Christ Teachings

Twitter is growing in popularity right along with Facebook. So, why should the church care? Here

We’ve talked about what a podcast is and some reasons why podcasting is relevant for churches, but what exactly should your church do for a podcast. There isn’t one specific answer. Every church has its own identity, its own strengths and weaknesses, and its own budget. So, you will have to decide what kind(s) of podcasting is best for your church, but here are a few ideas to get you going.

1. Sermon Podcasts:

This is probably the bare minimum any church should do if they are going to do any podcasting. A sermon podcast is simply using your weekly sermon as the podcast. One of the great things about the sermon podcast is that it requires NO ADDITIONAL PREP TIME. You’re already going to have a sermon, so why not record it. A lot of churches already record their sermons, so why not podcast it. If your church already records your sermons, then podcasting the sermons will probably only take an additional 5-10 minutes.

2. Recorded Bible Study Or Other Class Podcast:

This is along the same lines as the sermon podcast in that you would simply record something that you are doing already and turn it into a podcast, however, this may require a little more work. Most churches don’t record their Bible studies (or other classes) already, so you would have to figure out the best way to record. You also want to be sure to discuss the idea with all those involved in the class especially if their questions/

Kurt Steinbrueck is the author of the Church Marketing Online blog. He has been providing Christian search engine optimization services including church marketing solutions and private school marketing. Find this article at http://churchmarketingonline.com.

With the rapid increase in the popularity of Twitter, it seems everyone and their uncle are creating Twitter tools and Twitter related websites. Some of these tools and websites are very helpful and can be great resources, while others leave much to be desired. So what tools should you use? What sites are good resources?

Buzzable:

Buzzable allows you to create public or private groups either centered around a specific topic. The groups gather content from a various feeds, such as Twitter, blogs, Google News, Digg, and others. You can setup specific sources for the group and/or you can set up feeds by keyword. The idea is that members of the groups can then discuss the topics of the various feeds.

Buzzable, while an interesting idea, may not be something your church (or anyone) would benefit from as a marketing tool. I think it depends what you want to use it for. If you have a group of people within your church that would like to get info about a topic and discuss it online, then you could setup a Buzzable group for them, but, at least right now, I think that

We’ve talked about what a podcast is and some reasons why podcasting is relevant for churches, but what exactly should your church do for a podcast. There isn’t one specific answer. Every church has its own identity, its own strengths and weaknesses, and its own budget. So, you will have to decide what kind(s) of podcasting is best for your church, but here are a few ideas to get you going.

1. Sermon Podcasts:

This is probably the bare minimum any church should do if they are going to do any podcasting. A sermon podcast is simply using your weekly sermon as the podcast. One of the great things about the sermon podcast is that it requires NO ADDITIONAL PREP TIME. You’re already going to have a sermon, so why not record it. A lot of churches already record their sermons, so why not podcast it. If your church already records your sermons, then podcasting the sermons will probably only take an additional 5-10 minutes.

2. Recorded Bible Study Or Other Class Podcast:

This is along the same lines as the sermon podcast in that you would simply record something that you are doing already and turn it into a podcast, however, this may require a little more work. Most churches don’t record their Bible studies (or other classes) already, so you would have to figure out the best way to record. You also want to be sure to discuss the idea with all those involved in the class especially if their questions/

Kurt Steinbrueck is the author of the Church Marketing Online blog. He has been providing Christian search engine optimization services including church marketing solutions and private school marketing. Find this article at http://churchmarketingonline.com.

“Our job is soul winning! We need to win souls,” said the head deacon of fake church. After someone asked him about how much they would spend on outreach her said, “We don’t have money for advertising and outreach. We want to get the new fountain to go out front!” to every ones disarray.

Believe it or not so some Christian church advertising budgets are dry. The actual gospel truth is that when it comes to evangelism and outreach Christian churches don’t have plenty money to meet the requires. Using what we have is needed before we get more and I believe that is the cause for the problem

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Facebook has become the most popular social networking website on the Internet. Millions of people have a profile and most people have lots of friends. Their friends may range from family members, to people they work with, to friends from college or high school. Most of your church

In the last article, I wrote about how Facebook provides a great opportunity for the church to market itself through their members

There was a time that whether you lived in small town or even a large one, having a ministry of presence was usually an easy task.

Relevant Church in Tampa, FL is creative church leading the way when it comes to online church marketing. I recently had the opportunity to chat with Pastor Paul Wirth, senior pastor of Relevant Church in Tampa, FL about their online marketing strategy.

In part one of this part three part series, Pastor Wirth talked about how Relevant Church uses creative marketing ideas to cause a buzz and increase the effectiveness of the marketing. Then, in part two he discussed using multiple layers of marketing to greatly increase the effectiveness of the marketing effort. In the third part of my interview with Pastor Wirth, he talked about creativity in marketing, how it can be used, and what that means to different churches.

Part 3 – Being Creative in Your Church Marketing

Kurt: Let’s talk about some of the church marketing ideas you have used, not so much the forms of search engine marketing like SEO or Adwords, but the messages you’ve used. I know you did the 30 Day Sex Challenge.

Pastor Wirth: With our 30 Sex Challenge. Obviously, that had some buzz because it’s sex and the church is telling people to have sex for 30 days. That had some buzz to it.

And we had over a million hits to our website during that 30 Sex Challenge thing. So, that was a huge deal for us. It created a huge buzz, but all of our billboards, all of our signs, all only said 30DaySexChallenge.com. That’s it. And that drills into a website which gave them more information about our church and what the series is about and everything.

Kurt: Giving people enough information to get their attention and get them to act, but leaving them wanting more information.

Pastor Wirth: It’s a hook And some people say, “Well isn’t that bait and switch?” and I’m like, “No, it’s not bait and switch. It’s just a hook.” If people go to the site and it’s not what their looking for, they click off of the site. It’s that simple. But if we can get people to stay on the site and peruse it, they may think, “Wow! If I was going to go to church, I would definitely want to go to this church.” Hopefully, that will spark someone’s interest.

Kurt: I know I’ve seen a lot of other creative church marketing strategies. Some that come to mind are the My Lame Sex Life campaign, I saw a billboard the other day that said “Boycott such-n-such church. – Signed Satan”, and you had the 30 Day Sex Challenge. How have you found that those are effective? Do you find that those kind of “creative” marketing campaigns are more effective than the more traditional marketing ideas that churches use.

Pastor Wirth: Well, you tell me. We got over one million hits in thirty days during the 30 Day Sex Challenge. Ask any other church if by just putting my picture up on a billboard going “Come and listen to Pastor Paul Wirth on Sunday morning.” They would get that kind of response. Here’s the deal, unless you are looking for a church, why in the world would you even look at that billboard (of Pastor Wirth’s face) or website. It just doesn’t make any sense. Anyone who does a billboard, whether you promoting Mountain Dew, Google, or liposuction will tell you you’re trying to get someone’s attention. So, I think it’s foolish for the church not to try to get people’s attention when we really have the greatest message of all time to give to people. And for us to think that we are going to get their attention by the same means we did 50 years ago is foolish. I think, yes, for us it works much better.

I don’t think every church can do it. You have to make sure it fits the demographic and the people that you are trying to reach. If someone is trying to reach 60 year olds, I don’t know that putting up a flashy billboard for the 30 Day Sex Challenge would be beneficial for them. That’s not going to market to their people. You know what they should do? If they are marketing to 60 year olds, they should figure out what do 60 year olds like to do and they should market to that. If that’s giving free coffee away for all the walkers in the mall that walk every single morning at the mall. Well, that’s 60 year olds. So, why not go market to them and do something that’s going to be beneficial to that age group and that demographic. I think that’s where the creativity comes into it. How do you market to your demographic? Well, you have to know you’re demographic and know what their needs are and then shoot it that way.

Kurt: So, you don’t think the marketing message has to be crazy or outlandish, it just needs to fit the demographic that you are trying to reach.

Pastor Wirth: Absolutely. That’s the thing. You’ve got to know your demographic and then market to them. Outlandish works for us because of who we’re trying to reach. Outlandish wouldn’t work in St. Petersburg for 60 year olds because it wouldn’t reach them. Just be creative in your own environment.

I don’t try to knock people who do things more traditionally in their creativity because they are trying to reach a more traditional market. But, on the flip side of that, getting real negative feedback from lots of other churches because we are being creative in marketing to our demographic seems to be foolish as well. You know we had more negative feedback from religious people than we did from mainstream media, just because they didn’t understand what we were trying to do and didn’t think that we should try to do it even if they would understand it. They say, “That’s still wrong.” Well, ok, that’s your opinion, but we’re seeing people trust Christ and that’s what it’s about. It’s about reaching people for eternity.

Kurt: Staying on that point. You mentioned that you got over a million hits on your website during the 30 Day Sex Challenge. Have you seen that with all the attention that you got is it just attention or does it translate into reaching people for Christ”

Pastor Wirth: Well, we’ve grown by 20% through that challenge. That’s not exponential growth, but it’s manageable, sustainable growth and about 3 times what the average church is growing in America today. And during the 30 Day Sex Challenge we saw 13 people trust Christ. I’m talking about sex and their getting saved. They are beginning their relationship with Jesus Christ. So, those are the things that we look at more. Some people ask, “Man, did you double or triple is size?” And I respond, “No, we just have manageable, sustainable growth, which that is good and we consider that successful.

Kurt: As we finish up the interview, are there any lessons that you’ve learned or tips that you have that you’ve learned through either your online or offline marketing that you could share with our readers?

Pastor Wirth: I think the main thing in any kind of marketing is “know your target.” If you don’t know your target, if you don’t know who you’re trying to reach…and quite frankly I think too many times people in church work try to shoot with a shotgun and say “We’re here to reach everyone.” Well, you can’t reach everyone because you are probably going to reach people who are most like you. So, find out who you are. Find out what you do well and do that and then market to those kinds of people who would fall into that same category. Secondarily, spend some money in actually marketing. I still consider myself a church planter. I hear too many church planters say, “Well, if I had the money that you had, I could market too.” Well, we spend a thousand dollars on a billboard and we spend a hundred dollars a month on some other stuff. We’re not spending a ton of money on marketing; we’re just trying to maximize the marketing we’re doing. So, call around, but do something. Doing nothing is not optional. If we’re trying to reach people for the Kingdom, doing nothing is not optional. We have to do something.

Kurt: Well, I think that’s it. Thank you taking the time to talk with me.

Pastor Wirth: No problem, any time.

I want to thank Pastor Wirth again for taking the time to share with me and our readers. If you would like to learn more about Relevant Church or visit them, please visit their website at: http://www.relevantchurch.com

Kurt Steinbrueck is the author of the Church Marketing Online blog. He has been providing Christian search engine optimization services for church marketing solutions. You can find the original version of this article at http://churchmarketingonline.com/2008/10/creativity-is-the-key-to-successful-church-marketing/.

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In our continuing our discussion of church marketing within Social Media, we’ve started looking at social networking websites, specifically Facebook. If you haven’t already created a profile on Facebook, either for yourself or your church, now is a good a time as any. It’s quick and it’s easy, but be warned…it’s also addictive.

So How Easy Is It?
You can setup a profile in Facebook for yourself in a matter of minutes. There are about 5 or 6 steps to the setup process and Facebook will walk you through not only setting up your profile, but also starting to find friends right away. Setting up a Facebook Page for your church is just as easy, maybe even easier. So, if you haven’t setup a profile for yourself or setup page for your church, do it now.

Setting Up a Personal Profile:
If you want to setup a Facebook profile for yourself, follow these simple steps:
• Go to http://www.facebook.com/
• The signup is on the Facebook homepage. Enter your name, email, password, gender, and birthdate. (All this info is required. If you feel uncomfortable having this info in your profile, you will be able to set your profile’s privacy settings later and can have information hidden.
• Once you’ve created an account, you’ll start to find friends immediately.
• One of the especially helpful features of Facebook is that it is able to interface with most email providers and retrieve your contacts list from your email account. So, if you have a Hotmail or Gmail account, you can import your contacts list and add them as “friends”.
• Next you will be asked for your high school and graduation date. This helps you easily connect with former high school classmates.
• As you have started adding “friends” to your profile, Facebook will show you some of your friend’s friends. You may find additional friends from your friend’s friends that you can add as your friends.
• Lastly you’ll be asked for the city you live in to further help you network with people in your area. (Again, you can decide how much information is available and to whom that info is available in the privacy settings of your Facebook profile.
• Once you have setup your profile, I’d encourage you to Edit Your Profile and add additional information, especially a picture. Their may be a thousand people with your name in Facebook. A picture will help your friends identify you.
• If you are concerned about how much of your information is available, edit your privacy settings to the level of privacy you prefer.

That’s it. Once you have your Facebook profile setup you can find more friends, write posts on people’s “Wall”, send emails, post pictures, and keep your family and friends updated on what’s going on in your life.

Setting Up A Facebook Page For Your Church:
• Go to: http://www.facebook.com/business/?pages
• Click the “Create a Facebook Page” button
• Select “Local” and choose “Religious Center”. You can also select “Brand or Product” and then choose “Religious Organization. (Be sure to select the correct category as it is very difficult to change that later)
• Enter name of your org.
• Enter you email and create a Facebook account. If you want, you can use your existing Facebook account
• Update your Page’s image and info.
• Click “Publish”. (If you don’t click “publish” people won’t be able to see the page. So, if you want to work on the page a little before you go live, you can do that.)

Who that was hard. Now that you have your church’s Facebook Page setup, you an add news, post pictures, distribute your blog through the page, and more.

In the coming articles we’ll talk more about how you can use your Facebook profile and your church’s Facebook Page for church marketing. In the mean time, spend a little time in Facebook, find your old college roommate, see what your high school friends are doing, and have some fun…just don’t forget to sleep.

Kurt Steinbrueck is the author of the Church Marketing Online blog. He has been providing Christian search engine optimization services for church marketing solutions and private school marketing. You can find the original version of this article at http://churchmarketingonline.com.

Some people believe the church can be more effective by utilizing processes most commonly and effectively used in business today, including marketing. In fact there are companies that specifically help churches develop a logo, a slogan, a website, brochures, and a multi-faceted marketing campaign much the same way other companies develop these elements to launch a new business.

On the other hand, some people abhor these practices and think the church should stay as far away from them as possible. They believe marketing is deceptive, manipulative, superficial, worldly, and yes – evil.

And then there’s the middle ground where I think most of us find ourselves. We want our churches to reach more people in our communities. We want to express the passion and love we have for God and people. If people would just come to a Sunday service, we know God would show up and touch their hearts and show them the amazing life they could have with Him in it. We want to let people know about the opportunities God has for them, but it’s so hard to get people’s attention in this media-saturated culture. We want to reach out, but we don’t want resort to hype, gimmicks, or starkly corporate tactics.

Is marketing the way to do that, or is marketing evil?

Objections to church marketing usually fall into one of four categories.

1) Marketing is manipulative.
Some people believe that marketing is inherently manipulative, that marketing is all about overselling positive and concealing the negative, or that marketing has to play to people’s fears or emotions to be effective.

Now if you’re a company selling something that is bad for people like tabloid magazines or junk food, manipulation is pretty much your only option. But if you provide something that is truly beneficial to people, then there’s no reason to be manipulative or disingenuous. Churches help people connect with God, and through that connection people find unconditional love, peace, daily guidance, purpose for their lives, community, and eternal life. No other organization on earth can match that.

2) Marketing is superficial.
Other people claim that marketing promotes style over substance. You sell the sizzle not the steak, right? You tell people what they want to hear, right?

Unfortunately, I think a lot of churches actually are guilty of promoting superficial elements of who they are in order to appeal to people. I’ve seen numerous churches talk about having the rockin’est worship band, the funnest kids program, the coolest youth rec building, or most inspiring messages. There’s nothing wrong with being rockin’, fun, cool, and inspiring, but if those are the reasons you are telling people they should attend your church, then that’s what people are going to expect. At that point you have to either keep things superficial, which defeats the whole purpose of helping people to connect to God, or you have to “bait and switch” when it comes to the hard parts of following Christ.

But here again churches have an advantage when it comes to marketing because they don’t have to be superficial. A church doesn’t have to claim to have the rockin’est worship band when it can provide a worship experience where people can connect to God through music and words they can relate to and mean with all their hearts. It doesn’t have to have the funnest kids program when it can give children a spiritual and moral foundation in a setting they will enjoy and remember.

In fact, churches that market themselves on style are missing a huge opportunity because the church has so much substance to offer, and deep down people really do want substance.

3) Marketing sucks.
Another objection people have to church marketing in particular is that it’s just flat out embarrassingly bad. A lot of church marketing is not just unoriginal but it’s beating a dead horse that was dead a decade ago. I can’t describe how much I cringe every time I see a church sign with a cheesy Christian cliché on it. And if I see another “Got Jesus?” t-shirt, I might not be able to keep myself from chasing after the person with a lighter.

The truth is a lot of church marketing is embarrassingly bad, but it doesn’t have to be. That’s why the Center for Church Communications started the Church Marketing Sucks blog. Churches are led by the Creator of the universe, and so churches should lead the world in creativity, originality, and inspiration. Doing marketing well is not an effort to “out-cool” other churches or keep up with secular marketing trends, but rather to express what the church is all about in ways that reveal our creative, inspiring God.

4) Marketing is annoying.
We all hate commercials that interrupt our favorite TV show, right? (I thank God for my DVR!) We hate junk mail. We hate the endless promos at the beginning of a movie. We hate it when someone rings our doorbell during dinner to sell us magazines. The last thing churches should be doing is annoying people, right?

Well, yes, but I haven’t come across a church yet that wants to annoy people. Marketing doesn’t have to be annoying. Do you ever look through the ads in the Sunday paper? Ever save that $5 off coupon that came in the mail? Marketing is annoying when it is for something you’re not interested in or it’s at a bad time, but when we’re interested in something and the timing is right, we actually appreciate it. The key is getting information to the right people at the right time.

This is why it’s so important that your church have a good website and that it be featured prominently in search engines. If the key is getting information to the right people at the right time, what could be better than getting information about your church to someone who is searching for a church when they’re searching?

What is Marketing?
Finally, I think part of the reason why some Christians think marketing is evil is because they associate marketing with advertising. But marketing is much broader than advertising. Here are some definitions of marketing I’ve come across…

“Marketing is basically sharing your love. Your passion. Your belief.”

“Marketing is simply the transfer of enthusiasm from one person to another.”

Who doesn’t want to share their love, passion and belief for God and their church?

Of course church marketing efforts are not a substitute for personal evangelism. In fact, personal evangelism can be greatly enhanced by making it a part of the overall church marketing plan. A church that develops a great website and provides printed brochures, invitation cards, and outreach events can make personal evangelism efforts much easier and more effective.

Kurt Steinbrueck is the author of the Church Marketing Online blog. He has been Director of Marketing Services with Ourchurch.Com for over 5 years providing Christian search engine optimization services including services specific for church marketing solutions and private school marketing. Kurt is also a Deacon at his church.

In my last article I talked about creating a Facebook Page for your church. Facebook Pages are good, but there are some features in the Facebook Profiles which are not available in Facebook Pages. Unfortunately, these deficiencies have seriously weakened the effectiveness of Facebook Pages for churches. So, for your Facebook church marketing strategy, I recommend considering creating both.

Why Do I Want Both?
Simply put, Facebook Pages has some features that would be beneficial to your social church marketing and keeping your church members informed and a personal Facebook Profile has some other features which are also beneficial. The other way of putting it is that neither Facebook Pages nor Facebook Profiles are quite up to the task on their own.

Your Facebook Profile:
One of the great features of Facebook is the news stories that are created within your profile. When you add someone as a friend, every time they do something in their profile, like add pictures or post a comment, a news story is created in your profile. Similarly, whenever you do something in your profile a news story is created in your friends

Recently I wrote a bit about the value of a pay-per-click (PPC) search marketing campaign as a part of your online church marketing. I

Below is a list of link building strategies to get you started as you add link building to your church marketing strategy. It certainly isn

If you are a person (and most of us are) you can create a Facebook profile to reconnect with old friends, stay in touch with family and friends and meet new people online. Churches, on the other hand, cannot create a profile as profiles are restricted to individuals. Churches have to create a Facebook Page which works a little differently than a profile.

Your Church’s Facebook Page:
The Facebook Page for your church is a good way to get your church into the social networking scene. With Facebook being so popular, having your church where people are and having your church involved where your members and others are involved is a great way to connect with people.

The Facebook Page allows your church, as an organization, to have an official presence in Facebook, which is great for church marketing.

• The first step is to add a good profile picture. Many churches use a photo of their church building. That’s fine, but I’d encourage you to use pictures of people. People connect better with people than with buildings and after all, the church is the people, not the building.
• Next add the church’s contact information and some descriptive information about the church. If you have a church website, be sure to include the web address for the official church website.
• From there you can add whatever information/content you want. You can list events, publish photos and pictures, create discussion topics, and add notes.

Update, Update, Update:
Even more than with your church website, it is important to update your church’s Facebook Page. Most people on Facebook check Facebook a lot. Having new content on your church’s Facebook Page gives people a reason to check the page whenever they are on Facebook and that keeps them connected.

Updating the page doesn’t mean that you have to constantly be adding event or photos, it can simply be putting a message on the wall, perhaps a Bible verse or short “message of the day”. Also, unlike your church website, the adding of new content to the Facebook Page can be done by every member of your congregation. Encourage your congregation to write messages on the wall, post their own pictures and videos, and participate in discussions. The more interaction from your members, the better.

Be Personal:
Having your members posting on the church’s Facebook Page is not only helpful because it adds new content, but also because it makes the church more personal. Facebook is all about people connecting with people. Most of the communication that goes on in Facebook is about the little, personal things in people’s lives. People on Facebook are looking for that kind of personal information and interaction. By allowing the personal side of your church to come out on your Facebook Page, it makes the church more attractive to people, especially unchurched people who think the church is all about rules and religious practices.

Sending Updates
You can also use your church’s Facebook Page to communicate with fans (members of the church) that aren’t currently on the church’s Facebook Page using the Send an Update feature. This feature sends a message to the fan’s Facebook Profile. Sending updates can help send information to church members and also bring them back to the church’s Facebook Page. You can also use the Facebook Page to distribute blog articles, but I’ll discuss that in a future article.

Publicize Events
One other neat feature of the Facebook Page (and profiles) is that events can be made public. One of the options you will have when you setup an event in your church’s Facebook Page is to “Publicize” the event. By publicizing the event, it adds the event into the Facebook event database. People who are not fans (and fans too) who search through Facebook events will be able to find your church’s events. This is especially useful for events like concerts.

So, go ahead and get started. Create a new “Face” for your church. People are social. The church should be too.

Kurt Steinbrueck is the author of the Church Marketing Online blog. He has been providing Christian search engine optimization services for church marketing solutions and private school marketing. You can find the original article at http://churchmarketingonline.com.

Don’t think that the bad economy hasn’t affected all areas of our lives. The downturn has hit every sector of our society and hasn’t left out churches either.

In a new survey conducted by Lifeway Research of 1,000 pastors who were asked about the impact of “recent problems in the economy”, they found the following:

* 62% have had more requests for financial assistance from outside the congregation.

* 40% have members of their congregations who have lost their jobs.

* 37% have increased spending from the church budget to help those who are in need.

* 31% have explored starting new ministries to aid the disadvantaged.

* 31% have had more requests for financial assistance from members of their congregation.

* 27% have paid for more ministry items out of their own pocket than normal.

So, what does all this mean in how churches react, grow and actually prosper?

Well, for one thing, that it means that churches are going to need to evolve. Obviously, some churches are getting it while it is disappointing that only 31% are thinking about adding new ministries. Because even if your church is currently offering aid, shouldn’t you also be thinking about how to better meet your congregants needs?

“…we meet people at their point of need…not throw content at them”

The economy is bringing about an increased cry for both financial and spiritual help. Not totally unexpected, but the churches who are meeting the needs both spiritually and otherwise are benefiting the most.

Tony Steward from the online LifeChurchTV said the following in an recent interview about his online church: “…we meet people at their point of need not throw content at them”

What Tony and LifeChurch is doing for online church, brick and mortar churches need to emulate as well. Churches that want to prosper and build their brand should be thinking of the ministries that they might be able to offer.

People are seeking help any way they can get it. What is your church doing? Are you able to help by providing ministries that can offer support for those who have either lost their job or are fearful about their status with their current one? Those are the outreach services that will help to cement your brand and insure your place within the community.

Helping out and being helped at the same point of need.

Some of those outreach ministries could include:

Prosperity/abundance classes for those in financial fear

Ministries to support the unemployed

Creating a Benelovent or Compassionate fund for those in need

Getting involved in service projects in area schools, hospitals, and homeless shelters.

Because doing any of the above not only helps the people you reach out to, but also those who do the reaching out (and some of those are both at the same time)

In reaching out, you build your brand!

And building your church brand is important. Your brand is how you are perceived, the type of people you attract and maybe more importantly the kind of like minded people that support what your church stands for.

Some Questions You Might Ask Of Your Church Regularly

1. What are the challenges that attendees are facing and how can the church address those in a loving and compassionate manner?

2. Can your church be the bully pulpit for spurring action within the community?

3. Do you currently have a budget and/or process to help those with immediate needs?

Want to learn more about church marketing? Or did you read something here that you want to discuss more? Perhaps you have a project that you need help on or at least want to bounce ideas off. We are there for you!

We welcome your feedback at Unity Church Marketing. Or follow our tweets on Twitter at http://twitter.com/johnpanico

We think church can and should be more. We hope you do as well!

Over the past several weeks we’ve been looking at church marketing in social media. We’ve looked at using video sharing sites, like YouTube and GodTube, and now I’d like look at using social networking sites, specifically Facebook, currently the number one social networking website and third most popular social media site behind YouTube and Wikipedia. When looking for places to market your church, Facebook has a pretty big audience.

So what is Facebook?
Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family, and coworkers. The site provides a variety of features to facilitate communication between people as well as between organizations and people. Some of these features are news postings, chat, article distribution, photo sharing, and video sharing. With Facebook’s design, you can share information, pictures and videos quickly just by posting the info or media to your profile. That information or media can then be shared with all your “friends” or “fans” automatically.

The History:
Originally Facebook started out as an online college “facebook” at Harvard University created by then sophomore, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2004. More than half the students at Harvard had joined up within the first month. Considering that response, Facebook was opened up to all the Ivy League schools and then to pretty much every college and university in the US and Canada within a few months. In 2005 Facebook expanded to include high schools and finally in 2006 Facebook was opened for anyone over the age of 13.

Other than the fact that I find this history interesting, I wanted to share the history of Facebook to demonstrate the explosive growth and prominence of social media to demonstrate its value to church marketing.

Who’s Using Facebook?
In its first 2 years, Facebook grew from half the student population of Harvard, to a majority of all college students in the US and Canada. Since then, according to Facebook’s statistics page, Facebook has grown to more than 130 million active users. It is the 4th most trafficked website in the world, and it is the most trafficked social networking site in the world.

Here are some other interesting facts about Facebook:
• More than half the Facebook users are outside of college
• Over 85% of college students use Facebook
• The fasted growing demographic are people 25 years and older
• Facebook is also international with 35 translations currently available

So, who is using Facebook, a lot of people, probably a lot of your own congregation, and certainly a lot of people who you would like to bring into your congregation. In short just about everyone.

Facebook can be a great means of communicating with your congregation. It can also be a great way market your church and help your church members tell others about Christ and your church.

Over the next couple of articles, we’ll be looking at various ways to use Facebook for church marketing as well as church communication.

Kurt Steinbrueck is the author of the Church Marketing Online blog. He has been providing Christian search engine optimization services for church marketing solutions and private school marketing. You can find the original version of this article at http://churchmarketingonline.com.

We’ve looked at what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is, setting up your website to make it readable by the search engines and so that it tells the search engines what your website is about by targeting specific keywords. So, what is local SEO? Local SEO is optimization of your website both targeting keywords with local modifiers (e.g. churches in Trinity, FL) and with the intent of telling the search engines where your church/business/organization is in addition to what keywords are related to your organization. As a church with a specific location, local SEO is very important for bringing new visitors to your church through your website.

Why Local SEO?
Local search is a growing subset of online search. With so much information online that comes from every corner of the globe, it is no wonder local search is gaining in popularity. If you’re visiting New Orleans and want to find a restaurant to visit, you can’t just search for “restaurant” or you’ll get a bunch of results that don’t help you at all, like a restaurant in Hawaii. So, you search for “restaurants in New Orleans”. People do the same when searching for a church. Whether they are visiting a town, moving to a town, thinking about moving to a new church, or maybe struggling and want to talk to Pastor, people search locally for churches. Why local SEO for your church marketing? You want local SEO because you want your website to be listed when people search locally.

What is Local Search?
I mentioned above that searches like “restaurants in New Orleans” are a form of local search, but there’s another kind of local search. The major search engines saw the trend of people using keywords that included local modifiers (e.g.: “in New Orleans” or “in Tampa FL”. So, they created the Local Search option. In Google it’s called Google Maps. In Yahoo, it’s Yahoo Local Business. There’s also Live Local and Ask City Search. These are a different type of search. You enter the city you want to search in and then the keyword(s). The local search results are completely different from the general search results and usually include a map so you can see the various locations on the map associated with the search results. Also, the listings in the local search results do not necessarily have to have a website. In that sense they are more like a phone book listing. The listings can have a website link but don’t have to, and the listings include additional information like a description, business hours, contact info, etc.

What’s the Difference?
The local search options in the major search engines don’t just affect the way people search, but also require a different kind of search engine optimization. In this case, the SEO isn’t just targeting specific keywords, but also uses various techniques to tell the search engines where the church or business is located. This can be done through META tags, putting the organization’s physical address on the site, inserting a Google or Yahoo map on a page, in addition to other techniques. It’s still good to use regular SEO techniques to target specific local keywords, but you also want to include these other techniques.

In addition to different SEO techniques, local search results are also affected by ratings and reviews. Similar to the way link building can help you improve the affects of regular SEO, getting positive reviews and ratings can help you improve the affects of local SEO. If you are in a town with 100 churches, what does Google or Yahoo use to decide which church gets listed first and which is last? Four things:

• Local optimization
• The location of your church compared to what the search engine considers the center of town
• The reviews and ratings for that search engine’s listing
• The reviews and ratings for listings on other sites, especially local review sites and Internet yellow pages

So, in addition to using local optimization on your church website, you also want to get plenty of positive reviews and ratings both on the search engines’ local listings and on other sites.

Local SEO is absolutely essential for every online church marketing effort. It’s not all that difficult (or expensive if you hire someone to do it for you) and it can pay off in spades by bringing in new members to your church. Read more about why local SEO is so important in church marketing and what obstacles you may run into in my the second part of this article, “Local SEO’s Importance To Church Marketing – Part 2”

Kurt Steinbrueck is the author of the Church Marketing Online blog. He has been Director of Marketing Services with Ourchurch.Com for over 5 years providing Christian search engine optimization services including services specific for church marketing solutions and private school marketing. Kurt is also a Deacon at his church.

In this day and age where telephone books are literally going out of both style and print, I wondered if I could easily find my church through a search engine online. What an eye opener this exercise was!! The closest church I could find was over 20 miles away!

I put in such terms as “new thought churches XXXX county”, “new thought churches XXXX [my city]), and kept going until the only way I could find my home church was putting the exact church name in. There must be a disconnect I thought.

I mean if my church went through all of the time, energy and expense of building a website, was it all for nothing because either they didn’t optimize it for search engines or that it became so static that it no longer ranked with Google?

If people are looking for a church online..help them find you!

If you are doing what most folks do these days when they want to find a new church either in their community or where they are visiting, they go to a search engine and hope that it will provide a church near them.In terms of doing a search on any of the major search engines out there, if you don’t find it in the first few results, you are either going to determine that there isn’t such a church in your area or maybe another thought might come to mind. If they can’t come up in the search engine, they might not be relevant enough to go to. Neither of those are the church experience that you want potential visitors to feel.

Let’s face it, people don’t go to the second, third and fourth page of search results on the off chance that your church will appear magically.

You are losing out on potentially new visitors who may become members.

People have lots of reasons as to why they are looking for a new church. Maybe they are moving to a new town or city. Perhaps they saw or overheard someone at work talk about their church and they wanted to join one similar where they live. They might have heard someone speak or read a book. It really doesn’t matter why they are looking. They are looking. Maybe they are looking for answers. Maybe they want to be around like minded thinkers. Maybe they want to change their life and see what churches in your denomination stand for. Bottom line is that they are looking online for a church (usually in their community)…and that can be a good thing for your church.

If you don’t make sure your church’s website show up on the first page of most search engines or at least ranks well, they are most likely going to pass you by. Not because they didn’t like you. But because they will have never heard of your church and are not likely to know about your church unless they happen to drive by your church and find you.

Don’t leave your website and your church’s fate in the hands of a part timer!

This article is not meant to slam folks who dedicate their time and energy for their church by making/maintaining their website. But don’t shoot yourself in the foot either!

Do you have to be a pro or a full time web designer to create and maintain your church’s website? Absolutely…NOT! But you do have to have some awareness of how search engines work. And if they don’t, it doesn’t mean that you have to stop using them. But it may mean you need some outside help to insure that your church can prosper both now and in the future.

Want to learn more about church marketing? Or did you read something here that you want to discuss more? Perhaps you have a project that you need help on or at least want to bounce ideas off. We are there for you!

We welcome your feedback at Unity Church Marketing. Or follow our tweets on Twitter at http://twitter.com/johnpanico

We think church can and should be more. We hope you do as well!

So, you put a marketing plan together, even got a budget that didn’t have “shoestring” associated with it, ran your campaign and guess what? It all came together. People have started to flow into your church. And if you have read my past articles, you are saying that you are done and have done the warm hand off to others as these folks are on their way to becoming regular visitors and perhaps even members. You job is done…..almost!

Let’s face it, marketing’s job is never done, but there is one thing that you should give some thought to before the marketing team’s job is considered done. And that is a good welcome packet.

Why have welcome packets?

A welcome packet can be a marketing tool to provide new visitors information about your church, its’ doctrine or belief’s and some of the ministries or activities that go on there. It gives the guest something to review when they have left the church and have some time to reflect.

There are several objectives of insuring your guests are given a welcome packet when they visit:

* Makes them feel welcome! You want to express your gratitude for allowing you to share and to also indicate that they are welcome to return

* Understand your structure. One of the reasons visitors come is to learn something about your church. How it is organized. What sets you apart from the other churches in the area. Welcome packets can accomplish that.

* Become familiar with your worship style (is it more singing then they would like?) and church beliefs.

* Review activities calendar. Visitors want to know the upcoming schedule of events and ministry meeting times.

What should go into the packet?

While there is no absolute must have list, here are some ideas that will help to make a great impression and give guests a reason for returning:

1. Video or DVD of your organization

- It could be a video tour of the entire grounds or maybe just a 30 second clip that tells about each ministry in the church. Perhaps it is the vision for where you want to get to.

2. Refrigerator magnets

Are you looking for an inexpensive marketing tool that has long term staying power? This may be better than you think! According to a study at Purdue University, the average American visits their refrigerator 22 times a day. What else could you get that is going to get that much exposure? And strange as it sounds, even if people don’t like them, they tend to put them on their refrigerators.

3. Letter of Greeting from the Minister

Perhaps a personalized message with an invitation to return the following week. Studies have found that a personal interaction with the Minister can have a dramatically positive effect on whether someone returns or makes a church home. (So, don’t forget about the Minister making a personal phone call to follow up the next week either!)

4. Information on the membership process of your church.

Some visitors are ready to become members from day one. They may have just moved and want to keep their denominational affiliation intact. Others just feel good and know when they have found their new church home. It takes the awkwardness out of them having to ask.

5. Invitation for on-line survey.

A quick survey of a visitor’s church experience is good. But they may feel uneasy filling out one in church especially if they are the only guest that day. Online surveys provide an easy way for you to determine how things really are since they are truly anonymous.

6. Audio recording -

Could be a recent Sunday Message or perhaps something more of an invitation. Keep in mind that at the least we are a CD world. Cassettes are dead. Podcasts or downloads are a great way to get them to your website.

7. Informational brochure

- General info about the church and its’ ministries (if you can’t do a video or want to cover your bases). It could also include a brief history of the church, or the denomination if that is deemed important.

8. Calendar of events -

Announcement flyers of public events such as fall festivals, Christmas programs, etc.

9. Coupons!

A coupon to turn in at the church book store or on the website for a free token of appreciation or a discount. I love the coupon that entitles the user for a free cup of coffee with the minister!

10 Tote bags or bookmarks -

Both of these have become very inexpensive and help to keep your church in the guests mind. Be sure to include your website address on these!

While these are not all-inclusive, they do make a favorable impression on any church guest. A good welcome packet can make the difference if a visitor comes back for a second look. It can provide the answers to some of the questions that arise after they have left the church. Of course, nothing beats a personal note or phone call from the minister

How do they get distributed?

Don’t leave it up to chance whether a visitor gets a welcome packet or not. While my experience has gone from having to look for them myself or being told to pick one up on the way out, anything short of personally handing one to me loses some of the welcome packet’s purpose… to make me feel welcome. Make sure your church doesn’t make that mistake!

Do you have other ideas for a church welcome packet? We want to know about them!

Want to learn more about church marketing? Or did you read something here that you want to discuss more? Perhaps you have a project that you need help on or at least want to bounce ideas off. We are there for you!

We welcome your feedback at Unity Church Marketing. Or follow our tweets on Twitter at http://twitter.com/johnpanico

We think church can and should be more. We hope you do as well!