From church online to how networks communicate with their target groups, to the digital technology that has changed so many people’s expectations about media, there is an incredible amount of transformation taking place in media outreach.
Christian organizations must now evaluate how to move beyond reacting to leading, from transitioning to having the greatest impact with digital resources.
In a world where in one Internet minute:
* More than 204 million emails are sent
* At least 6 million Facebook pages are viewed
* More than 61,000 hours of music are played on Pandora, and
* More than 1.3 million video clips are watched on YouTube…
It can be easy for people to leave God out of their digital lives.
How does Christian media deal with that?
Change of philosophy
The first thing is to recognize that if we want to reach people using media today, this is how it’s going to be, and the best thing we can do is figure out how to empower our target groups.
Just getting them to tune in to our media channels isn’t enough anymore.
Now, to reach people for Christ using media we must empower them with information. Empower them with new viewing and listening experiences. Empower them with new delivery platforms. Empower them with daily “personalized” spiritual experiences. We must be aware of their spiritual needs and give them the ability to make their own choices about having those needs met using media.
We need to design experiences around seekers living in the digital world and make it easy for them to participate in the life of our organizations online.
Create new experiences
We have to spend time thinking about what’s possible. For example, building a relationship with viewers and listeners can now be achieved by creating experiences.
No matter how exceptional our content, many, many people still have a negative perception of Christian media. Reinventing media outreach can be achieved by creating educational experiences that produce “first impressions” about our channels and content before a user ever becomes a viewer.
We can completely customize the dynamics of how we reach out into our communities, e.g. introducing ourselves to those who don’t know us (Twitter) versus drawing closer to those that may already be in the family (Facebook).
Anything we can do to incorporate safe, non-threatening “faith-leaning” experiences into peoples digital lives is worth considering.
Become builders
We have to start building again, beginning with new technology infrastructure that enables adaptation and innovation. We can no longer afford to simply keep up with change by focusing on the applications and systems available today. We have to look ahead to what could be.
Why is that so important?
And the Scriptures give us hope and encouragement as we wait patiently for God’s promises to be fulfilled. Roman 15:4
Today, the number of networked devices equals the world’s population. By 2015, the number of networked devices is expected to be double the world’s population. And by the time we reach 2015, it would take five years to view all the video content crossing IP networks each second.
Will our existing traditional networks keep up with that kind of staggering change and growth in technology and viewing habits? What will we have to do to maintain audience expectations for immediate access to multiple forms of audio and video content across multiple devices?
The best dial position and format exclusivity are strengths from past eras of media outreach. A recognizable name, a great message and creative marketing will not address advances in technology and audience expectations of interactive and on-demand services.
We must be ready to embrace a new philosophy of media outreach that says we can do more.We must be ready to examine every possibility for discovering the best path forward to reach the digital media generation, for building cases of new technology applied to a very old enterprise: sharing the gospel.
Get Ready. Get Set. Go…