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“People with real influence don’t talk about it; they do things.” (tweet that if you like)

I love that brilliant bit of insight which Linda Bernsteinof, aka @WordWhacker tweeted in a recent #GetRealChat tweet chat.

It’s a great reminder that real influence is not a matter of how many friends or followers or shares you get in social media.  Real influence is doing things – taking initiative, leading, organizing, and inspiring others – that have a positive impact on people’s lives.

What are you doing – online or offline – that’s having a real influence?

Don’t be shy or humble. Share your excitement! Give God the glory for what he is enabling you to do!

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

(feel free to retweet that)

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

@OurChurchDotCom

OurChurch (dot) Com

(Feel free to retweet that)

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.

What is SEO? The quick answer is Search Engine Optimization, basically setting up your website so that it’s easily read and catalogued by the search engines and engaging in strategies that both tell search engines what your site is about and tell them that your website is important. All this allows your website to rank at the top of the search results for the keywords (search terms) related to your website and brings your website tons of traffic.

This begs the questions:

• How do I make my site readable by the search engines?
• How do I tell the search engines what your site is about?
• How do I convince the search engines my website is important?

In this video I’ll explain what SEO is and what some of the strategies are which can help you to optimize your website.

“Hi, I’m Kurt Steinbrueck, Director of Marketing Services with OurChurch.Com. In this video…” You can read the full transcript at: What is SEO?

Check out other video posts in this series Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About SEO.

Share your thoughts:

• What have you done to optimize your website?
• What SEO strategies do you use?
• What SEO strategies do you recommend?
• Do you have any questions about SEO?

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.

Last week Jason Wiser started a discussion in the Christians in Business G+ community about an article written by Himanshu Sharma titled, Here is why SEO is not for Small Business Owners. The gist of it is…

SEO is no longer just adding keywords in the title tag and getting links from cheap directories… SEO has become more complex than ever. Therefore it is no longer a question of whether or not you can do it yourself. You need outside help. Period. The question that you should be asking is whether you can really “afford” SEO with a small budget. The answer is “No”.

Himanshu justifies his conclusion by listing a whole bunch of strategies and tactics involved in SEO today including:

• Authorship
• Social Media
• Content development and marketing
• Local Search
• Co-Citations and co-occurrence
• SEO Tools
• Analytics
• Fixing/avoiding Google penalties.
• Reading blog posts 24/7 to keep up to date with the ever changing Search Engine Landscape.

The bottom line is that Himanshu concludes that SEO cannot be cost-effective for a small business, and therefore small businesses should focus on paid search ads such as Google AdWords which provide immediate results.

Himanshu is right in many respects.

• SEO has become more complex than ever
• SEO may involve all of the items listed above plus others he didn’t mention including keyword research, running ranking reports, monitoring search rankings
• It takes a lot of effort to keep up with the ever changing search engine landscape
• SEO takes months to get results while AdWords can provide immediate results

The problem with Himanshu’s conclusion…

… however, is that small businesses do not necessarily need to employ all the techniques he lists. Additionally, many small local businesses do not have a lot of competitors, and those competitors they do have often are not doing any SEO.

If you own a cupcake shop in Columbus, you’re a locksmith in Long Beach or a mobile auto detailer in Des Moines how many competitors do you have? 5? 15? It doesn’t take a whole lot of SEO mojo to make the first page of the search results. And with the right techniques and a moderate amount of work, a local small business site could be in the top 3 or even #1 within a few months.

The cost-effective SEO solution for small businesses

The challenge for most small business owners is they don’t have a good understanding of the complex strategies and tactics needed to do SEO well. And learning SEO, developing an SEO strategy, implementing it and then continue the ongoing work of monitoring and improving results is not most cost-effective use of their time.

But for the SEO professional who already understands SEO, has developed SEO strategies with proven results and has the tools and systems in place to do SEO efficiently, SEO for a small business does not have to cost a lot. For example, we at Ourchurch.Com offer a Local Business Search Marketing service for just $499 up front and $149 a month.

Can a small business afford $149/mo to be on the first page of Google?

When I compare that to the cost of other types of marketing and consider how many people are searching for products and services online, I can’t help but conclude a small business can’t afford not to be on the first page of Google.

And therefore…

SEO *IS* for Small Business Owners

You can read the full article, Here is why SEO is not for Small Business Owners, here if you like.

You’re thoughts?