In the last couple of articles in our series on Digital Ministry and church media, we have looked at why it is vital to start from the point of working out who your audience is and then why you need to develop an appropriate strategy to reach them. However, while having both things present in your church multimedia is key, neither will change their lives.
That is where your content comes in and why creating the right church media content is critical to your mission in digital ministry.
I also know that content creation can appear to be a complicated and intimidating concept to grasp, so in this article, I’m going to share some thoughts on content creation for churches in the hopes of helping you understand the importance of creating good content and, as a result, how you can have a more significant impact.
I’ve produced video content for over twenty-five years and created thousands of hours, including studio interviews, documentaries, and some of the world’s most significant Christian live events.
In this article, I will concentrate on creating video content; however, the principles are the same irrespective of the format of the church media content.
I’ve always found breaking down complex ideas into simple, actionable steps helpful. This is especially useful in content creation because there are three unchangeable pillars you must have in place regardless of the content you create if you want it to have an impact.
These are Presentation, Quality, and Context.
This is what I call the “trifecta of effectiveness.” So, how do these three elements interact, and why are they important?
Church Media Presentation
This will CAPTURE your audience’s attention, draw them into your content, and keep them engaged. Graphics, audio levels, music, staging and aesthetics, lighting, and camera framing are all presentation elements. When creating content, you must get this part right to entice viewers to start watching and decide whether your content is worth their time.
One way to see if you are getting this bit right is to check your viewing stats on your platform. If you have a rapid drop-off rate on your content, where people stop watching after an extremely short period, this can indicate that you need to work on your presentation.
Improve your presentation to ensure people pay attention to your content.
Church Multimedia Quality
This can be a touchy subject when people hear the word “quality,” so let me clarify that I am not implying that you must produce content of the same calibre as a Hollywood blockbuster film – BUT “quality” is essential because it determines whether people STAY watching your content.
Looking at your viewing stats will quickly tell you how you are doing. Are people starting to watch but not watching to the end? If so, you may have a quality issue; people can’t stick with your church multimedia content because the quality is so poor.
This means that you must get the basics right. Your audio levels must be consistent with no distortion; your video quality must be decent, not grainy, and if you are live streaming, it doesn’t buffer. Then you need to consider areas like lighting, is it good and even? Are the camera shots well framed, the programme’s direction or “flow” at the right pace, and so on?
People will likely stick with your content if your production is good quality. The critical thing to remember here is that it must meet the expectations of your target audience.
I recommend that you produce as high a quality as possible. This may require you to reconsider HOW you broadcast. On one of my recent training courses, I had a leader from a church in Norway who realised that if they streamed their service LIVE, their audio team would be incapable of producing an excellent balanced LIVE mix. So they decided to pre-record their service, re-mix the audio to ensure good quality, and then air it later. They realised that having good quality was more important than being able to live stream – have you thought about what concessions you need to make to ensure consistent quality?
Church Media Context
Understanding the importance of context will enable you, as a church, a minister, or an individual, to deliver RELEVANT and APPROPRIATE content to your viewers and ensure that your church multimedia content connects with the intended audience.
This is one of the reasons you must start by defining your audience, as only then will you know the context for your content.
“Content is King,” you’ve probably heard. I’ve said it many times in my career, but recently I’ve changed it to “Content in context is King.”
There are so many ways to reach people with video content today, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all model like we may have used in the past. When I talk about context, I’m primarily concerned with two distinct issues – both of which are critical.
The first is what I touched on above, the content’s relevance to the audience. This includes things like the length of the content you create, the language you use, the structure of the content, and the media type you prefer – video, audio, social, written, and so on.
The second point to consider is how your content works across different platforms. For example, the content you create for YouTube may need to differ from that for Facebook.
Here is an interesting stat, did you know that 84% of all video content on Facebook is watched without sound? Does your Facebook content have captions? If not, then you’re missing out on a significant portion of the audience – that’s CONTEXT.
Understanding the types of content that work on various platforms is critical to maximise your impact and reach – and ultimately change people’s lives.
What does it all mean to you?
You may think that you must suddenly produce more content – and for some, this could be the case – but you can also do what I call “repurposing” your content and thus expand what you do without creating more. This is where you take ONE piece of church multimedia content and repurpose it into other pieces that can be used in different contexts on different platforms or for different audiences.
All of this can be overwhelming, but with good content aligned to your audience and the appropriate strategy, you WILL see your content improve, grow, and change more lives – that has to be worth it, right?
Now, to deliver this, you need the right team – that’s for the following article.
How have you seen the “trifecta of effectiveness” (Presentation, Quality, and Context) play a role in the impact of digital ministry content?
Are there specific challenges you’ve faced in maintaining church media quality across different platforms?
How do you adapt your content to ensure it remains relevant and engaging for diverse audiences?
This is a guest post from Graeme Spencer of Media Mentoring, who specialise in helping churches excel in digital ministry, church production, and video production. They are offering a FREE assessment of your current digital ministry, which you can take by clicking HERE.
This post is part of series looking at Digital Ministry. You can find the other posts in this series here:
- Digital Ministry Unleashed: Transforming Lives Beyond the Walls of the Church
- The Key to Livestreaming Church Success: Defining Your Audience
- Churches & Live Streaming: Four Keys For Strategy
- Three Essential Pillars of Church Media Content
- Building Your Church Media Ministry Team
- Streaming Church & Technology: A Comprehensive Guide
