I have seen Liquid Church (and others) put together some impressive media kits for church special events. While most churches may not have the staffing and media team that larger churches do, a “media kit” sounds far more intensive that it actually is. In fact, most churches organizing a special event or sermon series may already have a majority of the pieces needed to put one together.
By making such a resource available, you increase your chances of being picked-up by the local media and give your own church members the necessary tools to spread the word. After assembling a few of these PR packages, you will find it easy to do and begin to see the rewards of your labor as it catches on with local media and your own congregation.
Using Liquid Church’s latest media kit for their upcoming “Cold Case Investigation,” let us go over the basic elements you may or may not want to include in your own church special event media kit:
1. Press Release
The first thing you will want is a press release. Like anything else, these get easier to write the more times you do it. So hang in there! These generally lead with a headline, just like you would see a news story, followed by a sub-headline. In fact, think of your entire press release as a news story. Start with a date, keep the most important facts towards the head of your story, and you may even want to include a short bio at the end of your press release, depending on who/what the press release is about. If it is a sermon series by your pastor, include his bio. If it is a community outreach project by your church, include your church’s bio.
Just as Liquid Church has done, you may want to include a downloadable PDF.
2. FAQs
Start-off with a few brainstormed frequently asked questions, and be willing to amend it if you begin to get the same question repeatedly. Downloadable PDF? Sure! Just don’t forget to update it if you amend your FAQs.
3. Media
This is where things can get cool.
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[YouTube]
Consider creating a providing the following media elements:
- YouTube/Vimeo Video/s
- Hi-Res Photo/s
- Social Media Ready Image/s
- Instagram/Vine Video/s
In our Liquid Church case example, they have included all of these elements and made their collection of social media ready images available via their Pinterest account — making a nice overlap in their social media reach and efforts.
4. Misc
Need to include anything else? How about a release form for volunteers? Or a general video about your church or downloadable logos? Your miscellaneous section may be a copy and paste effort every time with the occasional extra collateral that needs to be added.
Finally, you may want to follow Liquid Church’s example of providing a sign-up form for future media alerts. You can build an email list manually or leverage a tool like MailChimp for this. Either way, this is a sharp idea. This gets your church started in building communication connections with local media, so the next time you have a special event or need to get the word out about aiding in a local natural disaster, the work is done and you can reap the rewards.
You can take a closer look at the Liquid Church case example here.
Douglas Porter says
We didn’t go that far but we did do something new this year for Easter besides the usual newspaper ad and invitations. This year we created wallpaper for smartphones, tablets, desktop and social media. Hopefully it sparks conversation and reminds people to invite their friends and family. It’s also a good reminder of the meaning of Easter!
http://www.saylorvillechurch.com/2014/04/07/easter-2014-wallpaper/
Eric Dye says
This is awesome! Great job guys!