Check out this video tour of SoChurch. This will give you a taste of what the solution does and what it looks like.

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By the way, that’s me on the SoChurch advisory board. I think you’re going to love what’s heading your way.

I saw an article in this month’s issue of Fast Company about a recent study completed by SocialTwist. Using widgets built into referral messages, they found that:

• Most referrals still happen through email. In fact, email still has more than double the referrals of social networking sites.
• Most click-throughs happen through social networking. Social networking accounts for almost twice as many click-throughs as email.
• Among social networking sites, Facebook makes up more than 78% of the usage (Twitter only has 5%). But, interestingly enough, Twitter has a much higher click-through rate (almost 6 times the Facebook rate).

If you are engaged in communications at a church, what can you learn from this? Here are some strategies I think we need to consider:

• Online strategy involves much more than a website. It’s pointless to have a website unless you’re also leveraging email and social networking strategies to point people to your site.
• Email is a great tool for building an audience. It’s still the easiest online communications tool to use; however, we need to be strategic about how we use it. There’s a fine line between spamming our audience and providing a focused, helpful message. If people are going to use online communications to invite friends to church, though, they’ll probably forward an email.
• Social networking is a powerful tool for encouraging online engagement. At this point, it’s not as effective for building an audience, but social networking tools, when used appropriately, will improve how your existing audience engages your online content.
• You need both an email and a social networking strategy. Email is not going away any time soon. It’s not as sexy as Facebook or Twitter, but you’re missing a huge opportunity if you don’t have an intentional strategy for using that communications tool.

Are these trends consistent with what you’re seeing in your organizations? How is your use of these online communication tools shifting?

Just found this interesting stat from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. They found that commercial use of the Internet continues to grow…

“with 58% of Americans now reporting that they perform online research concerning the products and services that they are considering purchasing.”

I suspect that if most Americans perform online research before purchasing a product or service, they very likely also perform online research before deciding to visit a church.

That, of course, begs the question: If people visited your website, would they visit your church?

Five years ago, I wrote about 10 easy ways to keep me from visiting your church because I visited your website. If you were coaching churches today, what would the new list look like?

I had a chance to reconnect with Ben Forsberg, CEO of SoChurch. Several months ago, I wrote a post about his vision to simplify church communication by creating a solution that will incorporate social media, email, and other communications to enhance clarity. I’ve been anticipating the launch of SoChurch, and I wanted to share the update:

TONY: I’m hearing rumors of a fall release for SoChurch. Are the rumors true?

BEN: In this case, the rumors are true. As promised, we are shooting for a release in late 2010, and we are on track to hitting that target.

It’s hard to believe, but I’ve been serving at West Ridge Church for a year now. Because I serve part-time at the church and part-time coaching and consulting with other churches across the country, I’m typically working from my home office on Thursdays. That’s a critical part of the story I’m about to share.

Every Thursday I would be sitting at my desk in my home office and an email message would arrive from the church. Typically it said something simple like this: “Ralph is here in the Discovery Room.” That’s it. No other details.

For weeks, I got these messages, but, because I was working from home, there wasn’t any way for me to investigate further on my own. Being the new guy, I didn’t want to come across looking like an idiot. It was obvious that everyone else knew what this was about. It appeared that I was the only one in the dark. I was curious. Who is Ralph, and why is he in the Discovery Room?

Troy was new to the team as well. So, after several weeks of wondering what this cryptic message was all about, I finally got up the nerve to ask him. As a fellow newbie who happens to work at the church on Thursdays, I thought Troy may have discovered additional clues to this mystery. Troy confirmed that he had also been receiving the messages. But, like me, he had not figured out who this Ralph person was. Furthermore, neither of us had any idea where the “Discovery Room” was located, which, upon further reflection, makes it a rather odd name for a room since neither of us had “discovered” it.

At least I wasn’t alone at this point. I now had a cohort who shared the angst of this puzzling situation. Who was Ralph? Why did he consistently show up in the Discovery Room? Who would help me discover the Discovery Room? I began to think I was being hazed as the new guy on the block. I also thought the messages could possibly have been part of one of those Facebook games I always ignore. Maybe this particular game was similar to Clue. Rather than finding Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick, could it be that Ralph was hiding in the Discovery Room with a wrench?

As it turns out, Ralph is a real person. He serves in various outreach ministries at our church. And, regularly on Thursdays, Ralph delivers leftover baked goods to the Discovery Room at the church. He shares these bakery items with the staff. It’s actually quite a kind gesture.

It was a great reminder, though, that ministry can happen week after week, and, if we’re not careful, the way we talk about it could leave new people in the dark. At churches I’ve visited, I’ve experienced these examples of insider language:

• Mentioning specific people by name in messages but not explaining who those people are.
• Encouraging people to go to a particular room for an event after the service, but not having any people or signs to direct people toward that room.
• Using names for ministries that have no meaning to people who don’t attend the church. (We just eliminated one of those at West Ridge. When we were new to the church, we had no idea that “Praiseland” was for pre-schoolers.)
• Telling people to talk to a specific person after the service in order to take a next step, but then not explaining who that person is or where to find them.

Generally, it’s pretty easy to figure out if a church is really outside-focused based on the language they use. This becomes particularly obvious when we start throwing out theological terms without explaining what those words mean. Honestly, though, I think sometimes we subconsciously do that to make ourselves feel more spiritual than someone else who doesn’t know.

Take some time to gain the perspective of people who are new to the church. What great ministry might they be missing because you’re holding on to insider language?

Because of Google Analytics, I can easily track how people land on my site. About one in four visits happen when people directly access my site by typing in “TonyMorganLive.com”. The rest of my traffic comes from referrals on other sites. In case you’re curious, the top five referring sites are:

1. Twitter – 36% of traffic referrals
2. Google – 24%
3. Feedburner – 12%
4. Facebook – 5%
5. Yahoo – 2%

By the way, Twitter and Google have swapped places in the last 12 months. Google used to be the number one way folks found my site. (How do these trends compare to your sites?)

What caught my attention recently, though, was the traffic I was getting from Google due to people searching with the keywords “favorite Android apps”. About 5% of traffic over the last 30 days has come from people checking out My 21 Favorite Android Apps. As it turns out, that article is currently #2 out of 8.6 million results on Google for those keywords:

It’s just a great reminder to me of how valuable search is to how we filter information. Most of my writing is on ministry strategy, but a good chunk of my traffic is coming from a random blog post I wrote on something completely unrelated.

Just out of curiosity, what has Google found on your site that’s not really related to your normal writing patterns?

Have you heard a good story lately?

Psychologists theorize that people in ancient civilizations learned about dangers and benefits through personal exposure and through the stories of trusted others. From this tradition, our minds instinctively grasp onto stories and testimonials at a deeper level than statistics and advertising slogans. In one test, researchers discovered that when a subject is even reading a story, our brains function as if the story becomes a memory or an event in which we are actively participants.  This is why I can hear statistics about the staggering needs in many third world countries without batting an eye, but if I hear a missionary or someone from that region tell me about their daily struggle for water or education, it resonates with me deeply.

Recently, West Ridge began a series called One Story, to capture some of the life-change that has been happening in our church. Ultimately, all these stories are episodes in one big story — Christ redeeming his people. It seems to me, that if our brains are hard-wired to powerfully experience and remember stories, they are one of the best tools we have in order to share Christ with others and encourage believers. Stories will be remembered longer than census data, great theology and the three points in last Sunday’s message. However, stories also reconnect listeners with data, theology and last Sunday.

After all, some of Jesus’ most important teachings about the Kingdom of Heaven were in the form of stories, or as we call them, parables. I’m guessing you might remember the story of the persistent widow and the judge or the good Samaritan, or even the one about the shepherd who leaves 99 sheep to find the one he’s missing.

Maybe it’s time to begin using stories more strategically. What stories do you have about God’s work in your church? How have you used the power of stories in the past? When can you use a personal story to illustrate a larger point that you are making? How can you share these stories with your church family?

In the mean time, check out this article regarding the power of stories.

10 Ways to Improve Marketing without Spending Any Money

Have you used any of these strategies? What was the outcome? And do you have any other free marketing ideas that you’d like to share?

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of social networking tools available to your church? I mean, how can you prepare a Sunday morning message, update your Facebook status, write a thought-provoking blog, check all of your emails, and Tweet about the wreck you almost had because you were Tweeting and driving?

Meet Ben Forsberg and the SoChurch team.  SoChurch is creating products to simplify church communication. After surveying hundreds of church leaders, Forsberg and his team identified what practices contribute to ineffective church communication. Here’s a quick rundown:

• most churches communicate in one-way broadcasts- receivers do not have an opportunity to respond.
• there is a lack of integration between social networking tools.
• many leaders don’t know how to leverage social media and don’t have time to manage all the different channels.
• church leaders rarely use research-based practices or feedback mechanisms to evaluate their communication.
• community-style church websites become another place for members to check  and administrators to manage, rather than communicating via the tools their members already use.

To address these problems, SoChurch is developing a kind of “master dashboard,” where administrators can easily control the integration of multiple communication tools and change privacy settings. It looks like this:

Be sure to check SoChurch’s website for new products, and join in the conversation about what other technology you would like to see SoChurch integrate. Or, participate in their survey for church leaders.

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By the way, that’s me on the SoChurch advisory board. I hope to share more about what’s happening at SoChurch in the coming months. In the mean time, feel free to play around with their new intermediary site.

In the past, churches signs have consisted of a catchy rhyme or the chapter and verse that will be preached next Sunday. Now more and more churches are using screen-printed banners and billboards for promotion.  I’ve discovered the cost for one of these signs is pretty steep—billboards can run for up to $5000! While these signs may be pricey, they are also a great promotion tool—if used effectively.

So before you start eying that billboard, here are a few features of effective sign communication and promotion:

In case you’re interested, I found a great article on billboard signs. Same principles generally apply to any signage used to grab the attention of drive-by traffic.

Has billboard advertising worked for you? What responses have you received from billboard ads?  What other recommendations would you add to improve effectiveness?