I was watching TV this morning and this AT&T Uverse commercial came one, as I watching the commercial I was trying to figure out what exactly they were trying to sell. As the commercial progressed I noticed they kept saying the name "Marcel". Basically, this commercial was about all the shows, sporting events and anything on TV vying for our attention. They then showed a Uverse feature where you can watch four channels at one time, FOUR CHANNELS AT ONE TIME!

Four channels is a lot of content to consume by one consumer but it brings home a good point, if the content is good, people will not just want a little of it, they want a lot of it. With the advent of the internet (as well as cable) we have conditioned ourselves to consume a multitude of content. When I was young there were only about 13 total TV stations and no internet, thus I only consumed a small amount of content in a given day. On the other hand, today I will spend no less than 12 hours consuming content from the internet via my macbook, iphone, ipad, imac and at&t uverse cable. Therefore, as this commercial showcases, I can watch a channel that shows four channels at once and actually consume that content.

When it comes to your website, you have to offer a multitude of content. Not only do you need to offer content in quantity, but you have to offer it with quality. Therefore you need to offer relevant, informative and thought provoking content as well as update it often.

Content should be easy to understand and written in plain layman's terms in whatever language your ministry put its messages in. Your content should be free of spelling and grammatical errors so that the online reader can focus not the content and not get distracted by the errors.

Content should also be presented in variety and by that I mean in different formats. A good website should have text, images and video. When I was an instructional designer I learned something that I thought was common sense, people learn in different ways. Some people learn by reading, some learn by seeing and some learn by hearing. Thus if you present your content in multiple formats you can reach many more people.

Here are some examples of good content for ministries:

Welcome video from Pastor
Vibrant images of church, members and worship services
Homepage text that details where the church is, service times, who the church is and what the church believes.
Images of any products the pastor offers
Video clips of services and sermons
A detailed self help section for issues that church members or perspective members are facing or want to learn such as faith, finances, baptism, prayer and other topics.