Promoting eMinistry

A busy week -- working hard on contacting potential class leaders, getting 4 new classes scheduled and listed on the website for October! Some I've been working on for quite some time, and some just developed very quickly -- which is so neat. I'm looking forward to the Leaders Introductory Teleclass next Wednesday which is set up to talk with people about eMinistry and what becoming a leader involves.

So far today -- by 1:30 PST -- we've had 59 visitors to the website (!!!!) which is great -- but only 2 registrations -- I don't know if it's because they're not interested in what we're offering OR because the time/date we're offering something doesn't work for them. I'm not sure how we might get that feedback....maybe an informal poll on the website? Need to think about that.

A disappointing piece of news is we had to cancel the first offering of "Planning Your Final Celebration" -- lots of interest expressed in it by people but only one registration -- so we rescheduled it till later in October. I'm disappointed because the content looks terrific, and I am so eager for the learnings we get from holding each class -- and I hate disappointing the leader who gets all geared up for the class but then finds there's not enough people to hold it. It all gets down to getting the word out to the person in the pew, and I am wrestling with how to do that better.

Some ideas:

• contact the communications officer of a diocese which has an eMinistry leader teaching an upcoming class -- write a specially focussed "press release" kind of announcement to help them publicize that particular class in their own diocese
  

• ask leaders for names of people/places their class might be publicized (alumni magazines from colleges or seminaries; professional contacts/colleagues
  

• go through diocesan websites to find the contact person who would be interested in a specific class -- I've shied away from this because it is so incredibly labor-intensive....but it would get the news to a different level than diocesan staff or clergy
  

• find people who've taken an eMinistry class who are willing to be an "eMinistry rep" for their diocese -- they'd receive weekly updates about newly-scheduled classes; they would know WHO in their diocese might be interested in learning about a particular class.
  

I don't naturally think in a martketing-type way, although I am certainly learning to! I wonder who is out there who might be a good person to coach me on how to promote eMinistry?

Onward and upward,

Elizabeth