Amanda Pelser… Ramblings of a Communications Director …

Mark MacDonald led this session on three main ways to use the internet in church outreach:

1. e-Blast – Internal Communication
2. Social Media – Interacting with Community
3. Blogging – Engaging Community

The overall concepts were very familiar to me and we’re already doing many things in each of these three areas at Southbrook, but Mark gave some interesting and helpful details and examples.  In addition, Mark was a great presenter – knowledgeable, relevant, and funny…  He had my attention the whole time.  The free t-shirt and Starbucks gift card certainly helped too!

Rather than recap the entire outline of the session, I’m just posting a few of the points that made an impact on me:

• One church who has gotten rid of their printed worship guide has a printer available so print worship guides on demand for those who want one.
• e-Blasts, like websites, are really all about the content.
• Color, photography, bold words, bullet, etc are all good eye-interrupters.
• 38% of evangelicals downloaded a sermon last week.

Action items for me based on Mark’s data and suggestions:

• Check our connecting email for eye-tracking issues.
• Use Constant Contact statistics to measure effectiveness of our connecting email.
• Work harder to get email addresses for our congregation.
• Review our social media presence for consistency in branding.
• Set a goal and a plan to meet that goal for this blog.