“Who do you think you’re talking to?”  We’ve all had that question asked of us. I often visit church websites and that same question forms in my mind.  A parent often closes the question with “… one of your friends?”, and I am similarly under the impression that a church is speaking as though to a ministry colleague. The tone, the language , and even the content makes me wonder, “Who are they talking to?”

• Acronyms and references that a visitor or even many members would not recognize.
• Ministry information where the descriptions read as if written for a discipleship class
• New member information that notes requirements and classes to be completed, but never mentions why anyone would want to become a member and what that experience is like.

How It Happens

It’s very easy for this to happen. A church’s print as well as website copy can easily sound as if it came straight from a staff meeting, because there’s a good chance it did! Ministry personnel review their information with their pastor, which probably includes explaining how it is biblically based.  Staff and ministry volunteers discuss programs on an ongoing basis and have their own internal structure, and shorthand , much like professionals speaking to colleagues use industry terms.

The information that is discussed or approved internally by staff, generally should not be the information that is used publicly for marketing our informational purposes.  Both the audience and the purpose of the information is usually very different. Doing this doesn’t result in using content that’s really inappropriate, but it does result in using content that is really ineffective.

A Simple Fix

A very quick and simple exercise can help take the materials at hand and transform it into more effective content for your print materials and website. It starts with the question “Who am I talking to?”

1. Imagine the person that would be reading the material is sitting in front of you and your having a conversation. Can you describe that person? New member, youth participant? Imagine an individual representative of the target audience the material is addressing.
    
2. What would you say to that person? How would you convey or explain the information in a conversation? This will help you fill in the blanks, or adjust the “working” information for it’s public use.
    
3. What do you think that representative individual would ask you in this conversation? What would you expect the general questions, concerns or comments to be? This will help you identify specific information that needs to be added to the “working” information to make it useful for your target audience or much more effective if used for marketing.

Try this simple exercise with the next material you’ll need to publish, or you can also use this quick exercise to enhance your current content for better results.

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