Promise Keepers 2008 Schedule
Update:
Promise keepers has now released the 2008 schedule – there is usually an early-bird discount for registration so get on the ball, guys! 
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You’ll have to pardon the seemingly odd discussion in this post. I’m running a small experiment with Google as to the factors by which they rank websites for particular phrases that search engine users enter such as Promise Keepers 2008 Schedule .
As I mentioned earlier, I work as a Search Engine Marketing consultant (helping companies improve their online sales efforts) , and am a full-on dork despite my sporadic boyish charm. 
Last year I was at Promise Keepers in Jacksonville and I thought – “this is absolutely great, the minute I get back to town, I need to create a post that tells the people that frequent my blog all about Promise Keepers 2007.” I then created a few other informational posts that hopefully answered some common questions about Promise Keepers since there is some dirty work afoot in some organizations to spread ludicrous lies about what goes on at their conferences.
After a month I noticed that the amount of visits to my website had increased about 150%. I was curious to see what was the cause of this influx of readers, as it would mean I’d have to step up my topic choices and perhaps grammar (see mom, I read those emails ) Turns out that Google ranked this site #1 or #2 for nearly everything having to do with Promise Keepers. In some cases it even outranked the official PK site for its own conference.
Thank You, Promise Keepers
Was that because of the quality of the posts? No way! I’m not posting this as a brag by any means – this was 1 part accident, and 1 part what I do for a living. Its great that churches are really starting to embrace the Internet as a method to both reach people within the church to disseminate information. However, there are a ton of people that are searching the Internet for exactly what they provide to their community, but nobody will ever know about it.
Are there lessons Promise Keepers or the Church Could Learn from this in 2008?
I conversed with a church leader that said they didn’t put much into marketing via the Internet because they’ve found that the greatest portion of their current members were there because somebody gave them a personal invitation.
I will do something only after it proves to be effective? That doesn’t even make sense – actually, it’s outright impossible. This is a typical instance where Christian leaders look from within and assume the rest of the world matches their personality profile. I’ve mentioned before that tests like the Briggs-Meyer and others tend to split people into 4 profiles which can be broadly described as
- Social (loves to be around people – the social butterfly)
- Driving (the “get it done”person)
- Studious (loves information and analysis – the planner)
- The “Sensie” (sentitive, caring, loving) – sorry for the pet name, but JD on Scrubs called himself that, and it just stuck. Blame him
Now, every person has some of each of those characteristics though some are more pronounced than others. Understanding what drives each of those personality types gives us a better approach to reach them on their level for Christ.
Did you know that about 80% of church members’ strongest personality characteristics come from only 2 of those groups mentioned above? I’ll give you a hint as to which two. They are the ones who would be most likely to be in the position to receive, or respond to a personal invitation to church…
If you guessed, “Social and Sensie” you win.
So that means that studious and driving personalities are typically not related to well by the church unless there is a concerted effort beyond church-sponsored softball leagues.
Tying back into my “full-on dork” comment earlier, I rate very strongly in the studious and driving areas. I listened to Christian radio sermons for years before I ever joined a church – years. I mentioned to my small group that I got saved watching TV and they were shocked. Most didn’t know anyone who came to Christ in that manner.
Check your local Athiest/Agnostic discussion forums – not many “sensies” there. It’s a bunch of people who think they’re smarter than God. I’d give them a harder time, but I forget that God is watching me on a daily basis as I sin and I actually believe in Him
Now that I’m thoroughly off-topic, what does this rant have to do with Promise Keepers 2008?
I’ve noticed that if you are one of the first articles on a web to specifically optimize a page for a keyword phrase like… say, Promise Keepers 2008, you can rank very highly on major search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc. . Now, there is a lot more to it if you’re try competing for really profitable terms like mortgages, dating, ringtones, pharmaceuticals, poker, etc. but fortunately for us there is little money in marketing many Christian-related terms.
What does that mean for churches? Learn the basics of search engine optimization and apply them to your website. You don’t need an IT guy to run the program because it’s more of a marketing issue – maybe you might need him to push a few buttons for you, but that’s it. You don’t need a fancy search marketing consultant to help you out because much of the information is available for free on the web.
What are the benefits for your church?
What would it be worth to rank in Google for “church (insert your town name)” or a myriad of other related searches. If you have a celebrate recovery program, you could rank for “12 step program (insert your city) most likely within a couple months if you put forth the effort. Put forth the effort! Just get one volunteer to learn this stuff and coordinate with your webmaster. The amount of people that have familiarity with running a website is growing every day – check your youth groups. There is probably a 5th grader that could do a bang-up job.
I’ll post more about search engine marketing for churches on this blog or another site later, but for now we’ll leave this article up for Promise keepers 2008 schedule and see how long it takes for me to get this ranking #1 – checking the calendar… it’s August 28th, 2007 and…. go!
P.S. I’ll replace this article with the real schedule as soon as Promise Keepers puts it up. I think they’re taking a little longer this year after they had to cancel some events.
(update) It worked – #4 and #5 for “Promise Keepers 2008″, and #3 and #4 for “promise keepers 2008 schedule”.
Hey, you got me! Yes, I was Googling “promise keepers 2008 conference schedule”, and your site came up on top.
Grrr! I can’t believe they haven’t posted the ‘08 schedule on their site yet…even though the Christmas Letter states they will be having 7 national conferences in ‘08.
On another topic, your search engine expertise caught my attention. I’m somewhat of a novice, and I’ve tried optimizing my wife’s stained glass site for search engines, but with near-zero success. So…do you ever do this stuff for pay? You have my e-mail address, so please respond if any interest!
Blessings,
- Steve
Me again. I think you e-mailed in response to my 1/7/08 post, but my wife deleted it thinking it was spam, so I don’t have your e-mail address. Sorry!!! Can you please re-send?
Blessings,
- Steve
I was looking for information for my friends’ husband. She told me that Promise Keepers was no more and that her husband hadn’t been to one since it was in Eugene Oregon years ago. As I was doubtful of her statement I decided to find out. So, when I typed “Promise Keepers” on Yahoo, I was given your site first. I am pleased that you have this site which is both informative and interesting. So, you were proved right. The church and Promise Keepers are doing a poor job of informing the men that there still is a “Promise Keepers”!
Hi Linda,
Thanks for dropping in. Your’re right – but Promise Keepers isn’t entirely alone in this. Christian organizations are traditionally very slow to adopt the Internet as a future method of communication. There are some very talented ministries working to change that but it’s slooooowwwwww going.
Probably because out of the four major personality types you see on all those tests, the church does the worst job sharing Christ to the segment that is more prone to using the Internet. Of course now everyone is using the web so we’ll have to get our heads out of the sand and embrace how the Internet has changed communication. (not you and I per se, but I guess it will be our responsibility to help the others)
“And…. that means what? This is a typical instance where Christian leaders look from within and assume the rest of the world matches their personality profile”
I’ll never forget a frustrated men’s ministry guy trying to find out a better time for their men’s breakfast and everyone else on the team said “We’ve asked – this is the best time!”
Of course – they only asked the guys who were AT the early morning breakfst!!
In defense of PK (I know a lot of folks there), at times the delay can be the still painfully slow process of final approval and getting information TO the web folks, and not a reflection of the web group itself. Still, it comes down to everyone in the organization needing to understand the importance / timing of communication and clarity.
Hey Rick, thanks for dropping in
PK is great and their ministry has been a great blessing so I hope nobody takes that criticism to harshly.
That sounds like a gigantic load of “corporate-speak” – also known as a word we can’t publish here (lol). Here is where Christianity is missing the boat for the most part. “Web folks” (to Churches this means IT personnel and the occasional person who owns dreamweaver or frontpage and knows html) should have no part in shaping web strategy or calling the shots.
Companies tried this until the late 90’s and went bankrupt. Most of our clients tried this and failed. The organization only needs to understand why they are an organization in the first place and then make their web strategy support why they exist.
can you please tell me if pk is going to be in south fl. this year thanks.i attended 2005,2006 and it was alot of fun. i would hate to miss it this year. its awesome how thousands of men gather around to worship god. thanks for all your hard work and dedication to the lord + all the souls being saved each year its pretty cool.i hope and pray that im able to inspire some brothers to attend the next pk so please let me now thanks and have a good one. your bro billy
Hi Billy,
The schedule listed in this post is pretty much it. PK is planning some smaller events like they did last fall w/ the movie theater bit that tied into local service. Just shoot them an email at their website and they will probably be more than happy to provide you with whatever info you needed.
Re: my first comment – 8 months later and they still didn’t catch on. Now #3 for “promise keepers 2008″ and #1 & 2 for “promise keepers 2008 schedule”. Really just a 5 minute fix, too.
Demonstrates how ministries can use help in understanding how to apply the Internet to their ministry. Most of my requests to help are rebuffed, though so what can you do? My hypothesis (based on previous experience) is that these websites are usually under the control of IT rather than marketing. IT knows the ins and outs of hardware and software but are notoriously uneducated/behind-the-times regarding how search engines work and how websites need to work with them so their information can be reached most effectively. We’re not talking about significant time or cost, either. Just more due to stubornness, laziness, or ignorance – none of which are cool.
Businesses used to make this crucial mistake (some still do), but you’ve seen more businesses move under the control of marketing with IT pushing the buttons rather than driving strategy and the decision-making process. Infinitely more effective that way. That’s pretty much what my company does for a living – rescue sites from IT and make them a true profit center for the company where it drives real sales and leads. Natural conflict between production and leadership so I’m sure ministries will catch on one of these days. Oh well, maybe PK will get their own site ranking for their own conference next year.
If you work in IT & took offense to this, don’t take it personally – especially if it doesn’t apply to how you operate. If you do understand search, awesome! But, you’re in the minority. I worked in IT for a few years and still spend most of my day dorking around in code, server settings, etc. However, I spend the rest of the day educating companies on this very issue so it is sadly quite real and widespread.