YouTube is pretty standard across the board these days as the video-hosting service of choice for a majority of web users. There are others out there, like Vimeo and Viddler that have a strong following of their own, but YouTube is definitely #1 in this space.

However, one challenge presented in re-purposing YouTube videos on your blog is the fact that after your video of choice plays, YouTube features a group of related videos, the content of which isn’t guaranteed to be ministry-website friendly.

The good news is that there’s a way to stop YouTube from showing those related video links when your video stops playing. Simply add &rel=0 to the end of the URL that you copied and pasted from YouTube to embed your video in your blog/website and instead of getting related videos when your video finishes, you’ll get a replay video link.

Enjoy!

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.”

(Matthew 5:13-14, ESV)

Check out “Counterculture”, our latest AdvancedMinistry web template inspired by Matthew 5.

(Note to AdvancedMinistry Users: You can change the look of your website at any time. To do so, log into your account and click on “Choose My Template”.)

I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about our WPAS (What People Are Saying) feature and I think that we’re probably going to shelve it for the foreseeable future.

However, we recently received some notable recognition that definitely bears noting.

The American Design Awards is an organization that we have been honored by a number of times in the past, beating out sites designed for Nike Basketball and Upper Deck Sports. They run monthly and semi-annual design awards and in December, we were recognized as being a monthly winner for the Xpiritmental website.

One of the reasons that we really value this award is because the American Design Awards rates sites not only on the quality of the design, usability and content, but also on the basis of the ethics of the firm and the site itself. You can view their ethical design practices breakdown here.

If you get some time, have a read of this research study:

The result of the study essentially boils down to the fact that people become Christians most often as a direct result of a personal relationship with a Christian or group of Christians.

This finding has a real impact on how we approach marketing in the church and especially in areas like social media. Of course, creating a vibrant online community is a great tool, but it needs to be augmented with real face-to-face connections and relationships between people.

Check out the audio clip on this link.

Apparently, this gentleman wasn’t happy with a member of Lifechurch.tv and left a voicemail at the church to convey his concern.

Funny...Petty...and an absolutely wonderful example of how a brand can be affected by a relatively innocent event.

For those of you that have been following the latest news of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 browser, some questions have probably entered your mind, starting with: Will my website be compatible with Internet Explorer 8?

Well, that’s a great question… one that Microsoft can’t even seem to answer. In their latest effort to release a browser that is more “standards-compliant”, they have created the perfect conditions for a catastrophic disaster on the web. To date, Microsoft has released a list of over 2,400 major sites that do not work with their latest browser. Let’s list a few of them: CNN, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, eBay, Blogger.com, MySpace, Apple, WordPress, Facebook, New York Times, Flickr and Amazon. I recognize that all of those sites are really small players in the industry… (sarcasm). “Hello… Microsoft, is anyone in there???” Oh shoot, I forgot to mention another site on the incompatibility list… Microsoft.com.

Is it just me, or has Microsoft really missed the boat here? Basically, what they are telling us is that although all of these sites work with Internet Explorer 6/7 and standards-compliant browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Safari, they will cease to work in Internet Explorer 8.

Microsoft’s answer to this is a little button in IE8 called “Compatibility View”, that when clicked makes the site compatible with its browser. When I first read about this, my response was, “You’re joking, right?” After all of the flack they went through with Vista, they are now going to release another band-aid solution. To me, that just doesn’t make sense; not from a business perspective, not from a public relations perspective, and surely not from a brand perspective.

In 2002, Internet Explorer controlled 83.4% of the market. By 2007, it dropped to 56.0% (see W3Schools stats). As of January 2009, Internet Explorer now makes up 44.8% of the market (vs. Firefox at 45.5%). I can’t help but think that number will continue to drop unless Microsoft gets its act together. As a personal fan of Windows, I really hope they do (although I made the switch to Firefox a long time ago).

For those of you that are on AdvancedMinistry, we will be watching carefully as Microsoft continues to press forward with IE8. It is our intention to bring all of our second and third generation templates up to IE8 standards as soon as they complete beta and release a public version. But for other ministry websites out there, I can’t help but think that this is just “another thing” that they don’t need. Instead of being productive with our time, website developers are forced to write “another layer” of code to make sure their sites work with IE8 – something that most people had to do with IE7 and IE6 (because of it’s incompatibilities with web standards).

Perhaps it’s time that we once-and-for-all say “enough is enough” and recognize that Microsoft will never be able to regain its position in the browser market. Netscape had to let go. Maybe it’s time for Microsoft to follow suit.

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 6:10-12, ESV)

Check out the latest AdvancedMinistry web template, entitled “Soldiers for Christ”, inspired by Ephesians 6. You can change the look of your AdvancedMinistry website at any time. Enjoy!
 

Seeing that we are on the social media train this week, I found a great article today on “Getting Started with Twitter”. Although I’m not a huge Twitter fan (because I don’t like the idea of everyone knowing my whereabouts every second of the day), I do believe that there is great value, especially when it comes to keeping people informed about your ministry.

As defined on Twitter’s website, “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

If you’re interested in knowing more about Twitter, check out the article published yesterday on PC Magazine’s website.

This weekend, Facebook announced that it has reached 175 million active users (a number far less than its actual registered users). 175 million users is a lot of people! "If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia, and Nigeria”, says CEO Mark Zuckerberg. So my question for you is this: How is your church using Facebook? Are you using it as an outreach tool; and inreach tool; not at all? And what are some things that you would recommend to other churches looking to leverage Facebook?

I’ll start by giving you an example of one way that we’ve used Facebook. Most people know about Google AdWords, but not many churches know about Facebook advertising. Did you know that using Facebook's advertising program, you can advertise to any region or demographic? So if you wanted to advertise your church to all Facebook users that lived in your city, you could! We use Facebook to advertise AdvancedMinistry, and dollar for dollar, it outperforms Google AdWords by about 500%.

Let’s hear your experiences with Facebook.

A minister was forced to stop by a traffic cop to pull over for speeding. As the cop was about to write the ticket, the minister said to him, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." The cop handed the minister the ticket and said, "Go thou and sin no more."

Seemed fitting for a Friday afternoon right before a long-weekend :)

There are so many lessons and challenges in this video...I've watched it four times.

What Benjamin Zander does with this talk, is not only to convey and instill his passion for music in others, but he does so in a way that is amazingly transferable to other areas of our lives. This talk is in essence, exactly what the best music in the world is - a work of art that touches people where they live. It is his passion that jumps through the medium of music, speech and video and impacts the heart and mind of the audience. Does your passion jump through the mediums that you use to communicate individually/organizationally?

Or is the question even more fundamental than that?

In Benjamin's words: "Who am I being, that my [audiences] eyes are not shining?"

Today’s post is closely related to the topic we considered yesterday.

There is obviously a big debate about whether marketing belongs in the Church. But from my perspective, what underpins much of the debate is a lack of unity on the understanding of the terms being used. Different people define marketing in different ways and if you define it one way, it can be a great evil and if you define it another, it is a necessity for the Church to pursue. Another such phrase and debate is over the understanding of the term “brand”.

What I’m not going to argue is that the definition of branding that I’m about to put forward is the categorical reference point on the word. What I can say is that when we use the word “brand” around here, this is what we mean:

A brand is a complete picture and impression of your organization. It is the sum of your product/service, your mission, your people, your building, your clothes, your website, etc... In other words every aspect of what you do and how you do it contributes to your brand – the impression you leave with any given audience.

It is not solely a logo, although your logo is a visual/mental “hook” on which people will hang their impressions of your organization. It is not the sum of all your advertising pieces (brochures, website, billboards, ads), although they do contribute. It is not something that we simply paste overtop of our organization like a facade (see image in this post for a visual reference) to make us more attractive. And in the context of marketing the Church, it is not the editing and altering of the Gospel to make it a more appealing product.

The scary part of your brand though is that an organization is never in complete control of it. It is held in the minds and hearts of your audiences and all we can do is strive to launch and then manage the brand as best we can.

To my mind, this is entirely applicable to the life of a Christian. We strive to be Christ-like in our thoughts and actions and thereby glorify God and be an example to the world. But we need to comprehend that our Christian brand is affected by not only our words, but our actions, our clothes, our church buildings, our music, the books we read.

Inconsistencies in what we say and what we do are excellent examples of damaging a brand and in turn our witness. This is an age-old and Biblically supported concept.

There seems to be a recurring theme that I'm bumping up against a lot in the last few days and so I'm feeling compelled to write about it today. It's the foundational discussion about whether marketing has a place within the Church. It's a topic that we obviously have a pretty strong opinion on at the office here, given our focus on Church communications. 

After a couple other brushes with the topic in the past few business days, today, Brian forwarded an article that was in the January issue of Christianity Today. The article was authored by Tyler Wigg Stevenson (sorry no online bio to point you to), the author of a book called Brand Jesus: Christianity in a Consumerist Age. It's a longish article based on the book, but one that I found absolutely fascinating and I look forward to picking up and reading the book.

The one sentence that really encapsulates a big part of Stevenson's argument was this: "...any salvation that needs a sophisticated sales pitch is a salvation that won't really do anything. It will make you holy the same way a new pair of Nikes makes you athletic—which is to say, not at all. It only changes your religious brand."

Perhaps surprisingly, I actually largely agree with Stevenson's thought process in that we can not presume that our marketing will draw people into a meaningful relationship with Christ. But that's really not all that different than the idea of preaching is it? Most Christians today would agree that preaching in church holds a special place in the call to evangelize and yet the apostle Paul refers to it as "the foolishness of preaching" because without the anointing of the Spirit, even preaching is a foolish enterprise.

So our belief is that despite all the weaknesses inherent in marketing, we cannot simply use a broad-brush to say: "therefore, since marketing doesn't save people, we shouldn't do it" - it's too heavy-handed and short-sighted. It is the intent of our heart that makes any evangelistic effort a success or failure. Changing of hearts doesn't belong to any of us or our devices, whether we're a church, a preacher, a marketer or just a person attempting to live his/her life in a Christ-like way. But that doesn't remove us from the responsibility of using all the tools available to us to do our part in communicating the Gospel.

As per our post on Friday, we are pleased to announce the official launch of our AdvancedMinistry Form Builder! This component enables churches and ministries to create their own forms using a number of different field options (pull down menus, text fields, radio buttons, etc.). Additionally, our “conditional logic module” enables users to collect additional data based on choices that are made in previous fields.

To read the FAQs for the Form Builder version 1.0, click here.

Today's Casual Friday comes from my friend Barb who brought this video to my attention a few weeks back.

Good news! The AdvancedMinistry Form Builder is in its final beta stage. We are hoping to release it to AdvancedMinistry customers later next week. Originally, we were only going to make it available for Red, Blue and Purple suite customers; however, we have decided to enable it for all paying customers! The only difference between the suites will be the number of forms that you can create. Stay tuned!

Four years ago, VANOC (Vancouver Olympic Committee) held a competition to design the logo for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Designers from all over the world submitted potential logos from which Ilanaaq, the logo at right, was chosen.

I remember reading the project brief when the competition was launched. It was a long and specific document. I can recall one theme above all others that was prevalent in the multi-paged PDF file, and that was the desire for a mark that embodies the Canadian spirit and environment.

Now in case you’re not aware, the selected logo is a graphical interpretation of an Inukshuk. Although it’s not the only way that Inukshuk’s are set up, the most easily recognized way is basically a group of stacked rocks that take the shape of a man and it comes to us from the culture of the Inuit people of Canada’s far north and parts of Alaska.

And while Native people and their culture are a foundational element of Canada’s history, I do still feel that this logo misses the mark as a solid logo for the games. I can’t understand how, out of what was likely hundreds of submissions, that this was the best solution to fulfill the request for a logo that embodies the Canadian spirit and environment. As Canadians, we bear many stereotypes about our culture. Some people in other countries figure we all carpool on dog sleds to our high rise igloo offices. Reinforcing that stereotype doesn’t reflect well upon Canada at all.

But that’s just my opinion and opinions are subjective. What isn’t subjective was the project brief and that’s where this logo really fails. As I outlined above, the project brief indicated that they needed a mark which would embody the Canadian spirit and environment. And that’s the critical element of this, or any design project.

The subjectivity of design will almost always lead to people on both sides of the fence claiming the design to be good or bad. It’s for that reason that project briefs are written – to combat subjectivity with a set of standards that define a “win”. So did this logo “win”? I believe the project brief tells us no and sadly, a great branding opportunity for us as a nation was missed.

There are many potential roadblocks to a successful design project and we’ve spoken about some of them here on this blog in the past. But a reminder of one such potential roadblock for website design cropped up today.

Web design presents a unique challenge because, unlike a brochure or other such print piece, people have to interact with a website and so a beautiful design at times can bump up against a usability consideration that could sacrifice the quality of the design.

The best designers though are able to find ways to achieve a compromise and leave the user with an experience that not only worked for them, but engaged them through the design. That is the art within the art of website design.

Each year we become embroiled in the consideration of which and how many awards ceremonies to become involved in. There are some that are no-brainers to us, like, for instance, the Webby's.  The Webby's are essentially the Oscars for web design, development and content creation. We're pretty convinced that that's a valuable endeavour. But the Webby's are a big boy. There are many, many other awards we could get involved with and most other agencies do exactly that. My question to you is, when you look for an agency or a web firm, do awards matter? And if so, does it come down to quality or quantity of the awards the firm has won?

“Holistic” is a word that might have some negative connotations to Christians. I know my first interaction with it was in a post-secondary context and it was used to refer to holistic health and wellness and many of the concepts introduced in that class unit were contrary to my beliefs as a Christian.

But I believe that the word and the concept still have their place. One such place is in the world of corporate or organizational communications. The word “holistic” is derived from the Greek word “holos”, and it connotes the idea of completion, or considering the ‘whole’ of a given entity. Although we don’t specifically use the phrase “holistic communications” around the office here, we do strongly advocate an approach to communications that is holistic.

No aspect of your communications, or even your organization, is outside the reach of what you communicate to your audience(s). You can go ahead and send out an 8-page glossy booklet that explains in moving images and powerful verbiage the importance of what your ministry or non-profit does, but if someone was to talk to your accounting department on the phone, would they sense the same passion and vision in that person as they did in the brochure?

If not, then there’s a disconnect in what you’re communicating. The downside is that the validity and authenticity of your messaging in the glossy booklet that you’ve taken so much time to create is undermined. Worse yet, it’s indicative of a lack of passion and clarity of purpose across your organization and that is the real concern.