Application Development for Farmers
I was reading on CNN this morning about a farmer in Nebraska that is using Twitter on the farm. This story peaked my interest because, as a lot of you may know, I grew up on my family’s farm in Eastern Arkansas, and they are still very much so involved with farming. I am not for sure of the size of the total operation now but I know it’s bigger now than when I was there and it seemed overwhelming then. For some reason I don’t see my dad ever using Twitter, and that’s cool with me, but I do see him eventually using his smartphone to record data and retrieve information. Here’s an excerpt from CNN about the farmer that is using Twitter on the farm:
Twittering From the Tractor:
(CNN) — As he rolls across the wheat fields of his Nebraska farm, Steve Tucker often has his hands not on the wheel of his tractor, but on a smartphone. Steve Tucker, a Twittering farmer, pauses in front of his tractor in Nebraska. He sometimes posts a dozen messages per day on Twitter, commenting on everything from the weather to the state of his crops to his son’s first tractor ride and even last night’s cheeseburger. Twittering from the tractor: smartphones sprout on the farm – CNN.com
I started telling my dad back in the 90’s that it wasn’t going to be long before computers became a necessity in their day to day management on the farm. I even devoted a lot of time developing some applications in Visual Basic to assist them in tracking various aspects of the business. We never really used it on a large scale, I did however input my own personal farm information into it and eventually sold it to a company in Washington who built onto it and marketed it to farmers across the country as an early form of farm management software. There are a lot of farm management applications on the market today, but I still think that Red Wing might be the leader when it comes to micro-managing a multi-million dollar operation, even smaller operations can benefit from it’s advanced accounting and payroll functionality.
CenterPoint from Redwing Software
CenterPoint is the most versatile Ag software product on the market, yet it’s easy to set up and use. By using CenterPoint, you can see which area of your operation is generating income, and which is not. By doing this, you can focus on the income generating enterprises, and increase your profits. The profitability of your operation depends on good financial management. CenterPoint Accounting for Agriculture gives you everything you need to manage your operation’s finances. Get the answers you need to make important business decisions to increase profitability, become more efficient, and achieve your goals. (click here to learn more…)
It wasn’t long after this that we started seeing farm equipment such as combines and spray rigs that were shipped to us with GPS capabilities. We didn’t latch onto the new technology at the time but since I have left the farm it’s been funny to watch them gradually move into this realm. The equipment they use on the farm today would shock a lot of people. Most people wouldn’t expect to see air conditioned cabs w/ air-ride seating, computerized controls, GPS, 2-way radios, and high-definition stereos on farm equipment, but that’s pretty much the norm anymore. I have even seen a television mounted inside a combine before.
All of this to say that technology has found it’s way into Agriculture in a big way. This past winter I wrote some software for my dad to help him manage day to day operations like tracking chemical purchases, seed buys, planting dates, fertilizer costs, fuel consumption, etc. We sat down and outlined every possible piece of data that he wanted to capture and I setup a web-based application that allowed them to track these items and generate reports. We also setup some notebook pc’s that could connect to this database with cellular cards and shipped them out to the fields.
Our intentions were great but this year things were pretty hectic during the planting season that we didn’t capture as much data as we would have liked but I am hopeful that next year will be different, especially since everyone on the farm is getting more and more familiar with technology and the use of the internet.
There are some other advantages to being connected to the internet while working out in the field. For example, seed purchases and futures bookings can be made online now via email. Commodity markets can also be tracked closely via the web as well, but probably the most useful tool during planting and harvest season is online weather. The satellite and radar imagery provided by many news and weather websites today is phenomenal, and has evolved quite a bit from the DTN satellite systems we used to rely on to predict rain.
Another tool that has been on the farm for years is the mobile phone. When I was growing the first people I ever saw with cell phones were farmers. Of course they weren’t the small smartphones that everyone carries in their shirt pockets or clipped on their belts today, the earliest phones I remember were heavy truck mounted phones that had a cord attached to them. I can remember my uncle even having his setup so that if it would ring the horn on his truck would start honking so that if he was in the field or away from the truck he would know about it.
Fortunately mobile phones have evolved over time as well, and this past winter my dad got his first smartphone. We even tested the farm application that I mentioned earlier on the Blackberry so that it would be accessible and data could be entered from it.
I know that when most people think about farming they picture old, topless, 2-cylinder tractors sitting all alone in a 1000 acre field with the driver fully exposed to the elements but that’s just not how it is anymore. I am sure that in some smaller family operations that is still a way of life, but for the most part farmers have started embracing technology. I believe that over the next couple of years we are going to see a growing need for applications to be developed for use on large farming operations as well as smaller family operations.
If you own or operate a farm and are considering some form of application to track your day to day operations such as chemical applications, pesticide reporting, equipment maintenance logs, fuel consumption, seed purchases, yield tracking, and custom harvesting, please feel free to contact my partners and I to discuss your needs. We would love the opportunity to work with you and while we don’t have a specific product to sell you, we can develop a custom application for your operation to fit your needs.
Possible Twitme Bug w/ Wordpress 2.8
A few days ago I updated my personal blog to Wordpress 2.8 and for the most part everything seemed to be working fine but I noticed yesterday that when I published to my blog using Windows Live Writer I started seeing an error message. If you are not familiar w/ Live Writer it’s a great desktop publishing application that allows you to publish blog posts using RPC.
To use Windows Live Writer you have to first enable RPC publishing inside of wordpress but once that’s done it’s actually pretty handy for a Microsoft application. Here’s the error message I am getting:
The response to the metaWeblog.newPost method received from the blog server was invalid:
Invalid response document returned from XmlRpc server
Also, when I published from inside the wordpress dashboard instead of saying at the top of the post that it had published and giving me a link to view the post online I get a white screen but no error message. I wasn’t for sure what could be causing the issue because I hadn’t seen any reports about Twitme errors with version 2.8 so I had our server admin Matt take a look at the error logs and mod security to see if we could track down what was causing this behavior and this is what we found:
PHP Fatal error: Cannot use object of type stdClass as array in /var/www/vhosts/cottonrohrscheib.com/httpxdocs/blog/wp-content/plugins/twitme/twitmeShortUrl.php on line 37
Again, I wasn’t having any problems with the plugin up until the point where I upgraded to 2.8 but I am leaning toward there being a bug or something with the application. Unfortunately TwitMe is not one of those applications that you can just deactivate and try to live without, it’s actually a pretty handy tool that posts your blogs to your twitter account, and probably one of the best plugins for doing that that I have seen. I was just wondering if anyone else out there is having any issues with this plugin on 2.8?
Current Projects: OAHCP Redesign
This past week I mentioned that we were in the process of moving over two of our existing clients to wordpress. One of those clients was OAHCP, the Oklahoma Association of Health Care Providers. OAHCP has been one of my clients since 2002 and up until today were using a site that I had hand coded for them. Over the years I have learned a lot about how they use their website to communicate to their members and I realized that Wordpress was a perfect fit for them, you can preview this redesign at www.oahcp.org/cms, it should go live sometime today.
5 Tips for Freelancers
This past week I received three phone calls from friends that I haven’t spoken to in a long time, when I asked how they were doing they each painted similar pictures, unhappy at their current jobs, hoping to pickup enough side projects and clients to justify going out on their own. I know these guys and have worked with them in the past on various projects, they are very talented. One of them is a graphic artist and the other two are developers, very talented developers. Each of them wanted to let me know that they were looking to pickup some freelance work and wanted me to keep them in mind, I told them I definitely would do that, but currently we seem to have everything under control at Pleth, but that could change quickly given the nature of our business.
One of the guys asked me what advice I had for him, he hasn’t done any freelance work in several years and was finding it hard to get his groove back. I shared with him a couple of things that I picked up over the years, I used to do a lot of freelance work back in the day. In fact, that’s how I got started. I was doing work for another company and developing websites for their clients, occasionally I would have a relationship with the client but often times I would not, which was fine with me. Here’s are the things I shared with him:
Referrals are Huge!
When I was first getting started on my own I quickly found that a lot of my clients were the direct result of friend referrals, the same holds true for client referrals. I would say that probably 80% of the calls I have gotten over the years as a result of a referral have materialized into projects. When you do work for a client, there’s no shame in telling them to tell their friends.
Reach Out to Small-Medium Sized Ad Agencies
I found a lot of success early on by reaching out to ad agencies and letting them know that I was available to come on board as a member of their team on a project by project basis. At the time I was breaking into the business the web was still somewhat new, and very few ad agencies actually staffed web developers, it was almost always a product that they outsourced, and even today there are a lot of smaller to medium sized agencies out there that still have a lot of success outsourcing their web work. Trust me, ad agencies are awesome alliances to have and it’s a win-win for all parties involved.
Get Out and Meet People
This, for me, was always the toughest part, because as I have mentioned many times in the past, I hate playing the part of a salesman. What worked best for me was to approach potential clients that I had a sincere interest in working with, regardless as to whether they had a website or not. I would first establish a relationship with them and then share with them what I did. Almost 100% of the time after finding out that I developed websites they would either tell me they had a website but it wasn’t doing as good as they thought it should or ask me if I thought they needed a website. It didn’t hurt that I had pre-rehearsed these answers in my head a few times before approaching them and had a smooth spill that I laid on them. Early on I can remember landing just about every project that I went after, or course the market wasn’t as saturated with developers as it is now.
Befriend Other Developers
I know this sounds weird but trust me it’s in your best interest to be friends with your competitors for a couple of reasons. Over the years I have been brought in by one of my competitors to help them out on a project, and several times I have brought in one of my competitors to help out. You would be surprised at how many times I have been able to land deals that were actually referred to me by one of my competitors. Why would they refer a client to me? They might have been overwhelmed with projects in-house, or possibly I was a better fit for the project. For example, I was one of the first in my area to use Flash on websites, and I admit now that it was kind of hokey, but that’s what a lot of people wanted, the animations and the music, etc. A lot of my competitors didn’t do flash, but they would often hire me just to do the flash components. This same theory can apply to PHP, ASP, ColdFusion, or whatever areas you are the strongest in, be open about what your strengths and weaknesses are.
Another advantage to hanging out with other people in the industry is that you can pick up on a lot of useful techniques or emerging technologies that are out there. Let’s face it, it’s tough to stay on top of everything that is going on today within the web development community. Once a month I have dinner and hangout with at least 50 other web developers at the Central Arkansas Refresh. Technically, we all compete against one another for clients, but when we get together we share ideas and learn from one another, what this does is make our industry better as a whole.
Build Up a Portfolio ASAP
One of the first things a potential client is going to ask for is some examples of your work. I found out early on that my portfolio was a big part of why a lot of clients chose me over my competitors. Even if you do a job pro bono be sure to include it in your portfolio, the more screenshots you can crowd onto a page the better.
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I hope that this has been helpful, I am sure that I will remember some more things later, but this is all that comes to mind right now, it’s been a while since I was out beating the bushes looking for clients but I think that a lot of these tips are still relevant today as they were 7 or 8 years ago. Also, if Pleth can assist you w/ hosting or email solutions, please don’t hesitate to let us know…
You Don’t Have to Compete
I am usually not a huge fan of email newsletters but I do have one exception, the SitePoint Tribune. If you are web developer you probably are already familiar w/ SitePoint and have been on their site and read their books, they put out good stuff. This morning one of their editorials caught my eye and I thought that it was worthy of sharing, especially since I had this same conversation the other day with a friend who does a lot of freelance work.
The editorial was inspired by one of the SitePoint forum users who asked the other developers on the forum if they even bothered competing against other companies because he felt that most companies almost always choose the lowest price when accepting bids but I tend to disagree w/ that philosophy, there are clients out there that will honestly pay more because they feel they will get a better product at the end of the day. I can’t think of an instance where my partners and I sat down and decided to underbid a project so that we could land the deal. In fact, we have even jacked up our proposals a few times in the past because we didn’t want to come in too low, or because there were some loose cannon’s or variables that we just weren’t sure about.
DrQuincy asks an excellent question in the forums: Do you bother competing with other companies? He writes about how he feels he’s wasting his time when competing against others because the client will almost always choose the lowest price. I totally agree — I hate competition for web development projects.
Looking at our projects on at the moment, we have 12 web sites under development: ten are redos of existing sites, while seven of those are sites we originally did. Two projects are new, both having been referred from existing clients. We have been the only web developer quoting on those 12 jobs. I love that! The advantages of being the sole developer putting forward a project proposal are numerous, but here are the main two:
- You’re 99% certain of winning the job.
- You can charge more.
The big question is: just how do you position your business so that you’re the only ones quoting on a project? What we do is simple — just two things:
- We ask our happy clients to refer us their friends.
- We position ourselves as experts so that existing clients and prospects assume we’re the best and never consider going elsewhere.
You see, it’s all about trust. If you’re a trusted provider or expert, there’s no reason for the prospect to go elsewhere. Fairly simple really and it can turn you from a struggling web development firm into a successful one.
Here’s something else that I shared with my friend that he got a pretty big kick out of. When we put together proposals for potential clients, we put a lot of time in estimating development costs and making sure that we totally understand the scope of their project, but once the proposal is in their hands we don’t do the daily or weekly telephone follow-up thing. We pretty much stay out of their hair unless they have a question or are ready to contract our services. It’s not that we don’t want the business, it’s one of my quirks I guess but I hate to play the part of a salesman.
I guess another one of my quirks is that if I don’t get a good vibe when talking to a potential client, they usually don’t even get a proposal. I know this sounds like poor judgment, especially in this economy, but there’s nothing worse than getting saddled to a client that you don’t work well with or who knows everything for an extended period of time. Fortunately my business partners feel the same way.
The Vendor / Client Relationship…
I have to thank Greg Smart and Scott Pinkston for pointing this one out to me, this is just good stuff…
Every Company Needs a Blog…
I deal with a lot of clients today that have been with me since I got into this industry almost a decade ago, and for the most part my partners and I have had a hand in developing every aspect of their web presence from the bottom up so when they see their competitors launching these things called “blogs” they naturally reach out to us for advice as to whether they need one or not. My answer 90% of the time is yes, and here is my reasoning…
Your corporate website is what it is, it’s a great resource for information about your company, products & services, etc., but a blog can bring so much more to the table. A blog is a lot more personable and interactive in my opinion, and in a lot of ways it should be viewed as a direct link between you and your consumers where they also have the opportunity to communicate their needs or perspectives on your posts. This can be extremely valuable not only in making sales but also in improving your product or service offerings.
A lot of the companies that my partners and I work with on a daily basis have blogs, and for the most part I subscribe to each of them if for no other reason than to stay in the loop with what’s going on within their organization, but it has also helped me to find additional products and services offered by these providers that are well suited for our company.
If your company isn’t providing a blog right now, you could be missing out on establishing a much closer relationship with your existing clients as well as reaching new ones. One misconception we run into is that given the fact that some organizations we have worked with might already have 20 or 30 thousand dollars already tied into their web presence, they instinctively think that adding more functionality to their site is going to be expensive, and that could not be further from the truth. Adding a blog to your existing web presence is extremely cost effective and can possibly have a larger return than any other component of your web presence if it is managed correctly…
For more information about adding a blog to your corporate or business website, please don’t hesitate to contact my partners and I for a free consultation, click here.
Project Management w/ Basecamp for Web Developers
Now that Pleth has 3 locations (Batesville, Conway, and Jonesboro) being able to manage multiple projects at the same time has grown way past the enormous whiteboard at our Batesville office, and being somewhat OCD, I have always looked at a whiteboard in my office as more of a hindrance than a help anyway. In the past our internal project management has always been up to whoever was heading up a project. Each one of us have our own unique way of management. I am a strong Outlook user and have used Tasks to manage projects that I had going on in the past but my partners have always relied on their whiteboard pretty heavily. We have also used a pretty robust intranet solution from Vialect (which I also highly recommend) to store our client proposals, track hourly time, etc.
A few times in the past I have collaborated or freelanced with other companies on various projects and on a few occasions I have had the opportunity to use Basecamp before, so it was totally unfamiliar to me when we first started using it this past week. Our reasoning for using it was we have found ourselves collaborated with a few outside agencies and providers that we partner with from time to time on projects and it was more or less their recommendation. Being a minimum of 2 hours away from the rest of my team I am open to anything that will help us collaborate better on projects. I am also a big fan on archiving past work, I literally have every file I have ever coded or created for a client since I got into this business about 10 years ago. Basecamp has some excellent archival methods built in, which is pretty cool, but here are some of the things that I am really getting hooked on…
- Universal – Odds are that when we involve freelancers in the future on projects they will already be familiar with Basecamp because it is extremely popular within our industry. Even though it is a really straightforward solution, it’s nice to know that we don’t have to spend that extra hour of time getting someone up to speed on our system.
- Customizable! I have no idea why this is as important for me, but it is. As I mentioned earlier, I am a bit OCD when it comes to tools and things I work with and for me, just being able to work inside a clean, well laid out environment. I know that this probably doesn’t matter to a whole lot of people as long as the solution works right? But trust me it does affect my level of participation.
- Dashboard – 37 Signals has done a great job w/ the layout of the dashboard on Basecamp, and honestly I don’t remember it being this user friendly the few times I logged my work in the past but it might also have something to do with the fact that I understand project management a little bit better now. There also some obvious things you notice about the Dashboard too, for instance, late items appear in red at the top of the list as well anything that is due within the next 2 weeks. It’s also pretty cool to see what all we have assigned to each member of our team, not that we are consumed by performance or efficiency, our concerns center more around quality than anything else.
- To-do Lists – Being a power Outlook user I am extremely familiar with Tasks. I have tracked every client project that I have ever worked on using Tasks. The To-do Lists in Basecamp pretty much serve the same purpose, but with a little more flexibility in that where I would normally track each project as a task of their own, I can now break down the elements of a project into stages (ex. Pre-Flight, Development, Testing, Launch, Bugfixes). Furthermore, each of these elements can be assigned to a different member of our team, therefore eliminating the need to pass tasks back and forth to each other. There is also some sort of endorphin high, or adrenaline rush when you check off a task from your list, or at least there is for me. Another pretty neat feature of the to-do lists that I like is the fact that you can add items that are only visible to “need to know” members of your team, this will come in handy I am sure when we are outsourcing elements of projects.
- File Sharing – In our industry we often find ourselves working with a wide variety of files (ex. Artwork, PDF’s, Documents, and Compressed Files). Being able to retrieve these files 6 months to a year after a project is launched is nice, because believe me, this does happen from time to time. I had to retrieve a vector logo file I created for a client about 4 years ago this past week and being able to locate it in about 20 minutes from my previously mentioned archival system was nice. Having this flexibility companywide is going to be nice.
- Message Boards – I know that email is still the killer application but sometimes shooting interoffice emails back and forth is not the most effective way to communicate. With the message boards inside of Basecamp all messages are displayed in reverse chronological order and the best part, files can be attached to messages in the message board, so this actually makes this part of the application even more collaborative. You can even categorize the messages inside the message board area.
- Milestones – When I speak to a client on the front end they always want to know 2 things upfront, costs and timeframe. Sometimes the costs aren’t near as important to them as the timeframe, especially if they are trying to rush along a product release or capitalizing on a promotion. I like to give my clients 3 tentative milestones when we get our initial payment for the project. The first milestone will be the start date, since we often times manage multiple projects, sometimes it’s not feasible for us to start on a new project the day we get our clients deposit, so we have to give them some sort of tentative start date. The next milestone is the test date, and of course a lot of this has to do with when I have all of the required assets from the client to get started, when clients drag their feet providing me with logos, content, etc., this can move the testing date back later than originally projected. Another milestone is the launch date, and this is sometimes hard to call and really dependant on the first two milestones and how quickly they come together. With Basecamp I can project these milestones and stay on track and prioritize my time a lot better than ever before. Also, Basecamp allows you to subscribe to your Milestones in iCalendar format, and they are even color-coded inside of Basecamp, which also really helps me visually to see the big picture.
- Time Tracking – For us, our billable time is our bottom line, it is for this reason that time tracking is so critical. With Basecamp we can log our time on project elements and see a full log of our time entered on a project, therefore giving us another valuable look at the big picture. Tracking time against to-do list items might be one of the biggest advantages to this software for a company like ours.
- Project Overview – Speaking of getting the big picture on a project, the overview section for each projects shows you everything, including milestones (late items are listed in red), and things that are due in the next 2 weeks are listed in the mini-calendar area. There is also an RSS Feed for each project which is also an added plus. With the project overview you can also see who is assigned what and it’s a great motivator, especially if the ball is in your court and there are others waiting on something you have to provide.
- Comments on Messages – I really like the way to communicate to specific members of our team on components that require their involvement. For instance, if I get as far as I can in the development process and I need Matt or Greg to do something server side before I can continue, I can add them to that particular element and send them a message letting them know that the ball is in their court. They can also provide comments back in the event they should have questions, etc.
- Expandable – There are a lot of add-ons and extras out there that are available as add-ons for Basecamp. These extras and add-ons can do everything from subversion to accounting. Since we are adjusted to our internal accounting solution we probably won’t jump into any of these anytime soon, it’s still pretty nice to know that these products are already on the market and mature in their feature sets and stability should we ever decide to transition.
Granted, I know that overall standardization for project management in our industry is non-existent, that’s probably due to the fact that we are all more or less pioneers since the Internet hasn’t been around all that long, but when a lot of organizations the size of our company and freelancers alike all start embracing tools like Basecamp, we can lay the foundation toward standardization and efficiency.
I speak from the perspective of a partner in a web development firm, but I can honestly see where Basecamp could also be a very useful tool for other industries out there, even further than Graphic Designers and Content Writers, but also wedding and event planners, teachers, consultants, etc. If you are like me and always on the lookout for ways to improve your business, take a look at Basecamp and see what it can do for your business. Here are a few companies that utilize Basecamp already in their operations:
Demo – Adding Featured Content (articleimg & thumbnail)
In this video demonstration I walk you through the process of adding Featured Content to your website or blog. The Featured Content area, as shown in the video, is the centerpiece of your website where Images are scrolled through and content is pulled in from each featured post and displayed in a layer above the image. Visitors to your website immediately know that the content found in this area is “featured” and “important”. To get to these “featured posts” the visitor simply clicks on the image and it takes them directly to that post.
There are three things to remember when adding Featured Content to your website. The first thing is that in order for your content to show up in this center area, it must be in the “featured” category. There are two other elements that are required for the images to show up properly inside this centerpiece area, the “articleimg” or Article Image, this is the large image that immediately greets the visitor when they logon to your website. You will want to make sure to resize whatever image you use for your “articleimg” to make sure that it fits the particular design of your website. The last component is the “thumbnail”, this is a smaller image that is used alongside the listing of your post on the homepage of the website. The “thumbnail” also has a specific size that it needs to be so that it doesn’t break or mess up your layout.
Here’s the video demonstrating the addition of these two components, sorry for the low volume on the video…
The New Traditional Church
I just got around to reading a blog post that my good friend Garth Bowman sent me the other day about the New Traditional Church by Tony Morgan. I am not familiar with Tony but I have to say that I think he has hit the nail right on the head. The web is all about interaction, sure back in the day it was primarily used for research but today a vast majority of web users get online to communicate with their friends. The explosive growth of social networks like Twitter and Facebook just solidify that theory.
In his post, Tony makes a good point, if a ministry’s website doesn’t “engage” it’s visitors in some way, it more or less is a digital replication of the Sunday bulletin. When I consult with a ministry client one of the first things that I recommend is for them to establish a presence on Facebook and Twitter. When we develop ministry websites we always go into the project looking for ways to make our clients websites more “engaging”. We also incorporate things now like streaming video and chat rooms during our services, the response to the streaming video has been overwhelming, in fact we have had visitors from all over the globe inside our chatroom during service.
Another thing that has worked out very well for our clients is Facebook Connect, this technology allows users to post comments on your website using their Facebook account as a means of authentication. Facebook Connect also allows Facebook users to share your content with their friends inside of Facebook with just a few clicks. We have found that if users have to register for an account on your website just to post a comment, they are likely to just move on. But, if they are able to use their Facebook account they are a lot more likely to interact and post comments. Another way we have been broadening our reach is through the use of Twitter, our website is tied into Twitter so that anytime new content or podcasts are added to the website they are also sent out to our followers on Twitter.
I feel really good about our approach to Ministry Web Solutions, this past year one of our ministry clients, The Church Alive won “best of show” at the AdFed Banquet for the interactive category. If you are interested in speaking with us about your ministry’s web presence, please don’t hesitate to contact my partners and I, we would love to speak to you about your project.
Here’s the post that I was referring to from Tony Morgan:
I’m amazed at the number of churches that still view the web as primarily an advertising mechanism to let people know who they are and what they’re doing. Go ahead. Visit several church websites. Really doesn’t even matter what size the church is. With few exceptions, you’ll find their web strategy is essentially a bullhorn approach. The church is standing on a streetcorner of the web yelling at the people passing by:
- “Come to our services on Sunday!”
- “Let me tell you about our men’s ministry!”
- “Join us for the golf tournament or fishing derby!”
- “Serve on one of our ministry teams!”
- “Give money to our church!”
- “Here’s what we believe!”
It’s a one-sided relationship. The church views the web as a place to promote their agenda. No interaction with the audience. No stories of life change. No solutions to help people experience community or discipleship online. At best, you may be able to watch a video of a service, but you certainly won’t have the opportunity to engage a conversation with others about what you’re watching.
Essentially we’ve taken the Sunday service bulletin and we’ve put it on our website. That’s the web strategy for the Church today. “Here’s who we are and what we’re doing. Join us!”
The rest of the world views the Web very differently. For example, outside of the Church, people go online to:
- Meet other people and build relationships
- Share what’s happening in their life and tell their story
- Get a taste of the experience, primarily through video, with the opportunity to interact
- Have the ability to share slivers of content with others (3-minute clips, not 45-minute messages)
- View content on demand on their time
- Create content to add their contribution to the bigger story
Rather than looking at the Web through the eyes of a Facebook and YouTube and Twitter user, though, we’re still looking at the Web through the eyes of a Sunday bulletin reader. That approach works for the people who are already attending our churches. It completely ignors the people who we are trying to reach.
And that’s the problem. We view the Web as an add-on. After we’ve figured out how we’re going to do ministry, then we want to know how to use the Web to promote our ministry.
Instead, the churches that have influence within our online culture look at ministry differently. They assume the people they’re trying to reach are online. They assume the people who are connected to their ministry are online. Rather than looking at the Web as an add-on, they consider their web strategy as a fully-integrated part of how they help people take steps toward Christ. They are a church online as much as they are a church in a building located on the corner of First and Main.
The website isn’t something the “web monkey” maintains. It’s a place where the youth pastor, worship leader, children’s director, small group leader, senior pastor and every other person of influence help people to connect and grow. It’s an environment where the entire church engages the community and encourages each other to take their next steps. It’s as much their story as it is our story.
Of course, this approach to the Web would require far more time, resources and leadership. It would be much less expensive than building a new building, but it would require a shift in thinking and a shift in focus. Because it’s new, it would be hard. Because the staff and volunteer leadership team would have to embrace this new approach, it would be challenging.
We’d rather stick with what we know. It’s a lot easier to maintain our online bulletins. And that’s another reason why we are the new traditional church.
The New Traditional Church: Web Strategy | TonyMorganLive.com
