Posts Tagged ‘website’

@maurilio:

6

Church and Ministry Website Usage

In ministry, as in business, the day and time of your posts matter. A good social media strategy is critical. Take a look a this infographic. There are a lot of implications for your church and ministry website strategy. What statistic do you find most surprising?

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3 Questions You Should Answer Before Launching a Website

“We have a technology problem.” Words I often hear from a client or potential client. While that might be a valid concern, most of the time it’s not the technology problem that’s causing the issue, but a communication one. My company, The A Group, has a technology division where we have developed a sophisticated platform for media-rich tools as well as a powerful and easy-to-use content management system. While I’m happy to sell our products to anyone who needs faster, easier, and overall better technology, I’m always careful to make sure people understand the it’s the communication strategy that drives the technology and not the other way around. This might sound simplistic to some, but I can tell you from personal experience that many churches, businesses, and not-for-profits believe that a shiny new website, a powerful digital media tool, or an iPhone app will cure their communication problems. They won’t.…

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6

How Should We Manage Technology?

How far into the future should your technology plan look? That’s a question I am asked often these days. Technology can be a capital expenditure for businesses and not-for-profits. It seems like yesterday I was sitting in board meetings considering investing in technology, websites, servers, and productivity tools that we expected to be useful for “the next 10 years.” Oh my, how times have changed. Unfortunately today I run into all sorts of limitation issues when clients who bought expensive technology 5 years ago want to continue to use it in today’s context. The proliferation and democratization of technology has taken innovation from the large software and hardware developers such as Microsoft and has moved them down to the level of a college kid who starts a little online tool for his friends based on an open-source platform we now call Facebook. It seems like every day something amazing has…

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10

Fast Forward Deployment and Your Online Project

The social media revolution has forced traditional journalism to rethink its most basic premise: a well researched, well developed and thoroughly checked news story. We don’t want to wait for weeks or even days for a news story. We want it within hours of it breaking, minutes would be best.  Journalists have even coined a new name for it: fast forward journalism. It’s a fast, unstructured post, and with just the facts that are available at the moment, giving its audience enough information to get them up to speed. I believe online development needs its own fast forward approach. Not long ago I sat in a room filled with engineers working on a spec document for an online tool. We worked for a solid week. The engineers were trying to account for every potential user scenario and exception. I was fighting for simplicity and quick deployment. I had not given…

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16

3 Questions You Must Answer Before Launching a Website

“we have a technology problem,” is what I often hear from a client or potential client, but while that might be true, most of the time it’s not the technology problem that’s causing the issue, but a communication one. My company, The A Group, has a technology division where we have developed a sophisticated platform for media-rich tools as well as a powerful and easy-to-use content management system. While I’m happy to sell our products to anyone who needs faster, easier and overall better technology, I’m always careful to make sure people understand that’s the communication strategy that drives the technology and not the other way around. This might sound simplistic to some, but I can tell you from personal experience that many churches, businesses and not-for-profits believe that a shiny new website, a powerful digital media tool, or an iPhone app will cure their communication problems. They won’t. What…

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7

Alignment: A Case Study

I hear a lot about alignment lately. Business and church leaders like to talk about being aligned with mission, staffing, and consumers. It sounds great in meetings. It usually makes people think that you very smart when during any discussion you say “but we must make sure we have alignment here.” Try it next time you’re in any kind of strategy meeting, you’ll feel good. But true alignment is difficult to come by. The road to alignment is often paved with a lot of tough and very unpopular decisions—specially if you’re trying to re-align an organization that, for whatever reason, has gotten off course. Most likely, true alignment comes at the high cost of cancelled programs, product lines, reassigned or terminated staff positions. But when it works, it’s a beautiful and inspiring thing to see. I’m thankful to have been part of a true alignment exercise in the past year.…

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4

The A Group’s MediaMachine Comes Online

Everyone has to win. I believe that about most exchanges in life, and more so when talking about business. I have spent a lot of my life arguing with brilliant software engineers and developers about the need to create the administrative back end of software as easy and beautiful as the user interface. “We must make it Martha friendly,” is my cry around the office. Years ago we developed software for a church who hired a sweet lady named Martha to work it. Well, Martha was not computer savvy. That’s an understatement—she thought the mouse was a foot pedal the first day she looked at her terminal. Martha did us a big favor. She forced us to make things simple; very simple. And from then on, every time things start to get complicated, I dig Martha up (she’s not really dead, only gone from her old position). “What would Martha…

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Birthing Websites

Going live with a website is analogous to the birthing process–ok, ladies, please give me some latitude here. First, there’s a conception plan, then the site begins to take shape in the womb of a development server. A lot of work goes into creating and growing the new site that’s hidden from everyone but its creator(s), and then one day, the new site goes live after the DNS records propagate. And much like the birth of a baby, the site, no matter how large, will continue to develop and grow in the days to come.Over the past few days we have given birth to some great websites: www.eagledrygoods.com and their sister sites www.Tommybahamacs.com and www.calvinkleingolf.com. Beyond the clean, streamlined design of these sites, their most powerful function is something most people will never see: the back end custom programming that allows different people, from designers and product buyers to inventory…

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