Churches have so much to offer the people of this world. You have been given a mission by Christ to spread the Gospel message to everyone. Deliberate and intentional marketing is an important way to connect with people and share your message with them. Developing church online is an effective way
to reach the new digital mission field.

This is how you communicate with the public. You’ll share why your church exists and tell them why they should care about your organization.

Here are some ways to engage in marketing and outreach:

• Word of Mouth - Train your members to be ambassadors for your church. They can invite the people they know in the community to your services and events.
• Website - This is the heart of your online outreach.
• Live Streaming - Many people will want to check out your service online before actually attending. Setting up a way to live stream your services is really important.
• Social Media - This is a great way to empower your members to reach out to people in the community. 
  
• Paid Online Advertising - This helps people in the community who are looking for churches find you.
• Traditional Marketing - Direct mailing, billboards, television and radio are still relevant and reach many people.
  
  

Marketing today is largely digital and mobile. 64% of American adults have some kind of smartphone. Many more are using tablets and other mobile devices. Reaching people in today’s world is greatly dependent on developing a marketing strategy that relies heavily on mobile-friendly, online tools.

The strategic use of these tools will help you to effectively create a church online. Visitors from around the corner or around the globe will be able to connect with your congregation and have an experience of your vision and values. By bringing together all the digital communications tools, you create a 24/7 online
experience of your church that begins by attracting people to a live streaming service and encourages them to follow your church throughout the week via automated digital tools and social media that personalize the online experience.

Outreach and evangelism are mission-critical to every church and ministry. Senior church leadership should be involved in the planning and development of a marketing strategy. The execution of this strategy will fall to the same person in charge of internal communications. There may also be a marketing team made up of paid staff , volunteers, and outsourced freelancers.

Marketing is directed at the larger public in your community. You can focus on the local neighborhood around your church, but a digital strategy can also give you a global focus. You can spread your message to people online around the world. Marketing will be deployed on many communications channels. These include your website, social media, mobile devices, and other online media tools.

This is another activity that comes at the end of the development process. In order to engage in external marketing, you need to have a well-developed brand and clear goals that you want to achieve. You also need to have a strategy developed to achieve these goals. Without these, attempts to market your church may be premature. Learn about strategic branding for churches>>

• ​6 Tips for Improving Internal Church Communication
• How to Create Digital Disciples in Your Church Community​
• Member Advocacy (Becoming Social Media Ambassadors for Christ)​​​
• Strategic Branding
• Tips for Getting Your Content Noticed
• Tips for Your Member Care Strategy​

Posted with permission from the book reTHINK.Ministry. ​

With Facebook’s organic reach for Pages declining, organizations are finding new ways to increase how many people see their posts that just aren’t showing up in the News Feed anymore. Some companies have started equipping their employees to share company news and content on their personal social media accounts in a way that includes them in the social media strategy.

Called “employee advocacy,” it provides a simple mechanism for employees to choose from a variety of pre-selected posts, including text, and post to their own social media accounts. Companies are seeing much higher total click-rates when the content is coming from their employee’s personal profiles instead of the company accounts.

Imagine assembling 25 of your church’s most active social media members onto a Member Advocate team and giving them a pool of content to pull from every week. Not only do they get to choose which content they share, but can also suggest new material and truly take ownership of the church’s brand. They can share events your church is promoting, a link to your website, a video your produced, or anything else you’d like to promote. The only difference is it’s not just coming from one account, but many, which ranks that content higher in Facebook’s algorithm.

There are a number of services out there that streamline this process for a fee: Hootsuite offers it’s platform Amplify, SproutSocial has Bambu, and Oktopost and DrumUp are stand-alone solutions. These all make social sharing super-easy for your advocates (members can even schedule their posts for the week) and provide the data on how big your team’s impact was, but come at a price.

However, Member Advocacy is also as easy as sending out an email once a week with links to the content and text. Your advocates simply copy/paste and they’re done. The hard part is getting people to actually post, which is why it’s a good idea to run a gift card contest every month to see who has shared the most. Make sure to include the leaderboard in each week’s content email.

So if your church has no Member Advocacy (aka Digital Discipleship or Social Media Ambassadors) program in place, give it a try. It is so fun to see people getting engaged and taking ownership of the church’s story. And naturally more people will know what is happening in church life since they’re out there promoting it. It’s a win all the way around!

Livestreaming is one of the most powerful tools that you can leverage for your organization's digital marketing strategy and approach. Engaging with your audience in real-time and providing them unique experience comes second to none with most content experiences. In the world of content marketing, livestreaming is quickly becoming one of the most common and powerful tools for organizations.

As powerful as it is, if done incorrectly, it can yield weak results or even hurt your brand!

One of the most common shortcomings of livestream content is the quality of the actual livestream. If you're looking to engage with your audience effectively and produce content that is Evergreen in nature, the quality of the livestream is vitally important.

After talking with several leaders involved in their organization's marketing and content strategy efforts, livestreaming can seem expensive and daunting. The truth is, it doesn't have to be.

You can get a livestream that looks like a million dollars on a tight budget. 
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In this article I'll cover 3 different ways that you can take your livestream to the next level.

Mevo is a complete livestreaming solution that allows you to setup and shoot wherever you are with great quality. They have a huge community of people that are willing and able to help, a dedicated support staff and a large user-base which is always a huge plus; big userbases typically means that new features and software will be considered with each release more often. Here are some of the most notable features that places it at the top of my list:

1. Multi-camera action (without multiple cameras): You can cut and edit your stream in real-time using Mevo's incredible mobile application. Prior to going live, you can setup the shots you want and cut to them dynamically while your stream is happening!
2. 1080p streaming and 4k native: Not only can you stream in hi-def, you can also shoot in 4k which can be saved natively to an SD card that is inserted into the camera. You can record events in 4k while streaming - this is the one of the best features about this product.
3. Livetracking subjects: Move around a lot? Mevo's dynamic live-tracking will actually allow you to track the individual portraits and shots seamlessly. It's not a perfect feature, but if your subject is making minor movements, Mevo will keep it framed the entire time.
4. Connect on Wi-fi, LTE or Ethernet: Use any internet connection you have available to shoot - imagine doing a livestream inside of a Starbucks, or on location at an event!

Mevo is one of my favorite products for livestreaming and I would definitely encourage anyone to consider using it if they are looking for quality AND value. 

The Logitech C922x webcam is a great, simple and cheap solution for livestreaming with really good quality. There are a few limitations, such as needing a laptop or computer to stream from and also lacking the ability to do multiple edits/cuts, but for the price-point, it is a great alternative.

The Logitech C922x also comes with a ton of accessories such as tripods, desk clamps, and other accessories to bring your livestream to the next level. 

The Logitech C922x has a few standout features:

1. Stream at 1080p with 30fps or you can stream at 720p at 60fps. Either way you are getting great looking video.
2. Great built-in stereo microphone for audio - not the best on the market, but again, for the price-point it is pretty stand out.
3. Setup and start streaming in minutes - One of the biggest benefits of the Logitech C922x is that you can connect it and start streaming almost immediately. Setup is plug and play and it works with Apple and Windows computers.

Churches are communities of people, so good lines of communications are necessary in order to work most effectively together. Thriving organizations have excellent internal communication systems in place. These systems help leaders cast visions and set goals. They help organize the congregation to achieve these goals. Solid communications help members feel connected and involved with your church. An effective internal communications system creates a dialogue that is clear and healthy between your congregation and the church leaders. 

You cannot begin to reach out and attract new people to your church community if you don't have a solid internal communications system. Otherwise, when new people come, they may not experience a warm welcome. Instead, they may feel left out of the loop, confused, and frustrated about how to fit in with your church. In short, good communications effectively integrate new people into your church community. 

Your internal communications system is composed of all the channels that you use to communicate with the members of your congregation. In the past, communication was simple. Church bulletins, pulpit announcements, and phone calls made sure that everyone knew what was going on. 

Today, communication is more complex. People are busy, and they don't always read the bulletin or attend weekly planning meetings. If you want to keep your entire congregation in the loop, you are going to have to communicate across more channels. Email, social media, text messaging, and possibly mobile apps will all be important components of your internal communications system. 

In other words, your internal communications system is going to have an external layer. The phrase used to describe this is 'church online.' This means that your online presence will replicate the experience of participating in your live congregation. It will be a fully interactive experience that your members and visitors can engage in beyond weekend services and live events. An effective, online, church experience is created from strategically using all the digital and mobile communication channels at your disposal. 

Internal communications is a church-wide effort to dialogue with church staff and members of the congregation. It covers all the communications channels and includes the software and hardware that allows your church to engage in a dialogue with its loyal visitors and members while laying the foundation
to interact with the outside world.

For many churches, no one has ownership over the communication channels. Secretaries produce the bulletins, volunteers run the website and social media, and others manage the email. In order to bring all your communications together in a strategic way, someone has to take leadership.

It will be very helpful for your church to designate a Communication Director / Manager. Some churches may be able to hire someone to fill this position. Others may simply give these responsibilities to someone already on the pastoral team or a committed volunteer. This person will manage a team of people to execute an overall digital communications strategy.

After planning, the Communication Director / Manager works very closely with the pastoral team to ensure that the digital strategy synergizes with the overall pastoral plan for the year.

To be most effective, internal communications needs to work closely with external marketing (next chapter). As a result, the communication director (or communication manager) will be interfacing with both systems. It is recommended to select a lead person who is capable of seeing the overall picture and
how each aspect of the strategy plays its part.

The target audience for your internal communications is going to be both members and visitors. You will need to focus on these two groups and their needs. You will also want to prioritize the training of members to interact effectively with visitors.

With so many potential communication channels out there, you might be wondering where to start. The best way is to survey your congregation. You want to find out what communications channels they have available to them. Setting up a Twitter account is not going to help you if the members of your congregation do not use Twitter. Once you have good data on the preferred communications channels of your congregation, you can begin to make decisions about how to design your own internal communications system.

Armed with this knowledge about your congregation, you can begin to look at the kinds of messages you want to communicate to your congregation and outline a content strategy. Then proceed with the following steps: 

• Optimizing Your Existing Communications Channels: Take a look at the communication channels which are currently in place. You want to ask yourself if these channels are as effective as they could be. Are you promoting the use of these channels by your congregation? Are these channels coordinated to effectively communicate the messages that you want? Revisit what you are doing with your existing communications so that you can bring them into alignment with your brand and overall communication goals. 
• Update Your Membership Database: You will not be able to communicate effectively if you do not have a good member database. An outdated membership database could mean you are not reaching everyone. You will need current contact information for everyone in your congregation.This information must include current cell phone numbers and emails.
• Add New Channels If Needed: The process of adding new channels requires careful planning.
  You want to add new communications tools one at a time so that your congregation can get used to using them. Adding too much at once will overwhelm your staff, volunteers who manage the communications, and your congregation. You want to make sure that you are not just hopping on the latest fad and that you have the right kind of content for the new channel you are adopting.
• Document the Use of Your Communication Channels: You should also develop a documented set of best practices for using these communication channels. This will include how frequently each channel will be used, what kinds of communications will be sent on each channel, and the criteria required for making an announcement.
• Launch and Promote the Use of Your Communication Channels: An email or text may not be enough to get your congregation on board. You may need to explain why a new tool makes sense before people adopt it. One congregation that we work with has an older population. They have to spend a lot of time teaching their older members how to use the communication tools. But the fruits are tremendous because many people have become more connected to their congregation than ever before. 
• 24/7 Church Online: Setting up an internal communication system is about picking the people to manage communications, putting communications processes in place, and picking the best tech tools to implement these processes. Once the people, processes, and technology are in place, you can begin to develop a strategy that puts these digital tools to work beyond your current congregation. The result will be an online church experience that is available 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

Before you tackle the steps above, be sure to define your brand and develop your overall communications
strategy. In reality, you are already communicating with your congregation in some way. Most congregations use pulpit announcements and bulletins. Many have websites with online sermons. Some churches may also use email and social media. So, this part of the digital strategy process involves taking stock of what you are already doing and aligning it with the vision and goals that you have developed. Once you do this, you can add new components to your internal communications system to help you to achieve your goals.
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Posted with permission from the book reTHINK.Ministry.