mediasalt

So often we get dreaming on new toys and tools for our church. I’m guilty too — I can dream up crazy ideas with the best of them. It’s so easy to sit in a room with other creative people, and build crazy systems, marketing channels, and geek tools. Maybe a microsite, how about a Facebook fan page for this, Foursquare for the church, or maybe its yet another Twitter account for a specific ministry.

If you are like me, creating these marketing/communication tools is the easy part. Maintenance and upkeep are the hard work I tend to avoid. So how often do we sit back, zoom out, and truly analyze these creative ideas, and measure their impact?

What should you evaluate?

First, lets take an inventory of the following 5 places.

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the church website

How many pages do you have? How deep are some of them buried? Look at your google analytics (You do have some sort of tracking on the site right?). How many hits does the children’s ministry get per month? Now what about the news and events pages?

Looking at the reports on traffic is one key metric to evaluate a page. Sure traffic getting to the page is one part, but is the page doing its job can be another. Ask around, do others feel value from the staff bio pages, or are they just outdated blobs of content no one really reads?

By keeping your web content focused on your goals (you have goals right?), you can easily yank dead content, and help your users find what they are truly looking for. Quality over quantity.

I recommend a monthly or at least a quarterly review of all web content. Who owns what content, is there old dated content up? Is there anything new you need to add to the events/news pages, etc.

facebook fan pages & groups

This is fuzzy. Sure Facebook puts out a weekly insights report, that clarifies page views, new fans and interactions. Why you built the page/group could impact how you interpret the report. If you have a fan page for a specific outreach event, maybe page views is all you care about. But say its a page dedicated to small groups. Interactions and fans could be the key metric to gauge effectiveness.

Looking at this report, and creating an action plan for increasing your goals could be all that is needed. I suggest setting goals regardless of your plan. Re-evaluate these goals often. Missing your goals by a long shot? Maybe its time to slash the page, or start over with tactics and a fresh set of goals; or slash the account completely.

twitter accounts

How many Twitter accounts does your church have? Are they needed, and are they being used effectively? Having one for each ministry may be the top priority for the staff controlling them, but for the attenders, you could be segmenting your message to deeply. Having one central account to promote all ministries, events, and info could be the best bet.

Unless each Twitter account has a specific goal, and manager of that account, it may be time to reassess the need for that account.

micro sites for events

I think micro sites for big events are great. Easter, Christmas, maybe one other in the year. But having a micro site for every little thing can dilute their effectiveness. They can distract from the core mission of the main website. Look at your last event micro site. How many visitors did it receive over its life? How did people find the site?

The visitor path is key here. If they came from the main site, that could mean they are likely already in the fold of the church, and came for more info. But if they came directly or from an advertising source, they could be a newcomer, and your advertising worked. Which is the bigger number, and how did this align with your goals? If it’s mainly traffic from the church main site, you may have missed the boat on marketing, or maybe there just wasnt a big interest from the community.

Regardless, you need to soak this information up, and think hard about your next microsite. How can you improve, or is a micro site even needed? How can you best leverage the church main site for the same thing?

the church/pastors blog

This is an easy one. I find most pastors fall into one of two categories. They blog often, or they say they will, but quickly stop. Is your pastor the latter? Either can the blog or find a way to help. I know a few pastors with this issue, and the solution was to have staff blog for them. The pastors put out great ideas, and often generate a newsletter or sermon notes. So it’s easy to post up this content on their behalf.

So your pastor blogs often. How often, and how well? Sometimes it’s too often. Blogging every day can be too much for the average church. Find a way to outline upcoming topics, and schedule them out. Again, using your goals, look at the traffic and analytics, and figure out which articles get hit the most. Which have the most comments? See any patterns worth repeating?

The pastor who blogs too much information? This is a dangerous blog for the church. Too often I see a pastors blog that is way too personal. This needs to be changed ASAP. This can be a slippery slope if there is ever a controversial topic where the church body and the pastor may disagree.

For all of your projects, marketing, advertising, and tools…

Having a Facebook account because everyone else does is a terrible and dangerous mindset. It’s better to ask “Was the effort (or often cost) worth it?” Did attendance for that event really increase because you built a microsite for it? Are those Twitter users really listening to the updates you are sending? So many things to evaluate. Maybe its time to freshen up the content and promote it more. Or maybe its time to slash it, and focus our attention to more effective strategies.

At the end of the day, anything you do for marketing and promotion, have a plan. Pick your strategy and tools according to the plan, and outline how will you measure success a head of time. If you document these notes from the conception, you’ll see the flaws in half-baked ideas early on, and be able to navigate the right course around them as you progress forward.

Matt is a summer contributor >> See all summer 2010 contributor bios