For those of you who were not at the presentation, you may also want to get a copy of the audio of the presentation, which CLA is making available for $9.00. That link is also below.

Link to PDF of presentation

Purchase MP3 audio from CLA

One of my first projects in the area of online ministry was to seek an answer to the question: what makes online ministry successful? This led to the development of a research project to determine the “best practices” in online ministry.  From November 2007 to April 2008, over 300 ministries took a survey and reported on how they were doing Internet ministry. From the data collected, a series of “best practices” were developed matching ministries who reported success with their Internet presence with answers to the survey questions. I presented the results of this research at the Internet Ministry Conference in October 2008.

How did I determine “best practices”? In the survey, I asked each ministry a set of questions that correlated with “success”. A “success score” was developed for each ministry. I then asked a series of questions about their online ministry practices in the area of technology, people, and process (my “Internet Ministry Framework”).  By taking the ministries who score the highest in their “success score” together, I was able to find which practices they had in common and develop a set of “best practices”.  The twelve best practices that I can recommend for any online ministry are as follows:

For full details on these best practice recommendations and more about the research project itself, download the report from the “Resources” section of either at my main site or my Facebook page. And while you’re there, take a look at the other resources available.

I am also looking to update these recommendations in the near future. If you have feedback or comments on these or other best practices, feel free to leave me a comment!

I encourage you, if you haven’t already, to become a fan of this blog on Facebook and to share it with others who are doing ministry online as well. I also encourage you to interact with my posts and let me know what you think.  Thanks for your support and I look forward to good discussions on online ministry.

• Shane Hipps interview – we watched a short snippet of this 30-minute interview I did with Shane via Skype. In this interview, Shane describes his book and his thoughts on online community.
• Best Practices in Internet Ministry – this is the research writeup of my two-year research project on the technology, people, and processes that make ministries successful.
• Strategy Worksheet – this worksheet walks you through the steps needed to create a strategy based on the principles discussed in the session.

For those of you who came to my session, thank you! And if you did not, you can still feel free to use these resources.

For readers of my blog, I will also embed it here. This embedded video will work for as long as I have the video available on my genesys11 site. It runs about a half an hour, but is well worth it.

I also left a spot for comments on just how these ministries were doing “search engine optimization” (SEO) on their sites:

“The more we are integrated with other sites (Facebook, blogs, etc.) the better.”
“Ask the congregation to search for the site.”
“Create web pages for other churches in the area.”
“I believe that doing SEO is just part of doing good site design. If you have a web site, you want people to find it. If you want people to find it, you must show up in search results.”

In my e-business strategy class this week, we spent some time reviewing SEO concepts, using Google’s starter document on search engine optimization as our talking point.  Now, there are two components to ranking high on a Google search: 1) good SEO design on your web page, and 2) lots of other sites linking to yours. You have full control over the first, not so much over the second. Many will say (see comment above) that the best SEO is done by making your site the greatest site in its niche.  And this is true and will surely help you in the second component listed above. But why not follow Google’s advice and design your site to be as search-engine friendly as possible?

Anyways, all this is to say that if you are trying to figure out how to make your site show better in search results, then one of the best places to start is Google’s SEO document.  Most of the changes discussed in this document require you to know how to modify HTML on your site, so you may want to give this to your webmaster/tech guru.

• Pew Internet and American Life Project home page
• Report on use of podcasting (2008)
• Report on use of video sites (2008)
• Report on “networked families” (2008)
• Report on “faith online” (2004)

Link to Church Marketing Sucks blog entry

Link to research page on genesys11

As a corollary to my research, I have been leading a team at my church to develop a “Web presence” strategy. Our current web site is primarily a static page maintained by one staff member and a volunteer and desperately needs updating. My team is working to develop a strategic plan for the development of an updated or new web site and will be presenting it to the Elder board later this year. As part of this process, I feel that it is critical to understand how those who are the primary users of the web site, the church body, use the Internet and to get their input into possible features. Now, an argument can be made that a church web site is NOT primarily for those who already go to the church, but I will leave that argument for a different post.

On two consecutive Sundays this past spring, my team passed out a survey to the church members asking them several different questions on how they use the Internet. The surveys were done on paper and handed out inside the church bulletin. They were also handed out in all the Sunday School classes (Junior High and older) and during mid-week meetings. Of the 500 or so weekend attendees, we received 249 surveys back – a tremendous success! I’ve just finished compiling all the results this week and found some interesting, though not necessarily unexpected, results.

The survey confirmed our suspicion that Internet use is a way of life for those who attend our church. 95% of our church body use a computer a few times a week or more, 86% check their email “a few times a week” or more, and 87% surf the web a few times a week or more. Interestingly, these numbers did not change much when filtered for gender or age. This validates our notion that our church is an Internet-savvy church and is experienced in web activity.

But would they be interested in visiting our church web site and what types of things would they find useful there? The survey found that 81% would be read a blog by the pastor or their group leader, 84% would register for events online, and 48% would do their giving online. Additionally, when asked to comment on what features they would like to see, many respondents put that an online events calendar would be the most useful.

And what about Web 2.0? The survey also asked about the types of activities that the attendees participated in online. A large number are viewing media (pictures/video) on the web, with 59% reporting viewing pictures of family or friends in the last month and 49% watching an online video. 32% reported uploading pictures to the web recently and 9% have uploaded videos. As for blogs, 30% read them and 7% write them. 26% reported accessing a social network site in the past month, with 7% updating their profile in the past month. When analyzed by age group, the Web 2.0 numbers do show a marked difference, with the younger set (under 30) being more likely to participate in these activities.

Near the end of the survey, we asked one big question: how important is the church web site. 72% of the respondents stated that it was “very important” or “important, with another 23% stating “somewhat important”. This gives credibility to the project and some leverage come budget time.

So what did we accomplish by getting this data? First, I think that we now have a better understanding of who attends our church and the level of sophistication they have for using the web. Second, this will give my team a starting point for conversations with church leaders. For example, when I meet with the head of women’s ministries, I can now say “Did you know that two-thirds of the women in this church go online to look at pictures? What can we do to get the women’s ministries to begin posting pictures on the web?”. Finally, by surveying the church in such a public way we have communicated to the church body that we are doing something about the web site and that their input is important. Many, many of the surveys had comments and ideas on them that will be useful as we move forward.

The next step in the process will interviews with church leadership, reviewing the results of the survey and focusing specifically on the responses of those for whom each leader is responsible. I will be doing that this week and then working with our team again to start developing priority lists of features for the web site.

I have posted a copy of the survey we used here. Feel free to download it and modify it for your own use if you like and let me know how it goes! I have also posted a full summary of results here.