You may be tempted to cut marketing communication and promotional budgets as our weak economy continues.

The desire to trim, for some, the need to cut, is understandable.

But whether you are a "trimmer" or "cutter," I encourage you to be committed to staying in the promotional conversation.

If you haven’t already, think about pursuing your brand name awareness, conversation growing, and relationship building goals through more online public relations and marketing communications in 2010. Here are some tips to help:

1. SEO

Make sure your web’s SEO is primed and ready for media and content story searchers. As internet search continues to grow as a key story source for media editors, you ignore SEO to your competitive peril. Don't waste your time and money. Start here.

2. Push and Pull

Think in terms of push-pull strategy in relationship to journalists, magazine and trade journal editors. Produce interesting comments, blog posts, web articles, videos, and photographic essays that you send and pitch to media contacts while continuously optimizing your content for story researchers to find your stories on the internet.

3. Harness New and Social Media

Ensure your new media and social media strategies are in-place, integrated, and operating smoothly. Short videos, social bookmarking, Twitter, Facebook, and other new and social medial tools can be very effective in starting and growing relationships and new business leads.

Trim or cut your promotional budget in 2010 if you must, but stay in the conversation.

A thoughtfully crafted digital PR strategy can help you do that professionally, effectively, and affordably.

Don't give in to pessimism. Choose to stay in the conversation in 2010.



Pastors, you’ve only got so much time in a day to influence your church’s ministry. Being a pastor is hard enough without the challenge of ensuring good communication within your church and beyond.

So, if you could do just one thing today, this week, or this month to help ensure your ministry’s communication is clean, clear, and credible, I suggest integration.

If you could task your ministry leaders and work with them to bring all your church’s messaging and interfaces—online and offline—into alignment, you’ll be doing your congregation and the community you live in a big service.

Unaligned communications and design is less clear and confusing to people. Integrated communications and design, on the other hand, helps you achieve a one message-one look-one feel that enhances perceived credibility and clarifies what you’re about.

In a crowded world of ideas, religions, and churches, this is a good thing.

There several things you could do to have a strategic impact on your church’s communications. But be realistic. As you’re focusing on feeding the flock and reaching the world, you don’t have time to oversee the production of your church’s communication.

But, one thing you can do for strategic impact and rapid improvement is champion an integrated approach within your staff and communications ministry team. 

What do you think?

The sample included the 25 largest and 25 fastest growing churches in the United States, according to Outreach magazine's 2008 ranking.

The results were surprising and have direct ramifications for building relationships and doing the work of missional Gospel ministry.

The findngs appear in our Missional Ideas newsletter which was recently launched. Read it here.

Missional Ideas is about branding and communication arts for churches. What makes Missional Ideas unique is that our creative strategies, design, and copy ideas are not just according to best practices, but are theologically informed as well.

As a result, Missional Ideas will be of special interestest to creative teams, communication leaders, and pastors of churches with a missional passion.

Missional Ideas will be published monthly. You can read the inaugural issue here.

Extension and Enhancement

New and social media tools will not replace human relationships. However, used in a context of responsibility, accountability, and spiritual thoughtfulness, they can extend your or your congregation’s relational reach, which can mean even more ministry. 

New and social media tools will not replace the centrality of the Gospel in Christian ministry. That said, be open to the fact that responsible use of new media and social media tools can actually aid the church in realizing its mission. As church leadership structures continue to become flatter and congregant meeting pattern decentralized and midweek, the faithful are increasingly becoming more missional in bringing Christ to where people live through a variety of community and work groups, new and social media tools can help people easily stay connected with each other, as well in touch with the pastor, staff, elders, and deacons. Conceived of in this way, new and social media tools don’t replace the Gospel ministry’s importance. They just help create new missional paths for more of it.

New and social media tools will not replace biblical community. Instead, they can help re-shape the architecture and experience of your church’s community. Think of a family. How many different ways do families express or engage in acts of community? Just face-to-face? Wouldn’t notes, letters, and phone calls during the week be considered legitimate expressions of relating and living with one another? Cannot the joys, challenges, hardship and cost of living in community still be experienced through these non-physical means at some level? Like notes, letters, and phone calls, new and social media tools can be credibly used to broaden and enrich relationships and biblical community.

New and social media tools will not replace the priority of corporate worship. In fact, used responsibly, new and social media tools can help increase the purity and amount of worship by your congregation. By this, I am not referring to the corporate worship experience on Sunday mornings. Others have thought and wrote on this. I’m specifically thinking about worship in every day life during the week that Paul refers to in Romans 12:1-3. To the extent that these tools can help brothers and sisters in Christ keep their minds, hearts, prayers, and actions kingdom-oriented, while living in the real, everyday world, the better.

Watch for Traps

Is your church an enthusiastic adopter or rejector of new and social media? Is your church some place in the middle? Avoid the traps.

Don’t just adopt these tools because other religious leaders and consultants think you need to.

On the other hand, don’t just reject these tools because you think they are “less spiritual” in some way. 

This entire matter is under grace, not law. Humility, prayer, wisdom, consultations, and reliance on the Holy Spirit’s leading are the critical things. 

Your church can be an adopter, rejector, or middler in it’s attitude towards these new technologies, but following Christ and growing in manifestations of the fruit of the Spirit as a body is the main thing.

In light of this, your church's view on this is a tactical rather than strategic matter.

Although new and social media tools are personal rather than traditional mass mediums, because they are increasingly ubiquitous in our society, oddly, they've become new tools for reaching the masses. For this reason alone it is worth churches thoughtfully considering its attitude towards new and social media.

Some of you have asked, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts on why pastors and ministry leaders may want to consider (or re-consider) making Twitter part of their congregational development and spiritual formation strategies.

More than flimsy or shallow trend appeal, there are actually substantive pastoral and practical considerations for using Twitter. Here’s a few:

1. It’s Penetrating

So many advertisements and promotional messages surround us each day—online and offline—that many of us have developed a significant internal filtering system to help manage it all. As a result, much of the messaging ends up in our “trash” bin. Because it’s completely opt-in and personal, Twitter messages have a higher likelihood of penetrating your congregant’s personal filtering and actually being received and considered.

2. It’s Continuing

Healthy and helpful conversations are often continuing threads. Why let the conversation end with the congregation, small group, or ministry service team after one gathering? You can easily re-enforce a sermon or small group application point or service team prayer request during the week with Twitter. Used the right way and in the right amount, mid-week tweets can help you extend gospel community moments and extend your pastoral care in people’s lives.

3. It’s Relational

A Christ-centered model of ministry is certainly a relational one. It’s sometimes heard that pastors or ministry leaders resist something like Twitter because “ministry is personal. It’s about people.” They might even mention the recognized dean of Christian pastors as an example, Richard Baxter. A new technology like Twitter doesn’t challenge the premise that ministry is people-oriented. What it does do, however, is challenge the notion that authentic Christian ministry is only personal in the sense of physically present. Love, personal care, and spiritual interest are not limited to the expression of physical presence. As the apostles show in Scripture, these can also be expressed using messengers, notes, and letters. Again, used in the right ways and in the right amounts, a technology like Twitter can encourage connections within the congregation--leadership to member as well as member to member.

4. It’s Where They Are

Twitter is available anywhere there is access to the Internet. Whether it is through a computer or mobile phone screen, your messages can be personally placed in people’s lives for viewing.

5. It’s Easy

Twitter, like riding a bike, takes a few trials and then becomes very easy, for most folks. If you haven’t tried Twitter yet, get with someone you know who uses it and give it a shot. Wondering if you’re “too old” to use this new technology stuff? You’re not alone. But no worry. You can learn. It’s interesting to note that a recent study shows that 7 in 10 internet users are 33 or older. If you can use the internet, you can use Twitter.  Believe it or not, older generations—not younger ones—have driven Twitter’s explosive growth! 

6. It’s Fast

Twitter tweets arrive faster than email, phone calls, or letters. Need to get the good news out, logistic change announced, or prayer need mentioned FAST? Consider Twitter.

7. It’s Customizable

Multiple accounts are available with Twitter so each pastor, staff, or ministry can have their own Twitter page. Twitter’s design capability easily allows everyone to give their Twitter page a custom look and feel.

8. It’s Revelational

God revealed himself in his creation and Word. Within a thoughtful framework of privacy and appropriateness, Twitter tweets can give members a glimpse of your private world and inner life. In turn, these insights can encourage and inspire.

9. It’s Measurable

By using a simple tool and adding a link to your blog or church’s website, it’s possible to know who has read and responded to your tweets. This reduces the guess work and wondering about whether or not your messages are getting people’s attention.

10. It’s Free

Twitter doesn’t cost anything. Enough said.

Last Thought

Like any technology, pastors and ministry leaders need to reflect and prayerfully consider how something like Twitter might help deliver real spiritual nutrition to people.

I don't know whether or not Twitter is a good fit with your church or ministry context. No one knows this better than you and your ministry team.

My aim here is not to advocate for Twitter one way or another but, rather, encourage thoughtful evaluation of its considerable potential uses in a congregation's life, while journeying to fulfill the mission today.

Whether you’re a sole proprietor, marketing communications executive, creative director, designer, or copywriter, what can you do to begin to open up and unlock your creative thinking process? What can you or your creative team do to ramp-up the originality and appeal quotient of your messaging to clients?

Here are some ideas.

Disrupt Routine
Think about adopting different approaches to creative thinking for your next campaign. You can use classic brainstorming, mind mapping, or a myriad of other ways and tools to generate new story, messaging, and design ideas. Keep it simple. Track results. Have fun.

Broaden Perspectives
When thinking about design, copy, or content issues it’s easy to approach them from the same angle. We’re creatures of habit. We like to stick with what has worked in the past. Remember, this security can also become our prison. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Take a bit of time to consider “crazy,” “impossible,” “ridiculous,” “stupid,” and even “tried” ideas for your project. No matter how short and hard your timeline, resist the pressure to just settle for the easiest or most cost-effective solutions. Often these types of creative solutions aren’t either, when considered from the consumer’s perspective and brand equity.

Change Information
One writer observed, “there’s nothing new under the sun.” I think this rings true for many of us. Very few creative acts are purely original. We all rely on the ideas, designs, creations, or experiences of others for inspiration. What inspirational streams do you drink from? What if you changed some of them? What if you changed all of them? How would this impact your creative thinking and communications strategies? Think about it. Try it.

Examine Assumptions
Assumptions have powerful influence on ideation and the creative communications process. Assumptions are often unspoken filters that include or exclude. How many great ideas never surfaced or were considered because certain assumptions were in place? Think. Reflect. What are some of the key assumptions operating in your creative ideation process? What about your creative team? Are there assumptions that can be identified as drivers? Are these assumptions helpful? Do they need to me modified? Sometimes a small adjustment here can have big creative and even breakthrough results for your marketing communications messaging and design.

Creativity and Communications
Want to capture attention, stand-out, and be more memorable to consumers? Say something in message and design that’s truly worthy of people’s attention in a very crowded and busy world.

Over-reliance on technique in brand and marketing communications just leads to more of the same. Competitors can easily adopt and use the same techniques. What, then, will make you more noticeable or stand out from the others? You or your team's creativity.

Consider or re-consider creative excellence as your strategic asset to move beyond parity thinking and compete better. Try some of the ideas above in your creative thinking process.

Let fresh streams of ideas flow to help you, your product, service, or message stand out more and better connect with consumers in interesting, memorable ways.

Besides being rude, using intrusive online ad tactics is poor business strategy; They damage your brand and hinder your relationship building efforts.

Advertise online differently. Out-of-the box advertising that reflects a truly unique and fresh rhetorical perspective and message--not just nice visual or technical design--is commonly found eye-catching interesting, and memorable.

Why not invite people, rather than intrude upon them, by taking a low-tech approach to doing high-tech advertising online? Where are the brilliant headlines, killer creative designs, and smart placements?

For your online advertising strategy, put the accent on creative brain power that build relationships, rather than cheap strategies and technical slights of hand that bully, annoy, and tends to reduce human beings to mere consumers.