Putting your audience first
Hi, I’m Natchi Lazarus. Today, I want to share with you a thought about putting your audience first. Many nonprofits, churches, and ministries are good people. I mean, we are good people with good causes. You want to serve people. You have good intentions. But unfortunately, I see many organizations not putting their audience first. It’s not an intentional thing. It’s not that you want to do it. It’s just that sometimes they don’t know how to put the audience first. So I want to give you two strategies today that will help you put your audience first.
Strategy #1: Get feedback and review it regularly
#1: Feedback and review mechanism. Constantly survey your audience, get feedback from them and review your activities. As a nonprofit or a ministry, find ways of getting that feedback. Your feedback could be as simple as going through your comments on your social media post. As you post something, don’t just post and leave it there. Look for comments. Look for those small conversations that people are having, questions that they are asking.
This could be a simple way of collecting feedback. Or if you’re okay with it, you can send out a survey form, once in a month or once in a quarter and ask people for feedback. You know, “Are you being blessed by our content? What else would you like to see?” Always putting the audience first is important. And to do that, you need to know what the audience wants. Never assume something. You will be surprised when you talk to people. You think you know your audience. You ‘think’! Especially at this time, everything has changed with COVID and lockdowns and all the other things, people’s mindset of change, their lives have changed, the requirement or what they need from a ministry or a nonprofit has changed. People’s need for being served has altered. So for you to know that, you need to talk to them. So survey and feedback – you can do online surveys, you can do chat surveys, you can do messenger surveys, send a survey on WhatsApp.
Very simple conversations or even one-on-one, if you’re a small ministry. I actually like a situation where a ministry is small because then you can actually talk to everyone! I heard a pastor who said, “You know, I like the time when our ministry was small. I could talk to every single person. Now that we’ve grown, I don’t have much time to talk”. Of course, a good problem to have. But if you’re a small ministry then this is an opportunity for you to talk to your audience one-on-one and get that feedback.
Strategy #2: Measure and analyze
#2: Measurement and analytics. You’ve heard me say this again and again, analyze and measure what is happening on social media. Without talking to people you can understand what people want. For example, if you have a search capability within your website, an internal search, not Google search, a search button on your website, then go and track all the words that people are searching for inside your website. That will tell you what people are looking for in your ministry. And you can create content accordingly putting your audience first. So always keep measuring – measure your Google Analytics, measure your Facebook Ads, measure your Facebook posts, measure your Instagram activity.
Look at what people are doing on your website on different pages. These are all reports that are available to you that will give you an insight into what your audience wants. And this will make you more relevant as a ministry and a nonprofit. So you are not only being good, you’re not only being a blessing in your heart, but you’re really starting to put out that intention on the digital and social media space, by understanding what your audience wants and actually giving it to them.
Those are the two things I wanted to share with you. Thank you so much. I’ll see you next week with another thought from the book. Until then you stay connected, stay blessed and stay safe. God bless you. Bye.
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Author of The Connected Church. Social Media and Digital Marketing Consultant for Nonprofits, Faith-based Organisations, Churches and Ministries. You can subscribe to Natchi’s email newsletter by clicking here.
