot of great motion graphics on the web. Here’s one example to set frame of reference:

But there’s a specific flavor of motion graphics that deals with moving typography. Temporal typography to be more specific. And here, we have something called KINETIC TYPOGRAPHY which is produced by a new type of creative producer called a kinetic typographer these days. So get ready for more kinetic typography in the months and years to come.

Here’s some examples of great kinetic typography I’ve seen recently. And a big bang at the end.

And finally, we’re also seeing some of this format being applied within ministry media applications. I’ve included a fabulous one as the last one in this listing below as a “TRUER & BETTER” final example. . .

. . .

And finally, the true and better example featuring words of truth by Rev. Tim Keller by Peter Artemenko:

Do you know of any other examples of amazing motion graphics – kinetic typography? Share a URL below!

Today I got a new book in the mail from Zondervan that had a nice and shiny cover that’s about our desire & drive to always choose to go for the nice and shiny covers on our lives. . .superficial over substantial.

VENEER: Living Deeply in a Surface Society is a book that sets out to call out some of the “real” challenges we have in living out Christian lives in today’s media-rich, materialistic, techno-buzzing, hollywood-worshipping society.

I’m particularly interested to see what Tim Willard and Jason Locy have to say in particular about Technology in this book.

I have had some interesting informal conversations with the authors to date about some topics tangential to this book, and I can tell you there’s some good stuff brewing here. Thoughtful. Insightful. Authentic.

This video intro sets-up the book pretty well. And from what I can understand, the Veneer book will provide you with an interesting critique of the current times — and at the same time put forth a challenge to many that decide to plunge in and remove some veneer.

Can’t wait to share with you my own takeaways after I go through the book myself including how this book pushes me to re-think various aspects of my own daily praxis involving technology, social media relationship building and more.

It’s Good Friday. And Sunday’s Coming.

Tim Keller put this weekend all in perspective: “Easter means that Christmas worked.”

Now that’s something to be happy about. 90 percent of people who celebrate Easter buy chocolate. You know those 90% of the people know there’s an upswing to all of this.

Perhaps the 10% that ain’t buying no chocolate need to hear a specific message that is imprinted in my mind every year when Good Friday comes around. . .

Tony Campolo’s famous “It’s Friday” sermon is a classic, and it just makes you wanna shout in response, doesn’t it?

Sure, I know that shouting on the street corner about End Times is not the most effective way to invite people into HIS Story.

Most of those explicit, in-your-face methods just aren’t well received, especially when you aren’t contextualizing the message for the audience. Taking an almost literal “spray and pray” approach to evangelism isn’t for me in general.

But there was one little tactic that I never really thought of as a similar “active attack” methods, but did get revealed the other day when someone came over to meet and wanted to connect to my wireless router…so in a way, here’s a confessional for two things that I have done, and I still do from time to time — to poke, prod, provoke some unwitting people to think twice when they come across these messages.

You might think of them as “Wireless Evangelism Tactics,” perhaps? You decide!

1) WiFi Evangelism

Have you ever set-up a network and named two printers on the same network like “Batman” and “Robin” or “Kenny G” and “Jimmy Hendrix” (because Kenny G is all about a smoooooth experience and Jimmy Hendrix is always jammin’!). . .having some fun with what you name your devices?

Well, for one of the routers in our building that happens to be the strongest signal and most reliable, I decided to name it something that we say all the time. . .

Of course, that means my neighbors and anyone nearby trying to find an open hotspot will be exposed to this almighty wifi signal!

2) Radio Evangelism

As someone that has rented more than my fair share of rental cars, trucks and vans when traveling or even around town, I like to turn on the radio and listen to contemporary Christian music sometimes. So it’s relatively easy to find the local CCM radio station in a given city and turn the dial to it.

The extra step I take is to just HOLD DOWN one of the radio preset buttons down till it beeps. Yup, that’s usually how you set one of the preset buttons on the radio. Simple little step so that every time I get back into the car, I can hop right to the local CCM station I was enjoying the last time.

But I realized that setting one (or two!) of those buttons just increases the chance that the next (few) customers that rent that same car will be exposed to the music “accidentally” too.

So my question is, is that so bad? Seriously?

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?