Jeremiah Owyang recently dropped his 8 Principles for Blog Design and I thought I’d throw my hat in the ring as well in terms of how I see ministry blog designs panning out for the rest of calendar year ’09.
To be clear, Jeremiah isn’t a designer nor a developer, but his experience in the space in terms of social media strategy is near-legendary, so his thoughts count.
So give it a one-over and then come back and take a look at my list [ which is better… 😉 ].
So here are my Top 5 Trends for Ministry Blog Design and Strategy for 2009:
1. Catching Up
The first and foremost trend is that ministry blogs, generally speaking, are fast-paced to catch up with best practices from every angle (design, development, platform choice, etc) from the marketplace and this is probably the best thing we’ve got going for ourselves.
The level of skill that I see creeping along the landscape of design and development is extremely encouraging. I think people are beginning to understand that it’s not as hard as they originally thought to get a quality blog up and running.
2. Distribution Management
I’ll have to agree with Jeremiah on this one, the Church is learning the strategies of distrubution at a rapid-fire pace. The evaluation and groundswell has been typical though as most people begin with going hyper-crazy in terms of their channel choices but then begin to pare it down and choose effectiveness over volume.
The simple fact is that it is not humanly possible to manage all the different channels in an effective and continuouse manner. Through 2009 more people will “kill” their 3/4/5th/etc distro-channels and focus on the few and effective.
How this will play out in the blog design will be only a few of those external services populating the blog real estate. This is good. A simple Twitter feed is perhaps all you need to bring in that additional element of “social.”
3. Content Up, Posting Up
More ministry leaders will be providing better content and posting more frequently. I think there’s a trend toward developing a robust schedule, or at least being aware that content-generation is crucial and the heartbeat of any successful blog.
The word’s out and people are picking up the pace. Tempered with visually stimulating rich-media and provocative titles, we’ll take a larger chunk of the traffic-tunnel. That’s another great thing.
4. Personal Brand vs. Ministry Affiliation
I see more and more people understanding the value of the personal brand aspect of their online equity, not just from a personal perspective but also for the organizations and ministries that they represent.
The catch is that more and more people will come to the critical juncture and question of whether they should build organizationally-agnostic equity or organizational-centric equity. There are pluses and minuses to both, and it can literally be argued both ways.
To each his own on this one, but the question and challenge is more and more apparent.
5. Multiplicity and Specificity
It’s not apparent to the general observer but more and more ministry bloggers are blogging in more than one spot. This isn’t necessarily a trend as much of the beginning of one. People are blogging for themselves and for their organizations, or in a number of other fashions as well.
Where this could go ultimately has yet to be determined but the result is near-obvious: More equity build for all, more space to grab, and more eyes on valuable enriching content that has the message of the Gospel.
Additionally, more people are finding that the niche is where it’s happening. Razor-focus on topics of passionate interest are cropping up more and. It’s still young, but it’s time for the land grab.
Where To Now?
We’re not even half-way through 2009 and I’ve already seen significant changes across the broad spectrum of blogging. Let’s keep it up.
What are you seeing from your perspective?
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