How will they believe if they haven’t heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? These are great questions posed by Scripture. However, we may want to ask one more question in the digital age: How will they find the preacher without a church website?
A church website is the digital front door to your church. It’s one of the simplest ways to be found by people who are looking for a new church.
Yet many churches are missing out on a huge opportunity with their websites—including starting a church blog.
Why start a church blog?
For your website to attract new visitors, it has to be found . . . and search engines like Google highlight fresh and relevant content. One of the easiest ways to keep your site full of fresh content is to blog every week.
Plus, it’s another way to engage both visitors and members. When you can find blog posts on every topic imaginable, why not use this popular medium to spread the Word? A whopping 77% of internet users still read blog posts.
How to start a church blog
The thought of starting a church blog might seem overwhelming, but here’s a secret: you can start simple. Very simple.
To get your church blog up and running today, just post last week’s sermon notes and embed or link to your newly published sermon audio and video. That’s it!
Then lather, rinse, repeat.
When you start blogging sermon notes with audio and video every week, you’ll be giving search engines a lot to work with—and your readers a lot to learn about Scriptures.
How to generate blog post ideas
After you’re comfortable blogging once a week and want to expand, how do you do it? That’s simple, too.
Start collecting possible topics with these strategies:
- Ask your members what questions they have about Scripture, what they want to learn, and what problems they’re dealing with right now.
- As you’re preparing sermons, make a list of things you want to include, but don’t fit. (Follow those rabbit trails!)
- Start with popular post types and see what comes to mind—how-to posts, list posts, and Q&A/interview posts. For example, you might write a post on eight ways to deal with anger according to the Bible.
- Announce or recap events to get readers itching to go or wishing they had.
And don’t forget, you can enlist help. Of course people want to hear from the pastor, but small group leaders, children’s ministry leaders, etc., could also contribute.
2 ways to make the most of your church blog
Before you start your church blog, think about
- How it will look on your church website
- How easy it is to publish posts on your church website
When your blog looks attractive, people will be more likely to stick around and read it. And when it’s easy to publish new posts, you won’t have any complicated processes holding you back from posting as often as you and other church leaders would like to.
With super-simple Faithlife Sites, you can check off both boxes. You don’t have to be a designer to create polished posts, and they’re so easy to publish anyone can do it.
How to publish blog posts on your premium Faithlife site
With Faithlife, your blog post gets to do double duty. It automatically gets twice the chances of being seen.
How’s that?
You publish it as an article to your Faithlife group—a great place for your entire church to see it and interact. And that article can automatically publish it to the blog page on your church website—where anyone who comes to your church website can find it. There are three simple steps to making that happen, and you only need to do them once!
Step 1: Check one setting.
From inside your church group, go to Settings, then Group Settings. In the News feed section, make sure “Read news feed” is set to public. (Move the slider all the way to the right.)
Step 2: Add a blog page to your premium Faithlife site.
- Log in.
- Click Edit Site.
- Click Add page on the top left.
- Name it “Blog.”
- Click Create.
Step 3: Add a blog widget to your new blog page.
Since new pages come with a content widget by default, you’ll swap it out with a blog widget.
- At the top of the page, click the Edit icon.
- Select Change widget type, then Blog Articles.
- Choose whom to show blog articles from and a layout style.
- Click Save.
- Click Publish changes.
You’re done! Now the blog page of your website will update automatically whenever you post a new article. And for another boost in reach, you can share your new blog post to social media from your Faithlife group or your website.
For more ideas on how to get more visitors to your website, get the free guide to SEO for Churches: Everything You Need to Know to Get Found Online.
The post How Starting a Church Blog Is So Much Easier Than You Think appeared first on Faithlife Blog.
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