Target audience

Every blog/marketing page says that this is one of the first steps: Identify your audience. I just haven't found many that cover when you have more than one. My family are "Interdenominational, multi-dimensional tent-maker missionaries." As tent-making oversea missionaries, this isn't quite such a simple question. There are three different areas, each with different groups.

1. The people I minister to on the field
1. Our English students; they provide the money that covers base-operating expenses, a large part of our social-interaction, valuable connections, the possible base for future expansion of the area's infrastructure, AND an opportunity to minister.
2. Besides that, there are also the general citizens of the area, whom I visit door-to-door sporadically to check on.
3. There are also the children we reach for Christmas.
4. In my father's case, there are also the pastors, evangelists and church leaders, as well as the individuals, whom he works with to distribute the evangelism, discipleship and kids' ministry materials that we have.
5. In my church's case, the emphasis is on teens.
6. In my father's church's case, the emphasis is on worship; those who practice, those who play, those who sing, and drawing people in to listen.
2. The people we answer to, that support us.
1. Primarily, my parents' friends and those of their age.
2. Obviously, we will eventually have to spread to include those of my age. These are actually some of the hardest for me to really feel like I'm relating to, in my personal case. I grew up slightly out of step with them, and nearly 20 years overseas has only exacerbated the issue. Plus, many of them have children now, while I'm heading towards being a spinster. So I have to figure out how to reach them, on top of everything.
3. Additionally, the teens of the age that head out on short-term missions trips and might someday also decide to follow the same path.
3. And, now, the audience for this blog.
1. The marketing experts that I'm studying, who might check on how I'm doing.
2. Other missionaries, who might be trying to sort out how to do the same things.
3. Marketers, who simply want to know whether I've found something that works, that might be able to be stretched to apply to their situation.
4. Family and friends that might read the blog just for the sake of knowing what I'm writing.

So, next week I'll post about my analysis of what their "pain points" are, based on last week's research.

Since you are part of my audience, feel free to let me know if I incorrectly misinterpreted you.

How about you? How are you coming on identifying your audience and their pain points?

About Me draft and making the page

This is my draft for my About Me page for this blog:

I grew up on the mission field. When I was 13, God opened the doors and my Dad got to fulfill his life-long calling to be a missionary. It didn't take me long to feel the call on my life, as well. I knew this was where I was supposed to be. Now, it took me quite a bit longer to realize it. I returned to the States for college, and also on furlough both before and after college. I learned what missionary kids often discover, that I didn't quite fit. It worries me as I take over the communications for my parents. Thankfully, God has led me to several blogs and mailing lists about marketing. However, they are written for secular marketers, not foreign missionaries. So I first re-write their articles,seeking what the Bible has to say on the subject. Then I have to apply it. Then I will try to post a follow-up as to what I have confirmed. God willing and internet cooperating, I will be able to post once a week. I pray this will help you as you face the same challenges of communicating via the new technology from your fields. Also, check out my experiment so far: our Facebook page. www.facebook.com/ChowningAmazon/ I pray that God be able to take my meager attempts and encourage you to create your own.

God bless you, each and every one.

 I wrote it on my tablet, and then logged in to blogger via the web browser on my tablet to post it. It took quite a while.

Once the draft was posted, I turned off my tablet and logged in on our computer. From there, I was able to find the sidebar and where it said "Page."

Once that opened, I was able to click "Create Page." I copied the blog post and pasted it to the page editor. There, I was able to correct the links, linking to our Facebook page, and add my favorite photo.

Next adventure will be to figure out where it is supposed to be! But at least I have posted it.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

I will admit, I'm a bit of a to-do-list junkie. I'm always making another list, or reading another book about it. It's one of the first things I do. So, of course, I'm going to make a to-do list for my blog. 

My favorite to-do list mediums are real notebooks and spreadsheets. For a little while, I used OneNote, but I am too good at crashing it. Spreadsheets are universally legible and expand in every direction, which is how I like to think. 

So, first, one night I just made a list of the topics I knew I should share with you.

Over the next few days, I dragged them around until I had an order that I wanted to release them in. That is one of the beauties of using spreadsheet.

Then, I had fun re-writing the list into titles that would help me remember the inspiration and purpose.

And the end result:

Blogs:

11/21/17 1. Follow the Yellow Brick Road.

This here. The index/check list of the next few articles. However, it did take a little more than just writing the list.

11/28/17 2. Collaborating as a guest author.

One of my students had to make a blog for homework, and his classmates (and tutor) were acting clueless about the matter. So I did a little research and made a blog post to illustrate. Later on, his classmates did figure out how it worked, so he didn't need it.

So I've decided to post it here, instead. Spoiler alert: It's bi-lingual

12/05/17 3. Who? What? When?

Scheduling the posts; Automated scheduling; Future and back-dated delivery

12/12/17 4.0 Pain points research paraphrase

12/19/17 5.0 Target audience

12/26/17 6.0 Pain points of Blog Readers

12/26/17 7.0 Pain points of Donors

01/02/18 8.0 Mission Statement

01/02/18 9.0 Adjust initial blog about purpose of this blog

01/09/18 10.0 “About Us” page research summary

01/16/18 11.0 Page on purpose and About Us

01/16/18 12.0 Adjust third blog about dropping off etc.

01/23/18 12.0 Button, button, Who's got my button?

The blonde lost her blog (button)

01/30/18 13.0 Landing Page research summary paraphrase

14.0 How to Make a landing page

02/06/18 15.0 Coming in for landing

Comments on the adventure of breaking the hypothetical barrier: Actually making my own landing page

02/13/18 16.0 Upcoming newsletter planning

02/20/18 17.0 WhatsApp? Twitter? Facebook?

Advantages of different social media; Research summary

02/27/18 18.0 Signing up for PayPal

03/06/18 19.0 The Computer Running the World

Experimenting with “Newsletter Automators”

03/13/18 20.0 Creating a Page for the Book

Making a Facebook Page

03/20/18 21.0 Facebook Page research paraphrase

They said what?

03/27/18 22.0 The Proper Way to Say Thank You

I bet you didn't know there was a proper way. Admittedly, neither did I. However, I had the advantage of a constant lurking sensation that there are proper ways of doing everything, but no one has told me. This time, I was kind of right.

04/03/18 23.0 Training for a Thank-a-Thon

04/10/18 24.0 The Ghost of Website Attempts Past

Finding and merging earlier attempts, if they are still out there.

04/17/18 25.0 Now what?

Next task-list article, because at this moment, this is as far as I can foresee. Of course, when I get there, there will be a whole new article about what I'll be doing next.

As I write and post these, I'll add the links. I will probably also eventually create an index page or article, with the full list and what order they (maybe) should go in. 

After I had shuffled the posts, I then had to decide on dates. That was, on one hand, fairly simple; I only wanted to post once a week. 

One the other hand, it was pretty much guaranteed that therefore, the articles would appear at some time other than the most appropriate.

Why?

Because, for example, it was near Thanksgiving when I did the research on the Thank-a-Thon. And that was not just a single blog. That was the research, and the prep work, and the next week the application. Three blogs; a month-worth. However, you WILL eventually receive them. And this will be even easier next year. They will already be written. 

An advantage to that is the fact that while I'm out of town on a mission trip, these will still post like clockwork. That is a pretty big advantage, because, after all, I didn't come this far out of the States just to start a blogging business. Unlike what sometimes happens in the U.S., it's fairly easy to avoid getting stuck in cyber-space. The real world is right on our doorstep here, and it doesn't accept “Later” as an answer. 

So I'm glad that cyber-space does.

Anyhow, what order do you think they should go in? 

Is there one in particular that I should put a rush order on?

How do you organize and order your posts?

How do you decide on the best order?

Upcoming challenges/posts

1. Upcoming challenges (on Family Mission Facebook Page www.facebook.com/ChowningAmazon):
   1. How to enable other team members, like my Dad with his failing eyesight, to post as themselves onto the family mission page.
   2. How to re-post posts from the other team members but that AREN'T set to public.
   3. How to enable other family team members to re-post old posts

4. How to schedule a post.

• An option that I lament NOT being here is the option to schedule delivery, or to have it post at some reasonable-for-someone-besides-a-night-owl hour. I will have to investigate THAT later. But, praise the Lord, I can at least post this!

5. How to schedule a re-post, if such a thing is possible.
6. How to schedule enough posts that it will be okay if I don't get on immediately.

• We ARE still on the field, after all. Chasing internet buttons isn't what I actually returned to help my parents with. I simply don't go through all of the hassle to get online and research and catch up etc every day.

7. What I should post

• After this long outside of the country, and I'm not counting furlough back, which doesn't solve the issue, I feel slightly out of step with everyone else and anxious about what and how to communicate.

8. Adding more information about the event that we are participating in, the Christmas Gift give-outs.
   1. Adding the events that will come right after that - the arrival of a team of short-term missions, and the Seminary season at Saboneti.
   2. Researching what I'm supposed to do with the “Event” feature in the first place.

2. And then, to top it off, there is still all of the other means of social media to deal with. Goodness, it has taken me 2 hours just to post archives. There is still:
   1. The other Facebook pages, which I haven't even set up
   2. The next newsletters
   3. The landing pad for the newsletters
   4. The blog about setting up the newsletters and the Facebook page etc.
   5. The other blogs
   6. The website that will eventually provide overview over all of them.
   7. And several more.

3. And then I wanted to vent by getting on here, but I couldn't find all of my research on what I was supposed to do with a blog, either. Silly me.
   
   
   
   
   If anyone has some insight on how to do one of these, I'm willing to be the blonde at bat.

8 steps to re-posting old content onto a new Facebook page

Technology has changed. New features are just getting started. However, our mission isn't; We've been here for 18 years. So there is a lot of stuff that pre-dates the Family Mission Facebook Page - www.facebook.com/ChowningAmazon So, I'm trying to figure out how to get that over there into this over here. It took me 8 steps. Here's hoping you do better.

1. I tried to post. I wanted to re-post an older post. But it kept giving me an error message. “Sorry, the privacy setting on this post means that you can't share it on that site.”
2. I did a Google search for advice. I was hoping for a video that would show me where the buttons were to fix this, but there weren't any. I finally found an answer in the Facebook Questions page, although it didn't have any pictures to guide me.
3. I realized had posted it as a Friends and Friends of Friends option, and the “Memories” feature wasn't letting me re-post it. So I had to go over to “Timeline” and click the drop-down menu beside “Recent.” But my Timeline on my Newsfeed wasn't showing the menu, so I went to my personal profile page (www.facebook.com/name.lastname).  When I can't find it by typing it in, I cheat and search Facebook for myself. I open the Timeline. Once I scrolled down a few clicks, the floating header menu was visible, showing my name, "Timeline" (where you can also switch to "About") and ... "Recent;" The button I wanted.
   
   
   
   
4. Once I found the post I wanted to re-post, I was able to click on the drop-down menu and change the post to “Public” (1). After that, I was able to click on the button “Share” (2). It brought up a whole new message-box pop-up (which I had to diligently make sure I didn't click away from. Ay, can't you load this on your own while I go and check on some other stuff? No? Why not?)
5. 
   In the roll-up menu, I tried multiple times, unsuccessfully, to use the “Share to a Page” option. (It made sense to me that that would work, but it sure didn't seem to.) Finally, I found out that I had to choose the “Share . . . “ (3) option.
6. An entirely different pop-up window pops up. Along the top, it says “Share to Timeline.” Clicking on that opens (yet another) menu. This time, the “Share on a Page You Manage” option actually works (for me, the Administrator; I'll have to go through this process again with someone else from the team before I'm convinced.)
7. 
   The pop-up window totally shifts in style. After I start writing and it finishes loading, an additional feature appears: the ability to post as myself, or as the page (4). That will be handy. Once again, I'm not sure if this feature is available for everyone on the team, or only me. And I'm not even sure which option will be best. But I just want to note that the option is there.
   
8. By the way, this also works to enable me to re-post posts from others of the family team onto the mission page as long as they are set to public. So I can work on getting the Family Mission Facebook Page caught up with where we are.
   
   
   So . . . How many steps did it take you?

The next adventure: How to re-post from MY timeline onto the Mission page in the Facebook Page Adventure

I'm panicking.

Being on the mission field for so long is a serious disadvantage at times. When we left the States, I still saved everything on 3½ floppy disks; “Internet” was understood as two computers in the same room being able to communicate; cell phones were seen mainly on television. We didn't even have a single family e-mail account until we were getting ready to leave the country; now, each family member has 2 or more. Newsletters were mailed (snail mail) from the mission field to the mission base, and there photo-copied and mailed (snail mail again) to the donors; they often required some ingenuity to contain a “timely” issue when they arrived. The advantage was that no one expected an immediate answer. Replying sometime that day or the next was being very punctual. So, in the years since I have taken over the publicity side, I still have a hard time feeling at home with the technology.

After much deliberation and research, I set up a Facebook page for the ministry. After all, most of our friends are on Facebook. And then I start to panic. “What am I supposed to do with this? What am I supposed to do first, at least? How do I REACH our friends here on Facebook and get them to follow this so that they can see the updates?”

Anyhow, the posting challenges are:

• Setting up the page for everyone in the family/on the team to be able to post to it
• Catching the page up to date on what everyone HAS been posting, but has been unable to post onto the page.
  • Correcting security features to allow both of these to happen.
    • Finding the right button to correct the security.

As you can tell, I actually have to do the LAST one first. I'm not even sure I'm going to succeed in getting clear up to the first one. If I can at least partially do the last one, I'll feel very lucky. I am close to freaking from how complicated this feels. All I wanted to do was share what Facebook brought up about an older post. But if I go chasing it, I'm going to leave this page and close out the post that I'm trying to share on this page, and it's going to get lost in the ethernet. And I am not even sure how I'd find it again, much less post it.

Eventually . . . I succeeded!