{"id":6792,"date":"2011-09-28T07:53:55","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T07:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicademy.com\/?p=6792"},"modified":"2019-08-02T11:37:52","modified_gmt":"2019-08-02T11:37:52","slug":"is-a-church-website-enough-what-about-the-social-media-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicademy.com\/blog\/is-a-church-website-enough-what-about-the-social-media-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Is a church website enough? What about the social media revolution?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I’m not working at Musicademy I lecture part time in marketing with a particular interest in social media. I recently wrote an article for one of the UK’s leading digital marketing websites, Smart Insights<\/a>, and was surprised by how many Christians commented to me about its relevance for churches as they seek to communicate with both their congregations and the wider community.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m therefore going to re-work that original article in this post – would love to hear your comments below.<\/span><\/p>\n

The difference with social media<\/h2>\n

Social media is very different from the communications tools that have come before. Over the years organisations have communicated with us mainly via the medium of advertising. And churches have adopted many of the same tools as businesses. Yet we have become totally overwhelmed by the number of advertising messages we are exposed to each day and many of us simply blank them out. By the time we reach the age of 66, most of us will have seen approximately two millions TV commercials. Timewise that’s the equivalent of watching 8 hours of ads 7 \u00a0days a week for 6 years straight. In 1965 a typical consumer had a 34% recall of those ads. In 1990, that figure had fallen to 8% (figures from Martin Lindstrom’s book Buyology). The powerful heyday of what Seth Godin calls “Interruption Marketing” is well and truly behind us.<\/span><\/p>\n

But still organisations cling to the familiar, even if it doesn’t seem to work anymore. I go to Christian conferences and find that the bottle water is sponsored, the bathroom doors contain advertising messages and our hands are stuffed with programs and leaflets all containing glossy sales messages. Rance Crain, the editor-in-chief of Advertising Age once said “Advertisers will not be satisfied until they put their mark on every blade of grass<\/em>“. Christian magazines are funded to a large degree by the advertising you find inside them, but I have to say, at Musicademy, we have rarely found that these traditional marketing methods work at all well. Its an ethical dilemma for the producers of these magazines and conferences – they want to deliver a publication or event at a cost effective price for their customers, so they look for advertising and sponsorship to cover their costs. Yet the evidence is clearly beginning to show that such commercial profile doesn’t really work anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n

We’ve found the number one most effective sales tool is our online presence. This is comprised of:<\/span><\/p>\n