I was reading this article “Keep it Simple” and I am amazed at how often the concepts “keep it simple” and “begin with the end in mind” come up when talking about media and online information. The tendency is to give all the information at one time in one place. In college, I took a few journalism classes. And one of the things we were taught is to keep the most pertinent information in the first paragraph – who, what, when, where , how.
Why? A lot of people stop reading after the first paragraph. With ministry information, I think maybe the online information needs to be scaled back, delivering the pertinent information. Then, the challenge is to move the reader to a decision. That’s quite a big order for the ministry minded and producing content. However, big or not, it seems to be the demand from the reader. Thoughts?
June 16th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Tony… I think you hit the nail on the head. Gone are the days when churches need 100 pages in their websites to tell everyone everything they have done for the past 1oo years. If you can’t communicate who you are quickly and effectively you will not have the chance to continue to communicate at all.
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Totally agree! I don’t think readers want to sift through several pages of information just to find the basics. People will remember simplicity.