This is a great, quick read. And a good reminder to make sure your church has a web stratagy in place;

readscott:

When working with churches, the biggest obstacle to having a web strategy is clarifying a web strategy. The problem is that the process of clarification is painful. It requires saying “no” more often than “yes.” (Your dream for having a flash-based web portal with a 2-minute intro like this one should be put to sleep.)

So, to make the clarification step easy, let’s make the web strategy part simple. Here’s how I break it down for clients:

• Website – Is it structured properly? Does the design match your church’s personality? Do you have the ability to maintain it yourself without technical knowledge?
• Content – Do you write for members or visitors? Who writes? Do you only produce written copy or also other types like video or images?
• Community – Where will you enhance your real world community online? Facebook? MySpace? Twitter? There isn’t a wrong answer, except to choose none.
• Marketing – What tools will you use? What messages will you send? How often will you send those messages? Will you focus on active or passive approaches?
• SEO – What keywords and phrases will you target? Do you have a goal for your SEO? A specific pagerank? A specific amount of search traffic?
• Analytics – What tool(s) will you use? What metrics will you focus on? Hits? Time on site? Visitor goals ala Google Analytics? How will you change your web strategy in light of what information your analytics gives you?

Sit down and take a few minutes to answer each of these questions and you’ll be on your way to a nice, tidy web strategy for your church.