Wouldn’t it be great if all you needed was a church website to reach more people? While it’s a great start, you have to keep your site updated with fresh content, aka a blog.
Pastors are busy, but it’s also their thoughts, leadership and personality that makes people want to join a church. This is why pastors are often responsible for building a church blog.
Even if you’re drawing a blank when it comes to topics, don’t worry. With these eight tips, you’ll have a blog to be proud of in no time.
1. Find Inspiration
You’re used to writing sermons and church blog posts aren’t much different. However, they’ll likely be shorter and more tightly focused. Writer’s block and finding topics are two of the most common problems when it comes to building any type of blog.
The solution might seem like cheating, but it’s not. Find other church blogs to read. They don’t have to be from a specific church either. They might just be from Christian thought leaders.
For personal guidance that might inspire you to write, Vanderbloemen’s 10 Practical Blogs Every Pastor Should Subscribe To and Church Staffing’s 8 Essential Blogs For Pastors To Read In 2018 are ideal.
To get an idea of what highly successful church blogs look like, consider Feedspot’s Top 50 Church Blogs, Websites and Newsletters To Follow In 2018 and Church Relevance’s Missionary Blogs You Should Follow.
We’ve also written about potential church topic ideas before in our post about using your church website to connect.
2. What’s Your Purpose
What do you want to accomplish with your blog? Do you want it to be more educational or inspirational? Are you trying to engage more with current members or reaching out globally?
Part of any great church blog strategy is knowing the purpose. This helps you to decide what types of topics to blog about. Of course, it’s perfectly fine to mix several different purposes in one. For instance, you might do two posts per week. One that focuses on educating readers on a certain verse and one that provides guidance on everyday problems.
3. Decide How Frequently To Blog
If you asked 50 experts this question, you’d get 50 different answers. The one commonality is you should set a schedule and stick to it. Your church blog should publish new posts regularly. If not, you could cause people to stop coming back. As SmartBlogger explains, you don’t have to post something new everyday. Instead, focus on quality posts over quantity.
Believe it or not, only blogging two or three times per week is much better for your church blog than doing it every day.
4. Let Your Passion Shine Through
The great thing about a church blog is it’s the perfect place to let your personality shine through. Showcase your passion for ministry and helping others. Let readers instantly know what type of person you are and what type of church you preach in.
This allows you to build stronger relationships with your readers. Even if they never step foot in your church, they may read every single post and think of you as their own friend and pastor.
5. Share From Other Sources
You don’t have to come up with everything from scratch. In fact, building a church blog will mean hunting down sources sometimes. For instance, maybe you found an intriguing news article and want to build a post around it. Link to the post and even add some quotes or statistics from it.
This gives more power to your words and provides proof to those who may doubt what you’re saying.
6. Answer Questions From Readers And Members
As you build your church blog, you’ll find that readers start leaving more comments. Of course, you’ll also have comments and questions pop up on social media if you’re active.
Take common and highly unique questions and turn them into blog posts. In fact, you may even consider asking your members to submit ideas once a month on topics they’d love to see covered.
7. Include Videos And Images
Media is a crucial element not only on your website but your blog as well. It makes your text far more engaging. Of course, it’s becoming more common to add videos as your blog posts, at least sometimes. Add media that supports your post. You might even consider uploading podcasts or videos to make it quick and easy for readers on the go to just listen to your blog.
8. Invite Others To Help
You don’t have time to blog? No problem. There’s a reason guest blogging is so popular. Busy people don’t always have time to maintain a regular blog schedule. Keep your church blog growing by inviting others to guest post. Of course, you have final say on what is and isn’t accepted. Invite fellow pastors, church leaders and even members to submit ideas and posts.
Having a hard time driving more traffic to your church blog? See how we can help you with Facebook ads to improve engagement with your blog.
About The Author
Comments 2
I think these are some great insights and impactful for someone like me who is trying to become apart of the business side of things of running a church. Thank you!
Author
Glad it was helpful James! We actually did a whole podcast on this last week. You may find that even more helpful.
https://reachrightstudios.com/podcast/start-a-church-blog/