Thinking strategically, part 2: Research the “who”
I am continuing my blog series on developing a strategy for Internet ministry. Step 1 was to create a mission statement for the ministry. The second step in developing an Internet ministry strategy is to describe the target group that you are trying to reach. I see at least two steps to this part of your strategy:
1) define as specifically as possible the group of people to whom your ministry will be directed. Think about things such as age range, location, gender, stage of life, etc., that will define who these people are. The more specific the better.
2) describe how this group can be engaged using the Internet. You will need to understand what your potential users do online in order to design a strategy for reaching them.
Neither of these steps can be accomplished successfully without research. You cannot effectively reach your target group without understanding them and their Internet habits. Simply using intuition or a “gut feeling” about it is not acceptable. You will need to be able to defend your strategy to those who will be providing the resources for it.
There are several methods of research available to you, let me suggest three: surveys, focus groups, and utilizing third-party data. If possible, directly surveying your target group is probably the best way to understand them. I did this with my church a couple of years ago and you can find the write up (and a copy of the survey used) here. Another method is focus groups: if you can get a group of individuals from your target group together to discuss how they use the Internet, you will learn quite a bit about how to reach them. Finally, using third-party data (such as that from the Pew Internet Project or the US Census) will also give you some ideas of how to reach your group. If possible combine two or three of these methods to help you fully understand your target group.
This step does NOT include a decision on which specific web site or software you will be using. This is simply getting a full understanding of your potential users. You will be making those specific decisions in a later step.
2 Comments to Thinking strategically, part 2: Research the “who”
[...] my series on creating a strategy for internet ministry (see part one and part two), we now focus on determining what resources you have available to implement your ministry. This is [...]
[...] I continue my series on thinking strategically about web ministry (links here to part 1, part 2, and part 3), we must begin thinking about selecting the technology tools we are going to use. This [...]
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This blog is where I share the latest thoughts on the world of technology and faith. Feel free to join the conversation by leaving a comment. To find out more about me, my company, and this web site, or to see what resources are available on this site, click on the images right below this.
- Dave Bourgeois
May 8, 2009