Branding and Marketing Series - an intro
A few months ago I was on a call with one of our pastors. We were discussing some of the ideas he wanted to see come from the Great City Network project.
“We really just need to get better at Social Media,” he commented, “can you help us learn that?”
In the moment, I gave him a simple positive response. Sure, of course I can guide you through the practical points of running decent social media.
Over the following couple of days, I began to realize that it wouldn’t be enough to simply teach social. What he (and many pastors) actually needed was more comprehensive guidance on building a solid, modern, competitive communication strategy. Social media, after all, is only one small component of a larger system.
Fast forward to the present. Great City Network is currently ⅓ of the way through our Branding and Marketing series of workshops geared toward churches. The series has been designed to cover several topics in three core units: Brand Development, Digital Marketing, and Community Engagement.
Our presenters all come from the professional field where they work at very high levels. We have an Emmy award winning brand writer who works with the Green Bay Packers, Milwaukee Bucks. In the area of website design, we’ve invited a UX/UI designer from Epic - one of the largest health industry companies in America. A marketing professor, a Ph.D in public health, HR Consultant, and several others round out the talented professionals leading our pastors through the series.
Great City Network is a community of WELS pastors focused on developing fresh perspectives and best practices for spreading the gospel in major metropolitan settings. With that in mind, we knew we needed to work toward building excellent communication strategies for churches. After all, when you’re working in a big city, there is a lot of noise, speed, and angles of conversations happening all at once.
As the live workshops occur, we publish them for our members to refer back to as often as needed. Many times, we build additional resources related to the topics as well. Together, we can work to be better communicators of God’s word through the channels he has blessed us with.
~ DJ
