Starting Your Passion Ministry Blog
Before Your Start Know Your Direction of Focus
I trust you have picked or at least narrowed down your ministry (and its niche) that you are excited about (I call it your passion-ministry) and that you are eager to start writing. Blogging is both easy and hard at the same time. Easy because you can jump right in and write to your little heart's content. Hard because unless you have a DIRECTION for the NICHE of your passion ministry that you will be writting about, there will few folks outside your family who will be following you...meaning your blog will be like the children of Isreal wandering in the wilderness of the Internet. Of course, if you are just writing to please yourself, then any direction(s) will do.
Blog Housekeeping Hints You Can Use
If you've been with me thus far, you know we have been sort of building on each posting. Go back and read the other blogs to see what I mean. I don't mean to leave anyone behind, after all, if my goal is to get you and 20% of your church congregation blogging about a ministry in your church in order to increase the traffic to your church's website, it behooves us to stick together, yes?
Think Through These Items Carefully
1. What STYLE are you going to use?
Here again, if your spiritual gift is teaching, that is probably going to be the style of your blog. If you write in first person, as in a me-to-you style, you will gain more adherents as people like to be spoken WITH as opposed to be spoken TO. Make sense? As to writing style, write in short paragraphs (never more than six lines) and try to write in short sentences. (See also how I occaisionally fail to take my own advice!) Are you going to keep up with current events (as a reporter) or focus on the people--or a little of both? Try to focus.
2. Is there an over-arching purpose you have with your blog?
Are you going to be using your blog content for a forth-coming book or report series? Will you at some time be looking to earn money with your blog? (This raises a whole series of template and keyword questions.) Will you also have a link to the national headquarters of your passion-ministry's site and develop relationships with HQ personnel? You may feel the Lord leading you to apply for a certain job or position and you want to show them how well you know their ministry in your blogging. Do you want to gather people together regionally or even nationally who are also interested in your ministry niche to contribute to local causes or outlets as a group. Again, the purpose of your blog will set your tone. You can have dual purposes of course, but again they must be planned very carefully if you do.
3. Never be boring (It should be a sin to be boring).
A friend of mine is the lead scientist at a well-known military research facility. Our families have grown up with each other for over 30 years. I remember when my scientist friend John, ever the teacher, was explaining LASER or some other scientific facet of his work to our kids. My wife and I would catch a glance at each other and secretly roll our eyes at the thought of John holding the kids' attention. But he did! Every time. Thus, you and I have no excuse with our audiences. Everyone enjoys quality humor. You don't have to be humorous to eliminate boredom. (Now there have been times I wanted to get up out of my pew and shake a preacher or two because he was boring his audience in a lack of focus wandering or too much humor, but that's a story for another time!)
4. Carefully cultivate keywords.
In today's writing, we must think in terms of giving ourselves a framework of keywords within which to write our blogs. What do I mean by key words? Let's briefly discuss this (skip if this will bore you!).
Keywords or 'metatags' are words and word phrases that search engines (Google is one of hundreds of search engines) look for that are built from how other people input THEIR search terms. In other words, if you put into your search bar 'crowns' you will get tons of pages on crowns. But if you put in 'casting crowns' you will get, along with the obligatory listings for molding requirements for making crowns, the Christian singing group.
Every ministry has its own share of keywords (may be way over 100 words and phrases). Your church techie should have set up your church's site with its own set of keywords (eg expository preaching, AWANA, church in easy downtown location, church with plenty of parking, kids ministries, etc,). What do people who have just moved into your area type into the search bar when they want to find a church home? The closer your church site has to what they type in means the closer your church ranks at or near the top of results.
If your passion ministry is, say, unreached people groups, and your church supports, say, missionaries with New Tribes Mission or Pioneers, you can go to their main site, RIGHT CLICK on the home page, scroll down to SOURCE, and you will see your ministry's keyword bundle. (Unless of course, they have locked the page.)
You need to be careful here though. You should not willy nilly think you should write your blog around the keywords on your ministry's site. Again, think NICHES. Get with your church's techie to explain to him/her what you are looking to do. Together you may come up with a bunch of keywords you can blog around and not feel 'constrained' in your writing enthusiasm. Make sense?
Between now and eternity,
In His grace,
Steve
|
|
Author: churchgrowthblogging
Location: Hagerstown Maryland USA USA
Gender: Male
Age: 62
Blog Entries: 8 (archive)
Blog Comments: 3
not prone to go the 'easy' route, i completed a four-year, double major program at my alma mater boise state university (idaho) in five years in 1971. i traveled the usa coast to coast for a venture capital firm in maryland interviewing inventors and their inventions and was asked to...
view full biography
at 2am jan 1, 1970, i finally surrendered to jesus as my lord and saviour. this was my senior year (at least my first senior year!) at boise state university. the place was the ampitheater at the arrowhead springs campus of campus crusade for christ, int'l and was only 3...
view full testimony
Five Good Reasons to Star...
What Kind of Readers Will...
Blogging Your Ministry Pa...
Will You Sell Anything Fr...
Pastors: Encourage Your M...
Building Local Church Gro...
Building Local Church Gro...
|
Log Into Chatroom 
