Media Outreach

Alas, my dear reader(s), the time has come for us to depart from our copyright discussions of the past few weeks. Fear not though, for my litigious nature will surely demand that we return to that particular briar patch in the quasi-near future. Today though, we shall turn our attention to that which college students everywhere are seeking to master, only to fail spectacularly in a torrential downpour of Mountain Dew and pizza – time management.

As a longtime member of faithHighway’s fulfillment team, I have heard a plethora of reasons for why a site’s content is not finished in a timely manner. I’ve heard things such as, “I haven’t received the material I need from the ministry leaders,” to “I’m sorry, I’m the only one doing the content entry, and we have 318 pages so it’s taking me longer than I thought,” to even, “I’m sorry, I’m not ready yet because your father hasn’t given me the pictures for the new gallery, and how come you never come to visit us? (Hi Mom!).” Honestly though, I’m not here to judge anyone. There is no late penalty for not doing your content, and truth be told, if your site sits on our production server for 5 years, I will not scold you. I may make fun of you, or offer to sell you faithHighway’s content setup services (contact your Client Relations Manager for more info), but I’m not going to threaten to take your website away. However, I would encourage everyone, with the simple notion that your website will not do anyone any good if no one but you sees it.  One of the primary goals of most faithHighway websites is outreach. I, for one, think that is awesome, and I’m very proud to be part of a company that strives to help others fulfill the Great Commission. However, a website that never goes live will probably not be successful in helping outreach goals, since it is for all intents and purposes an un-utilized tool at that point.

Now that everyone is starting to feel guilty about not doing their content, here are a few tips for how you can more efficiently get things done:

1. There is no “I had to do all the content myself” in Team: Doing the content for every page on an entire website can be a daunting task. You may be familiar with the adage, “many hands make light work.” I personally don’t agree with that, since electricity makes light work, but I digress. The point is, by forming a committee to get the content done, you’ll drastically reduce the amount of work any one person has to do. This will not only reduce the time it takes to do content, but you may just make a few friends as well. I’ve worked with churches that have formed small groups specifically to work on website content, and they all seem to  be having a lot of fun whenever I’m on the phone with them. Kind of makes me wish I was invited to their meetings. I’m just saying…
2. Shortcuts are better than long cuts: If you’ve worked with the faithHighway editor in the past few weeks, then you may have noticed a few new toys at your disposal. We’re actually in the process of upgrading our existing editor, and one of the new features are some preset templates that can be dropped right into the content areas. This enables the user to simply drop the template in place, select a specific area within the template, and replace the placeholder content with their desired information. With this, you can now get your content in place without having to worry about creating a layout.
3. When all else fails, ask Andy to do it: Despite the hints and guilt trips I’ve laid out in this blog post, I understand that there are going to be cases where it’s simply not feasible for someone within the church to get the content done… or sometimes people just don’t want to. For cases like this, feel free to take advantage of the content setup services that faithHighway has implemented that I referenced earlier in this post. With this, faithHighway will take your pre-written content and integrate it into your site, supplementing it with optimal text and images from our photo stock library.

You may be familiar with the oft used web phrase “Content is King.” By my calculations, that would make the person who enters in the content on a website a kingmaker, which is pretty sweet in my opinion. The point is, in order to spread the message, your message has got to be a part of the website. By utilizing these tips, we can make sure that your website is up and running as fast as possible, and that your message is heard wherever a wireless connection is available… from sea to shining sea.

Photo by CarbonNYC