How to promote your church website
If you are someone new to creating church websites, it can be hard to see your church’s website not attracting many viewers. After investing time and money into developing the church website, seeing it being ignored may feel disheartening but that is no reason to give up at all. There are countless tactics and advice used to promote your church website, you just need to pick out what works for you and implement it on your church website. We have come up with some great tips that will be sure to get your church website’s traffic booming.
Research your strengths and weaknesses
Without understanding your community, you will not be able to promote your church website. It is important to research what people want on a church website, the things they look forward to and enjoy. This can be done through a variety of methods. You can interview your congregation and ask for their opinions, you can hold online polls on topics they wish to see discussed. Don’t try to focus on what you think is right but focus on what the community would like to see. Understanding your demographic and catering to people’s needs will help them be interested in the website and more likely share with their friends and family.
Create your unique identity
To promote your church website, you need to stand out. Give people a reason to keep coming back to your church website. As a church, you already have the advantage of catering to a specific subset of people, those who follow Christianity. So, it is a good idea to expand on this and offer a church’s perspective in various fields. You can comment on the latest news and developments, talk and discuss ideologies and texts and much more. Having people come to you for your perspective and opinions allows you to stand out amongst the crowd.
Create content for social media
Everyone uses social media nowadays so it is important to create content that people can easily share amongst their colleagues, friends, and family. Blogs, podcasts, and Youtube are great ways to create interesting content but when you consider someone on social media, they most likely don’t have the patience or attention to watch your youtube video or listen to your podcast. So a great approach is to create snippets and upload them on social media, with links to the full source. People are more likely to watch a 30-second clip than a 10-minute video when browsing on social media. This can capture their attention and as they share, you capture the attention of more and more people.
Involving the youth
No one knows the internet better than today’s youth. Being online and on social media, they have a wealth of knowledge that they will be more than happy to share. It is useful to stay in tune with the latest trends and topics and no one does that better than the younger generation. You can offer them internships or involve them in making content for your church website that people may enjoy. Working together can be fun and make your church website more trendy and accessible. While it is important to stick to traditional roots, exploring the modern world can be enlightening.
Keep a schedule
Something people struggle with is maintaining a schedule. This is especially so in the beginning when people don’t have much viewership. They may create some content, see how it’s doing and take a break or abandon the church website for a couple of weeks. This is wrong. Even if you don’t gain a lot of viewers, it is important to keep a steady flow of fresh content. This is because the more content you make, the more chances you have of promoting your church website. And once you manage to create a habit, it becomes much easier when you do have an audience. You don’t want to fall into not being able to provide content to an audience as they will end up leaving you after all your hard work of accumulating them.
Learn and adapt
It’s important to learn how to appeal to your audience and see what the world is currently interested in. Sticking to modern times, involving your community, seeking opinions and reviews is the steadfast way to see your church website grow.
How church blogs help your website and church
So you have got your church website up and running. It can be exciting and fun engaging with your congregation, seeing them access your church website but sooner or later you will hit a wall and wonder how you keep your community interested. Events don’t occur all the time so it can be hard for people to have a reason to visit your church website. This is where blogging comes in. A church blog is a great way to keep your viewers engaged and increase your visibility in the community. Let’s look into some of the amazing ways blogs help promote your church website out.
Keeping your community engaged and informed
A blog helps keep your viewers engaged. Any events take place or there is something important you need to share, a blog can be an effective tool to share information that some might miss if there are not actively coming to church. You can keep everyone on the same pace and track.
By discussing various topics, whether they be examining a religious text, providing advice, or just a random segment such as a cooking recipe or movie review, the content will keep people wanting to check in weekly or daily. This helps retain your readers and have an active viewership on your church website other than visitors looking to know more about your church.
Increase your church visibility
The second biggest advantage is that your church can increase its visibility. By people sharing your blog posts, your church website gets shared with countless people, and more and more people come to know about the church website and your church’s name. This all leads to an increase in traffic to promote your church website. People can get inspired by your message and seek out further advice and enlightenment. Having a digital presence is vital to any website’s survival for a long period of time.
Increase your church website’s SEO
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” This may sound confusing and leave you wondering what it means, so to put it simply, it allows your church’s name to pop up more frequently when someone searches for something regarding a church.
Having a church blog will help to increase your church website showing up in search results. A church website that is mostly informational (no real readable content), makes it difficult for the site to compete for ranking in search results. By having quality, written content, search engines will rank those pages – which will increase traffic and promote your website.
Foster communication and growth within your community
Some people only show up for Sunday service and some don’t do that either. This can be due to a multitude of reasons so your website should be a place for everyone to bond. You can ask your members to submit their ideas and have custom blog posts from them. People can comment and share, allowing a community to form. For the younger audience who are active on social media, this is a great way to reach them and involve them in creating more content for your blog.
Create an online ministry
We mentioned above how people can become inspired by your message and want to learn more. This doesn’t have to be from someone in your area or country, by having a digital presence, you can be visited by people all around the world.
Your church blog can very easily become a worldwide Christian ministry. A church blog is accessible by anyone with an internet connection. Having to plan and finance overseas ministry trips can be difficult, but a blog allows you to reach those countries from your desk.
Offer financial support to your church
A website can become taxing to run. Having to pay server fees and a website designer if you hire one, can end up becoming more than you might have expected. When traffic increases on your website, you can start earning by placing ads. The more people come, the more you can earn. A blog can be a great incentive to increase your traffic and earn some extra income for your church.
Blogs are helpful
A blog is essential to any church website looking to stay relevant and expand its reach. It can provide income, entertainment, help people get to know each other, and expand their well of knowledge.