Christianity

Church Marketing and Why Nobody Likes Doing It

January 19, 2011, by No comments yet

Last night at our monthly Bishop’s Committee meeting, the topic of updating our sign came up. We have a run of the mill church sign that lights up on both sides with black plastic letters. Once a week, someone has to go out and knock off the old message and put up the new one. I have done it many times and it takes about an hour start to finish. The reason it came up last night is that because it takes a bit of time to organize all the letters, take the old ones down and then put up the new ones, no one wants to do it. It is currently falling to our vicar and that’s not really fair to him. He has plenty to do and sign duty should not be added.

My friend who brought it up, wanted to get a newer sign that has scrolling text. These signs can be updated from within the church office and do not require someone to go outside. Not only that, but it is much faster to update. The only problem is the cost. Somewhere between 10-15K.

Not surprisingly, there was some discussion and disagreement. Now, we are fortunate to be in a family neighborhood, literally right next to an elementary school with a high school a block away. We get a lot of foot and car traffic in front of the church. No doubt the sign will attract attention. The real question is whether or not this is a good choice for advertising. Personally, I have mixed feelings. I can see where it would benefit us. The only thing worse than having no sign, is having one that does not get changed often. As I mentioned, we suffer from the latter.

So, what are the alternatives in today’s marketplace? Well, you can still purchase print advertising. Even with the decline in readership, our church demographic would still be targeted by newspaper or neighborhood newsletter advertising. But, that only gets the older members of our community that do not use the Internet or prefer traditional methods of news gathering. In order to reach younger, web-connected persons, you will invariably end up advertising on Google or Facebook. Their reach into almost any online news source or social networking site can not be ignored. After using Google to successfully market events on our campus, I know their reach is powerful. My suggestion is to use a mix of traditional and online advertising to reach a broad and diverse audience.

Google Apps for Personal Email

December 29, 2010, by No comments yet

I registered a domain for my family’s email some years ago and it has been hosted by a traditional method. I use a company (Dreamhost) that provides web and email hosting. So far, this has been a great option to the various free email services that are popular for a day and then get replaced. I wanted something that would last years and always allow me to connect with people over that time. This hosted solution has other advantages, most notably, the ability to save all my email and access it via IMAP. Those two can not be over exaggerated when your wife wants an email you sent last month and you only have your iPhone. Traditional email uses POP, which anyone who uses a desktop will tell you, once you download it, you can’t get it back on webmail. Hence the mail hosting. Over the years, free webmail has grown to encompass these two advantages of the traditional hosting model, but still require you to use their domain, i.e. me@fremail.com. Not bad, but not terribly portable. If they go out of business/get bought out/change service, you’re out of luck. So, I had not real reason to move from Dreamhost to another hosting solution for my email.

Until recently.

I noticed Dreamhost tried hard to advertise the ability to host your email on Gmail for several months before I actually even looked at what it meant.  Essentially, they are referencing Google’s App service. For just about any organization, you can get fifty (50) free accounts that come with Gmail, Docs and Calendaring. Not bad. Everyone needs email these days. Throw in calendaring and document creation and you have me interested. The real trick would be how this all worked.

It was easy.

Dreamhost has a link on the panel under mail management to get you started.  Essentially, you sign-up with Google Apps for your domain and then have the option to setup what apps are available and for whom. After that, you can access email, calendar and docs with ease. The pieces that intrigue me the most are calendar sharing and storage capacity. I uploaded my entire email archive and it came in at almost 7600 messages and several hundred megabytes. That’s pretty large for some and not so much for others. To get it up there, Google also has a handy little tool aptly named the Google Email Uploader. I used it on my Mac with Mail and had no problems uploading both my and my wife’s email. The only email that was skipped were duplicates. It all ended up under a label (Google eschews the traditional folder paradigm for IMAP accounts) with today’s date.

So far, no problems.

Great video about true Christianity – all are welcome, especially us sinners

December 10, 2010, by No comments yet

[Updated] Plagiarism by any other name is still stealing

November 5, 2010, by No comments yet

One of the Internet controversies today is the copying and reuse without permission (i.e. stealing) of an article written by Monica Gaudio on her website Godecookery.com related to the change of apple pie recipes over time. Unfortunately, the editor of another website Cook’s Source, took the original article, edited it and posted without attribution or permission.

We should stop here to discuss something very important.

Content on a website may be available for the public to read (assuming there is no login necessary to read), but it is not available for the public to take and copy, especially verbatim. While we have all seen content on another website that looks interesting, copied portions, edited it and then posted, it is largely for inspiration and not wholesale copying. If it were copying or use of another website’s photographs/images/art, that is theft.  We all know that copying a news story from the local newspaper is illegal, whether it’s in print or the web. The same is true for private writer’s and their content. Like this post.

Back to our story.

When she was made aware of the content being posted somewhere else,  Monica attempted to contact the site owner.  Both by email and telephone call, she made numerous attempts. Eventually, the magazine editor returned her message and promptly informed her of the following:

Yes Monica, I have been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws. It was “my bad” indeed, and, as the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things.

But honestly Monica, the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me… ALWAYS for free!

I am sure to most experienced web users, this sounds preposterous. If this were true, why would news organizations freely post news on their web pages? Why would anyone put up personal photos? Why would any musician allow downloads of their music? If it’s on the web and free, anyone can take anything. Unfortunately, for the Cook’s Source editor, her position is demonstrably false. Monica posted on her blog a resource available from the University of Maryland University College discussing this very topic.

While this might seem off topic for this blog, in reality, it is relevant to those in ministry. When you are starting out, it is very tempting to copy content from another source, either text or images. In short, don’t do it. It is not only stealing (Ten Commandments anyone?), but it’s also wrong to start off with the mindset that your ministry can be done by taking things without asking. It doesn’t hurt to ask, and, if they say no, look for additional resources. You might not start out with a drop dead gorgeous website the first time out, but you can get there very quickly. Hosting can cost <$10/month and templates for Joomla/Drupal/WordPress can be purchased for <$100. Invest in your ministry and reap the rewards.

Don’t hobble your website for short term gain and have to apologize later.

A few other things related to this story:

  • The original article was not copied in it’s entirety, just portions of it.
  • The original article was also written in old English, thus the editor’s belief “the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing”.
  • The response to this plagiarism on the Internet is huge.
    1. Several heavily trafficked websites have taken up the cause
    2. Someone created fake Facebok page for Cook’s Source
    3. Someone else created fake Twitter account for Cook’s Source and is responding to commentors as if they are from the magazine

Update: According to NPR, Cook’s Source did credit her with a byline.

Note to self…

October 8, 2010, by No comments yet

always make sure to change the email address to the church administrator instead of leaving it your personal one.  Otherwise, you will still get emails from the hosting company even after you have “handed it over” to the pastor.

Really have to remember that one.