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Is Anyone Listening?
I’m Listening – the famous line of Fraser Crane…
Please indulge me for a moment.
I need to rant.
One of the core tenants of social media is that it is supposed to be social. Social means that there is conversation. Conversation is a two way or multi-player communication channel. It started out that way at least. In the past year, I have noticed a very glaring shift.
The Conversation is Starting to Wane
People may be reading, consuming, and filtering information from blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, but the interaction within these channels is not what it was even six months ago.
I subscribe to about 60 blogs in Google Reader. I have begun to notice that there are fewer people commenting now than there used to be. Many excellent posts garner few if any comments at all. On this blog as well, fewer and fewer comments are left (hey maybe in this case, it’s my writing) – It was time for an experiment – I decided to start leaving more comments across the blogs I read. Some of the comments would reveal my identity, others would be anonymous. In the past month, I have left upwards of twenty five comments on almost as many blogs, The result – not one author or reader of any of these blogs has commented on or followed up on the comments I left.
I opened a conversation and the air is dead. I am left to believe that no one is listening.
What surprises me the most is that the post authors are silent! Tons of work goes into writing informative blog posts. If the author is writing but not responding what does that say? Maybe I am late to the game and people have already discovered long a go that there is no point commenting because there will be no response. What is the problem? Seriously, I am at a loss here!
On the blogs that I do see comments, forgive me, but they are so pithy.
“Great post“. “Thanks man“. “Cool“. ”Word“.
What is that all about? The channel has no substance. No one adding to the thoughts, few disagree, and most say nothing at all.
Is The Conversation Dead?
So can it be that everyone is so busy talking that no one is listening? Has social media just built up a cacophony of noise and no real substantial conversation. The problem is not a lack of great content – ideas, teaching, and philosophies. They abound! Where is the conversation?
OK – now here’s a gutsy move …
What do YOU think? Come on, don’t just read – speak up (yes, you).
Share what you think! Start a conversation. I promise to respond.
Rant. Done.
Marketing A Church In Canada
Canada is a different culture from America.
There is a completely different perspective of the Christian Church in Canada.
We are a large country geographically (second largest in the world), yet our population is comparatively small. Across this great land, churches are shrinking and closing their doors. It is not that there isn’t a hunger for spiritual things – it may be that there is little respect left for “religion”. In many ways there is a backlash to traditional churches (Catholic and Anglican) which were the foundational denominations of many of our country’s forefathers. I think there is a hunger for spirituality, but seldom is there the reflex for someone to turn to a Christian Church when searching for spiritual significance and answers.
So what is a Christian church to do to promote itself in Canada? How can a church effectively reach it’s community?
Print Advertising Doesn’t Work
Using traditional print advertising to invite someone to your Sunday morning church service doesn’t work – at least from my experience.
I was part of the church launch team five years ago for a church in Halifax. When we were promoting our “grand-opening” we sent 22,000 professionally designed and printed postcards by mail to homes around our community, inviting them to attend our grand opening on Easter Sunday. Twenty two thousand. We had only seven (yes, seven) people come to our first service because they received a postcard in their mail. There was some trickle effect…over the following couple months we probably had 30 new visitors because of the cards. From a marketing success standpoint, the ROI (return on investment) was poor. Not a great response.
We tried advertising in newspapers, yellow-pages, and more even more postcards over the following three years. All this was good for “visibility”, but produced very few new attendees based on the time and dollar expense.
Service, Not A Service
What I have discovered is that for churches to reach their communities effectively they have to be relevant and provide a “service” that is deemed high-value. Not a church service on Sunday morning, but a service to the needs of the demographic of their community.
Our church is based in a middle class suburban neighbourhood. The core demographic is young families. So, we created two seminars. One on “marriage” and one on “parenting”. These were relevant needs in our community. Couples need practical help building stronger marriages and learning useful parenting skills.
One of our promotional strategies was another print postcard distributed to about 2500 homes. One-tenth of the reach. The response was about 40 people who were not attending our church. Over the seminars, we were able to make deeper relational connections with these couples and many came out to Sunday services and eventually came to our church regularly.
So, one important and proven church marketing strategy is to invest in a relevant, practical outreach. This shouldn’t surprise you really. Church communities are supposed to be relational…and connecting with people relationally and building into them a practical skill set that meets a real defined need…that’s the ticket!
What do you think? Have you tried any specific strategies that have garnered success for your church?
Now
Now.
Now is the time.
All of us have things we have said we would do. Things we would try. Things we would learn. We get sidetracked with “will”. Someday I will…
Someday, I will blog.
Someday, I will have a new web site designed.
Someday, I will try a new “social media” tool or platform.
Someday, I will read (or maybe write) a particular book.
Now is the time.
I am by nature a procrastinator. Many of you can relate. I have had to put those some-days to the side. I have tried new things and learned much in the process. Now it is your turn. Try something new today. Not tomorrow, today. Please – do it for you!
Now, share in the comments what you have been saying “someday” to and what you will finally do today…
What Do People Think Of When They Think Of You
Jerod over at the web site Church Juice posted an article earlier this week titled “Marketing Isn’t a Bad Word if You Think of It Right“ – the article references a Collide Magazine article. So often, leaders in churches struggle with combining marketing with ministry. Yet, marketing is simply storytelling and impressions that you, your community, culture, and environment make on people. All these things help form opinions, emotions, and reactions – both for visitors and regular attenders.
Leaders need to step back from their preconceived idea that marketing is merely advertising and look at it from a more macro perspective. Maybe then there will be a recalibration of their mindset and a refreshed view that all a church (or any organization for that matter) does is a marketing and communication function and therefore tells a chapter of their story. Read Jerod’s article to enlarge your understanding of marketing as it related to the church…
Why Every Church Leader Should Be On Facebook
I have joined the Media Salt team as a summer contributor. Today, I wrote my first article for them titled Why Every Church Leader Should Be on Facebook.
I believe that every pastor, elder, and ministry leader should strategically leverage Facebook as a practical relationship building tool in their church.
Please click over there, read the article, and join the conversation by contributing a comment of your own.
