3 Phases of Web Presence
Phase 1 = Take our information. (I estimate 90% or more of church websites.)
Phase 2 = Taste our experience. (I estimate 10% or less of church websites.)
Phase 3 = Create our story. (I estimate 0% of church websites.)
We need to move to Phase 3.
What does phase 3 look like, how do we do it?
well-stated. very true. scary to many i’m sure but it is a big part of what we must do if we’re going to communicate in this generation.
I would love to hear your thought, Tony, on how to do #3.
What do you think lies beyond Phase 3? And how long until we get there?
Wow, such a short post, but oh so true! I’m taking longer with the re-design and update of my church plant website because of this very thing. Trying to connect people to our journey in a relevant way. Great post Tony!
perhaps “how to do” number three may still be pretty evasive considering you estimate 0% of churches are there, but do you know of any websites (para-church, not-church, etc.) are allowing their engaged and dedicated viewers to help create their story?
Great minds think alike, Tony ;)
there are a few churches who have done this. we’re trying, but learning our congregation is probably tech savvy enough yet….
the tool that i think is really effective for this is wikis.
pbwiki.com is my choice.
whoops. i meant to add…
if you google “pbwiki” and “church” you’ll find several examples.
Phase 3 = Create a communities! For this to happen we need to make communicating and dialogue easy, relevant and meaningful.
The technology is here to accomplish this.
What it will take as a first step is a clear definition of WHAT COMMUNITIES we want to foster online and a strategy to deploy.
The two elemenst to consider are social and network.
Social = people, communities, dialogue
Network = enabling technologies, like twitter, FB, wiki, ….
The Social part is where the Church’s opportunity must begin. By clearly defining what kind of social are we going to “simulate” on line.
This simple step of defining who, what brings the local church looking to leverage into Phase-3 much closer than many in the corporate world.
Marc
justin:
We need to look at other community synergisms (for example FaceBook and Twitter) these are prime examples where the “Network” is available.
What is made Twitter take off is the incredible ability to create instantaneous conversations with just about anyone with an account. By “flattening” out the conversations Twitter and FB makes it possible for you or I to instantly converse and connect with @Obama or @USEmbassyOttawa.
The “seeders” in the conversation are not controllers of the masses. The content free to take its organic course and people connect naturally around shared-life, interests, calls, burdens!
I hope this all helps.
Marc
Phase #4 :: You are the story
Is there even anybody right now that you can point at who are phase 3?
I’m like a lot of people here. This sounds like a good intro to a blog series. Great in principle, what does it really mean?