Episodes
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Josh Kashorek is the Marketing Director at Five Q, a digital marketing agency focused on helping ministries reach more people online. With over 15 years of experience in digital strategy, analytics, and marketing, Josh brings valuable expertise to this topic.
In this episode, Josh shares insights from Five Q's annual Ministry Benchmark Study, analyzing digital metrics across over 1,000 ministries. Here are some of the key topics covered:
The Continued Importance of SEO
Nearly 70% of ministries gained rankings for keywords in Google's top 100 search results this year, up from 50% last year. Josh emphasizes that SEO remains crucial for driving organic traffic, which comprises over half the traffic for many ministries.
Website Speed Impacts User Engagement
While ministry websites showed modest improvements in PageSpeed scores, Josh notes there is still plenty of room for optimization â especially on mobile devices. Faster websites lead to better user engagement and reduced bounce rates.
Social Media Integration Trends
83% of ministries did not list any social media channels on their websites, choosing instead to drive traffic back to their owned properties. Among those promoting social, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube were the top channels utilized.
Follower Growth Insights
The median number of Facebook and Instagram followers grew year-over-year across ministries studied, while Twitter and YouTube follower counts shrank slightly.
Realistic Posting Frequencies
Despite advice to post daily, the median number of monthly posts was 16 on Facebook, 13 on Instagram, and lower on Twitter and YouTube â highlighting the content creation challenges many ministries face.
The full benchmark study is available for free download, and ministries can request a personalized scorecard and strategy consultation from Five Q.
Listen to the entire Ministry of Skill podcast episode for more valuable digital marketing insights and to learn how you can better evaluate and improve your online impact.
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Kedron Rhodes, Director of Digital Experiences at Crowe LLP, has over 25 years of expertise in optimizing customer journeys. In this insightful episode, he shares a powerful framework for enhancing donor relationships through empathetic experiences. Here are some key topics covered:
Why Cultivating Donor Empathy is Crucial
Kedron emphasizes the importance of stepping outside your own perspective to truly understand how donors feel at each touchpoint. He provides examples of how changing expectations can create mismatched experiences over time.
Building an Empathy Map for Your Donor Persona
Kedron guides listeners through developing a relatable donor persona by mapping out their objectives, frustrations, influences, and behaviors. This lays the groundwork for evaluating the journey through their lens.
Auditing the Full Donor Journey
Using the persona, Kedron demonstrates how to document every interaction from initial awareness through consideration, donation, support, and even discontinuation. The goal? Identify pain points where the actual experience falls short of the donor's expectations.
Prioritizing Seamless Donation Experiences
Kedron stresses the importance of minimizing friction during the crucial donation process when the donor is at their "aspirational high" and most motivated to give.
Never Neglecting the Discontinuation Phase
While often overlooked, Kedron explains why mapping the discontinuation journey is vital for understanding departing donors and preventing negative impressions.
Through hands-on activities and real-world examples, this episode equips you with a comprehensive journey-mapping approach to continually optimize your donor's experience through an empathetic lens.
Listen to the full episode for all the insights, templates, and group exercises around this transformative donor-centric methodology.
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Episodes manquant?
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Josh Kashorek is the Director of Marketing at Five Q, a platform helping organizations leverage no-code tools and automation. His creative mindset and technical skills converge in an insightful perspective on how ministries can steward AI for greater impact. In this thought-provoking episode, Josh shares:
The Existential Crisis Inspiring His AI Experiments
Josh opens by recounting the "minor existential crisis" sparked by a report predicting that up to 70% of work activities could be automated by 2030. As someone in marketing/communications, he wondered if his skills were becoming obsolete. This led him to dive into exploring AI capabilities hands-on.
Overcoming AI Content Creation Challenges
While tools like ChatGPT can generate passable content, Josh outlines key hurdles like factual inaccuracies, lack of unique voice/opinion, and generic sameness across outputs. His solution: provide contextual guardrails by inputting your ministry's real content to infuse your distinct voice and brand.
A Replicable Framework for Automating Workflows
Josh walks through his code-enabled workflow for rapidly generating branded social media visuals with compelling quotes from source material. What manually took 15 minutes was automated in a mind-blowing 3 seconds! He encourages ministries to analyze repeatable tasks for automation potential.
Embracing Joy over Fear in Kingdom Stewardship
Drawing inspiration from the Parable of the Talents, Josh challenges listeners to not cower under the "weight of stewardship" amid radical changes like AI. Instead, he cheers embracing your God-given role and responsibility with joy, trusting your ministry is part of God's plan.
Whether providing a basic AI content creation demo or translating a biblical narrative, Josh casts a vision for faithfully experimenting with these emerging tools. His parting charge? Use AI as a megaphone to amplify your ministry's unique voice and mission, not replace it.
Don't miss this creative thinker's perspective on facing technological disruption as a "Christitunity" to invest the Master's resources for greater Kingdom impact.
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Josh Burnett is the founder of Church.tech, an AI-powered platform helping churches streamline operations and engage people more effectively. Drawing from his background in ministry and entrepreneurship, Josh brings a unique perspective on leveraging technology for greater kingdom impact. In this insightful episode, he shares:
How AI Transcribes, Summarizes and Generates Discussion Content
One of Church.tech's core features is the ability to upload sermon videos and instantly generate transcripts, summaries, discussion questions and more using advanced AI models. Josh walks through a live demo showing how churches can quickly create robust small group materials and content resources from their weekly messages.
The Power of Unified Messaging Across Ministries
Josh describes the vision of enabling churches to develop a synchronized discipleship strategy with unified teaching flowing from the pulpit all the way down to kids' ministry. AI-generated age-appropriate lessons and parent guides ensure families are receiving the same biblical truths packaged for every age level.
Practical Applications for Sermon Illustrations and Visuals
The platform's "Playground" feature allows pastors to interact with the AI by asking it to generate compelling illustrations, social media post ideas, decoration themes and more - all aligned with the main sermon concept. Josh shares how this creative capacity stretches the imaginative potential.
Upcoming AI Innovations on the Roadmap
Looking ahead, Josh previews several groundbreaking products in development at Church.tech including an "ethical AI co-pilot" for augmenting sermon writing, a social media automation tool trained on a church's voice, and workflow features to streamline operations.
Whether exploring the live product demo or dreaming about future AI capabilities, this episode highlights the powerful ways Church.tech is empowering ministries to increase efficiency and impact through intelligent technology.
Don't miss Josh's passion for helping churches spend less time on logistics and more time making disciples! Listen to the full episode for a glimpse of the AI-powered future awaiting the church.
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Corey Alderin is the founder of Sermon Shots, a platform that helps churches transform their full sermons into popular short-form video content for Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. In this hands-on workshop, Corey shares his expertise on leveraging AI to create thumb-stopping, engaging clips that reach people where they are consuming content.
Why Vertical Video Content Matters Now More Than Ever
Corey highlights the seismic shift happening in social media, where follower count doesn't determine who sees your content. The AI algorithms analyze each video's content and match it with the right audience members most likely to engage. This unlocks massive reach potential even for ministries with small followings.
5 Keys to Creating Viral-Worthy Vertical Clips
1. Captions - With most viewing on mute, having captions is crucial
2. Keep It Brief - Shorter videos perform better to sustain engagement
3. Grab Attention Early - Use a provocative hook in the first 2-5 seconds
4. Leverage Music - Adding the right music can invoke desired emotions
5. Highlight Faces - Close-up shots of faces are proven attention drivers
Walk-Through: Turning a Sermon into Multiple Engaging Clips
In the live demo, Corey shows exactly how the Sermon Shots platform utilizes AI to streamline the clip creation process:
1. Upload your long-form video content
2. Select from pre-built appealing designs and styles
3. Let the AI suggest top moments or identify them by keyword
4. Fine-tune clips with text, branding, zooming, music and more
5. Preview clips on each platform to optimize appearance
6. Download ready-to-post video clips in a fraction of the normal time
The Power of AI to Multiply Your Content's Reach
What used to take hours can now be done rapidly thanks to AI capabilities like speech-to-text, facial detection, and identifying engaging moments. This allows ministries to repurpose one sermon into a stream of natively formatted videos perfectly suited for each social platform.
Corey's innovative approach combines AI's efficiency with human curation to create ultra-engaging content that expands your ministry's reach and impact like never before. For a first-hand look at this game-changing process, listen to Corey's full instructive workshop now!
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Arnie Cole is a social scientist and researcher at Back to the Bible, who has studied the spiritual lives of over 1.5 million people over the past 20 years. In this insightful episode, he challenges ministries to truly understand the spiritual state of the people they serve in order to help move them closer to Jesus.
The Importance of Asking "How Are You Doing Spiritually?"
Through examples from his own family's equestrian ministry, Arnie highlights how children are remarkably open about their spiritual struggles, but something happens as they become adults and stop sharing. He argues it is critical for ministries to directly ask people how they are doing spiritually.
Introducing the Personalized Engagement Prioritization Model
Arnie presents a 25-dimensional model that identifies 17 trillion potential spiritual data points for where a person could be in their walk. The methodology includes:
1. The "Death Question" to assess their salvation
2. Their level of Bible engagement, which predicts spiritual trajectory
3. Prioritizing people into 4 categories: Need for Evangelism, Discipleship, Activation, or Mature Believer
Measuring Spiritual Transformation and Discipleship Impact
The critical metric is whether people are engaging the Bible regularly, which research shows leads to transformed lives. Arnie also emphasizes the need to measure if people are actively discipling others.
Addressing the "Hard Issues" People Face
The model accounts for the real spiritual struggles people face like anger, anxiety, pornography use, gender identity issues, and more. Arnie laments that many ministries are unwilling to even ask about these "hard" areas people need help with.
A Free Resource to Increase Ministry Effectiveness
Arnie's team offers ministries a free scientific study and impact assessment to truly understand the spiritual state of the people they serve. The goal is to equip ministries to more effectively help people find and follow Jesus.
This is a powerful framework for personalizing ministry engagement in a way that leads to real spiritual transformation. To learn more about implementing this model, be sure to listen to Arnie's full engaging and eye-opening presentation!
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Andrew Rogers is the co-founder of BibleChat.ai, an innovative app that uses AI to help people engage more deeply with the Bible. With over 75,000 downloads and users in 188 countries, BibleChat has been pioneering the use of artificial intelligence for Christian ministry. In this insightful episode, Andrew shares:
The Alarming Decline of Biblical Literacy
Andrew highlights shocking statistics like 26 million Americans stopping Bible reading since COVID and only a third being able to name the four gospel books. This Biblical illiteracy crisis represents both a huge problem and massive opportunity.
Introducing Faith Assistant - AI for Ministries
To tackle this issue, Andrew introduced Faith Assistant - BibleChat's new product that brings AI capabilities to churches, ministries and Christian media. It understands each organization's unique teachings to provide personalized, spiritually enriching experiences.
Surfacing Your Ministry's Content with AI
By indexing sermon libraries, ebooks, articles and more, Faith Assistant surfaces the perfect content to answer user questions and needs. It remembers context, provides summaries, and can even auto-generate customized Bible studies.
Real Examples from Partners Like KCBI Radio
Andrew showcased powerful use cases from partners like KCBI radio, Concordia Lutheran Church, and Pastor Richard Ellis. From Finding relevant sermons to answering theological questions in a denominationally appropriate way, the applications are endless.
Shaping AI to Spread the Gospel
Andrew's passion shines through as he describes this innovative approach to shaping AI technology to increase biblical engagement and ultimately further the Great Commission in powerful new ways.
This episode is packed with insights, real-world examples, and an inspiring vision for how AI can be leveraged for kingdom impact. To hear Andrew's full presentation and vision, be sure to listen to the entire Ministry of Scale podcast!
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Jeff Kliewer is the founder of ViewSpark. He has worked in fundraising for over 30 years and brings much experience to this episode. Jeff has taken his experience with fundraising and, through ViewSpark, has put a powerful way to connect with your donors right at your fingertips. In this episode, Jeff shares a variety of topics, including:
Why Customer Feedback is Critical for Innovation
Jeff shares how ViewSpark customers started using the product in ways he had never imagined and how those experiences have helped shape their product development.
How Real-time Information Matters
It is one thing to tell your donors what their funds are doing to make the world a better place. It is an entirely different thing to show them firsthand. Jeff shares stories about rescue missions in Maui using ViewSpark to give real-time impact updates.
Showing Impact Means Being Authentic
Ministry work can be messy, yet we often feel like everything we produce must be polished and shiny. But donors want to see the impact they are having firsthand. Jeff shares a story of how one customer shared a video during a massive snowstorm about the need to help their homeless neighbors living in that very storm. Simple and real wins over polished messaging every time.
Why Video and Text is a Winning Combination
As a digital communicator, you know how hard it is to get your message seen and heard. Jeff shares tremendous response rates made possible by the video and text message combination. He also shares why these rates get amplified when you send the content your recipients have been waiting to watch.
This episode is full of powerful stories and practical tips on how to better serve your donors with authentic, timely video updates from the field.
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During this talk given at the Digital Ministry Conference in 2022, Aly Hammond & Chip Johnston from Virtuous provide 8 responsive mindsets that ministries and organizations can utilize to solve some of the big problems that many non profits are facing today.
Personal For All
How do we treat all donors the way we treat major donors? This doesnât mean youâll have the capacity to take all your donors to dinner, but it does mean you can send every donor a personal thank you email, call and text. If you have hundreds of thousands of people in your database of donors, you can followup with all your donors in a highly personalized way based on what theyâve done.
Innovate, Experiment and Embrace Failure
Itâs important to try new things and get really comfortable with failing.
Focus on Trust
Relationships thrive on trust and accountability. Donors have rightful expectations that whoever theyâre donating to will do what they say they will do. Jennifer McCrea from the Generosity Network puts it like this:
âResources will tend to flow naturally towards you when you focus on the most important aspect of the fundraising process: creating human connectionsâ. Donors tend to continue giving when they feel connected with and have confidence in the organization they are involved with.
Value Motivational Insights Over Behavior
Itâs incredibly important to understand somebodyâs intent. Whatâs their connection? Why are they giving? Whatâs their motivation for giving? The first thing to find out is âwhyâ. Listen so you can understand the intentions of your donors so you can serve them in the most effective way possible.
Breaking Down Silos
Combining your people, platforms and processes to work in harmony together will help build deep, authentic donor relationships at scale.
Be Abundantly Thankful
Generosity breeds generosity. Donât lose sight of the sacrifice that your donors are making with their time and money. Rather than treating donors like an ATM, lead with gratitude and provide highly personal and meaningful experiences.
Design Plans, Adapt, Stay Curious
Write out your plans in pencil. Be willing to fail and learn from your failures. âSome organizations will thrive from this increased chaos, some will be unprepared and some will merely fight it and lose.â as Seth Godin put it.
View Generosity Beyond the Transaction
There are often so many transactions, itâs hard to see beyond it. Ask questions like:
What was the mindset behind that donation?
Why did it take place?
Take steps to focus on personalization in order to best serve donors based on who they are as a whole.
To listen to the entire talk, listen to episode #74 of the Ministry at Scale Podcast.
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Anthony Elliot is a senior software developer at Five Q. On todayâs episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast, Anthony joins Chad to talk about conversion tracking and why itâs so important.
For many people unfamiliar with conversion tracking, thereâs one big question: what are conversions?
As Anthony put it, it has similarities to a spiritual conversion. Much like how a spiritual conversion involves a person on a journey through life interacting with something that causes a change, a conversion on a website happens when a user comes to a site and interacts with the site in some way. This could include signing up for an email list, engaging with articles, posting on social media or even donating.
Conversions are important because they provide data in order to more effectively use advertising in ways that actually work. You can start testing and optimizing based on how you know people interact with your online presence.
In order to track conversions, you need to know the journey that a user takes. Asking questions such as these can help you to understand how people interact with your site:
What are they doing on your site?
How long are they on each page?
Are they a recurring donor?
The process to set up conversion tracking can be done many ways, but the way that Anthony and the 5Q team have done it successfully is to set up Google analytics to track conversions. It can be a daunting task to begin understanding this process, but Anthony gave an example about how it works. If you wanted to track donations, for example, you can create a âthank youâ page that users are taken to when they donate. You can set up google analytics to track how many people visit that specific url each day, thus tracking the number of people who donated in any given day. Another way to track this is to link your Google ads account to Google analytics in order to capture which ads are most successful and which ads need adjustment.
To learn more tips about conversion tracking and how to do it well, listen the the entirety of episode #74 of the Ministry at Scale Podcast.
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In this session from the Digital Ministry Conference, Pete Marra, the Vice President of Innovation at the Colson Center discusses how to get started with risk mitigation for your ministry.
Your Ministry is Like the Three Little Pigs
In the story of the three little pigs, each pig picked different materials to build their house, one used straw, another used sticks and the last pig used bricks. When the Big Bad Wolf stopped by and began huffing and puffing the results were often disastrous for the little pigs. Your ministry is likely built on straw, sticks or bricks as well, though it is most likely a combination of materials and risk assessments will help you identify the areas your ministry is being held together by straw.
Building Resilience Through and N+1 Mindset
N+1 comes from network administration. It stands for Node plus 1 which means you have your main node (server, channel, means of communication etc.) plus an alternate or backup in case something happens to the main node. When thinking about this in your ministry you need to think beyond just your data, you need to think about N+1 in terms of people, processes, and technology.
The 4 Aâs of Risk Mitigation
Assessment - What is it that you are going to measure to assess the risk score of your ministry. This will be based on probability and impact.
Alignment - This is about bringing agreement across your team as to what your risk is and how you will handle it.
Assignment - This is where you decide who will head up your risk mitigation plan.
Action - This is where you put your plan into action and start building resilience into your ministry.
Resilience Doesnât Have to Be Expensive
One simple way to ensure you donât lose your data is to download it from the cloud and store it offline somewhere. For example you could get a backup of your email list.
Bottom line Pete, wants to make sure that the biggest takeaway you have from his talk is to get started, anything you put in place is better than having nothing in place to mitigate risk. Pete shares many more practical ideas so be sure to listen to the full episode, but whatever you do, get started now.
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John Cobb is the Vice President at Ligonier ministries. He started looking into Web3, Blockchain and the Metaverse simply as a way to understand what they are and how they could impact ministries going forward. What he found is that there are three main buckets he thinks ministries should be considering. The three categories are community, content and censorship.
Community
When he first began he discovered NFTs since he has an interest in art and photography but found that it goes beyond the art, NFTs can also be used to build community and show membership in a specific community. When building a community one thing that is important is owning the community so that it is not fully dependent on a platform that you donât control. Many people think of this in terms of collecting email addresses or other contact information so you can still reach them if the platform goes away. Blockchain and decentralization take this one step further by allowing the platform for communication to be secure and resilient.
Content
When it comes to content there is the possibility of censorship and deplatforming coming in America, but there are many places around the world where censorship is already in place, and there is a real risk for those who spread the Gospel in those areas. Blockchain in particular could provide a secure way to distribute content digitally.
Censorship
This topic dovetails nicely with the other categories. Making the world virtual (as in Web3), decentralized and secure (via blockchain and NFTs) enables you to build security and resilience within your systems. This is also a way to future proof your digital ministry.
This is a high level overview of the types of things you should be thinking about for your ministry. John takes some time to answer specific questions and dive into details, so if you have questions youâll want to listen to the full episode.
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Marketing Communications can be a critical part of your ministry. It ensures your message is presented effectively, all of your resources are consistent so you can stand out in a sea of other organizations and that your materials are engaging your audience. In this episode we speak with Cheryl Brunkow, the Marketing & Communications director at Bethany International, and she shares her five Câs for building an effective communications strategy.
The five Câs for effective communications are clear, clean, concise, consistent and creative. Be sure to listen to the full episode as Cheryl gives very practical advice on why these are important and how to implement them within your organization.
Clear
Itâs critical that people can understand your messaging if they are going to get excited about the mission of your organization. All too often in ministry we design things around our own personal experiences which require a significant amount of explaining for others to understand. When youâre creating your messaging make sure it will be meaningful to your audience.
Clean
Reviewing for things such as typos, or grammar and spelling errors, will go a long way in showing that you value quality, and are a professional organization. Taking the time to make sure all of your resources and materials are clean will go a long way toward building credibility with your audience.
Concise
It takes time to build the right messaging, but If you can not clearly communicate what youâre about in a very concise way, then your message is going to get lost, and likely misinterpreted.
Consistent
There are a lot of moving parts in any organization and keeping consistency in your branding and messaging throughout all departments and channels is important for building your brand identity. Your audience wants to know that your whole team is working toward the same mission and vision rather than a collection of individuals doing their own thing.
Creative
The world around us is filled with amazing creative and engaging things that pull our attention in a lot of different directions. As ministries we need to be on the same level as the secular world in terms of both quality and creativity. Designing creative materials and experiences will not only get peopleâs attention but it will also keep them engaged over the long term.
This summary is just scratching the surface of what Cheryl shares in the podcast, so whether you are in the middle of rebranding, building a new communications department, or just need to breathe new energy into your communications you wonât want to miss this episode.
Resources:
Bethany InternationalThe Poisonwood BibleLess Chaos, Less Noise by Ken MeyersCreativity Inc.Wait, Wait, Donât Tell Me Podcast
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Shae Bynes is the Chief Fire Igniter and founder of the Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur movement. On this episode of the Ministry at Scale Podcast, Chad sits down with Shae to talk about what a kingdom culture looks like and how to focus on using a kingdom approach to business.
In 2009, God told Shae to quit her corporate job at IBM.
She originally started out as a software engineer and had continued to work her way up in the company, but she knew it was God telling her to move on because it wasnât in her plans. Less than a year later, she quit her job at IBM with little guidance on what to do next but continued to trust in Godâs faithfulness along the way. After some time, she got connected to a woman who would eventually become her cofounder of Kingdom Driven Entrepreneur. She knew that it was a God-given friendship and since then, she has worked to help others take a kingdom approach to business.
What does a kingdom approach look like? Shae breaks it down into 5 categories.
The first piece is identity, which the other 4 pieces are built upon. You need to be able to trust that you can hear Godâs voice and allow him express Himself through you. Itâs very much a discipleship process as you learn to build an identity based on how God sees you.
The next is assignment. Whatâs your assignment? Does it match up with Godâs assignment for you and your business? Financial ROI is important, but we also need to focus on eternal ROI.
The next is assets. We have an unlimited God that we are in partnership with. What does it look like to operate out of Heavenâs economy? Itâs not about operating for provision, but rather from provision.
The next is culture. How does your kingdom culture affect your company, self, and your business ecosystem along with all the people that you touch with what you do in business?
The final part is operations. When we take a look at marketing or any other aspect of a business, we need to be asking what we can learn from Jesus. How can we avoid the ways of the world when it comes to marketing or staffing or any other part of our business?
The whole point of all these is to help people align with the King of Kings to let God influence the world around us through our work and through our businesses.
To learn more from Shae Bynes about how she uses social media and how she focuses on efficiency in her work, listen to the entirety of this episode Ministry at Scale podcast.
Resources:
https://kingdomdrivenentrepreneur.com
Grace and Grind by Shea Bynes
A Catalyst for Change by John Bost
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During his time at Bott Radio Network, the director of marketing Sam Rinearson came to speak at the Digital Ministry Conference in 2022. He taught how to personalize your user's experience in a way to build connection and to increase your number of divine appointments every day.
Personalization is defined as âthe process of tailoring a message or an experience to each individual which speaks directly to their needs, interests, and concerns.â In todayâs day and age, weâve come to expect personalization. On Netflix, we expect to be told what to watch based on our watch history. All throughout the tech industry, we expect someone else to know what we want.
Sam breaks data down into two categories: readily available data and actively collected data. Readily available data collection can only tell you what has already happened such as Google analytics and Mailchimp. Actively collected data is the information you can get from your current users. Sam has had success collecting this type of actively data with surveys and questionnaires. He tends to go straight to analytics, but has learned that sometimes data collection is as simple as going straight to users to ask simple questions.
Of the data that you acquire, you have to be able to sort through whatâs useful to you and whatâs not. It can be helpful to first ask âWhat do I want to know?â then go and find the data that answers your question, rather than going to the data first without having a clear idea of what youâre looking for.
Data tagging is an important aspect of personalization as well. Within the audio world, audio transcription is something that Sam highly recommends people to do if they donât already do it. Itâs useful for categorizing content and for helping people find exactly what theyâre looking for. According to Sam, youâre not going to be able to make good connections with users if you donât have good tagging
To learn more from Sam about the power of personalizing your userâs experiences, listen to this entire episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast.
Resources:
Journity
Finney Media
Bott Radio Network
This talk on YouTube
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Ken Coleman is Americaâs Career Coach, the #1 national bestselling author of The Proximity Principle and From Paycheck to Purpose, and host of The Ken Coleman Show. Ken helps people discover what they were born to do and provides practical steps to make their dream job a reality. During this talk given at the Digital Ministry Conference in the spring of 2022, Ken spoke about the 6 rules of employee engagement and gave lots of practical tips about how to ensure employees feel valued, cared for, and passionate about their work.
The Purpose Rule: Your people should be using what they do best to do work they love to produce results that matter to them. This rule can be broken down into three parts. First, âusing what they do bestâ talks about talent, then âwork they loveâ deals with passion. Third, âmatter to themâ is about mission. According to this first rule, talent, love and mission are all an integral part of discovering purpose in the workplace.
The Expectation Rule: Your people will know what to do, how to do it, and how their results will be measured. After you show people how to do it, the most important step in this rule is that people know how results will be measured. People want to know if theyâre winning or losing. Stop coddling them.
The Relationship Rule: Your people must feel cared for by their leader and connected to their team. There are two simple questions that can be used to build relationships in the workplace: How are you doing? How can I help you win in your role? If these questions are asked genuinely and with intentionality, it can help people to feel cared for and valued by their leader.
The Recognition Rule: Your people must be recognized publicly and privately for their attitude, effort and contribution. Private recognition deals with the one-on-one part of a relationship. Public acknowledgement of peopleâs achievements and successes is what happens in front of the rest of the team. One way that public recognition is done at Ramsey Solutions is during leadership meetings, they will do popcorn shout-outs as a way to encourage one another and point out the areas where they see others winning.
The Growth Rule: Your people must be challenged to learn new skills and step into new roles. This rule is not about promotion, itâs about giving people an opportunity to progress. If you donât give people a ladder, theyâll leave and advance their life on their own
The Crusade Rule: Your people must see how their work is part of a cause greater than themselves. This is one of the most important rules and ties closely with the first rule. When people can see the value of their work, they can understand the bigger picture.
To learn more about each of these rules of employee engagement, listen to the entirety of episode #68 of the ministry at scale podcast.
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Chris Martin is the content marketing editor at Moody Publishers. From his talk at the 2022 Digital Ministry Conference, Chris shares some practical tips for maximizing your reach using social media.
Just a few years ago, it wasnât uncommon to reach a high percentage of your followers on social media with just a single post. Reaching 50% of your followers was not unheard of. Today, however, the average organic Facebook post reaches about 5% of followers. The best way to use Meta is to free yourself from Meta. If we learn to use social media as a means to an end, it will have less of a hold on how we reach our audiences. One practical way to do this is to focus on driving your audience to email lists or other forms of intimate off-social media communication. If social media is the front porch of our ministry or nonprofit, we need to invite users through the front porch into the living room; a more inviting place where we can engage more effectively.
When creating content for social, we also need to also consider the fact that going viral is not always as great as it seems.
âCan you help us go viral?â Thatâs one of the most common questions that social media managers get. According to Chris, itâs not as great as it sounds. It seems like the most common way to go viral today is to do something that makes a lot of people mad. In many cases, going viral could lead to controversy in a way that you did not intent. Rather than focusing on trying to go viral, the best way to use social media to maximize your reach is to just make good content. In order to do this, Chris outlines three steps:
Isolate your audience. Investigate their needs.
Identify the gifts God has given you to steward for the good of his kingdom.
To learn more about how to take practical steps in order to isolate, investigate and identify, listen to the entirety of episode #67 of the ministry at scale podcast.
Resources:
Terms of service book
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Tabitha Kapic is the Director of Innovation at the Chalmers center. In this talk from the 2022 Digital Ministry Conference in Nashville, she talks about design thinking and how teams can be better at innovation.
Be the solution
What if teams started asking the question "What do people need?" rather than "What can I give people?"
Get uncomfortable
Design thinking can be uncomfortable if youâre not used to it. Tabitha uses drawing in the creative innovation process with the Chalmers center and many times, teams donât feel comfortable drawing out their ideas but in her experience it can be a very effective tool.
Be Emotional
Youâve got to be emotional and relatable when using design thinking. Emotion is a shortcut to innovation.
Be asset based
Use what you already have. Be fast and cheap for as long as you can until youâre ready for a big investment. You donât have to build the perfect thing before youâre ready to launch. Itâs ok to learn and grow as you go.
Get out there
Design thinking is active. Do testing, get out there, talk to people, and be ok with getting uncomfortable.
Design to the edges
Who do you need to listen to? Are there people that you arenât designing for that you should be? Be ready to design to the edges. Find extreme users at both ends of your target market and design for them and everybody else that falls in the space between.
Limit yourself
Gather together with your team and turn off your computer. Many times, giving yourself limitations can really stretch your design thinking and help your creativity.
To learn more about using design thinking to innovate better, listen to the full episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast.
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On this episode of the Ministry at Scale podcast, we hear a talk given by Chad Williams from the 2022 Digital Ministry Conference held in Nashville. Chad is the founder and CEO of Five Q and gave this talk on the opening night of the conference based on the theme of the conference: Embrace the Race.
Chad used the story of his son Josiahâs high school running career to teach about some deeper principles. Since Josiah started cross country his freshmen year, he grew to love the sport and really wanted to push himself to improve and become a better athlete. One year he ran 1,000 miles in just one year as a part of his own personal training and through determination and perseverance, Josiah completed his goal even when it meant running outside in below freezing temperatures. He put in the effort to accomplish the goal which is a large part in what it means to âembrace the raceâ.
Another aspect of embracing the race is having a character of integrity to do the right thing even when no one is watching. In Josiahâs case, when his coach would tell the team where they would be running for that day, many of the other runners would take shortcuts so they wouldnât have to run so far. Even though the coach would have never known, Josiah still chose to run the assigned route and even began leading others to do the same.
The third part of embracing the race involves measuring success by Godâs standards rather than by the worldâs standards. Throughout his entire running career in high school, Josiah wanted to make it to state. He worked hard, put in the effort, did the training and pushed himself to do his best, but in the end he was seconds away from achieving a fast enough qualifying time. Although the world might view that as a failure, Josiah character and leadership abilities grew during his running career to a point where he eventually became student body president at Moody Bible Institute. He achieved success in much more important areas than a state qualification.
To hear more about embracing the race, listen to the entirety of episode #65 of the Ministry at Scale podcast.
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Heather Heuman got her start in the digital marketing space 22 years ago. After working as a special education teacher, she switched career paths and began work at a digital marketing firm. After beginning a business of her own, she began to grow that business using her digital marketing experience and started helping other businesses do the same. For the past 7 years she has been helping businesses grow using social media with her digital marketing firm called Sweet Tea Social Marketing.
In this interview, Heather shares about how you can do social media well and how can you use it to assist your business or clients. Heather uses the acronym S.O.C.I.A.L. to help her clients grow their businesses and organizations.
Strong Foundation
Who are you, who do you help, and what do you do? These are the foundational questions to ask when synthesizing your organizationâs core beliefs. Think about it like this: if you were brought onto your local news station representing your business, whatâs the one thing that will be listed on the screen underneath your organizationâs name? In five words or less, it should explain who you are and what you do. If this strong foundation is not clear, it makes everything else on social media much more difficult.
Optimize Relationships
Relationship building can really make businesses stand out. Reaching out and making connections, even digitally, is a great way to build relationships on social media and connect with people in your industry. Many people think of social media as a feed curated for themselves, but it can be a great way to cultivate relationships and make connections.
Choose the Right Platforms
Spreading out your content across many social media platforms is usually not the best strategy. While itâs important to not put all your eggs in one basket, itâs best to identify which platforms you get the most engagement on and focus your time and energy on those platforms that are working. Itâs more valuable to emphasize quality content on fewer platforms, than to publish mediocre content on many platforms. Pick your top two platforms and spend 80% of your time on those platforms, spending your remaining time on the other platforms.
Influential Content
You need to be adding content that adds value to the conversation. Itâs important to be adding your genuine thoughts on things as well. Donât share sensationalized content for the sake of getting engagement and attention, but donât be afraid to add your opinion and thoughts into your messaging. If you want to amplify what your organization thinks and stands for, you need to add something personal rather than simply following the crowd and sharing what everyone else is sharing.
Automation and Smart Systems
Rather than trying to figure out what to post day by day, scheduling out your posts can save time and energy. Itâs also important to be interacting with commentors or posting extra content on top of the scheduled posts so it doesnât seem like the business is completely hands off. Work smarter, not harder, and donât complicate things that donât need to be made more difficult. This may mean sitting down and scheduling out a bunch of posts for the following month or setting aside some time to film 5 pieces of content at once, and schedule them all out for the future. Just remember that organic content is equally as important as scheduled and automated content.
Legacy and Kingdom Impact
If you can focus on communicating in a way that will help humanity or work to make the planet a better place, it can create more passion for what you are doing among your team. If you are not a faith-based organization, are you creating a legacy? If you are a faith-based organization, is your social media presence having...
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