This is a Guest Post by Brian Barela.
We faced a choice: create a below average offline experience or refine our online experience using the critical mass from our normal meeting.
My ministry launched a virtual meeting this year – Chico CRU Live – and although we saw good participation traffic started to fade.
Our meeting happened to fall on Veteran’s day which meant our students did not have school and our ministry did not have access to our meeting room.
This is what we did:
- Designed a studio style meeting at a large house that some of our student leaders rent
- SHORTENED the meeting from an hour and a half to just under 30 minutes
- Encouraged students to watch the meeting with other students that they live with
- Instead of providing a one to one meebo chat option, we opened up a group chat to facilitate connection amongst our students
- Asked ALL of our students to use their facebook status as means of exposing others to the live event
These key factors influenced our actions:
- Many of our students (75%) did not understand the concept of a virtual meeting other than the novelty
- Many of our students (75%) did not grasp the power a virtual meeting has to expose new people to who we are and build trust and credibility BEFORE they ever come to a meeting.
- Only 6% of the student population participate in a Christian group (church or parachurch). My interpretation is that 94% of the campus does not see Christianity as a valid expression of their life journey.
The results (these metrics are from that day alone):
The key metrics for us were % of New Visits, Average Time on Site, and Referring Sites
- % of New Visits because we desired to raise awareness of our virtual meeting
- Average Time on site because we are still trying to understand the average length of online participation
- Referring Sites because our goal was that in students updating the facebook status that it would drive significant traffic to the virtual meeting
I have two questions for you as we continue to refine our virtual meeting:
- If you have been measuring your virtual meeting/online church what has been your average time on site?
- What have been some meeting design issues that you have wrestled with in converting/translating an offline meeting to an online one?
So, what are your thoughts?
dewde says
Brian:
I'm having a little bit of trouble trying to understand the article. Is it "Here is what we did and it worked" or "Here is what we did and it didn't work"?
Or is it "Help us refine our process"?
You sort of throw a bunch of data out there, but didn't really set up my expectations for what the article is about. It just feels like a bunch of arbitrary information.
I'm not trying to be critical, I'm trying to help, I promise!
🙂
Chris