Nov
20
Generating Rockin’ Content by Asking Questions
ByContinuing in the Building Rockin’ Church Websites, let’s talk about about content.
To determine what content to offer on your site, begin by brainstorming and listing all the questions that you think your primary audiences – guests and congregation – will be asking?
[Note: Please read the comments to this post. Frank Johnson of Strategic Digital Outreach has some good advice and insights on this post.]
Here are some sample questions to ask for those two audiences …
GUESTS:
- Who is the pastor? (At both the churches I’ve served at, the pastor’s bio page was one of the most popular pages)
- When does the worship service(s) start?
- How do I get to the church?
- What are the services like?
- What do I need to wear?
- How about childcare? Is it safe and secure? Clean?
- How can I get connected (to a small group or Sunday school class)?
- How do I join?
- What does the church believe?
- Who is Jesus?
- Who do I need to contact to talk about …
- I need help … who can I call?
- Can I make a prayer request?
- What’s the history of the church?
CONGREGATION:
- Where and most importantly when are church events happening?
- Can I invite my friends, family, neighbors and coworkers?
- Are sermons available online?
- What quality Bible study resources are available online?
- How can I contact the staff? Email, phone?
- How can I serve?
- Are there any upcoming missions trips I can be a part of?
- How can I give online?
- Can I make a prayer request?
- Can I register for an event online?
- How can I get connected to a small group or Sunday school class?
- Can I get regular updates from the church via email?
Start by asking great questions. The kind of questions your guests and your congregation will be asking of your site.
… and you’ll be on the way to rockin’!
See all the posts in the Building Rockin’ Church Websites here.
Cory – I prefer to divide the potential target audience of a church website into three groups: 1) congregation; 2) believers looking for a church (corresponds roughly to your guests); and, 3) unbelievers.
In my opinion, most of what a church website targeted to the congregation does can be accomplished in better ways (e.g., news and announcements are better spread through the vehicle of small groups, in the context of deep Christian community).
Most of what you’ve outlined as questions quests need answered does, in fact, serve the purpose of informing believers looking for a church.
But in all this, the unbeliever is left out. The average unbeliever has no interest in who our pastor is (because they have no intention of meeting him/her), when the service starts (because they have no intention of attending a service), who to call when they need help (because they would never think a church could help them), etc., etc.
How can we use our websites to reach the growing segment of our population who thinks the church is irrelevant to their lives. I would propose that we tell the life stories of our people in an engaging fashion (not religious testimonies, but real life stories that talk about our interests, our hopes, our dreams, our sorrows, our struggles, etc.) so that the unbeliever will find common ground with us and want to meet with us.
In my opinion, an online strategy to reach unbelievers is missing from 99% of all church websites, and I believe it’s a vast opportunity that is tragically being ignored.
Frank, I like your three groups better than mine … it’s more focused.
But I’d respectfully disagree … the question I have then is … if they don’t care about all those things, then why are they on the church Website in the first place?
But I totally agree that we need to have more web strategies for reaching the lost …
But (third but here) … trying to tackle all of this adequately is a challenge. It almost needs separate strategies. I mean if the unchurched/lost aren’t even going to come to a church website, then it probably needs its own domain name, etc.
Cory – thanks for the quick response. My point is that unbelievers aren’t visiting the church website at all. Most would take that as a reason to not target them at all. I would say, however, that unbelievers aren’t visiting the church website because we don’t have anything of interest to them on our websites.
If we would put content which would interest them, they would visit the site.
A few years back, I built a website for a church (unfortunately, the site is no longer online in the wake of some leadership changes) that wanted to use their website almost exclusively to reach out to unbelievers.
We decided to post profiles of believers within the congregation and make those profiles the dominant content on the site. We started out with five believers: 1) Ed, who suffered from hepatitis-C from drug use prior to his salvation; 2) Chris, who was a former right-rear-tire man on a championship Indianapolis 500 team and a former alcoholic; 3) Tyler, an actor and musician who was a very atypical Christian in terms of appearance, but fit in very well to the subculture in our area; 4) Michael, who was formerly deeply involved in Eastern religions; and, 5) Stanzy, a teenager girl who suffered from leukemia.
The profiles consisted of a short summary of their life stories, transcripts of extended interviews with them, and a page of their favorite links. Ultimately, we wanted to show video clips of their interviews. We also wanted to expand significantly beyond the 5 believers we initially profiled (we hoped to ultimately have hundreds of profiles).
The profiles were not religious testimonies, but instead were packed with content about the people’s life experiences, along with some commentary about how their relationship with Christ impacted their experiences. For example, Ed told the story of how he contracted hepatitis-C, how he found out he had the disease, his struggles with the disease until he had a liver transplant, how he found a release through his artistic talent, his love of music, and most importantly (but subtly), how his relationship with Christ helped him cope through the years when he didn’t know if he would live or die.
Although the concept lost a lot of its steam in the wake of leadership changes, our idea was to promote these life stories through search engine positioning, pay-per-click campaigns, movie theater advertisements, banner advertising on local websites, postcards to targeted mailing lists in our local area, etc., etc.
Our objective was that these profiles would draw unbelievers who had similar life stories to the website, and that the unbelievers would read the stories and be so intrigued that they would want to meet the believer whose life story corresponded to their own.
For example, we wanted people who suffered from hepatitis-C in our area to read Ed’s article and want to meet him face-to-face. We were convinced that face-to-face community is the foundation of all effective outreach, and so we wanted to use the church’s website to facilitate face-to-face meetings between unbelievers and believers around common life experiences and interests.
Again, unbelievers don’t come to our websites because what we have to say doesn’t interest them. The solution to that is not to decide to not post content that would interest them because they aren’t coming, but to instead change our philosophy of what content should be on a church website.
You’re right – tackling all of this adequately is a perhaps insurmountable challenge for all but the largest of churches. That’s why I tell churches to not target believers at all with their websites but instead to target unbelievers initially. Then, if they have the time and resources to provide something for church members and believers looking for a church, they can work to offer something for them. Again, I think there are much better (although they may be less efficient) ways of providing information to church members than the use of a website.
Another domain is a possibility, although I have yet to see it done well. If another domain is used, I would advocate using the church’s primary website as the site for unbelievers because we always want to at least imply that the online experience an unbeliever has at the church website will only be completed when they become exposed to and immersed in the local Christian community (which is where the message of the gospel is most effectively presented).
Frank, I love your insights …
I think though that you still need to offer something for each of the three groups you mentioned. I keep our members updated through our calendars and an email newsletter. But the main church site is primarily designed for guests .. maybe the second audience you mentioned.
But the third audience, in my case, is neglected for sure. I did mention recently about how I’d love more churches to start blogs on topics like money to reach out to the community.
I think you could accomplish what you’re talking about through a blog … and someone with a passion for that ministry and subject.
I wish I had more time and the passion for a particular subject (other than church communications) to start one with our church. All along, I thought it’d be an awesome way to reach out and also get exposure for the church.
Frank, we need to collaborate on a post about all this. I’m afraid not everyone will get to see your insights and our dialogue.
Cory, with regard to blogs, our plan with the church website I worked on was to eventually allow everyone who was profiled to have a blog on the site so that they would have the opportunity to add to their stories. Again, the reason I would want those blogs to reside on the domain of the main church website is to more easily complete the cycle of having an unbeliever read a life story, want to meet the person profile, and then want to join the community of believers at regular gatherings (because we have suggested, albeit perhaps subtly, that the life story and the regular gatherings are connected).
I’d love to collaborate on a post. Let’s talk further.