Chuck Scoggins | Web + Print + Video Design

I recently read an article on Copyblogger titled, There Is No ROI in Social Media. It gave me some amazing insights and new things to think about. I definitely recommend that you go check it out.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes and take-aways:

• “Social media marketing is never going to produce an ROI. No marketing will.”
• “Marketing activity is not an investment. Marketing is an expense, and goes on the Profit & Loss statement.” It’s just like email in that it’s something that is vital to the function of business, but it how do you measure the gain achieved from it? You can’t. “The real measurement of marketing is comparing the net income (revenue minus expenses) by the total revenue generated — in other words, your Profit Margin.”
• Forget ROI and focus on profits (by leveraging social media to reduce expenses and increase revenue).
• Marketing is not some kind of frosting you put on top of the business. It is the business.

It’s Christmas time and all of us are busy with all of our Christmas projects (shopping, decorating, cooking, etc.). So, to save you some time, I thought I’d give away a free resource: a Christmas-themed service bulletin design.

In the download is an InDesign file, a template in MS Word, and the raw graphics for you to choose from.

Let me know if you use it (not because you have to…just because I’d be interested in knowing if this type of thing is useful to provide in the future). If you need it customized in any way, let me know and we’ll see what we can work out.

Merry Christmas!

This might be the most important concept I’ve run across in my career (pardon the drama, but it really has shaped nearly every aspect of my work in the communications and design field):

“People choose not on the basis of what’s most important, but on what’s easiest to evaluate.”
-Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice

To put it another way, (beyond the first few options) the more options available to an individual, the harder it becomes to make a selection and the less satisfaction there is in making the decision. After a certain point, the easiest and most likely decision is to make no decision at all.

I highly recommend you pick up a copy of the book.
Here is also a good article on the topic.

“Dad, what do you do to make money?” asked my 8 year old son on the way home from a quick run to the grocery store last night.

“Well buddy,” I said, “I teach some classes, and I help churches, and I make videos, and I make websites.”

“You make websites?!?”

“Yes. I make websites.”

“Can you make me a website? Can you put my picture on it? Can we put some games on it? Do I get a password?”

So, last night, I took two hours – two precious work hours – and designed a website. It cost me about $250 in lost time and $10 for a domain name. But the cost of not doing it was too high. This was one of those pivotal moments where I could see in his eye the question, “Does my dad love me enough to do this for me?”

Will he use it? I don’t know. Will this launch him into a love of blogging and web design? Probably not.

So why did I bother? As my wife pointed out, in 10 years Trip will likely not remember that I designed him a custom WordPress blog. She’s right: he probably will never know how much time I put in to setting it up.

So why bother?

I like how Carlos Whittaker put it here and here.

So build!

Want to get more volunteers for your ministry? You could put an article in your weekly handout, monthly newsletter, email newsletter, etc. You could have a big “volunteer fair” or some other big serving campaign. You could guilt people in to volunteering. But I think there’s a better way.

Do you currently have people serving in your ministry area? Would you like to double that number? Why not pick up the phone and ask every volunteer to bring a friend to serve along with them. The benefits should be obvious:

• If every existing volunteer recruits one more volunteer, you double your workforce. Think about what would happen if each one brings two. Think about what happens when the second generation of recruiting takes place.
• It builds in a value of “recruitment” to the DNA of your ministry.
• If friends serve with friends, your existing volunteers and new have a more enjoyable serving experience.
• People who are already serving probably know how best to recruit people that are perfect for the job!

Yesterday I saw this quote in a post about search engine optimization:

It’s not about getting as many people as possible to quickly visit your page. It’s about getting the page in front of the people who are likely to be interested in what’s there.

This was in the context of page rank and other SEO, but it got me to thinking about our role as communications professionals. Often, we view our job to be the person who gets the message(s) of our organization out to as many people as possible. However, this is a misguided approach that creates unnecessary noise and stress in people’s lives. Our goal should not be to get our organization’s message out to as many people as possible; it should, rather, be to get it out to as many of the right people as possible.

An Example From the Church World

As Communications Director, there was a constant reliance on the weekly service handout (most churches call this their bulletin) to provide all the information for all the ministries to all the people of the church. Most of the time, however, the individual pieces in the handout only applied to a handfull of people that were receiving the document. For example, if we were promoting a women’s ministry event in that publication, roughly half of the people who received it (the men) were not the target audience. Asking the men to sift through the women’s ministry content is asking them to ignore all the content. And 50% is a best case scenario…the number drastically drops when you start promoting smaller ministries, support groups, niche groups, etc.

A much more effective use of the weekly handout would be to cast vision and point larger groups of people toward larger next steps and toward larger church-wide initiatives. Then, use targeted and specific methods to reach the smaller groups with their own interest-content. Examples of these targeted methods might include Facebook groups, direct mailers, email newsletters, etc. This approach gets the right information in front of the right people. It’s a value-added, relationship-driven model (more on that later).

The Buffet Is The Blanket

In my experience, the push-back was always, “well, what if there’s someone out there who is not on our mailing list or that we don’t already know about who might be interested in this information? Shouldn’t we throw a blanket out over the entire large group to make sure those people get the information about the small ministry?”

I would emphatically say, “NO!” Blasting everyone with messages that they might or might not be interested in is lazy and irresponsible. As the quote above implies, we should only put messages in front of people that those people are interested in hearing. And it’s you’re responsibility, not theirs, to figure out those messages.

One thing that is important to do is provide a highly-organized, user-friendly, buffet for people to access when they do want more. For most organizations, the website is the best place for this hub of information. In fact, the best approach is to build a massive wealth of information on your website and use your blanket messages to encourage people to go find info about their interest topic there.

Relationship-Driven

All of this is part of a larger approach to communications philosophy that I’m calling “relationship-driven.” In essence, today’s world is hyper-connected and the currency for ministries, non-profits, and even commercial entities is relationships. In actuality relationships have always been the most important part of our transactions (I think about how my grandfather went to the same pharmacy because the pharmacist knew his name and his drug history off the top of his head), but now more than ever we have the tools to connect with people of like-minds. Church staffers (and non-profit staffers and corporate leaders and everyone) need to figure out how to use these tools to leverage their personal networks for the purposes of communication. The need for the church bulletin, the ad in the Sunday paper, and even commercials on TV is becoming more and more scarce as people look to personal connections and recommendations as the primary informer in decision-making.

A relationship-driven approach to communications is harder. It’s harder to develop a network and work through a web of people connections than it is to take out an ad. But, the return-on-investment is much greater. It’s time to change our thinking, get out of our offices, and be amongst the people (literally and virtually/digitally).

One last thought…if you agree that the buffet is the blanket, start thinking about a progressive dinner!

Here is another kinetic video I just finished up. This one is pretty simple, but I think it has a good message. It could be used as a message opener, as a worship intro, or stand alone. It also has a pretty good Christmas flavor to it. If you want to purchase a copy, it’s available on SermonSpice.com. If you’d like a customized version of it, hit me up. Enjoy…

I just finished up this little kinetic text video. Let me know what you think.

What Is Christmas? from Chuck Scoggins on Vimeo.

You can purchase it (along with several other videos I’ve produced) over at Sermon Spice.

Occasionally on Tuesdays I give you my thoughts, unfiltered and off the top of my head. Here’s a special Thanksgiving video edition…

Occasionally on Tuesdays I give you my thoughts, unfiltered and off the top of my head. Here’s what I’m thinking about today…

• I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships & the communications implications lately. My friend, Justin Wiseposted this stat on his blog today:
  

  92% of Jesus’s time in the Gospels was spent in the martketplace amongst people. Not holed up in a church building. (And yes, I realize churches and synagogues are different. Hopefully you get the point). 

  I think it’s time we start depending less on our programs, bulletins, newsletters, etc. to get people to church and more on our relationships with others being the church. Thoughts? Push back? (side note: a conversation is happening here)

• I did a guest post over on MediaSalt.com (I love those guys) about Netflix and the church. Let me know what you think about it.
• Have you taken advantage of the Church Marketing Lab? It’s a great way to get feedback on your ideas and to add value to others design ideas as well. The collective wisdom of the group is better than the individual, right?
• I’ve been working on building my design business. It’s hard work! Here is a screen grab from one Christmas After Effects project I’ve been working on.
  
  Lots of layers going on there!
  If there is anything I can do for you, please don’t hesitate to let me know! 
• I updated my blog theme from a Woo Theme to Standard Theme and I’ve already seen a spike in traffic. And, I feel like the design is cleaner. What do you think about the new look?

That’s all from me…what’s going on in your world?