St. Roman Catholic William Church - London at 521 West Fifth Street, London, KY 40741 US - Better Parish Communications through Cloning

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Better Parish Communications through Cloning
By: John Howard
Date: March 24, 2005

With just a little bit of preparation, you can get your parish message out more broadly using "cloning." Cloning can help you to ensure that your message reaches more people, different people and reaches them more often.

What is cloning and how does it work? Cloning is taking something that you have already written and making it work harder by publishing it in a variety of places. Let's say that your church has engaged an excellent speaker to do a presentation on "Living your Faith in the Workplace." You write up an announcement of the event to publish in your parish bulletin (several times) and in your parish newsletter.

The hard work comes from drafting the announcement in the first place. Once you have drafted a compelling and informative announcement, cloning allows you to multiply the effectiveness of it by getting it published in as many places as possible. For example, this exact same announcement could be placed:

on the parish website
on a community calendar website, if one exists
in the community calendar of your local paper
in the bulletins of nearby parishes
in any local "advertiser" newspaper that publishes notices among the ads
on that annoying public access cable bulletin board channel that normally offers only announcements on hydrant flushing
on local radio stations as part of their local news or community calendar segment
in your school and ccd newsletters
in an email to your parish list
on the community calendar of your local television station

This sounds difficult, but in fact it only takes a little preparation. Not every parish will have access to all of the above, but most will have several. One volunteer could, in just a few hours, identify all of the above that exist, their contact information and their publishing policies. The fax machine can be programmed with a "local announcement" list and a stock of envelopes prepared for those that require hard copy. Then, once the announcement is written, it is handed to the parish secretary for fax, mail and email to all of the above.

Educational articles or commentary on current events can also receive this treatment, with perhaps a slightly different group of media as the target. But the primary principle remains; if you have taken the time to write something worth reading, make it work harder and reach more people through cloning.

John Howard has been serving parishes for sixteen years. In 2004 he established Parish Life Consulting to strengthen parishes in the areas of communications, stewardship and faith formation. John lives in Morton, IL with his wife and five children. For more information, email John at Howard7@insightbb.com or check out his website at www.parishlifeconsulting.com.

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