It's been roughly one year since our congregation put forth its first communications strategy, and what a year of firsts it's been!

In collaboration with the newly formed Communications Team (made up of 60% millennials), we charged ahead by first examining our pre-existing web presence. We evaluated what other churches of comparable size were doing and surveyed our own congregation to find out what meant the most to them. The survey results were incredibly helpful and were immediately implemented on our website and social media channels. 

In one year, we launched and maintained the following:

• Web Presence
  • Social media
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram
    • YouTube
  • Website
    
    • ​Blogs
      
    • News/Announcements
    • Centralized calendar
    • Online resources
• Communications
  • Email
    
    • ​Targeted, weekly email digests to members and friends
      
  • Mail List
    • Marketing automation (sign-up forms, mail list management, etc.)
  • Signage
    • Sleek, modern signage for our current meeting space

One of the most rewarding things about web-based marketing is that we are able to see accurate, reliable insights in real-time. Every click of a mouse, every visit to our website, every 'like' or 'retweet' on social media...all of it is logged and recorded for us. This information is invaluable to our community. But more important than simply reading this data or sharing it is that we act upon it. Continuous check-ins with these metrics begs the questions: What is working? What isn't working? How can we improve? Who is our target audience? How does our target audience prefer to be communicated with?

We are forming new expressions of ministry based on data-driven decisions...and it's working. Community of Christ International Headquarters, located in Independence, Missouri, USA, recently recognized us as being a 'best practices' congregation in the area of communications.

See for yourself in our Calgary Communications Report below. Enjoy!

Special thanks to the Calgary Communications Team for all your hard work and dedication! 

In our everyday lives we often try to impress people with our knowledge, our strength, or perhaps our humour, but what about our online selves? Yes, it would appear that in the 21st Century we now have to worry about multiple identities…wasn’t one enough? When we create profiles on social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, we are carefully selecting what we share and don’t share with the world. Now, social media isn’t all that bad, I’ll be the first to say I love being able to maintain relationships quite easily with friends and family around the world, but it isn’t just about maintaining a relationship…it’s about the maintaining the authenticity of that relationship.
I oftentimes think I am way funnier via text message or Twitter than I am in real life. Why? Because I spend 10 minutes or more crafting content I’m going to share so that it’s the perfect combination of wit, self-deprecation, and charm.

But that isn’t really me.

I’m Parker, a socially awkward, prematurely greying gay man from Oklahoma trying to sound Canadian. Doesn’t sound so cool, does it? But who cares? I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve learned the awkward moments are the ones I love most and that I could actually label 99.9% of the people I know as awkward at some point or another.
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So, yes, we will probably keep taking 20-30 selfies before we get just the right pose or carefully craft a tweet for way too long, but that’s okay…as long as we know that there will always be a difference between our on- and off-line selves. Embrace your quirks, and don’t compare your offline self to the one you’ve spent way too long rehearsing. It isn’t genuine, and we like the real you more anyway.

I found this video to be incredibly relevant for me. I hope you enjoy it!