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. . . Read the rest of this entry »

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?