Blogging, Church, Community, Metrics & Analytics, Strategy
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Customers vs. Members

Posted by John Saddington on May 21, 2009

membersonly

Some pithy statements by Seth this morning gave me more than just a few things to chew on:

If you changed your model to have members instead, what would that look like? If people had to subscribe, or be admitted, or apply… and if you had to please the membership, not convert new strangers.

The web likes businesses that have members.

It’s interesting because the Church, generally speaking, really likes members too! Or, we at least encourage that to varying degrees of our congregation members and attenders.

I think there is, perhaps, a connection between successful online communities (and blog communities) that leverage this cultural aspect. I know that I’ve tried more than a few things to make sure that the readers here feel more engaged than just consuming content (but by and large, the vast majority of readers just peruse, according to my analytics).

The ChurchCrunch Forums is one such move.

How can you make your visitors feel more like members? Perhaps another interesting spin would be: How can you make your visitors feel more like Church?

[Image by Artis]

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John Saddington

John is the Chief Editor @ The 8BIT Network and Senior Blog Junkie here at ChurchCrunch.He enjoys Triple-Tall Americanos, developing Wordpress Themes, and a few other Random Things.

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4 Responses to “Customers vs. Members”

  1. Mikes
    Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    Hmm, I don't know. Maybe to really write for them. To make every post as beneficial to them as possible. What I do is give rewards like Featuring them as Blog readers for the week or give them a link back. Am I making sense at all?

    Reply
    • human3rror
      Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 1:58 pm

      Ooh. I like that. I did that once, but I haven't done it recently… That's a good one.

      Reply
  2. joel
    Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 8:59 pm

    That last question really struck me: "How can you make your visitors feel more like Church?" I wonder if in the Church, the worshipers really feel like members at all sometimes.

    Technologies made possible with the web allow Churches to be more like the Church. That is giving more people a voice.

    To ask the question from another perspective: How does the web change the definition of membership within churches?

    Reply
    • human3rror
      Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 9:28 pm

      wow. Joel. that is a great question. I think there a re a lot of people who may consider themselves \”members\” remotely and through online only. But how do they \”fulfill\” their obligations as a \”member\” if there are some \”rules\” about members and the conditions of membership?

      man, that's great.

      Reply