2nd March 2014
PARISH MAGAZINE EDITORS/WEBMASTERS TRAINING
Thank you for what you do. All volunteers, what you are doing is vital to help your church to communicate. Array of mags & websites show hard work that goes into it. Tonight’s Evensong & reception & contest are designed to be celebration of what you do & thank you. Also try to make sure that we are on end of phone or email to support you in what you do. Both editing & webmastering can be isolated jobs & want to help you to feel supported.
PARISH MAGAZINE OF THE FUTURE
I do believe that parish magazines have a future. Easy to think that everything going digital or online that printed publications will cease, and national newspapers are in decline. But I still think there is something fundamentally different about holding a newspaper or magazine in your hand. I still think there is a role for magazines. I also think there are ways that you editors can work more closely with your webmasters. I think your parish websites can be enhanced by using skill of editors.
First of all, how many webmasters and editors do work closely together? How?
How many of you also involved in social media on behalf of parish?
One of the things I recommend to parishes is a communications team, including editor, webmaster, weekly leaflet compiler, vicar, social media person, etc. Anyone have one? Idea is that you can all be saying same kind of thing.
Parish magazines:
- Deliver it to everyone for free!
Those of you who have been to a few of these events will know that I’m not so keen on the magazines where editor puts in a lot of effort to produce a 24-page mag, and it’s only read by church congregation, a few housebound people, and they are charged money for the privilege. I believe we have good news to share and we want people to read about it, then:
-shouldn’t be expected to make a profit, in fact subsidy important;
-shouldn’t be confined to congregation + a few others, should be delivered across whole community
-perhaps that means producing it less frequently, so you can be really proud of what you put out
-also means you need to have something enticing on the cover to compete with everything else we get delivered.
- People like to read stories about people!
Again, those of you who know me will know I’ve been banging on about this for years! People come to me wanting to advertise their events in P Chimes, or to get help publicising their church events in some way. My response is that people are interested in stories about people, not events. Way of helping people understand what goes on in our churches is by emphasising the people involved:
-testimonies in which people talk about how their faith has affected their lives (eg. healing story better than preaching about healing. Benefits someone has got from becoming a Christian). Partly this helps because we’re not great at talking to each other in congregation about our own faith;
-publicise your activities by focussing on people who already enjoy them (eg. publicise toddler group by talking to people who go there);
-publicise your events by talking to people who have benefitted before (eg. Alpha, Saying Goodbye);
-PHOTOS important for all of these things. We respond much better if we can see what someone looks like (some magazines include photos of weddings or baptisms as way of showing off what your church can offer)
-if something is best story in your mag that month, don’t be scared to put it on your front page.
- Those people stories can be shared online!
There is a difference between just placing pages from your parish magazine or weekly leaflet on your website, and using those stories effectively….
Not v inspiringto see prompt saying “click here for our parish magazine” because nothing to persuade me to do so.
Why don’t you take those people stories and use them online? Photo & headline will do make a difference. Means extracting the text from the magazine, adding it & photo to a separate page of the website.
-your testimonies can be put in a part of your website where faith stories collected (eg. DIOCESAN SITE);
-your stories about people enjoying activities can be included on that part of the website;
-your stories about people that might publicise an event can be put on that part of the website;
-PHOTOS important online;
-I’ve seen photos & even videos of weddings and baptisms on church websites., which really brings alive what your church can offer to people.
-again, don’t be scared to put them on the front page, or a link to a whole load of different faith stories from your front page….
-each of those people stories can be shared via social media, which can direct people to website. If you are lucky, can go viral.
Need permission to do so. Need to be careful with photos of children, but if you have permission, that’s fine & you can name them.
I steal your stories from magazines & websites & take the credit. I’d still like to know about them, but you need to use them too.
If you have good stories, don’t just use them in mag & online, but also send them to secular media as well. That might be where I come in.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Talked about updating the website and using social media to direct people to where they can find updated pages.
Perfectly OK to have static one-page website directing people to social media, and updates, photos etc to go on Twitter & Facebook, where will definitely look good. Keeping both updated can be tricky.
DIOCESAN WEBSITE SCHEME:
Hosted 20-30 parish websites for 10 years, using Typo3. Provide design template so all you need to do is insert your text & photos and will appear in right place.
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Now switching to Wordpress, That’s become industry standard for websites, looks better. Also looks better on mobiles & tablets. Happy to talk to anyone if you want to join up.
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