Evangelical missiologist and researcher Ed Stetzer takes a broad look at how digital technology has evolved into what it is today and how it has created a cultural moment for evangelical leaders to assess their impact in the world. How do we shift from digital as a tool for mission to both a tool and a context for mission? How do we leverage digital space to learn from the majority world? How can we move from discipling with digital tools and spaces to discipling for digital spaces?

This session offers an array of high impact insights in effective digital engagement including advertising techniques, data capture and use, and social media strategies, with additional insights for online fundraising and email.

Hoping to craft a more effective website? From strategy to implementation this session is packed with specific ideas to help your next project succeed.

What you will learn:

• Easy ways to appeal to your online audience

• Key elements of the website building process

• How to find quick wins using existing content

• Common mistakes to avoid

Discover how to create killer content, break it into smaller pieces, and then repurpose it. Learn how to use a podcast to create brand awareness and build brand authority, and up your game with best practices for podcast guesting.

Learn how Google works, what it is looking for, and simple tweaks you can make to your articles that will make a big difference in your rankings. Google can be an amazing source of free traffic, if you know how to optimize correctly.

Click on the ON-DEMAND SESSIONS tab above to see the selection of videos from past conferences. Three of these will be unlocked each day of the conference. Once unlocked, they can be watched on-demand anytime.

This session teaches critical principles for effective email engagement including rapid and affordable list building strategies, managing domain reputation, increasing deliverability, and insights into high impact messaging.

What do you need to successfully and organically grow your community using social media channels? This presentation will review best practices for Instagram, YouTube and Facebook with a heavy focus on creating engaging written content for your current followers and optimizing your content for steady growth. This session will be taught by Haley Jersey who successfully grew an Instagram channel and YouTube channel by 33% (over 100K new followers each) organically in under a year using this strategy.

In this session, Akosua Frempong will share practical tips on recording your stories using your smartphone. She’ll also talk about how to edit those stories. It’s vital to highlight that as part of your report, you’ll need a good voiceover. You’ll also need to upload the completed story onto a social media platform or share it with your smartphone audience. Understanding these tools, therefore, is key to maximizing their usage. So is understanding your audiences, found on social media and smartphones. While addressing these critical topics, Frempong will highlight the importance of using these digital media tools for content creation, dissemination, and promotion.

The pandemic has revealed what we’ve known as believers all along… we were created for connection. Automation, analytics, and all the amazing marketing tools we have at our disposal will not replace good old fashioned relationship building. In this workshop, Jason Goff will walk you through the four levels of the social penetration theory and how you can apply this psychological framework to engage, inspire, and motivate your digital audience. Learn how to apply the four stages of the social penetration theory—cliche, facts, opinions, and feelings—in your communication strategy. When you better understand your audience, you’ll be able to share more meaningful, relatable content.

Click on the ON-DEMAND SESSIONS tab above to see the selection of videos from past conferences. Three of these will be unlocked each day of the conference. Once unlocked, they can be watched on-demand anytime.

Erick Goss, formerly of Amazon, is the co-founder and CEO of Minno, a streaming platform for Christian kids. In this talk, Erick shares lessons he has learned from spending the last 25 years working in digital. He gives a masterclass on effective digital marketing in uncertain times and how to build products customers love.

What you will learn:
• The value of a growth team
• How to execute high tempo testing
• The four elements of user flow
• Why having a strong brand is essential
• Why analytics and storytelling are equally important

Elementor is a popular and widely used visual builder for WordPress websites. Many teams now use Elementor to build both their smallest and most ambitious projects. Join Elementor nerd and web creator Brian Erickson to learn how to use Elementor more effectively as a team or organization while having some fun in the process! This session has something for everyone and will focus on three groups:
• Content creators: helpful tips and techniques for non-coders (especially landing/sales page builders)
• Developers: advice for maintainable, intuitive, and scaleable development with Elementor
• Designers: using a living web style guide inside of Elementor and connecting this to your design tools and processes (for example, Figma)

Generational differences are not just stereotypical; they exist because the world was different when different generations were in their childhood years, teenage years or becoming adults. Their perception of the world is different, making communication unique within each generation. Trying to speak to all at the same time will simply make your message more invisible. Learn how to leverage the individual intricacies of each generation to increase engagement and connection.

What you will learn:
• Understanding your audience’s generation will give you cues on how to communicate with them in a relatable way
• The communication gap between you and your audience can be reduced if you understand who they are and what makes them unique in this world
• You can’t reach what you can’t define. Define your demographic first and then trace a plan of communication”

Reusing content from a successful blog, articles or white papers is a great starting place for a book. Writing a book from scratch can take time, but when you re-purpose published content you start with a pre-existing audience, an established focus for your book, a built-in marketing machine (readers are already familiar with your work) and a library of content. The big questions you must answer are: What are you giving readers? Why would they want to read your book? How will it improve their life, change their future? We will discuss KDP and IngramSpark account setup, the pros /cons of Kindle’s KDP Select program, how to set up the accounts, five things to watch for when you upload your files, and how to produce your book with professional cover and interior designers for less than $1000.

What you will learn:

• How to take ownership of the publishing process

• When to self-publish—when to pitch to a traditional house

• What a detailed road map to publication looks like

• Where to find the same professionals that larger houses use for cover and interior design

Digital/social media gives publishers a borderless platform with a potential audience many times larger than their subscriber base, organization supporters or denominational membership. Drawing from more than a decade of experience growing multi-million-follower mainstream digital newsrooms, Edric has transferred the expertise to build influential Christian discipleship and outreach portals in Singapore, with a view to regional expansion in the coming years. Come learn how to build your digital platform to save souls and impact the nations.

What you will learn:
• How to build a Christian online newsroom
• Core values for an effective digital strategy
• How to harness digital media for evangelism
• How to forge Kingdom partnerships for digital impact

Click on the ON-DEMAND SESSIONS tab above to see the selection of videos from past conferences. Three of these will be unlocked each day of the conference. Once unlocked, they can be watched on-demand anytime.

You have a website, but what kinds of content are you creating? How are you promoting that content? Is it connecting with your audience?

• Identify what makes your Web content shareable

• Recognize why your audience shares your content

• Apply our best practices from Cru and other ministry websites

• Implement ideas for promoting your content via social media, even with limited resources. (Bonus: Learn about two great Cru resources!)

It’s no surprise that no one likes change, even when it helps us. But COVID has opened up opportunities like never before, especially in digital media. As leaders, how do we navigate it all and get others on board without losing our sanity?

Content, in every form of media, is king, but it is most significant on your website. If you want to inform, engage, and retain your audience, you must have content that is compelling and memorable. Creating balanced, quality content is a demanding process, but it doesn’t have to be painful! Participants will learn fundamental and essential techniques for creating key content for any web-related formats (e.g. websites, landing pages, e-newsletters, etc.), as well as simple methods for optimization. Various applications/tools will be discussed to help leverage productivity and save time.

What you will learn:
• Define what content is and where it is used
• Discuss content formatting and how it can affect audience engagement
• Explore ways to create, format, and optimize content using various web-based tools and applications

Is the content you are creating producing the results you want? Just because you have a digital presence, does not mean you have a digital strategy.
And great content doesn’t guarantee success. In this workshop we will walk through the steps of creating an effective digital content strategy that will connect you with the people God has called you to, so you can produce content that will engage your audience and ultimately reach your goals.

You will learn:
• The essential questions to ask as you develop your digital content strategy
• Where your audience is and what content they prefer
• Processes and systems to analyze and audit what you distribute
• How to measure success

What are the key skills needed to lead a virtual team and support the success of the organization? In this session, you will be introduced to concepts surrounding team dynamics and the ways they are more challenging in the virtual environment. Melody Rawlings, Director of the Center for Advancement of Virtual Organizations at Northcentral University, will share strategies to overcome the challenges and maximize virtual team performance.

What you will learn:
• The most effective leadership styles for virtual teams
• The importance of practicing authentic leadership
• The art of virtual coaching

Do you spend too much time on your social media…with not enough results? In this workshop, you’ll learn how to streamline your social media marketing program while upgrading the quality of your posts and increasing your exposure. Discover how to:

• Choose the best social media sites (and ignore the rest)
• Easily find content your audience will love
• Streamline your process for crafting posts
• Tap into time-saving, third-party tools
• Understand which social media activities are most effective for business

You’ll walk away with lots of practical techniques to enhance your social media in less time!

Millennials and GenZ’ers think differently, act differently, and look for different types of content. They are deeply concerned with how Christianity connects to everyday life, and desire to see how the Bible speaks to social issues like poverty, politics, sexuality, and creation care. Those in their 20s and 30s often see a disconnect between their faith and real-life, and sometimes that is directly related to the way the church tries to reach them. Daniel Day is the Director of Reclaim Today, a lifestyle content brand that creatively explores how we connect with God in the ordinary, extraordinary, every-day moments of life. His team specializes in using social platforms like Instagram, and he will be describing what it looks like to reach younger and more diverse audiences.

In this workshop, we’ll discuss digital strategy for finding readers, subscribers and donors for faith-based publishers. We’ll look at examples from peer publications and how they are funding their journalism by raising more money online through subscriptions, donors and advertising.

What you will learn:
• The importance of email newsletters
• How new products can repurpose your content to attract new readers and advertisers
• What role social media should play in your overall digital strategy
• Why your web site navigation is critical to your publication’s financial sustainability

From the pitch of a story idea, prayer, planning and trip preparation, to travel, creative development, editorial production and the subsequent publishing of an online photo story, join a panel of Cru Storylines’ staff as they take you on a tour of the process of creating an engaging digital photo feature story.

What you will learn:
• How to develop key steps and plan logistics for a successful story
• How to capture photos that tell a story
• Three types of journalistic writing styles

Bonus: 10 important packing tips for traveling journalists