Some savvy Church and State leaders have seen the light
Many, many years ago Cutlip and Center wrote the 7 C’s of communication in their seminal textbook, Effective Public Relations, One of these C’s is the channel you use to reach your audience.
Use a channel your audience is familiar with and uses frequently, advised these PR gurus.
The more things change, the more the stay the same! A few church and political leaders have figured out that this still works and they need to online:
“As a pastor, I shouldn’t be just leading a church but connecting with people using the same formats they use every day,” says Pastor Ben Arment of the HIstory Church in Oak HIll, Va. "Blogging is a forum that’s successful because it corresponds with how younger generations think.”
Mark Batterson, the lead pastor of National Community Church in Washingaton, D.C. Batterson estimates he spends 20 percent of his workday updating his blog, “Evotional.” He recently hired a “digital pastor” whom he met through the blogosphere to maintain the church’s Web ventures.
“I used to think that the blog supplemented my weekend message,” said Batterson, who draws upwards of 25,000 visitors a month to www.evotional.com. “Now I wonder if it isn’t the other way around. It’s hard for me to imagine why a church that has younger members wouldn’t have a blog component.”
How about a Church that would like to attract younger members?
And on the political side, NPR’s On The Media spoke at length yesterday about the power of consumer generated media, blogs, video and podcasts.
Politicians needs to take heed of the power of the Net, was the overarching message. Smart politician’s know that they need to take their message directly to the audiences who are relying on the Internet for news and information.
Senator Lieberman’s loss in the Connecticut Democatric primary to Net-savvy newcomer Ned Lamont was a case in point.
Indiana Senator, Evan Bayh, is posting messages aimed at the younger generation on sites like YouTube and Facebook in preparation for his anticipated 2008 presidential bid.
The channel still matters. In fact it matters more than ever. if you want to reach a net savvy younger audience, you have to learn how to include social media components like blogs, RSS feeds, podcasts and video news in your online PR campaign.
