SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, should be one of the primary things you consider as you develop a new website. But it’s also something that requires ongoing management because your content actually makes a difference in how your site ranks.
Keep in mind that search engines like Google place a high value on seeing that your site has fresh content updated to it frequently. They also want to see that people are linking to your site from theirs because, by nature, that indicates that you must have some valuable content there that people care about.
Of course, you can’t control how people respond to the content on your site, but you can do your best to make it as compelling as possible so as to give yourself the best shot at getting a buzz around your site.
Closely tied to that is the strategy of having a blog on your site. Showing Google and other search engines that you have an active RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed for a blog or podcast on your home page, tells them that you are trying your best to keep fresh content on the site and that helps you to score better in their rankings.
So blogging is not just about having something to say. It’s a really practical way to help your site get found and ranked higher by search engines.
For the second straight week, we are pleased to announce more features and improvements to AdvancedMinistry 3.0 templates. Some of the new items include:
Round edges of your menu
Position your menu above or below the banner
Create a title header above, below or in your banner
Better control of padding/spacing between the banner and menu systems
Create bottom borders on all of your module headings
Create separators between your menu items (and change the color)
Change the border color and size around your thumbnail images
We have created a quick sample site to show you a few of these features; you can check it out here.
To view the new changes, login to your admin, select “Choose My Template” and edit your AM 3.0 template.
As the clock turns towards midnight, Apple users from around the world get ready for the official release of Snow Leopard, Apple’s latest operating system release. The new OS provides 64-bit functionality, which in layman’s terms means more speed and is set to offer support for Microsoft Exchange users. [Click here for the full review from CNet]
As a user that has gone back and forth between Windows and Apple, I always find it exciting (and scary) when major companies launch new releases of operating systems. It’s exciting because it provides something new, something fresh. It’s scary because although it’s been tested by thousands of users, it has greater potential to have flaws and security holes. At the end of the day though, most people are willing to enter the unknown and take their chances. The thrill of something new drowns out risks involved.
I think that principle is generally true of our culture. We are always ready to move on to the next big thing, even if what we are currently using is working just fine. Some call it advancement while others would call it stupidity. Whatever you want to call it, the fact of the matter is – it is happening. For Apple users, that next phase begins tomorrow.
Ever heard someone say something that you’ve heard dozens of times before but they say it in such a way, or perhaps at a specific moment in your life, that causes the concept to resonate with you like it never has before?
That’s the power of repetition.
And there’s a few ways to do it. You can take a simple message and just repeat it over and over to the point it becomes ingrained in your audiences mind. Another way to do it is to repeat a concept but say it differently – this is really powerful if the concept is a bit more complex.
In any case, presuming that everyone understands you after saying something just one time is a dangerous approach to communicating as it puts the onus on the listener. While communications definitely involve both communicator and audience, all you can control as an organization trying to get a message out, is what you communicate, so think about repeating your important messages.
We are pleased to announce two new Xpiritmental desktop wallpapers entitled, Faith and A New Song, inspired by Matthew 17:20 and Revelation 5:9-14. Download the new desktops below or visit the Xpiritmental Archives for more wallpapers.
Remember Andre Agassi’s hair from the 90’s? If I recall correctly, he was quite the looker to the ladies back in the day. But I can tell you this, if he was to sport that style today…well…not so much.
I mention this because, well, for one, I love the opportunity to post a picture of a mullet on this blog, but more importantly, it illustrates a point that I want to make today.
Interests, fads and culture change over time – this is a truism that I’m sure we can all agree on. But even though it’s something that we can all agree on, ministry communications don’t always seem to be put through the filter that that truism presents.
One of the reasons this doesn’t happen is because it is typical human behavior to be so involved with your work for such a long time that you forget what that work looks like from the outside. As a result, we neglect to act on the fact that we have a tendency to forget what our work looks like to our audience, and we fall out of touch with them.
How we avoid this is by regularly reviewing where our communications are at with our audience(s). Staying in touch with them will help us to stay sharp in communicating to them in ways that will impact them instead of producing communications that should have both feet firmly planted in the early 90’s.
We are pleased to announce further additions and improvements to AdvancedMinistry 3.0 templates! Some of the new features include:
Add rounded corners to your columns (instead of square edges)
Join all of the modules in a column into one fluid column
Make the bottoms of all of your columns line up with each other
Customize the color of each column
Control the padding between your text and the edge of the page/column
Finally, we extended language support in headers to include Latin characters like ãäåæçêëìíîïðñ÷øùúûüýþÿAaA, etc. (for all fonts that support extended Latin characters)
For the second time this week, we are pleased to announce a new Xpiritmental desktop wallpaper entitled, Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, inspired by the popular children's prayer. Download the new wallpaper below or visit the Xpiritmental Archives for more wallpapers.
Xpiritmental No. 47 Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep Children's Prayer
Champion Challenger is a process that we sometimes use with our custom clients to determine how to improve a given page or action item on a website.
The basic idea is to setup two versions of a page, or change the users experience in some way, and then divert portions of your web traffic to one or the other while measuring your rate of return on both pages. The champion is the existing page that has proven itself previously and the challenger is a new page that contains some sort of difference from the champion. If the challenger succeeds, then it becomes the new champion and the process is repeated.
For instance, recently, we began an ad campaign for one of our clients on a popular website. When the ad first went up, we directed people from the ad to our client’s home page. At that point, the average daily sign-ups resulting from that ad were around 20. Last night, we changed that process and made the ad link to a different page on the website which resulted in 8 signups within the first 45 minutes. Now, this isn’t a complete process yet, but the early signs are pretty clear that the challenger is significantly more effective in translating people from simply a web visitor into a sign-up.
It all comes down to removing the barriers for people. The presumption is that if they clicked on the ad, they actually wanted to engage our offering and so that being the case, it was incumbent upon us to ensure that they could get to that engagement as quickly and easily as possible so as to ensure a positive experience on our site.
Champion Challenger is a great tool in the arsenal of anyone who is trying to determine how to improve a measurable goal on a website or even in print or with processes within your office.
We are pleased to announce a new Xpiritmental desktop wallpaper entitled, Thy Kingdom Come, inspired by Revelation 21:1. Download the new wallpaper below or visit the Xpiritmental Archives for more wallpapers.
Xpiritmental No. 46 Thy Kingdom Come Revelation 21:1
I wonder at times about the fact that our culture is producing more and more people who are Starters and not Finishers. You know what I mean – those people that have great ideas and can kick them off the ground but 1-2 years in, they feel they’ve taken the organization as far as they can and move on.
The question that runs through my mind is how many of them actually are just Starters or have they just confused being a Starter with having a short attention span?
The same thing happens in communications. You can see it happen all the time where a company launches a new campaign, runs it for a while but then gets bored of it and wants to change direction. Meanwhile, at the same time that the people in the organization were getting tired of the ad or campaign, the audience they were trying to reach was just starting to really engage the campaign. By shutting it down early, they devalue all the hard work that went into the campaign.
As Kenny Rogers likes to sing: “You got to know when to hold ‘em” and “know when to fold ‘em”.
Was sent this photo today as found in a story on the Telegraph (UK) website about a couple who set up their camera to take a picture of themselves visiting Banff National Park, Canada. Apparently, this squirrel wanted in the shot and the camera obliged by auto-focusing on him.
After a good laugh, what crossed my mind was how this squirrel is such a great example of what a lot of church and ministry communications are like – interruptions. And even though interruptions can be useful, they are never neutral in their impact – they either work, or they fail. Because any brand impression that leaves no impression doesn’t help your brand, it only helps to communicate that your organization is yet another church or ministry in the plethora of churches and ministries out there. It doesn’t distinguish you, it lumps you in with everyone else.
Unless of course, you can find a way to be like this squirrel and interrupt in a way that leaves a lasting impression.
Today we live and operate in a world that is being transformed by technology. Opportunities to easily communicate with those of like interests and concerns have never been more prominent and powerful...and yet, this new world of technology is only another step in the staircase - a new means to a familiar end.
As a result, I say get excited about what's out there: jump on the social media bandwagon; get your site a content management solution; and freshen up those print ads you've got, but when the next step comes and the dust settles on our current paradigm, you'll be left with the same old problem of needing to have a compelling story to tell. So just how compelling is your story...? Does what you do really change anything...?
If it does, then do that story justice and tell it as best you can - that is timeless. And that skill and passion for the story you are a part of will still be there when the dust settles.
If you feel that AdvancedMinistry has played a vital part in your organization, we invite you to share it through our Video Testimonial Project.
Using your webcam, video camera, or any other video recording device, submit a video, not more than 3 minutes long, highlighting your overall experience as an AdvancedMinistry customer.
We have been blessed to serve thousands of ministries worldwide and we look forward to hearing what you have to say!
For full details of the project and to submit videos, click here.
I’ve been noticing something anecdotally lately that’s had me thinking. I keep getting the impression that young people just aren’t that into Twitter. Of course, there’s no doubt that they are all over Facebook (more than 50% of Facebook users are under 24), but Twitter just doesn’t seem to be a real draw for them. Then today I read that the sub-24 demographic only accounts for 16% of Twitter users.
I suppose that the reasons for this are many and varied. I also think that it’s very likely that Twitter will start to grow in this key demographic as compelling content is generated on that medium for young people. But as things stand now, teens and young adults just aren’t camping out on that property.
So what does this mean for churches and ministries? I think it means that we can’t presume that just because Twitter is the “newest, big Internet thing”, that young people are all over it. We have to be wise with where and how we try to connect with people, because let’s face it, creating any relationship is a time-consuming task and the demands on our time are already excessive.
So, while I acknowledge that stats don’t tell every story and therefore I'm sure there will be exceptions, at this point in time, dropping into Twitter with the expectation that you can connect with your youth group or youth from the community might be analogous to trying to reach that same group at a Gaither gathering – ain’t gonna happen.
As such, your time might be better spent creating and spending time each day on Facebook.
I am nearing a decade into my career as a professional designer. In this time I have dealt with many questions from clients on an array of issues. Today I want to address the two things that I have explained time and time again. The first being what is dpi and resolution? The second is what is the difference between bitmap art and vector art? I believe for many of you this will be a revelation and greatly increase your understanding of design in the print and web world.
First I need to establish some definitions:
DPI – dots per inch: a measure of resolution used for printed text or images, the more dots per inch, the higher the resolution.
Resolution - the degree of sharpness of a computer-generated image as measured by the number of dots per linear inch in a hard-copy printout or the number of pixels across and down on a display screen.
Bitmap – A set of bits that represents a graphic image, with each bit or group of bits corresponding to a pixel in the image.
Pixel - the smallest element of an image that can be individually processed in a video display system.
Vector – a quantity possessing both magnitude and direction, represented by an arrow the direction of which indicates the direction of the quantity and the length of which is proportional to the magnitude. (to simplify, this essentially means lines have length and direction)
So now that we have all the pieces of the puzzle on the table, allow me to put it all together for you. When it comes to print, DPI is king. If any work is going to be printed, 300 dpi is the standard. You can print something at less than 300 dpi but it can become noticeable at anything below 200 dpi. In the web world, everything gets produced at 72 dpi. The reason for this is file size. A 300 dpi file is much larger than a 72 dpi file and therefore would greatly inflate the size of web pages and the time it would take to load them. Also, screens are designed to only display 72 dpi which would make it much more inefficient to make web graphics any larger.
Moving down the above list we arrive at the terms bitmap and pixel. These two words directly tie into resolution and dpi. A bitmap image is made up of pixels. If you have ever been in Adobe Photoshop and zoomed into an image as far as you can, you have seen pixels. All the pixels in an image collectively make up an image or bitmap - the higher the resolution, the more pixels that are in the bitmap, which makes a higher quality image.
Lastly, what is a vector-based graphic? A vector graphic does what a bitmap graphic cannot. Vector graphics can scale infinitely without losing any sharpness or quality. How can this be? It is not made from pixels, it is made from lines and points that enclose an area and can have colors, outlines or some other effect added to it. It is essentially a graphic made entirely out of math, therefore making it scalable. So why can’t a bitmap be scaled up? Basically you’re asking the computer to make up information that doesn’t exist in the image and the computer has a hard time deciding which pixels should be added to the image to complete it. Imagine you have an image of a tree. The computer only know there are pixels there, it doesn’t know the pixels form a bitmap that looks like a tree.
So to conclude all this information tells you why you can’t take your logo off of your website and expect it to be used on a billboard or why your banner image on your website can’t be used on a brochure. So in the future if you work with us and we ask you for a .psd, .jpg or .tif we are asking for a bitmap image. If we ask you for an .ai or .eps we are asking for a vector image. Now go out into your church or ministry with your new found knowledge and make graphic disciples of your staff and co-workers. Please post a comment if you have any further questions. I would be happy to answer them.
I am so pleased to announce on behalf of the team here at Electricurrent that we are welcoming International Justice Mission Canada (IJM Canada) to our client list.
For those of you that aren’t familiar with their work, IJM Canada is a human rights agency that rescues victims of violence, sexual exploitation, slavery, and oppression.
So while they are quite literally busy with the work of saving the lives of people across the world who live in those conditions, we are going to be busy helping them build a new web presence that will help to communicate their message more clearly here in Canada and to generate the kind of response that they need, and this issue demands, both from those of us who follow Jesus Christ as well as other men and women of goodwill.
Deepest thanks to IJM Canada for this opportunity – we are so thankful to be involved in your critically important work!
Xpiritmental is a resource. It's a place to learn and to share thoughts on marketing, ministry, design, service, the Web, culture and more. We'll start the conversation, but we're looking forward to hearing what you've got to say.
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Remember Andre Agassi’s hair from the 90’s? If I recall correctly, he was quite the looker to the ladies back in the day. But I can tell you this, if he was to sport that style today…well…not so much.
Was sent this photo today as found in a 
I’ve been noticing something anecdotally lately that’s had me thinking. I keep getting the impression that young people just aren’t that into Twitter. Of course, there’s no doubt that they are all over Facebook (more than 50% of Facebook users are under 24), but Twitter just doesn’t seem to be a real draw for them. Then 
I am so pleased to announce on behalf of the team here at Electricurrent that we are welcoming International Justice Mission Canada (IJM Canada) to our client list.
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