I gave my first webinar in a long time and things have really improved from a few years ago.

There are two components you need to provide: video and audio. Unfortunately, most of the services that combined video and audio also charge a premium over the individual services. So I ended up going with separate services.

There are many services available. Here are the best of the video services. Of course, I will always be glad to hear about other services that I may have missed.

Video conferencing

WebEx - the old standard. And old is right. I wouldn’t recommend this for anyone, it is just too complicated and ultimately too expensive. It reminds me of Norton Utilities - an application that was originally hot and cutting edge but now is a cash cow getting by on its reputation without upgrading.

Central Desktop Live - This looks promising. It has a nice calendar feature which is helpful and they provide a conference call number that you can use. Unfortunately, I had a lot of technical problems which were mostly my own fault for not understanding the software better. On the other hand, other packages were so easy that I assumed this one would be too. I will be giving this one another try. Support for the Mac is there but a little misleading. It definitely requires more set up time than the other apps I looked at.

Glance.net - This is what I ended up using and I would recommend it highly. It is simple to use as it just duplicates your monitor. There is a simple dotted line that shows you what is being sent out. It is simple for the incoming audience. All they need to know is the code to login and they are in. Glance uses Java and the client app is small and no one had any difficulties getting started, it was pretty much invisible. The pricing is $50/month for unlimited number of meetings for up to 15 attendees.

GoToMeeting - A spinoff of GoToMyPC, GoToMeeting lets you host an unlimited number of meetings for up to 10 attendees per meeting for $49/month. They have GoToWebinar which allows you to have an unlimited number of attendees for $99/month.

There are a number of different services that I chose not to mention for various reasons: no pricing freely available, excessive babble about “synergy” and “business strategies”, extremely high pricing or serious limitation (in my mind).

Recommendations

For the casual user, I would recommend Glance.net. It was extremely simple to set up and use and things went off without a hitch. I will be giving Glance.net another look.

When I was at GA, I participated in a workshop “Successful Public Witness: Planning Newsworthy Justice Events.” This was put together by Janet Hayes who is the Director of Information and Public Witness at the UUA. From this session and others, it was clear to me that there is an interest in public relations but people still feel overwhelmed by the basics. People seem to be looking for some magic bullet. Well, it’s not magic but it is work. It requires some effort on your part to study and learn how these papers operate.

If you have an Outreach, Communications or PR committee, go talk with them. They may have this information and already know all this information. If they don’t, ask them to find out. Hand them this list.

The Easy Stuff 

So let’s start with the easy stuff. Compile all this information in a list.

1. What are the newspapers in your area? Write it down.
2. For each paper:
   1. Get several editions of that paper and review them.
      1. What kinds of articles do they publish that could apply to your congregation? Cut them out and save them as examples and templates.
      2. Who are the reporters on those stories? Write their names down.
      3. Do they have a calendar of events?
   2. How do you submit info for their public calendar? Write it down.
   3. Call the newspaper and find out who covers religion. GET THEIR NAME AND NUMBER and, yes, write it down.
   4. We’ll call that person a little later after you do some more homework.

Have a good story idea

Reporters don’t report stories because you want to publicize some event. Period. Don’t even go there. Anything they do for you is free so be nice, professional, and courteous even when they say they’ll put your article in and don’t or edit it beyond recognition. 

Be authentic. If your congregation really isn’t doing anything, you can’t create something out of whole cloth. But don’t give up! ”Newsworthy” is a subjective term.

A few ideas:

Anything involving children

Nothing gets published faster than anything involving children in the area that the newspaper covers. Here is an article that we saw and adapted for three different newspapers based on three different children who were participating in a concert we were promoting. Obviously you must get permission from the parents and they will usually help you write the article as well.

Children participating in social action events is also newsworthy.

Music events

These are certainly publishable in a newspaper’s calendar. But it may also be a good feature news article as in the case of singer-songwriter Randy Driscoll who performed at our congregation. Randy wrote a song called “What Matters” about Matthew Shepard, the young man who was killed in Wyoming for being gay.

Our choir was planning on performing ”What Matters” and through a coincidence, one of our staff members happened to know her and wondered if wanted to perform the song with her. Things went from there and the choir has performed the song with her several times now in a variety of venues. That made a good story. But they don’t have to be unusual to get press. Local angles also play well.

Social Action Events

If you have visiting speakers who are covering notable topics, let the papers know. But if it is the “sermon” at your service, don’t position it that way. We have had a number of speakers that have received good coverage and attracted many new visitors who initially came because of their topic.

Provide a writeup

We have a template that we use for informing reporters about events. This particular letter gave rise to a good article about the lecture which resulted in half the audience coming from the community outside of our congregation.

• Provide a short write up of the event that is clear and factual.
• Who, What, When, Where, Why and How come first.
• Avoid hyperbole!!!! The greatest!!! Most brilliant!!!! It doesn’t fly. Be objective.
• Provide access to the speaker or musician if possible. The reporter is not going to want your opinion on what the speaker is going to say.
• Be accessible to the reporter. It’s ok to be persistant be remember that they are doing you a favor. Too pushy and you’ll lose a valuable connection.
• Thank the reporter for their time, for a job well done, for everything. If there do happen to be factual errors, be professional and clear about the error. Don’t get emotional. The error should be factual not one of editing preferences.

Ok, Now you can call that reporter

Follow these simple rules and you will get more exposure for your congregation. It’s not magic. It’s just work. Now, after reading this, you can call the reporter to ask them about their interests, deadlines, etc. It’s also an opportunity to briefly float an idea if appropriate. Now make that call!

We’ll get into other aspects of medial relations in another article.

Another of my articles was published :-). The talk was called “Why Liberal Churches are Growing” but I like my title better. The characteristics apply to any congregation whether liberal or conservative. To me, this was one of the most important talks at GA.

We can learn a great deal from conservative churches. Please abandon your stereotype that they are mindless automatons who just attend and throw money at their congregation. It’s insulting and ignorant on our part.

Like any organization, they are doing something right when that many people feel that they are being ministered to effectively. Read the article.

Through the vagaries of chance, I got the opportunity to present at one of the workshops on organizing newsworthy justice events (Thank you, Janet!). One of the other speakers talked about social justice while I talked about PR. We each gave a short talk and then followed up with about 30 minutes of questions. The following is from my notes:

My name is Dean Goddette and I am chair of Outreach at Chalice Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Escondido, California. Just north of San Diego, Escondido is one of the most conservative cities in the state with a record of making it illegal for landlords to rent to illegal immigrants, to force the closure of emergency homeless shelters because they attact drug addicts, thieves and illegal immigrants. And besides, as one city councilor put it, “The bible says that the poor will always be with us. ”

In the midst of this, in fact, probably because of this, we have doubled in size from about 90 members to 193 members in about 5 years.  We are one of the fastest growing congregations in California.

And it’s not by advertising. If you leave here with one message it is that it is what you do as individuals that drives inreach and outreach and congregational growth.

For you outreach and PR people, a few questions:

• How many have a listing in your local paper’s church directory?
• How many of you know who the religion editor or writer at your local paper?
• How many have written up a news story with pictures and provided it to the religion writer?

Newspaper reporters are almost always starved for copy. They have careers and they want to move up the ladder. Several stories that we started with a local paper “graduated” to the larger regional paper. The local reporters become a resource for you as to what is newsworthy. As you develop a relationship, you don’t have to write everything up, you can pitch them a story on the phone and they will say yea or nay.

My Outreach co-chair has focussed on PR and has a list of all the papers and newspaper reporters. He contacts them on a regular basis. But be aware that reporters have a nose for BS. You need to actually be presenting them with news.

For those of you in social action or justice, you are the ones who can lead your congregation and provide newsworthy events for outreach. They can’t make stuff up. So the more authentic the event the better.

How does a person move from having never heard of your congregation to have a deep commitment? The Path to Commitment is an easy way to understand how people become members and what you can do to make it easier for people to become members. The Path to Commitment allows you to evaluate your process and identify your strengths and areas that need improvement.

Each of us has traveled a Path to Commitment. Have you ever visited a congregation and not returned? What happened that made you decide to return or not return.

Below is a diagram of a path to commitment. Each of the arrows in the diagram are interactions (or, in marketing lingo, impressions). Each subsequent interaction represents an increasing commitment on the part of the visitor. It takes upwards of 6-10 impressions for someone to become committed. And each subsequent impression requires more personal interaction on the part of someone in the congregation.

You can use the Path to Commitment to visualize how your congregation works.

• At the very top, how does someone become aware that your congregation even exists?
• Do people greet visitors or ignore them? (See below…)
• What are your strong points along the Path?
• Are there gaps or impediments in your Path to Commitment?
• Why do people exit the Path? Why do people stay?
• Are there events that you promote in the community?

Each one of these point is a long discussion. We tend to focus on the biggest, easiest chunks like a website. But why spend the money on advertising if you only lose them after their first visit.

My wife & I had moved into the area and were visiting congregations. On our first visit to one in particular, they had a great service that we enjoyed very much. After the service, we stayed for coffee and stood around, a bit nervous as we did not know anyone. No one talked to us so we looked about and found someone who had just gotten a cup of coffee and was not in a big group. After chatting with her for a few minutes, I asked her “How long have you been coming to this congregation?” Her reply, “Oh, this is my first time! It’s nice to meet people like you.”

People make their decisions quickly at each point, within seconds. It is important to take an integrated approach because what is the point of doing good advertising if they get turned off at the website or at the door? It is easier to think about point solutions such as direct mail or fix the website or get more greeters. But if you don’t have the whole plan together, you are wasting a lot of time and effort and losing many visitors who might have become committed members!