Thank you to all of our Vocation Promotion clients for making 2018 a great year for religious life!
And we have new developments to help your vocations grow!
We have been working on improvements to our Come & See Vocation Promotion Program. These benefits will give a boost to our paid social media ads and the newsletter followup program. Stay tuned.
We are also developing a much-needed area in vocation work: public relations. This area of marketing has to do with getting the word out about your community and charism to the major Catholic news outlets, as well as what are called the influencers in the social media world. These are specialty websites and bloggers.
Public relations and vocations
PR involves working with journalists and bloggers, and presenting an aspect of your work, your life, or your charism. Their coverage is an endorsement in the Catholic world that your community is worthy of interest. It means that when a young Catholic thinks about their vocation in life, your community will come to mind.
Coverage by a third-party journalist makes a stronger statement in the mind of the reader than if you tooted your own horn. It means that someone who has no vested interest in your community judges it as good. “Let another man praise you,” Proverbs 27:2 says.
Our biggest fish this past year was when we got news coverage on EWTN News Nightly, as well as on the online version of the National Catholic Register. See our article, “How we got news coverage for one of our communities on EWTN.”
We did this by writing a press release about a video made by the Mercedarian Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, of Cleveland, OH. Their video had gone viral, and our story was first picked up by the Register. Eternal Word Television Network, the largest religious broadcaster in the world, picked it up at about the same time.
Since then we’ve put together a list of about a dozen of the largest Catholic media outlets in the United States, including radio stations and YouTube channels. We’re also growing our contact list of specialty websites, such as those for young adults, and magazines. We have started building relationships with these editors and journalists so that when we have something to say, they will run with it.
To tell you the truth, I sense that many of these publications would like to have more material about the joys of religious and consecrated life. But they don’t have writers. We hope to change that, offering this as a service to our religious communities. If you’re interested, contact us.
Turning the Church crisis into an opportunity
There’s no doubt that the recent scandal among clergy and hierarchy is rocking the Church in a bad way. And it does not help vocation efforts, I’m sure you’d agree. Yes, the devil has struck his blow. But we as Church ministers will come back with a counter-punch. The crisis, in fact, presents us with an opportunity that we must take advantage of.
More on that later.
For now, best wishes for a hope-filled New Year!
