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Does Church Branding Matter?

Sean Cronin — Fri, 21 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000

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Does Church Branding Matter?

By Nancy Cornwell

Should branding matter for your church? Let’s think through this topic both biblically and practically if it matters and what you need to do about it.

Every church has a brand. There is no such thing as a church without a brand. A brand is simply what a community thinks about a church. Let me repeat that: your brand is what your community thinks about your church, not what you think about your church.

Do you want someone else to define what your brand is for your church? Or, do you want to define the brand of your church?

Branding matters. We often feel frustrated because we think of branding as a marketing scheme and something that is only applicable in the business world. People view branding as a marketing tactic to convince you to buy something that you don’t need and doesn’t deliver on what is promised.

Branding is merely telling your church’s story. So, how do you tell your story?

In Acts 17:5-8, we see branding elements in descriptions of the church at Thessalonica. These believers were known for for turning “the world upside down” (v. 6) as followers of Jesus Christ. They clearly had a reputation in their community.

Here are four steps to think through your church’s branding.

1. Branding is not what you think you are. Branding is what your community thinks you are.

Your church’s brand and identity is not who and what you determine it to be unless you work diligently to communicate that message. Many churches claim to be the friendliest on the block, but those claims are only true to others within the church, not to outsiders. Other churches may say they are missional. Often these churches only talk about missions and give toward missions efforts but don’t actually engage on mission. With these types of churches, what they perceive of themselves is often a better brand than what the community sees.

2. Branding is not just your church’s logo or name. Branding is your identity.

Unless the church has experienced a public failure in the community, you likely don’t need to change your church’s name. Instead, create consistent communications about your church. Remember that your name and logo are only a small part of your church’s identity.

3. Branding is telling your story.

How do you want to tell your story? What is it about your church that you want your community to know? You must first identify your purpose then identify your process to achieve this purpose. With your purpose and process, you can then better communicate and display who your church is, how your church behaves, and what values your church holds closely. These things help your community understand what matters to you as a church. You may even discover that many in the community also resonate with these values.

4. Investing in your church’s brand is as important as investing in your church’s building and communication tools.

Your paint, chairs, signage, website, and so forth matter in contemporary culture. If you don’t manage these elements as well, your brand will still be out there. It just may not be what you want it to be. Your brand matters. Treat it that way.

Source: Does Church Branding Matter?

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7 Habits of Generation Z That Your Church Might Be Ignoring

Esther Ritchey — Sat, 08 Aug 2020 09:00:00 +0000

By: Carey Nieuwhof

This post is written by Dillon Smith, a Gen Z team member of mine.

There’s no doubt that Gen Z has some different habits than previous generations.

Thanks to the internet and smartphones, the environment that we’ve grown up in is completely unique, and unlike any generation before.

We spend more time online, go outside less, and care about wildly different things than our parents did when they were kids.

You might look at these habits and think that these habits are “just a phase” or that we’ll “grow out of it.”

We won’t.

I’m 22, and I still watch A TON of YouTube. Even post-graduation, my classmates still spend a ton of time on Instagram and TikTok. None of us plan on making any of these a smaller part of our lives.

So for the church: How do you become a bigger part of our lives online?

Well, first, I think you need to be aware of how and why we behave and think the way we do.

I’m seeing 7 habits of Generation Z that your church might be ignoring. Here’s the list:

1. I watch who I want, when I want

The internet has given me the freedom to watch exactly who I want, when I want.

So, the only reason my friends or I are watching your church online is either because our parents are making us, or because we deeply care about what you have to say.

There are just too many other appealing ways to pass the time for us to waste our time on something that isn’t helpful or fun to watch.

So what does this mean for teaching pastors and service programming directors?

10 seconds of boring is enough to lose a Gen Z viewer.

Every second of online content you produce needs to add value in an efficient and engaging way.

10 seconds of boring is enough to lose a Gen Z viewer. Every second of online content you produce needs to add value in an efficient and engaging way. @Dillon_M_Smith

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2. If you want me to follow you for a long time, I need to get to know you

Our spirituality is one of the most sacred and private things we have, and if you want Gen Z to trust you with our time and subscription, we need to trust you.

And, a weekly sermon just doesn’t cut it for us.

In this digital era, churches should be producing more personal content online, not less.

There are tons of Twitch streamers and YouTubers who are doing this well. As church leaders, it’s about time that we start learning from them.

The single best YouTuber I’ve found at building a feeling of community and trust is a guy named Matt Carriker. Matt (who happens to be a Christian) has built three massively successful YouTube channels that have a combined total of 15.26 million subscribers.

His OffTheRanch channel is a personal vlog, and his fastest-growing channel that allows his viewers to see into his family, his hobbies, his character flaws, his ideas, and his work. By taking us into his real life, it builds more trust and community within his audience.

I think churches could do something similar.

Lead pastors could take the vlog camera home and show some of how they parent, or the staff could bring the vlog to worship practice or community service projects to show how the church is run throughout the week.

It’s just an idea, but ideas like this are going to reach my generation.

If you want more on how to create videos that people love to watch and engage with, Sean Cannell’s Video Influencers would be another great channel to check out. Here’s Sean’s recent interview on Carey’s podcast.

In this digital era, pastors should be producing more personal content online, not less. @Dillon_M_Smith

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3. I’ve been trained to view myself as a brand

Thanks to platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, I’ve grown up viewing myself as my own brand.

I don’t think this mindset is healthy, but I do think it’s accurate. And as the church, we’re called to reach people where they actually are, not where we would hope they’d be.

If you want to reach a “me-centered” generation, show us what’s in it for us.

One biblical angle to take with this is to change your church’s focus from the Sunday experience to what the church is doing throughout the week. Show us how we can join your movement and not just build your platform.

This might be a bit closer to how the church was designed to function anyways. ?

If you want to reach a “me-centered” generation, show us what’s in it for us. @Dillon_M_Smith

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4. Gen Z would prefer to avoid our parent’s generation on social media

When I look back at my time in school, new social media apps like Vine, YikYak, Kik, and TikTok would come up in popularity in phases.

The life cycle of a new app would look like this:

A new app would release
It would become popular because our parents had no idea about it yet
Our parents would find out about it and create an account or have the school block it
We would all abandon it for the next app
Repeat

I think this is part of why TikTok exploded like it did, and why many of the young people I know are spending less time on Facebook and Instagram and more time on TikTok. It’s still cool to avoid our parent’s generation online.

So, for you and your church, I’ve got a few strategies to think about:

Even as new apps become popular, I still follow Craig Groeschel on Instagram and YouTube. I follow him because I trust him, and I’ll still watch him on those platforms because I know he’ll be there. If you’re a senior pastor, stick to where your people know you are, and double down.
For taking new ground on new apps (like TikTok), let a young staff member or young volunteer take the lead. Let the student ministry put effort towards experimental apps, and as the average age of an app’s users increases, begin to add adult-focused content.
No matter how old you are, don’t try to be someone you aren’t. If I see John Piper dancing on TikTok tomorrow, I’m going to be more concerned and less likely to follow him. No matter the platform, being authentically you is the best way forward.

No matter the platform, being authentically you is the best way forward. @Dillon_M_Smith

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5. Diversity isn’t optional

A couple of years ago, Greg Atkinson told me that if you want to reach the next generation, having a diverse church isn’t optional. He’s right.

Our schools are diverse, our workplaces are diverse, and our friend groups are diverse. If your church isn’t at least as diverse as the school we grew up in, we will question you as an organization.

As Derwin Gray and Darryn Scheske pointed out on a recent ChurchPulse Weekly podcast episode:

“Young adults aren’t leaving the church, they’re leaving the white church.”

If you want more on leading a diverse church, this interview is a great place to start.

If your church isn’t at least as diverse as the school Gen Z grew up in, we’ll question you as an organization. @Dillon_M_Smith

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6. My mental health issues aren’t going away

One of the biggest issues facing the next generation is a sharp decline in mental health.

Here’s the strange part: We’re fully aware of the mental health crisis, and what’s causing it, but our phones are too good to give up.

The rewards of the internet outweigh the risks for us.

So, how can you help?

Sadly, a sermon series once a year isn’t enough to reach a generation plagued with anxiety. The church needs a better solution.

Maybe it’s opening a counseling wing attached to your church. Maybe it’s making mental health a regular focus of your young adult ministry or small group or something else entirely. Whatever it is, this is a felt need that we have year-round that the church can’t ignore.

A sermon series once a year isn’t enough to reach a generation plagued with anxiety. The church needs a better solution. @Dillon_M_Smith

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7. When I talk to my non-Christian friends about church, I usually need to lead with an apology

During my first couple of years of bible college, I was a server and bartender at a restaurant in downtown Omaha.

All but two of my coworkers were 16 to 30-year-olds who were either atheist or agnostic, and almost all of them had stories about how the church had hurt them or their families.

So, if I wanted to have any form of evangelistic/spiritual conversation with them, I had to first apologize (for something I had nothing to do with) and convince them that not every Christian is judgmental or abusive.

This is true for most of the people my age.

If the church wants to reach the next generation, justified or not, you’ll need to apologize to most of the next generation first.

I wish this weren’t true. And I wish it were just an isolated thing, but it’s not.

As evidence that this wasn’t just my experience, I posted a tweet last week in a moment of stress that I would not be so quick to post again. The tweet said;

“As a 22-year old Christian, too often it feels like I’m a Christian in spite of the Church rather than because of the church.”

Again, if I could go back in time I don’t think I’d tweet this again, but one thing that shocked me was the response I saw.

It was by far the most liked and retweeted tweet I’ve ever shared.

And you know who did nearly all of the liking and retweeting?

Gen Z Christians.

They responded with things like

“Oof, I feel this.”
“This is sadly true.”
“Same.”
“I would share if I didn’t think it would create a storm I’m not prepared to tackle.”

This massive response tells me that the emotion I was feeling when I originally posted the tweet is hitting a chord with the rest of my generation. It’s telling me that the tweet might be more right than I know.

As the Church, we need to get ahead of this.

We need to follow Jeff Henderson’s advice and make sure our communities know what we’re FOR rather than what we’re against, and we need to apologize to those we’ve hurt, even if it wasn’t us who did it.

If we don’t do this, more and more irrelevance and hate await the bride of Christ.

If the church wants to reach the next generation, justified or not, you’ll need to apologize to most of the next generation first. @Dillon_M_Smith

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If You Don’t Have A Healthy Culture, You Won’t Reach Us Either…

Want to improve your team culture?

Better team culture gets fueled by better value statements.

But how to do create them can be so complicated.

How:

Do you know which values to choose?
Do you avoid creating value statements people roll their eyes at or think are so obvious they mean nothing?
Can you be sure the values are accurate but still stretch you?

I spent years reading books and studying how to create value statements until I had a breakthrough on how to create cultural value statements that were both accurate and aspirational, and that the entire team embraced.

I’ve broken that process down into three simple steps that can get you improving your organization’s culture and values today.

You can get free instant access to The 3 Step Guide to Developing Better Value Statements here.

Is there more?

Did I miss anything? Are there other habits of Gen-Z that we’re missing? Did you find this article helpful?

Storybrand for Small Church Pastors

Sean Cronin — Sat, 08 Feb 2020 10:00:54 +0000

by Jeff Reed: You are a small church pastor, minister, staff member, or volunteer. You want to make a difference. You want your communication to move people. You want your invites to result in guests.

You likely ask questions such as, “How do I use what I have to make a difference in our community? How do I use online tools to reach people? Do I need a new camera, microphone, or software to do online ministry?” It is tempting to think that a new piece of gear, or a new method, or a new program will make the difference.

I want to show you a framework that you can use in a small church with a lot of tools or just a few. This works incredibly well in online ministry. I’m a small church pastor too. I clean toilets and take out the trash. And our church uses this framework to communicate in ways that make a difference online and offline.

The Storybrand framework is a way of thinking of marketing, communications, and strategy from the guest’s or customer’s perspective. It comes from Donald Miller’s book, Building a Storybrand.

Churches tend to think of communications, invites, and marketing from the perspective of the church’s goal, rather than from the guest, attender, or member’s needs, wants, and goals. This is especially true in smaller churches where staff and volunteers do multiple jobs and often have little training for things like communications and marketing.

Think of the difference between “Do you want to go to a marriage conference? Please sign up!” and “You want a great marriage. But maybe you’re hitting a rough patch. We’ve been through our own rough spots and believe every marriage is worth the work! Join us for our upcoming marriage conference.” One is focused on the event and the desire of the church (sign up). The other puts the couple and their desires and fears at the front (“You want…”).

Your communications will be more effective, no matter the tool, as you learn to shift your communication from church-focused to others-focused.

Learning to make this shift will help you reach your online audience, as well as, offline. Any tool you use becomes more relevant and useful. Your communications will make a difference when you reach out with something that is in some way relevant to a need that the user already feels.

Example 1:

Let me show you a way that we used this framework for a recent series. A typical church invite says, “We’re doing an exciting new series that you should join us for. Please come.” We wanted to flip that around and speak to a felt need that most people have as the reason they would want to join us.

Our big Fall series was called “Failure is Not Final.” Failure is not final is one of our core values. We believe God is near to the brokenhearted and that he does his work in and through our failures. Here is how we framed this series:

“Problems, challenges, failures. We all have them. But you don’t want them as your baggage. Join Belgium Community Church online and on Sundays starting September 8th! We’ll see that with God, Failure is not final.”

We created a landing page at belgiumchurch.com/final, did video ads, and sent flyers to every home in our village pointing people to this message.

Notice that the messaging is focused on not coming to church or engaging with us. The focus is on our community and their wants, needs, and fears. We did not start with a felt need. The series was a core value series for us. That was set. It was the communication of that series that started with a felt need. The communication method and messaging changed, not the message itself.

Example 2:

For our second Fall series, we went through the book of Titus. Instead of speaking to ourselves and how we will get more Bible knowledge (which is valuable), we spoke to the situation we all find ourselves in:

“These times can be crazy. Whether it is events around the globe or just down our block, life can surprise and overwhelm us. How should we live in times like these? Do we throw up our hands and retreat? Do we get angry and fight?In the Bible, the letter to Titus is for times like ours. Crazy times are an opportunity for us to live in such a way that we make the good news of Jesus attractive. Instead of being scared or angry, we are called to shine brightly.Will you join us on Sundays and online in October as we learn together what it means to adorn the good news of Jesus?”

Learning and applying the storybrand framework gives you an engaging and motivating strategy that can be applied with any tool. I showed us using text here, but we use the framework with video, audio, graphics, etc.

So then, if you have small budgets and volunteers, you can still communicate in a way that makes a difference.

What do you do?

Get the book Building a Storybrand by Donald Miller.
Read the book. Do it rather quickly (try to block off 2-3 times in a week to read through it. It is not long).
Go to their website: mystorybrand.com where you can build practice scripts or frameworks.
Practice on your next sermon series, community project, etc. Try to do it several times in the first month to get the hang of it.

What difference will it make?

Your communication will stand out and move people. You can use print, visual, audio, and video to communicate and get a response. You won’t waste time and effort anymore putting out content and invites and flyers and videos that no one responds to.

Any digital tool you use will have a purpose and be more effective. You won’t be stuck with a shiny camera with no message and no ideas on how to communicate.

Source: Storybrand for Small Church Pastors

The post Storybrand for Small Church Pastors appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Church Design Help for Non-Designers with Raj Lulla & Ben Lueders

Sean Cronin — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 09:00:28 +0000

by unSeminary: Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we have Ben Lueders and Raj Lulla with us from the design company Fruitful Design. The company works with churches to help them reach the visual learners in the congregation.

Raj and Ben are with us today to talk about why good design is important in churches and what churches should be thinking about design-wise as they communicate to people in the congregation and community.

Consistency in branding. // When starting to give attention to your design work, the first thing for a church to focus on is its branding. Consistency in what you put out in front of people is key to the level of trust they feel with you. Good design is important in the church because it gives people the “experience” before they have the experience within your church. What people see on your website, social media pages, signs, logos, and more can help people know what the weekend experience will be like.Discover your brand. // Going through the branding self-discovery process and turning that into a visual representation of who you are does a lot of the heavy lifting for you when it comes to identifying who you are reaching out to in your community. Fruitful Design develops brand manuals with their clients to help create the look that reaches out to the people they are focused on. Don’t underestimate the power of a simple brand experience.Tools to start with. // If you’re not ready to bring on a creative director or purchase something like Photoshop for your design work, try starting with Canva. Canva offers a free version with a lot of basic templates that make drag and drop design very easy for the user. For websites, Raj and Ben recommend Squarespace because it is easy to use and does well at keeping out hackers. WordPress is also used by some clients, but it can be harder to use for those who might not be as tech savvy. 50% photos and 50% text. // No matter how good the wording is on your website, paragraphs of straight text on the site aren’t the way to get people interested in learning more. Be sure to intersperse visually interesting and engaging photos in with a sparse amount of text. It’s okay to use stock photos on your website to make a connection with your audience. Ben recommends Unsplash and Lightstock, which offers Christian photos. Additionally, Life.Church offers their series graphics for free after they finish using them, so that’s a place to get images for sermon series. You don’t have to use their sermon content; you can just use their graphics.Make use of email. // If you’re not using email often, Ben recommends that you start. In the retail world, social media has about 1/10th of 1% conversion rate, meaning that out of 10,000 people on social media only 1 will result in a sale. But an email list has about 1% click through rate—out of 100 people on the email list 1 person will buy something. Everyone may not see your posts in social media, but you are sending messages to directly to people through email. Try using MailChimp as a way to send out email to groups of people.Make communications jobs clear. // One of the biggest mistakes churches make is to hire a communications director or graphic designer and expect them to handle several different creative and communications roles that may be outside of their area of expertise. Shift away from thinking that you’ll find the perfect person to do four different jobs yet work on a church employee’s salary. The better approach is to find a pastorally-hearted person who will manage a team of volunteers to work on these various creative projects. Another option is to outsource the entire approach to an outside team of professionals.

You can download Church Design Tricks for Non-Designers here, and you can learn more about Fruitful Design at www.fruitful.design.

Thank You for Tuning In!

There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I’m grateful for that. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they’re extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally!

Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live!

Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Leadership Pathway

Launch a residency program or take your internship to the next level at your church.

Click here for your free toolkit and learn how Leadership Pathway can help.

Source: Church Design Help for Non-Designers with Raj Lulla & Ben Lueders

The post Church Design Help for Non-Designers with Raj Lulla & Ben Lueders appeared first on Passion for Planting.

Blogging for the Leadership Influence Of It

Sean Cronin — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 09:00:48 +0000

Blogging for the Leadership Influence Of It

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by Brandon Cox: Starting a blog could possibly make you famous. Or it might not. It doesn’t really matter. Fame isn’t the point. And, after all, how many people to you know who are famous simply because they started blogging?

Okay, there are a few, but still…

The point isn’t fame. It isn’t fortune, although you can definitely earn a healthy income from it. The point, for most leaders, is influence.

Leadership is influence.

Leadership is doing something that creates a ripple, or maybe a current, or maybe a tidal wave that affects something down stream. Welcome to the world where blogging is more at the core of commerce and media than you’ve probably ever realized.

Last week, someone dropped a shrink-wrapped stack of phone directories on my doorstep. And these were “Christian” directories, whatever that means. (My name wasn’t in it, so…)

Phone directories are a lot like the rest of the print industry – fading fast. Nobody is subscribing or reading, which is dropping circulation numbers, which is turning away advertisers, which is causing tons of publications to either shut down or merge with someone else. A few are still doing well. All print isn’t dying, but much of it is. Why?

Because digital is rising. The internet is big. You know this. You know it so well you’re tired of hearing about it, right?

But tons of leaders, who have some influence, still see operating a blog as purely a luxury, maybe even a hobby if not an utterly pointless waste of energy.

But it isn’t. Let me tell you the why first. Why should you start blogging, like, yesterday? Here are my three biggest reasons (and I have a dozen more):

- Blogging lets you frame the story behind your brand. And by “brand” I mean the story the people tell about a person, a product, or an organization.
- Blogging is like owning a piece of real estate. It’s your own. Facebook and Twitter don’t belong to you. You’re just renting space and helping someone else profit from it.
- Blogging leaves a legacy. So do books, of course, so you should try to write books too, but blogging is off-the-cuff, in-the-moment, from-the-heart. Publishing is long, slow, and heavily edited to sell.

There is a bit of preliminary work to be done.

You need to think through your potential subject matter and outline the topics you’re going to write about. Do a little research into the various tools at your disposal for creating content.

But at the end of the day, blogging isn’t rocket science. That is, unless, you actually do blog about rocket science and, if that’s the case, I can’t help you much.

I’ve been blogging for fifteen years-ish. I’ve managed blogs about blogging and I’ve written a book about social media.

Blogging has earned a significant side income for me and my family, enabling us to pay off debt, set money aside for our kids’ future, travel without stressing out, and give generously with joy.

But I still say that the most important motivation for blogging isn’t the money. It’s the influence!

By the way, if you want instant access to the best website on the net for learning about blogging, affiliate marketing, and online business, click here to create your account and get started!

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Source: Blogging for the Leadership Influence Of It

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Get These 12 Church Logo Files from Your Designer

Patrick Bradley — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 09:00:43 +0000

by Patrick Bradley: As part of the branding process, you’ll be working with a designer to create a logo. When it’s finalized, you’ll want to get these 12 church logo files from your designer.

You’re going to need to use your church logo in lots of different ways. You’d be surprised at what a challenge that can be. Even just across the social media sites, you need:

one with landscape orientation for banners and headers
a square version for the avatar/thumbnail
one with a transparent background to overlay on other images
and the list goes on…

To be ready for all of those scenarios and challenges, make sure your designer sends you all of the following versions:

Versions of Church Logo Files

the primary logo (typically in color and landscape-oriented)
the reverse logo (if your logo is light-colored, this will be a dark version, and vice versa)
the primary logo in B&W
a reverse B&W
a square version (color)
a square reverse
a square in B&W
a square in reverse B&W
just the icon in color (no words, just the ‘mark’)
just the icon in reverse color
just the icon in B&W
just the icon in reverse B&W

But wait, there’s more!

Different Church Logo File Types

Your graphic designer will probably use either Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop (or less commonly, Corel Draw). They’ll be in file types that us regular folks can’t do much with. But you still need to have them. You’ll want to get at least all 12 logo versions above as master files.

Master File Extensions to Look for:

.ai (Adobe Illustrator)
.psd (Adobe Photoshop)
.cdr (Corel Draw)
occassionally you’ll see an .eps file (not software-brand-specific)

But you’ll probably want them in the following versions, too:

Print-Quality File Extensions to Look for:

.jpg or .pdf (300dpi resolution or higher)
does not support transparent backgrounds
great for printing but not great for online applications because they can make pages. load. s-l-o-w-l-y.

Online-Quality File Extensions to Look for:

.png or .jpg (typically 72dpi but no more than 96dpi – they’ll load faster)
make sure your .png files have a transparent background
great for digital media but not great for print applications because they’re low resolution

You’ll eventually want to end up with each of the 12 logo versions in each of these file formats. That will be at least 36 actual files. Whoa. But trust me, you’ll end up using them in various contexts.

Back Them Up

The original church logo files can be all but impossible to recreate years later (unless maybe you have a simple text logo). You can’t risk losing your originals if your computer crashes, so save all of the original church logo files from your designer to your hard drive and to your cloud storage (iCloud, DropBox, Drive, etc).

The post Get These 12 Church Logo Files from Your Designer appeared first on Church Planting Tactics.

Source: Get These 12 Church Logo Files from Your Designer

The post Get These 12 Church Logo Files from Your Designer appeared first on Passion for Planting.

3 Tools to Claim Consistent Social Usernames

Patrick Bradley — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 09:00:38 +0000

by Patrick Bradley: As you’re creating the brand for your new church plant, one of your challenges will be to claim consistent social usernames.

Learn from my mistake. I already have this problem:

On Twitter I’m @plantingtactics
And on Instagram I’m @plantingtactics
But on Facebook I’m /churchplantingtactics
And sadly on Google Plus I’m /113079890154934621964 (I think that means I’m a Storm Trooper)

Why Claim Consistent Social Usernames

My son tells me it’s as important as having consistent gamer tags across gaming platforms. Hopefully the benefit of consistency is at least somewhat obvious: it makes it easy for people to find your church from one platform to the next.

But a second advantage is if people @tag you in their post and have cross-platform automation set up, the other platforms may recognize you as the same user.

And rumor has it that consistency across your digital footprint can help your search engine ranking.

3 Tools to Claim Consistent Social Usernames

Thanks to the Pro Church Tools podcast, I learned about these sites that make figuring out which usernames are available across platforms:

namecheckr – “check domain & social username availability across multiple networks” (53 domains & platforms by my count)
namechk – “see if your desired username or vanity url is still available at dozens of popular Social Networking and Social Bookmarking websites” (I counted 35+ domains, 122 social platforms plus the US Trademark database)
knowem – “Search over 500 popular social networks, over 150 domain names, and the entire USPTO Trademark Database to instantly secure your brand on the internet” (for a fee, these guys will do the registering for you)

Twitter has the shortest limit at 15, so keep your proposed social username to 15 characters max. Try different versions of your church’s name and see which is/are available. Throw in your city’s name or common abbreviation (like the airport code) if you need more options.

Until today I didn’t know tools like this existed. Use one and you’ll know in advance if the social username (and even website address) you want is available. Then go and claim your social usernames like it was the Oklahoma Land Rush.

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Source: 3 Tools to Claim Consistent Social Usernames

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