Marketing and Management Thoughts

Drama and theater are two useful tools to help us reach our communities. Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa produced a play based on some of the lesser known Old Testament stories called ‘Terror Texts’.

Their musical made national news (as I found out from Fox News) and I wish I had heard about this sooner to share with everyone. Not to bad for Orange City with fewer than 6,000 residents.

Check out their MySpace page for more information on the play, from what they’ve posted it seems really well done musically/theatrically. Would have been interesting to see how they wove it together

In terms of building community this is probably the least effective method of those listed in the original post for the series. I make this statement because the main purpose of these sites is entertainment. For this purpose I’m going to break this down into three sections; Promotional Videos, Follow-up Videos, and Documentaries.

I would first post all of these video on your churches website for your members before heading over to a site like You Tube. If you’re interested in posting to multiple video sharing sites at once check out our post on tube mogul. (more…)

Photo Sharing sites abound on the Internet. The majority of them interweave a combination of user uploaded photos with a community aspect (mainly through groups and comments on photos). These sites allow you to create an account, most for free, and then allocate all of your shared photographs into one location.

There is little people love more than photos (and photos of themselves). These sites allow for great access of your members to full galleries. After retreats, mission trips, confirmation services, and any other event you can think of. With so many people loving photography this provides a way for them to serve as a ‘Church Photographer’ and you create a valuable new role in your church.

Within your churches account you can upload all your photos and place them into sets/groups for specific events. This allows way more pictures to be posted and archived than makes sense to do on your churches public website.

Below is a list of sites you can use to host these photos (more…)

http://static.videoegg.com/ted/movies/UrsusWehrli_2006-embed_high.flv

Ursus Wehrli shares from his recent book Tidying Up Art in this fun video from the TED confence in 2006. It’s worth a the 15 minutes to watch and enjoy.

Following up our post on Facebook and MySpace I thought I would showcase a local church (for us here in Minneapolis/St. Paul) that many of you have heard of before, Bethlehem Baptist Church (who have a beautiful, albeit huge, website) and a snapshot of their Facebook page. I actually stumbled accross their page a while back when I read a wall post stating, “YAY MY LIFE IS COMPLETE. THE CHURCH HAS A FACEBOOK.”

Pretty cool and is an example of a church that as created the page, and doesn’t do a lot of upkeep (seems primarly for the youth group). Mainly it is for photos and probably communicating with the youth who are already on facebook.

Author, Pastor, and Teacher Eric Bryant

Looking for a way to answer the question ‘What are you doing?’ Enter twitter. It is a blog, but it only allows entries of up to 140 characters.

Its a network that allows you to post short messages and when you are signed in you can see all the messages of those people following you. It’s a very easy and covenant way to keep up to date with friends/organizations/businesses you are interested in.

While it doesn’t make a lot of sense to use for a church as a whole, for individuals or small groups it can be great.

It’s hard to explain exactly how people use it, but it is used by many people in ministry. One example is a man I recently was able to hear speak, Eric Bryant, who gave a fairly impromptu talk to students at Bethel Seminary about the approach Mosaic Church has taken to church.

Checking out his personal website has revealed not only a blog that he up keeps, but also his twitter feed. (more…)

I came across this today and thought it was worth posting/sharing with all of you.

Unsure of what that restaurant is? Its a McDonald’s in Tokyo (website) that is one of a small few design to introduce the Japanese to the Quarter Pounder. So often in marketing we hear about branding and image recognition being the important purpose of our brand. That is the reason companies spend so much money on television and magazine advertisements.

I love the minimal design, simply a red line around the black framed windows, one photo, and some nice brushed steel.

(via @nedwright, Core77)

ChurchMarketingSucks.com

Blogs are a great way to communicate with the world. With millions upon millions of blogs in the world focusing on ever subject under the sun why make another one? Because this one is personal for those you are ministering with and to.

Blogging is another very easy form of informal communication. While some companies do choose to use a blog for their formal communication it is traditional informal. Its a way to share thoughts from your life, or to write about your specialization for others to read. For you, this is perfect as you have members who want to know more about both! Now to decide what to focus your blog on, personal life, or theology…

Get your free blog here at insightsforchurch.com if you don’t yet have one. (more…)