Nothing ever stays the same for very long in the world of search.  This past month Google has made some big changes.  The biggest change is their release of the new Penguin 2.0 update.  This update is the followup of their Penguin 1.0 update a little over a year ago that made major changes in how links are counted.  So, the rankings for your website may be shifting around right now.  But that’s OK.  I’ll explain why in the video.

The release of Penguin isn’t the only thing Google has been up to either.  I’ll quickly touch on some of the other changes that have been taking place, including a major update to Google Maps.

Catch up on everything from the past few weeks in just a few minutes by watching the video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_LtGlMLO3A

“Hello I’m Kurt Steinbrueck director of marketing services with OurChurch.Com.  I’m here with your May Seo update so you can stay informed…(Click here for a full transcript)”

Summary:

• Google releases Penguin 2.0
• What do you do if your rankings drop from the Penguin 2.0 update?
• Google drops Instant Preview
• Google Image Search traffic way down
• Google announces focus on promoting authorities in niches
• Google revamps Google Maps

Share Your Thoughts:

• Did your website’s rankings change from the Penguin 2.0 release?
• Did you ever use Google Instant Preview?
• Have you established yourself as an authority in your niche?  If so, how?

LifeWay CEO, Thom Rainer, who spent many years as a church consultant and has authored many books on the subject has authored a blog post published this week on the Pastors.com blog titled…

Seven (Hopefully) Helpful Hints After Seven Months of Visiting Churches

#2 on his list?

2)Many of your websites are terrible. Please make them user friendly. I want to see the worship times clearly on the home page. I want to be able to find the church’s physical address. I want to know what the church believes. I found out a lot more about potluck meals and senior trips than I did doctrine and worship times. Most of the websites were designed for those who knew a lot about the church. 

You tell ‘em, Thom!

Yet another reminder that if a church takes the gospel seriously and actually wants people to visit, hear the Word and connect with Christ and his church, it needs to take its website seriously.

It doesn’t have to be flashy. It doesn’t have to have live streaming video of your services. It doesn’t have to have the power to turn water into wine.  It just needs to be pleasant, user friendly and provide the info people want before they visit.

For Thom’s other 6 tips you can read the full article here.

Discussion

• How high a priority is having a pleasant, user-friendly website with visitor info for your church?
• How well is your church’s current site serving visitors?  How do you know?

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Don’t have a communications strategy?

Not sure how to develop one?

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Responses to the Communications Strategy Survey continue to pour in, and it’s clear that one of the biggest barriers to developing a better communications strategy many people have is they just aren’t sure how to develop one.

So many organizations skip developing strategy and jump right into tactics – that is doing the day-to-day communications tasks. But as Sun Tzu wrote:

Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. -Sun Tzu

May 21, 2013 9:13 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

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Avoid defeat! Develop a communications strategy!

I’ve tried to prune the process down to its basic elements. I give you…

Communications Strategy in 6 Words

1) Why?

Why are we communicating? We can break that down further by asking some additional questions…

• Why does our organization exist? (Hint it’s in your mission/vision statement)
• What are the goals and objectives of our communications? (They should align with your mission/vision statement)

2) Who?

This question has two parts:

• Who are we? What is our brand? Our message? Our culture? What is it that makes our organization unique?
• Who are our target audiences? Who are we trying to reach? Who are our existing customers/members/students? What are their demographics? What do they like? What do they think about? What communications platforms are they already using?

3) What?

What do our target audiences have need of? What can we provide to them? You might start with the products or services you provide, but think deeper than that. What do those things provide? Security? Significance? A community of love and acceptance? A deeper connection with God?

Now what do our target audiences have need of from a communications perspective to experience those benefits? An invitation to visit our community of faith? Regular reminders of opportunities for spiritual growth? Notices of opportunities to try a product or service that will lead to better productivity, relationships, leadership or fulfillment? An online community for sharing ideas & discussing challenges?

4) How?

Now that we know what our audiences need, how can we best deliver that to them? This is where we finally get to talk tactics.

• What platforms should we use for each audience?
• What content will we publish to each platform?
• What’s the content schedule going to be?
• Who is going to do what?
• What systems, processes and policies will we use?

5) ¿Cuántos?

That’s “how many?” for you gringos To keep the theme of one-word questions I had to mix in a little Spanish lingo. Once we’ve determined our tactics, we need to decide what we’re going to measure so we can evaluate our success. What metrics are we going to track? What are our numerical goals?

Note that tactical metrics are useful (e.g. number of Facebook shares each month), but the most important metrics are those used to evaluate whether our objectives (our why) is being achieved. How many people visited our church, bought our product, or signed up for our ministry newsletter after first hearing about us on Facebook? Twitter? Google search?

6) Where?

Where do we go from here? What is our process for reviewing our metrics, adjusting our tactics and revising our strategy?

Strategic thinking will never be simple or easy, but I hope these 6 words help give clarity to the strategic planning process. And I hope that clarity inspires you to do the hard work of developing a great communications strategy!

Discussion

• What comments or questions do you have about this approach to developing a communications strategy?
• What would you add, remove or change?
• Which of these questions do you need to address in your organization’s communications strategy?

Also see: 4 Common Barriers to Developing a Good Communications Strategy (and How to Overcome Them)

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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

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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

(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.