Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users posts here about making the culture of a large company more customer-focused. I thought a lot of her comments were helpful in thinking about how to write web page copy for seekers. Here are a few ideas I found particularly interesting …

Language matters. Frame everything in terms of the user’s experience.

In meetings, phrase everything in terms of the user’s personal experience rather than the product. Keep asking, no matter what, “So, how does this help the user kick ass?” and “How does this help the user do what he really wants to do?” Don’t focus on what the user will think about the product, focus everyone around you on what the user will think about himself as a result of interacting with it. Study George Lakoff for tips on using language to shift perceptions.

Capture user stories.

Keep a notebook or hipster PDA with you always and whenever another employee, blogger, (or user) tells you something good or bad about a real user’s experience, write it down. Build up a collection, and make sure these stories are spread. Be the user’s advocate in your group and keep putting real users in front of employees (especially managers). Imagine that you are the designated representative (like the public defender) of specific users, and represent them. Speak for them.

Look for first-person language from users about their own experience. Challenge others to solicit first-person, user-as-subject language.

Do everything you can to get user feedback phrased in first-person terms. Rather than feedback that talks about what the user thinks should be in the product, try to solicit feedback that gets the user talking about himself. Users tend to want to tell you what you should add/subtract from the product, but what you need is feedback where the user tells you about himself in relation to the product, even if it’s negative.

Useful: “I tried to use the XYZ feature, and I couldn’t figure out how to make it work.”
Not useful: “The XYZ feature doesn’t work properly.”

Useful: “I was able to make a really cool image as a result of your app.”
Not useful: “The app does a great job of image processing.”

Set it up as a challenge for yourself and others you work with to figure out ways to generate first-person feedback where users talk about themselves. Make it a game or a contest to see who can get the user to use the “I” word the most often. What kind of questions could you ask that would lead to the user talking about himself rather than YOU or your PRODUCT?

I promised Mark Stephenson would make an exciting announcement about Web-Empowered Church at at Church of the Resurrection’s annual Leadership Institute, which is Thursday through Sunday: Sept. 29 through Oct. 1. Well, I just previewed Mark’s announcement in the post below!

It’s not too late to plan to come to Kansas City for Leadership Institute. This is your first chance to hear directly from Mark and see the Web-Empowered Church technology demonstrated. I’ll be presenting along with Chuck Russell from United Methodist Communications (UMCOM), another of our Appian Way bloggers, and Mark. This is a great learning opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a new wave of innovation and cooperation to create more effective church web sites.

Mark Stephenson, Director of Cyberministry at Ginghamsburg Church, and also the director of Web-Empowered Church, announced yesterday the availability of the “Pre-Release” of the Web-Empowered Church software and documentation, based on the TYPO3 open source content management system.

This release includes software and documentation for:
1. WEC Common Configuration
2. Six Templa Voila Templates (+ variations)
3. Devotional Journal Extension
4. Flash Player Extension
5. Flash Presentation Extension
6. Prayer Connector Extension

Also, the WEC User site is now the place to be with its greatly expanded user information and a CHC Forum with user topics.

Seth Godin gives us a way to articulate the value of blogging. His key idea is that when people read a blog, they are giving the blogger their attention. And, when it comes to marketing and communications, attention is very valuable.

Thanks to BetaChurch for linking and commenting on this.

Does it help to know that even professionals can struggle when trying to market the church? Church Marketing Sucks tells us the story of Angus Kinnaird, a marketing pro who worked on the “Jesus: All About Life” campaign in Austrailia.

Have you ever worked really hard on a church-related marketing campaign without the level of success you desired and expected? I definitely have and I’d think most people who have worked in church marketing have as well. Thanks to Church Marketing Sucks, I feel a little better … I guess.

BetaChurch points us to MarketLeap, a company providing some very cool free tools for search engine optimization.

Yesterday ZDNet quoted Bill Gates as saying, “As we bring AD and Passport together, Hotmail and Exchange together, and MSN Spaces and SharePoint together, we give you the richness but also the choice of having it as a server or a service.”

This tidbit offers some intriguing insight into Microsoft’s product plans. The availability of functions like these as either servers or services will change the in-house vs. outsource calculation in significant ways.

There has been a lot of trade press coverage today on the unveiling of the new look for Office 12 at Microsoft’s Professional Developer’s Conference. The best information I’ve seen is this blog on PC World by Harry McCracken. Office 12 is due out in the second half of 2006.

Those of us involved in church IT will need to start considering how the availability of Office 12 will affect next year’s budget and technology planning.

To me, the biggest issue is the total cost of upgrading. This total cost is more than just the cost of the license fees and any necessary consulting to achieve a network-wide upgrade, but will also include the training costs. Given that the user interface will be completely new, there will be significant training costs as well as the intangible cost of loss of productivity while users learn the new interface.

On the other hand, the arguments in favor of upgrading are obvious. This will be the first major improvement in Office in more than eight years. It seems probable that most or all of the innovations we see in this new version will ultimately be embraced by users and become the “new normal”. If I’m right on this, it isn’t really a question of whether, but only a question of when. The only thing that could change this would be a universal rejection of the new user interface. In that case, will we all move to Open Office? Who knows?

Will those of us who are decision-makers in church IT be early adopters, or will we wait to embrace this new version? At Resurrection we’re still running Office 2000. We had tentative plans to move to Office 2003 this year, but that plan didn’t survive the budgeting process. I can’t imagine that we will adopt Office 12 next year since there’s no way we can properly plan for it a year in advance of its release. Since we’re still on Office 2000, however, we don’t have the luxury of waiting indefinitely. With all of this in mind, I’d predict that 2007 will be the year for us.

Perhaps you saw Robert Scoble’s interview of Bill Gates on Microsoft’s Channel 9. I found the interview interesting, which isn’t surprising as I suspect I’d be interested in practically any interview of Bill Gates. But what struck me the most is the way Scoble and the team at Channel 9 are innovating the use of inexpensive video technology and blogging to get their message out in an anti-slick, human way.

What they’re doing on Channel 9 shows that all you need is a consumer digital camcorder and a streaming video server. The interview isn’t edited at all, just trimmed at the beginning and the end. They’ve succeeded in making Microsoft human and Bill Gates human (look closely and you’ll notice, he isn’t wearing socks!). Making the big, bad Microsoft human is an impressive feat.

So I’ve been thinking about how to apply this innovation in the church. In order to attract people who otherwise wouldn’t come into the church, it seems to me that we should be working to export outside the four walls of the church something of the experience that happens inside the four walls. Many of our churches are doing that now with video streams and podcasts of sermons or other portions of weekend worship.

But what if we had a video “reporter” like Scoble who would go around and capture some of the experience of our other programming? For example, we could send a reporter into our children’s area on Sunday morning to capture a sense of the excitement, get testimonials from parents and kids, show the production quality of the large group time, etc. And then produce it for web streaming with minimal editing and no titles, effects, etc. That kind of anti-slick communication could go a long way to make huge churches like Resurrection seem small, accessible, and human. And it could make small churches seem innovative, high-tech, and exciting.

Is anyone out there doing this now? If so, I haven’t seen it.

It’s hard to believe that Church of the Resurrection’s annual Leadership Institute is only three weeks away. This year we’re blessed to have Mark Stephenson of Ginghamsburg Church and Chuck Russell of United Methodist Communications (UMCOM) presenting a 4-hour workshop on web ministry. Mark is the director of the Web Empowered Church, a new initiative of the Methodist Foundation for Evangelism. Both are well known seminar presenters on how churches can make effective use of the web in ministry.

Also, Mark will be making an exciting announcement about Web Empowered Church at the conference. More on this later.

If you could possibly make time in your schedule to come to Kansas City for this event, September 29 through October 1, I know you’ll be blessed. If you’re interested to hear more about how the Web Empowered Church can help you, not to mention the opportunity to spend time with some of the country’s most knowledgeable practitioners of web ministry, Leadership Institute 2005 is for you. See Resurrection’s web site for full details. See you there!