It can be discouraging to notice your church’s numbers dwindling. At first, it’s just a few members, but that can quickly grow.
Suddenly, you notice your church is rarely full and you can’t remember the last time you had a new visitor. But, it doesn’t have to be this way.
In fact, your church blog could make a huge impact. By engaging members with your blog, you might just keep them coming back and increase new visitors too.
Promote Conversations
Conversation is a friendlier way to discuss and better understand God’s word. In fact, many churches use a conversational style of preaching for better engagement. Blogs come complete with a comment section, which naturally promotes conversations.
It’s important to point out that comment sections can get a bit negative at times. Ensure you have someone monitoring comments to avoid anything from getting out of hand. Otherwise, it’s a great way to promote conversations throughout the week on various topics.
Target Different Demographics
Your church isn’t made up of just one gender, age or financial bracket. You have a diverse membership and sometimes sermons aren’t able to target everyone at once. For instance, if you focus mainly on current events, it might engage younger members, but alienate older members.
Your church blog gives you platform for tackling issues that apply to individual demographics. Focus on teens on one post and the elderly in another. Discuss faith based on being rich or poor. This engages a much wider range of people and shows how diverse your church is.
Answer More Specific Questions
Have a box in your church for members and visitors to drop in anonymous questions. You could also have a form on your website for the same thing. Go through the questions and tackle them in your church blog posts. This shows members you care about their questions and needs. Odds are, if one person has a question, others do too. Answering anonymous questions on your blog makes members and non-members feel safer asking.
Increase Website Traffic
If you have a church website, but aren’t getting many visitors, a church blog can help. Of course, the more website traffic, the more likely you are to gain new members. Websites that have blogs have 434% more indexed pages in search engines. The more indexed pages with high-quality content, the better your site ranks. This leads to more traffic.
By the time you reach 50-100 posts, you could see double-digit traffic growth. Optimal growth occurs around 300 indexed pages. Every blog post is a new page. This keeps your site fresh for search engines and provides more opportunities for visitors to find you.
Provide Social Proof
Most of the time, people don’t share a website’s homepage or About pages. Instead, they share content they find useful. For instance, a blog post that inspires them or makes them think is more likely to get shared on social media. By creating engaging content, you’re supplying members and visitors with something to share. This also shows everyone what type of church you have.
Keep Members Interested
Members show up on Sunday and forget about church until the next Sunday. Give your members something to think about all week. Blogging keeps conversations going. Even just two or three posts throughout the week ensure members stay engaged with your church. After all, you don’t want to lose the growth you already have.
Plus, if members aren’t able to attend sometimes, they’re still engaging with your church blog posts. You’re still able to reach them and as long as you’re reaching them, they’ll come back. For members who have to move, they may even still stay in contact, comment on posts and share posts on social media.
Just avoid a few common mistakes, such as rarely posting or using the blog just for church bulletins, to ensure members want to read the blog.
Establish Stronger Relationships
One of the most important ways a church blog boosts dwindling numbers is by establishing stronger relationships. A blog can be an intimate form of conversation, even though it’s public. When someone reads a blog post that seems to speak to them, they start to form a bond with the source of the content. In this case, it’s your church and God.
Does your church currently have a blog? If not, find out how to add one to your site today.
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Comments 1
We just started a new church in Brazil. thank you for the insite.