5 Ways to Make Awesome and Effective Church Announcements
Ready to learn some tips on how to make awesome effective church announcements? You have definitely come to the right blog! Here are the elements we have garnered in our expertise-endowed years of making effective announcement videos that will be helpful – no matter the size of your congregation.
1. Communication is Essential: Produce a Piece of Media That Makes Everyone Happy
This is the first thing that comes to mind when we’re asked about making church announcement videos – how does a large organization go about making sure each ministry and/or campus has compelling segments with correct details? Our experience in dealing with a variety of different houses of worship has taught us that each ministry or congregation will want things a certain way, and it’s your job – or Green Screen Talent Now’s, if you hire us! – to produce a piece of media that makes everyone happy.
The key here is to begin the communication process early enough to allow plenty of time for back and forth communication, competent execution and ample opportunity to review. Trust us when we tell you as visual communication experts that this process is essential. To keep everyone on the same page, use a handy Google Spreadsheet with the plan for each campus that week; this is just a suggestion for a great collaborative tool that keeps all the ducks in a row.
2. Always Use Music…and Try Experimenting with Something New
Sometimes, you won’t know what to do until you just do it, so experiment and try something different. How’s this for a suggestion? Create a “Two-Minute Window” game show-esque segment that features a different person – sometimes live, sometimes via video – trying to get through a list of announcements within two minutes time. Perhaps even consider spicing up the segment with campy 70’s music and a running counter…while music should always be part of your announcement presentations, it is vital you try something different to shake things up once in a while.
There should always be music playing during every part of an announcement — unless it involves sombre religious preaching – and using jazz-esque tunes can be helpful because the human voice can speak over it without falling into a rhythm. Another tip is to switch up what you play during the announcements each week; get creative with your “jam.” Play some popular music, as this will greatly increase the excitement level during this portion of a service.
3. Use Dual Spokespeople
First of all, it’s vital to make sure the individual you have chosen to do your church announcements is comfortable speaking on a microphone, energetic and happy; this person needs to engage the crowd, and while this may be a difficult task, if someone is already boring in delivery it will only be accentuated while doing announcements. Try using a pair of people during your announcements as opposed to just one, as one of them can take the lead while the other can add snippets and keep the announcement lively. Hiring professional spokespeople is ideal.
Also, if your announcement includes an upcoming event, be sure to remove all the adjectives normally used when describing these – excellent, incredible, amazing, phenomenal, exciting, unbelievable and mind-blowing won’t help sell the event.
4. Make Your Announcements WORTH IT – Keep Them Short
Make announcements as short as possible – four minutes max. In so doing, keep your announcements important…if the congregation knows that your weekly announcements aren’t worth listening to they won’t tune in even when there IS one worth listening to. Additionally, your house of worship should always welcome new members – it reaffirms why you are doing announcements (i.e. because new people are attending every week, they need to hear what’s new).
The point here is to make new members feel welcome.
5. Hire a Professional…Like Green Screen Talent Now
There’s no question about it: If you want a highly polished, supremely professional effective church announcement video production, you have to turn to the pros. Florida’s Green Screen Talent Now is a video spokesperson service agency that focuses on bringing high-quality spokesperson videos to a plethora of industries.
While there are many who never dreamed this was an area that could benefit from the magic of video, church announcement videos amplify a house of worship’s message while enhancing its mission in ways most folks never thought of. These videos enhance a church’s “brand” for increased recognition, allow for a more cost-effective approach than “DIY”-style videos and represent an easy way to increase a church’s production value.