3 Fall Communication Essentials to Decide Now

We’re about two months away from your church “fall launch”. It’s vacation time for you and your congregation, so you deserve to relax, right? Nope. Not unless you have everything in order for the fall already.

Most church communicators aren’t fully prepared from the discussions I’m having with them. So, before you head to the beach, consider these 3 essentials that take a bit of time to implement for the fall rush. And then commit to getting them done!

1. Discover what’s needed by your congregation to ensure you’re communicating solutions. Identify who exactly your church is targeting in your community (personas) by looking at who you currently have in your pews. Be specific! Consider what they need and then compare it to what you’re offering. Try suggesting a simplification of your programming based on essentials (corresponding to their needs) and then streamline your communications to talking mainly those solutions. People will always respond easier to an offering of benefits and solutions. Stop talking about clever names, long-lists of features, and details that don’t matter. Give the details to your ministries and events once they click on its weblink. Be simple, short, and clear!
2. Create a communication strategy to get your message heard. Never waste anyone’s time with information or details that they don’t want. You need a tiered communication strategy that delivers information to the group who truly wants the information. Most of your announcement times are forcing people to tune out and ignore the drone of unnecessary details. Your start? Prioritize your ministries and events based on the percentage of people listening. For example: if 85% or more are interested? Then that audience is perfect for the information. Create a strategy that sets the “rules” for this and then make sure you stick to it. And, of course, communicate mainly benefits!
3. Ensure you have an easy-to-filter event calendar. All details need to be easy-to-find on your website. Most will look for your events on your calendar (and that link needs to be on the homepage or main menu). Then that calendar needs to have the ability to be filtered. This means instead of seeing all events, someone can request only some (based on age, gender, topic, etc.). This is usually done by setting up a category or tagging system for every event. When someone gets to your calendar, they click on the tags or categories they want and the calendar hides the others. That way you don’t bore or confuse them with unimportant information (like we talked about in #2).

If you get these correct, you’ll have a fall like no other! People will be attracted to your programming, interested in up-coming events, and able to discover everything that’s offered for them at the church. This is the role of a great church communicator!