A great set of slides if you need a few more thoughts to get you going on what you could be doing with social media for your organization.
Archives for 2009
Is Your Ministry Trying to Catch Up or Just Copy?
After having spoken with countless ministries about their web strategy, their product development, and website redesigns, I’ve gotten the feeling that we’ve generally caught the bug of “copy” or “catch up”.
Most ministries have a handful of examples of other ministries that they want to emulate and/or copy and just as many, perhaps, sites that they don’t want to be like. I hear things like this:
Can you help us do what they do?
or
We just don’t want to look like these sites (“sites” = websites that need more help than theirs) but we want to catch up with these guys.
or
Can we have your source code?
…
And the thing is that the heart behind these requests is in the right place; there’s nothing wrong with wanting to have a better web strategy or website and if you see something that looks good then rock on, right?
Here are some key considerations though and questions that I ask:
- Do you know if those models and examples are actually being effective at what you think they are attempting to accomplish?
- Why do you think they are being effective? What specifically?
- How important is it that you tie your mission and overall umbrella ministry strategy to your web properties?
- What does success look like for you as a ministry?
You see, the goal is not to necessarily emulate or copy or catch up with other ministries, the goal for you in your next redesign or build out is to match as closely your ministry strategy with your website property. Your site isn’t going to look like or function like other ministries and it shouldn’t because your ministries are different.
Context, history, people, leadership, and target audience all play a part of your next move and it’s going to be different for each ministry.
Finally, the goal is also not to “leap frog the competition,” sotospeak. What competition exactly are we talking about? Do what you do best as a ministry and I firmly believe God will honor that energy and service. I’m not so sure He’s ever enjoyed watching 1st Baptist of Whatever pwn 2nd Baptist of Whatever in a web design contest.
Run well friends!
One Billion Minutes: Reading the Mobile Word
A very neat milestone, indeed! One Billion Minutes of reading the Bible on YouVersion.
Congratulations to the product team over at LifeChurch and Team Digerati for developing an mobile version of the most precious text ever created and assembled!
So, how much time do you think you’ve spent reading the bible on your mobile device? I’ll be honest, I read my physical one way more than my digital version, and I’m not sure that’ll change.
I just like the “feel”…
What say you?
mySTAT WordPress Plugin: Comprehensive Reporting System
A great new statistics and reporting plugin for WordPress has just crossed my desk and I’ve been trying it out for the last few days: mySTAT WordPress Plugin.
So far, I’m pretty impressed, and with it’s easy to understand GUI, I’d toss this as a recommendation to you to try it out.
Here’s what I’ve seen in the last few days over at Human3rror.com (click for larger view):
Have any other great reporting tools you’ve come across lately (besides Trakkboard)?
Trakkboard: Google Analytics on Your Desktop
I found this nice gem of an air app the other day that allows you access to you Google Analytics right on your desktop: Trakkboard.com.
I’ll be honest, it’s probably not for the average user, but if you’re someone that’s somewhat addicted to their stats and loves using desktop apps, then this might be for you.
It’s surprisingly free. The only problem I had was having some strange difficulty getting it to jump into “English” mode and out of “German.” Funny, but not really.
You can add widgets to different tabs to keep up to date with different sites. Check it out if you’ve got a sec.
Church Online IRL
Yeah. Just whack.
This video is such an obvious idea I love it! Thanks for making me laugh tonight LifeChurch.tv!
There is a lesson here… I just know it…