One of my jobs at the church is dealing with communication. We are constantly trying to find the best way to communicate with our members and the community. We are always looking for new ways to get information out. It seems like each week we ask ourselves, “What’s the best way to communicate?” Well I finally found the answer. Whatever works best.
I know that’s kind of a weird answer but hear me out. When I took golf lessons a long time ago my instructor showed me how I should swing. He went through the stance, grip of the club, ball placement, back swing and follow through. He said this is how you are supposed to do this and showed me, and I practiced it. I did fairly well taking lessons and eventually my time was up so I began just playing on my own. After a while I noticed that as I had practiced and played over time I had made my own little adjustments to my game. Over time my grip, swing, stance, all had changed to varying degrees. I ran into my instructor later and asked if I needed to go back to the right way of swinging my club etc. His response…”Do you hit the ball straight?.. me “Yes”… him..”There is no right way, there is the way that works for you.” Over time I had found a way to play that fit me, and that gave me the results I was wanting.
I think of this a lot when I watch Major League Baseball. I watch each player go up to bat and each have a different way of standing in the box, holding their bat, and swinging. And those methods have developed over time to give them the results they desire.
So what does this have to do with communication? Find what fits you, church, or organization, and what gives you the results that work. Maybe that means going all electronic in your communication using Facebook, Twitter, and a Blog. Maybe that means you mail out a weekly newsletter to each of your members. Maybe that means a combination of everything.
So what do you do? Here are some suggestions.
1. Find out how your congregation communicates- This can be done by a simple survey question that says “How do you want us to communicate with you?” and then list several ways like email, newsletter, twitter etc…
2. Don’t do something just cause everyone else is- If you spend countless hours updating your church facebook page, but no one uses facebook then you are wasting time. Just because the church down the street does it, doesn’t mean it will be effective for you.
3. Do keep your congregation informed of new ways that you can communicate- Just because your church doesn’t use facebook now, doesn’t mean they won’t in the future. Hold workshops, write articles and talk with people about new ways of communication.
4. Don’t use more methods than you can keep up with- You want to use as many communication tools as you can, however it is better to do fewer things well than a lot of things poorly. If you are a social networking person then find someone else who can take care of your print publications.
5. Create once and deliver different ways- There are several ways you can combine your delivery methods that cut down on your work. If you print your announcements and news in the bulletin do it in such a way that the news sheet can be mailed out. Have your blog automatically post to twitter and facebook. Anytime you can do this, you multiply the eyes that see your information.
Those are my five ways.. what do you suggest?
Related posts:
