It’s been said by many people that blogging is dead; it’s irrelevant, and people don’t read blogs anymore. While this is partially true (gone are the days of people reading about what you did today), there is still a lot of success in blogging. For businesses, this means making more money. For influencers, this means, well, more influence. For churches, this means growth and even more opportunity for people to hear the gospel.
In fact, this article makes a good point. “Any time you type a question into search (like Google), what shows up in the search results? And what do you click on to read? Blog posts — often called articles.” Every day when you ask Siri or Alexa to fetch an answer for you, most often, the results come from blogs.
In the digital world we live in, you probably know by now that it’s a good idea to have an up-to-date website for your church. What you may not have considered is how important it is for your church to also have a current blog. Below we will share 4 reasons why your church needs a blog.
Encourage Your Community
One of the main reasons people still enjoy blogs is because they can be encouraged by the content. The news and social media are full of negativity, so blogging about topics that inspire people will be refreshing. And as a church, it shouldn’t be very difficult to brighten the internet because you’ve got the most encouraging message of all time: the gospel. It’s called “the good news” for a reason! Your church blog is the perfect place to spread the gospel and have an eternal impact on people’s lives.
Other encouraging content can include devotionals. Have a pastor share about what they have been reading in the Bible lately. Strengthen the Sunday message with a Bible study follow up. Share testimonies from the congregation about how God has moved in their life. All of these will help to pour into your community and encourage those who are reading.
Engage With Your People
Blogs are actually a great way to connect digitally with church members (and seekers) alike. You can utilize the comment section of your blog to respond to inquiries, reply to statements, and even pray for people. Unlike a separate, static page that simply informs people of service times, events, etc., your church blog can be interactive, allowing for those reading it to feel engaged.
Assuming that your church also utilizes social media, blogs are a great source of content for your social posts. Share parts of blog articles by cutting out a great quote or displaying it in a cool graphic. Then, include a link to the full article so those who follow you on your social media networks can read the full story and learn more about your church. This will also help drive traffic to your website, which we will go more in depth next.
Drive Traffic to Your Website
Blogs are a great way to drive traffic to your church website because they keep your website active. One of the main sources that people use to find a new church is through internet searches. If you want your church to pop up when people search “churches near me,” you’ll want to have an active website. This is because the search engine crawlers (or the bots that scan websites and choose which links will show up first in Google) are looking for the most relevant and helpful sites to searchers’ inquiries.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a strategy you can also utilize through your blogs to attract more people to your website. This is an entire practice when it comes to publishing blogs, so it would be helpful to find somebody with SEO experience or to do some training or reading on how to succeed. HubSpot has some great SEO strategies to help your blog rank higher, including:
- Proper backlinking.
- Attempting to capture Google's featured snippet.
- Adding alt-text.
- Going after the right keywords.
- Achieving domain and topic authority.
- Incorporating media-rich content in your post body (videos, social media embeds, etc.).
The higher your blog ranks in SEO, the more people will see it because it will be toward the top of search engine results, which will in turn cause a higher click through rate. If you are able to drive more traffic to the church website through your blog, the more likely you’ll be able to also increase attendance.
Increase Attendance
Through website traffic, people will hear more about your church. As readers engage with your blog posts and hopefully start browsing your church website as a result, it will help to inspire them to also attend your church services and events. Through your encouraging content and testimonies, people well get an insight to the church dynamic. They will be inspired by what your church is doing and want to get involved.
You can even include recaps of community events to spark interest in volunteerism. Or, interview a family that has been impacted by your congregation or services. If there is an event approaching, write about what to expect or highlight a video of people’s experiences. When others can peek into the “window” of your church through your blog, you just might see an increase in the number of people attending services and events.
