What I learned from emailing you every week this summer
The numbers surprised me. The lesson didn’t. Before summer started, I decided to run a small experiment: could I raise my visibility without pulling focus from the clients I already serve? My current clients need my attention undivided, not split across chasing new leads. But going quiet for months at a time is bad for […]
Is it shareable?
The question I keep coming back to lately. This is something I’ve mentioned from time to time in my teaching and consulting over the years, but it’s come up more often recently: is it shareable? Not “will people read it.” Not even “will people click it.” Would someone actually forward this, post it, or bring […]
In defense of words
Why browsing isn’t the whole story I say it often enough that it’s become a bit of a personal catchphrase: people don’t read websites, they browse them. It’s true, and it’s useful shorthand when a client wants to cram every ministry update onto the homepage. But I’ve come to think the sentence needs an addition. […]
Are we behind, or did we never update the model?
Church comms was never broken. It just never grew up. A client asked me recently what the American church can actually do about a problem we all already know is true: our communications are behind, sometimes by years, sometimes closer to a decade. My first instinct was to talk about platforms and trends, since that’s […]
What my triathlon coach taught me about ministry planning
How to approach your communications strategy I always promised myself I wouldn’t be the triathlete who only ever talks about triathlon. And yet, here we are. One of the lessons I’ve learned more recently is that a coach’s approach to building a training program for an athlete has a lot in common with good communications […]
You don’t have to figure this out alone
A free monthly meetup for church and nonprofit communicators. Hi, friend. If you’re the one running communications for your church or nonprofit, you already know how solitary that job can be. You’re often the only person in the building thinking about messaging, timing, and tone all at once, and there’s rarely anyone else on staff […]
The Biggest Fix
Your email, website, and social aren’t supposed to do the same job. I’m deep in a communications plan for a client right now, and every part of it is built from scratch. The audience profiles come from who’s actually walking through that specific church’s doors. The messaging themes come from that congregation’s real history, real […]
Please stop saying your church is welcoming
A word that means everything means nothing. I’ve been doing this work for years now. I have never once had a church describe itself to me without using the word welcoming. Not one. That should tell you something. If every church is welcoming, the word has stopped doing any work. It’s not describing anything anymore. […]
If I ran your nonprofit’s social media
Nonprofits that teach their audience about the problem they solve build more trust than nonprofits that just ask for support. If you run a nonprofit, your social media has one job that matters more than any other. Teach people about the problem you exist to solve, and teach them how you solve it. Not the […]
Some of you had questions. Here’s what I said.
A few thoughts on email length and YouTube strategy. Happy almost-Fourth. I’m keeping this one short because you’ve got a long weekend ahead of you and so do I. A few of you wrote back after recent emails with follow-up questions, and two of them came up enough that I figured I’d answer them here […]