Leading your organization’s communications without a written communications strategy is like sailing a ship without a map.

May 16, 2013 7:28 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@OurChurchDotCom

OurChurch (dot) Com

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Just as a map is essential to navigating the seas, a communications strategy provides direction to your day-to-day communications.

A captain would never even think about sailing a great distance without a map (or GPS), yet every day thousands of organizations set out without a plan.

Why?

I believe there are at least four reasons. Let’s call them…

4 Common Barriers to Developing a Good Communications Strategy

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1) Aimlessness – If you don’t know where you’re going, there’s not much reason or motivation to create a plan to get there, right?

Solution: Pull out your organization’s mission statement. What is the vision? Close your eyes and imagine what that looks like. Your communications should be aligned with your organization’s vision and mission. Imagine what your communications will looks like when your organization’s vision is realized. That’s where you’re going. Write it down. (Note you may want to do this with your team of people. And unless you’re the head honcho you’ll need to get your boss’s approval.)

2) Busyness – Seems like everyone is living at mach 5 these days. There’s always a deadline to meet. And if you’re blogging or using social media, there’s always more people to engage with. Many communicators feel like their work is never done. They just don’t have the time to work on a communications strategy.

Plus strategic thinking is hard work. While I enjoy it, there are times when it makes my head hurt and other times I just don’t have the mental energy for it. It’s easy to keep putting it off.

Solution: Schedule a block of time for strategic thinking. Make sure it’s in the part of the day when you have the most energy. Somehow we manage to block out time for meetings, evaluations, lunch and vacation. It’s a matter of choice.

3) Fear – When you have no plan, nobody can criticize your plan. And when you have no plan, no one can anyone hold you accountable for failing to implement or follow the plan. It’s easier that way, isn’t it? Yes, but it’s also a leadership failure and a sure path to ineffective communications.

Solution: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

4) Ignorance – If you’ve never developed a communications strategy, you may not know how important it is. Or you may not know how to create one.

Solution: Keep reading this blog. I say that half joking. The solution is to find resources and people who can teach you about communications strategies – how-to guides, examples, webinars, books, conferences, coaches and consultants.

While I won’t be providing all those formats, I will provide as much insight and as many examples as possible in this series and answer your questions in the comments.

Plus my hope is the results from the Communications Strategy Survey will inspire other people to develop strategic communications planning resources. If you haven’t done so yet, please take 2 minutes to…

~~> complete the Communications Strategy Survey

If your organization doesn’t have a good written communications strategy, what is your biggest barrier?

“Most people don’t plan to fail; they fail to plan.”

That’s what I wrote in yesterday’s post, What Is a Communications Strategy? because the sad truth is most organizations don’t have a communications strategy.

We want to better understand how well all types of organizations – businesses, nonprofits, schools and churches – do at developing a strategy for their communications and where they need the most help. So, we created the Communications Strategy Survey.

Your Survey, Your Results

I will first share the results of the survey in the breakout session I’m leading June 5 at the Biola Digital Conference.

The following week, we’ll publish more extensive analysis in a blog post here. Our hope is the insights gained will serve as a springboard to discuss how, together, we can improve our own strategic thinking and create resources to help organizations develop better communications strategies.

We want this to be a collaborative effort. So, if you want to slice and dice the raw data yourself, we’ll even make that available (excluding the email addresses of participants, of course).

Go!

Please take 2 minutes to complete Communications Strategy Survey.

Then please share this post on Facebook, Twitter, G+, email, smoke signals, maybe a tattoo.

Hey, why wait for the survey results to start the discussion. Post a comment…

• How do you feel about your organization’s communications strategy?
• What is the biggest barrier to an effective communications strategy?
• What strategic communications resources would be most helpful to you?

When it comes to communications, sadly most organizations fail (or at least fail to live up to their full potential) because they have no plan.

As the saying goes:

Most people don't plan to fail; they fail to plan. -John L. Beckley

May 13, 2013 5:09 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

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OurChurch (dot) Com

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Most organizations either live in the past (just keep doing what they’ve been doing) or live in the moment (“We need to get the word out about X. Let’s do A, B and C”) but few actually think about where they want to go in the future or the best way to get there.

So, what is a communications strategy?

Here’s my definition…

A communications strategy (or communications plan) is a document that defines an organization’s communications goals, target audiences and methods for reaching those goals. It serves as a guide for all day-to-day media, public relations and communication activities in which the organization is engaged.

Let’s break that down

A communications strategy is a…

• document – That means it’s not just floating around in someone’s head but it’s actually written down. As my friend Ken Menesse likes to say, “If it’s not written down, it doesn’t exist!”

…that defines an organization’s…

• communications goals – What is the purpose of your communications? What specifically are you going to accomplish through your communications?
• target audiences – Who are you trying to reach? It’s probably multiple audiences. People within your organization? Existing customers/members/donors? People outside your organization? Where are they? What are they like? What do they need?
• methods – How are you going to communicate with them? What media, channels, and platforms are you going to use for each target audience?

…for reaching those goals.

• It serves as a guide for all day-to-day… – In other words, it’s not a worthless document that gets created once and then stuffed in a file folder and forgotten about. It needs to be practical and written in plain English. The communications leader needs to regularly remind his or her team of the strategy and provide correction when the day-to-day communication is not aligned with the strategy.

…media, public relations and communication activities in which the organization is engaged.

Without a communications strategy, your organization will simply float along doing what you’ve always done or be tossed about by the storms of urgent demands for immediate results.

Don’t do it!  Develop a communications strategy! 

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be discussing how to develop a communications strategy, more specifically what to include, examples of communications strategies and more.

Discussion

• What drives your day-to-day communications? Are you living in the past (doing what you’ve always done)? Living in the moment (doing what you have to do to get the word out today)? Or guided by a written communications strategy?
• What do you think of the above definition of communications strategy? How would you improve upon it?

I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be leading a breakout session at this year’s Biola Digital conference June 4-6 at Biola University near Los Angeles. As the conference website states…

The biola.digital conference is designed to empower individuals with the vision, knowledge, and relationships necessary to be thoughtful stewards of digital technologies for the cause of Christ.

Join us as we gather together like-minded people around one primary goal: to understand how we can use digital technologies to accomplish the missions of our organizations. The conference will be organized around three tracks: Education, Strategy, and Theology.

There will be a slew of great speakers and sessions including keynote speaker Michael Hyatt.

My Session: Grand Central

In the last decade, the number of communications platforms has exploded. In addition to print and mass media, we now have websites, blogs, enewsletters, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ plus dozens of other smaller social networks and private social networks. What could be great new opportunities to connect people with your organization often becomes an overwhelming mess of chaos.

In my session titled, Grand Central: Making Your Website a Powerful Hub of Communication, Connection & Growth, I’m going to:

• Show you how to strategically organize all your organization’s communications channels so they all work together to help your organization achieve its mission.
• Teach you how to evaluate any communications platform (even those that haven’t been invented yet) to determine whether your organization should be using it or not.
• Provide you with the key elements of a successful website that attracts new people and inspires them towards ever-increasing levels of engagement.

It starts here, now

In the weeks leading up to the conference, I’ll be blogging about communications strategy and…

• Launching a survey so we can all get a better idea of what organizations are doing well, where they’re struggling and the most pressing communications strategy issues.
• Sharing some of the concepts I’ll be presenting in my session.
• Using your feedback and comments to refine my presentation, including possibly citing quotes and stories you post in comments.

So, what do you think of the conference? Will I see you there?

And what do you think of my topic? Does it resonate with you? Does it sound like it provides a compelling solution to a problem you’re struggling with?

The Internet is a dynamic place.  There are always new, innovative thought leaders coming onto the scene adding their unique insight and perspective, developing new tribes, leading new initiatives.  The areas of church communications, ministry & technology, Internet and social media – which we discuss here – are no different.

I love to connect with new people, share new ideas, and introduce others to people I know who they may share some common interests. So, I curious…

Who are the Christian communications/tech/web/social media thought leaders you are listening to and engaging with these days?

There are dozens, if not hundreds of great people who I listen to. I don’t have room to list them all and I would leave some out even if I tried.  So, here are 8 blogs/bloggers I find insightful.  Let me introduce you to them…

• churchmarketingsucks.com – @kevinhendricks
• timpeters.org – @TimRPeters
• socialmediachurch.net - @DJChuang
• stevefogg.com - @Stevefogg
• #ChSocM - @MeredithGould
• churchm.ag - Eric Dye, John Saddington
• michaelhyatt.com - @michaelhyatt
• Internet Evangelism Day – Tony Whittaker

Who is inspiring you, challenging you, providing you with new innovative ideas?

Who would you like to introduce other readers here to?

Last week, I had the privilege of being DJ Chuang’s guest on the Social Media Chur1ch G+ hangout on air.  One of the questions DJ asked me was, “What can a pastor do in social media with just 1 hour a week?”

My answer might surprise you…

What do you think?  If you were talking with a pastor who was new to social media and he only had 1 hour a week to invest in it, how would you advice he spend it?

Or if you are a pastor who invests just one hour a week in social media, how do you use that time strategically?

You can listen to a podcast of the full interview, plus get notes and related links on SocialMediaChurch.net at Paul Steinbrueck of Christian Web Trends: Episode 43 or watch the full interview on YouTube.

Tuesday, I had the privilege of being DJ Chuang’s guest on the Social Media Church G+ hangout on air.  One of the questions DJ asked me was, how do you advise pastors and church leaders to manage their time on social media so it doesn’t become a 24/7 thing?

Here’s an excerpt from the hangout with my answer:

What do you think?  How would you advise pastors and church leaders to manage their time on social media so it doesn’t become a 24/7 thing?

You can listen to a podcast of the full interview, plus get notes and related links on SocialMediaChurch.net at Paul Steinbrueck of Christian Web Trends: Episode 43 or watch the full interview on YouTube.

This is a sponsored post by Acts 2 Technology. Keep reading to learn how you can win a $100 Amazon Gift Certificate.

God is at Work Online: Reaching Millions of People

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While 4,000 churches in America are shutting down each year, more and more families are sleeping in on Sunday morning. How do you reach them and the millions across the world who need Jesus? How do we reach the disengaged? As Christians do we continue doing the traditional thing over and over, or do we creatively branch out and reach people where they are – on their laptops and smart phones? How do we advance the Kingdom, and fulfill the Great Commission in the 21st century?

Acts 2 Technology was born out of need and is an answer to these questions. It is an online eCourse platform that is affordable to all and easy to use. Online learning isn’t a new concept; corporations and educational institutes saw the need for online training years ago. But the technology was too costly for churches and those in the mission field until now. Our eCourse platform is a new technology that is changing all that. And God is blessing His people and offering His love and salvation through this new technology.

a Chinese missionary…

Our very first Acts 2 user was a Chinese missionary living in Canada. Her mission involved training nationalists to counsel and teach Chinese Christians meeting secretly in underground churches. Travelling back and forth was becoming too dangerous and exhausting for this 50ish lady. So, here’s how we helped her: We produced videos of her teachings, uploaded them into our eLearning platform and found a server provider abroad that could sidestep censorship by the Chinese government. Exactly one day after we were up and running in communist China, the government closed the underground churches. What they don’t know is that closing the churches had little impact. Hungry Christians are still studying God’s message of love and forgiveness through Acts 2 on their smart phones.

We think God gave us this challenge to see if we were in it for the long haul. We tackled the complexities and learned a whole lot. Today, forward thinking ministries, churches, preachers, evangelists and missionaries are turning their printed and spoken work into Acts 2 online courses. They have found that by using video (shot on their Smart Phones) to introduce their course, a rapport is established with their students, and engagement is higher. Plus they are saving money in printing, distribution and travel. And they are broadening their audience from one church, one city or country and expanding their reach to the world.

Easy for Everyone!

You don’t have to be a technology geek to use Acts 2. If you know Microsoft Word, you know us. Anyone who has a message, a book, workbook, audio or video series can easily upload into our eCourse system and send it out to the world. We provide ecommerce and password protection, which means you can charge for your courses and keep 100% of the money for your ministry. Contact Acts2Technology.com or call 469-287-5355.

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1. Tweet this post or share it on Facebook.
2. Post a comment telling us . . . your favorite time of day and why. And please include the Twitter/Facebook account where you shared the link in your comment.

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If you would like to learn more about Acts 2 and how you can be involved visit http://www.acts2technology.com or call 469-287-5355.

Digital media have transformed the world in the last 15 years. We have entered a new ‘digital communication culture’ where all the rules for effective communication have changed. Even offline!

There are 2+ billion web users, and over 5 billion people use mobile phones (increasingly these are web-equipped). The Web is not just another means of communication, but a hyper-medium that subsumes, links together, and enhances all previous media.

It’s in this context that Internet Evangelism Day takes place this Sunday, April 21.

Internet Evangelism Day is…

… NOT a single day in which Christians are encouraged to share their faith online – we should be sharing our faith online every day.  Rather it is an awareness day in which churches, schools and other Christian organizations make a concerted effort to inform their people about the myriad of opportunities and resources available to help in the sharing of our faith online as well as challenge and inspire each other to be more intentional about making the most of these opportunities and resources.

We at OurChurch.Com have blogged a lot about IEDay and ways to share our faith online in the past.  Here are some links to some great ideas!

• 20 Ways to Share Your Faith Online
• 14 digital ideas to share with your church
• 12 Ways to Share Your Faith Online with Instagram

What are some ways that you’ve shared your faith online?

Is your church or ministry doing anything to raise awareness about sharing our faith online on Internet Evangelism?

If not, there is still time.  And at the very least, you can champion the importance of sharing our faith online by blogging about it and sharing stories and ideas in social media.  You can do that, right?

I was reading “11 Tips I Gave to Marketers this Morning” by SEOMoz founder Rand Fishkin and this one jumped out at me:

#6 – Crappy content often outperforms amazing content when the publisher/brand/site has a powerful community.

Community is one of the most ignored/under-appreciated channels of an inbound marketing strategy, yet it makes every other channel – social, search, email, content, viral, etc. – more effective

I’ve been saying for years now Content is NOT King, relationships are.

Obviously none of us is out to create crappy content, but the point is, if you’re spending a lot of time writing, blogging, tweeting, sending out newsletters and you’re not getting the kind of response you’d like, perhaps you need to invest more in people and less in content.

• Who is your target audience?
• What are they like demographically? Psychographically?
• Where are they?
• Are they already congregating in online groups? Which ones?
• Are you engaged in those groups?  Not just sharing your own content but meeting people, listening to them, getting to know them, interacting with them?
• If your target audience is not congregating in an online group is this an opportunity for you to create and lead a new community?

Think who before what.

You can tweet me on that.

Think who before what.

Apr 12, 2013 9:38 am via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@paulsteinbrueck

Paul Steinbrueck

See 11 Tips I Gave to Marketers this Morning for Rand’s other 10 tips.

How do you prioritize your time, strategic thinking and energy between content and community?