Categories
Branding Podcast

Podcast: How to be known for something with Mark MacDonald

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This week’s Social Media tool – HemingwayApp.com:

Try it our for free here!

 

Our Guest is Mark MacDonald: Be Known For Something

 

 

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Categories
Marketing Podcast

How to attract a specific demographic to your church: Podcast

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This week’s tool – Free Headline Analyzer from CoSchedule:

Here’s what the analysis looked like for this posts’s headline:

 

Try our the FREE headline analyzer here!

Brian asked about attracting men to your church.  Here are a few ideas:

  • Consider this the way you would consider any other demographic.  There are high-level needs we all have (to feel connected, to feel part of something, build relationships, etc.)
  • Create events where people can come a build relationships outside of your church service (include an invite to your church service, and be sure to include the ‘why’)
  • Create services specifically for that demographic (For men, Fathers Day for instance, and events with kids are always great for inviting family members – cousins, uncles, grandpas, etc.)

Have a church communications question you’d like answered? Ask it here.  We’ll reply to all of them and pick a few for our podcast!

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Categories
Advertising Church Marketing Ideas Marketing Podcast Social Media Website

Podcast: How do we use our church advertising to attract a younger demographic?

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This week’s Church Marketing tool:

 

Faith Engine offers an entire library of content that has been proven to create engagement across multiple churches Social Media channels, in various locations and reaching many different demographics.  What sets Faith Engine apart, is that it is also a scheduling tool.  You can choose your content (like images, quotes or scriptures) then choose your social media channel (like Facebook or twitter) and let the scheduler know what day and time to post.

You’ll also notice that Faith Engine offers date-specific recommendations like famous quotes on those speaker’s birthdays, holidays, and calendar dates (like the first day or Spring or St. Patrick’s day).

Usually, Faith Engine is available to try for 7 days, but they are giving a special offer to our Church Marketing Ideas family with a complimentary 14 day trial.  Try it out for free here!

 

Suzette asked a question in our blog comments about our recommendation to use real pictures of your church in your advertising to properly represent your church. If you use pictures of young families, but your church doesn’t represent that, then you will have broken trust with anyone thinking they’re coming to meet young families.

But the question then is, how can you attract new young families, if your advertising is based on your current church demographic?

I would recommend advertising about who you are as a church – what are your convictions, your desires and your current initiatives to impact your community? These common causes will transcend demographics.  People will be attracted to a common cause.

Then, create and advertise events specifically targeted to young families: A fair in the parking lot, a costume party alternative to Halloween, a preschool reading club or a stay-at-home Mom’s group for instance.  In each case, give some information about the initiatives your church is involved in, and how someone attending this event can participate in the next.

Take pictures during your event, and as more people come to be connected with future events and participate at your church, include those pictures in your next event or website advertising.  Soon, your advertising will match the demographic at your church as you work towards generation diversity.

 

Have a church communications question you’d like answered? Ask it here.  We’ll reply to all of them and pick a few for our podcast!

 

 

 

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Categories
Advertising Branding Marketing Podcast Social Media Tools

Podcast: Can we duplicate content across Social Media Channels?

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This week’s tool: Open-Edit-Print.com

 

Church Graphics… Simplified Save Time. End Frustration. Attract Visitors.Get Unlimited Access to Done-for-you Media and Graphics for Email, Social Media, Worship Slides and Print Promotions. Get a free trial here!

 

Stacey asks about which Social Media channels to be on to connect with a young demographic, and if cross posting is a good idea:

  • Facebook is still the largest user base, so don’t let it go.
  • If you’re using Facebook consistently and seeing growth, reach a younger demographic on instagram or twitter – both have it’s perks as far as content and strategy.
  • Maximize the strengths of each platform (twitter is real time, instagram is image driven)
  • Send a consistent message across each platform, but it doesn’t have to be an identical message.
  • It’s cool to cross-post. Some people prefer one channel over another, so they won’t know you’re cross posting.  Other people will see the same post, but at different times or in a different context.

Have a church communications question you’d like answered? Ask it here.  We’ll reply to all of them and pick a few for our podcast!

 

 

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Categories
Marketing Podcast Tools Website

How to get your church ranked in Google Search results for SEO

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This week’s tool:

Free resources from Life.Church in Oklahoma – message graphics, scripture images, audio and video for Adults, Youth and Kids. Each week, this is our go-to tool to find the scriptures our Pastor used on Sunday, and schedule those graphics through the week on Facebook, twitter and instagram.

 

 

Nicole asked about increasing her church’s website ranking in Google.  Here are a few ideas:

  • There are a lot of ‘buzz words’ in Search Engine Optimization (SEO: Basically optimizing your website to appear as high as possible in search engine results, like Google, Yahoo, bing… )
  • Nicole asks about how to setup meta tags. Meta tags used to be important with how Google decided how to rank your site, but since someone can put in meta tags that say things completely unrelated to your websites content, Google has (multiple times) adjusted their search parameters.
  • 2 things to focus on: New content and how long people stay on your site.
  • My recommendation is writing a blog. The ongoing content will help Google see your site is being updated, show more content for Google to show and when someone comes to your blog to read about one topic, they may stay to read about others.

 Want to learn more about Search Engine Optimization directly from Google?

Here are 173 video from Matt Cutts (Google’s spokesperson on SEO) on youtube.

Have a church communications question you’d like answered? Ask it here.  We’ll reply to all of them and pick a few for our podcast!

 

 

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Categories
Marketing Podcast Tools

Podcast: How to create an experience for both new visitors and your church goers

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This week’s tool:

Display your PDF like a digital magazine (with page curls and everything) using issuu.com. Ryan Holck from Rad-Ideas.com uses this for multiple church clients, but recommends paying the $35/month for the premium version, since there is no control over the ads on the free account.

Check out my latest project for Life Church in Fort Myers, Florida where I oversee Marketing & Communications. This is our yearly ‘missions’ magazine: ATK 2017 Magazine.

On this week’s podcast, Marco asks about how to appeal to both church goers and non-church goers, and we talk about the 4 reasons someone comes to your church (Read the full blog post here).

Marco also asks what we can do to encourage our people to invite their friends to church.  There are a few ways but the biggest is to BE CONSISTENT! Let people know exactly what to expect at your church so they can set the expectations for the friends they invite.

 

Have a church communications question you’d like answered? Ask it here.  We’ll reply to all of them and pick a few for our podcast!

 

 

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Categories
Advertising Marketing Podcast Tools Website

Podcast: Is my church’s website for new guests or our congregation?

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This week’s tool:

Unsplash is a growing library of “do whatever you want” photos from all over the world.  For a quick hit of inspiration, sign up for their email newsletter where they’ll send you 10 new photos from their library every 10 days.  This is one of our go-to resources on the fly to grab a photo to overlay a quote or a quick promo image with text.  Most of our blog post featured images are generated from Unsplash content!

 

Today’s question comes from Dan:

How do you decide if your church’s website content should be focussed on guests or on regulars?

A few thoughts:

  • Keep your home page content targeted to new guests, especially what they will see before they scroll.
  • New guests need to instantly get a sense of what your church is about and if they want to connect with you.
  • Use your subpages of your website for information your congregation needs: Upcoming events, registration forms, membership information, etc.
  • If possible, choose real photos of your church on your website over stock photos.
  • If you need to use stock photos, make sure they accurately represent what someone will experience when they visit your church.

Check out my ebook: TrustGlue: 11 ways to create a first impression that sticks and look for the section on making a first impression for new guests using your website.

From Brady Shearer at Pro Church Tools, here are 11 things your church website needs based on an eye-tracking study from new visitors. Read more…

 

Have a church communications question you’d like answered? Ask it here.  We’ll reply to all of them and pick a few for our podcast!

 

 

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Categories
Advertising Podcast Social Media Tools

Podcast 9: Which Social Media channels could you use for your church plant?

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This week’s tool:

More than a backup storage mechanism, dropbox is a great way to share files between departments, send proofs to other team and get their feedback on the sidebar next to the document itself. For live collaboration, have a shared dropbox folder to save images, quotes and videos from your phone, tablet, laptop desktop or all of the above. Click here to sign up for free trial account!

 

Nicole asks about how many social media channels her church launch needs.  Here are a few ideas:

  • Get intentional and successful on one channel before expanding to other channels.  You’ll be more engaged with your audience if you do one channel well, rather than a few channels poorly.
  • If you’re not sure which one channel to start with, I would recommend Facebook: It’s already got the largest audience, and the most versatile options for what you can post.
  • If you’re not sure if you need a Facebook page or Facebook group, read this info here!
  • You’re going to have a lot of decisions to make in your first 30 days managing your Social Media. Here is an article about what to expect and what conversations to have with your team.
  • When you’re ready to move to a second channel, consider instagram. You can do live ‘stories’ like snapchat, video and image posts with longer status than twitter.

 

 

Have a church communications question you’d like answered? Ask it here.  We’ll reply to all of them and pick a few for our podcast!

 

 

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Categories
Advertising Podcast

Podcast: How to target advertising to people who are ready to hear the Gospel

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This week’s tool:

Katie Allred (KatieAllred.com) joins us to share about sip which allows you to grab the hex code for any color on your screen.

Micheal asks about how to reach people in your area who are ready to hear about the Gospel:

Ryan Holck from Rad-ideas.com joins us to answer Michael’s question.  Using targetted Facebook and Google ads, direct invitations to learn more about the gospel based on these 4 ideas:

  • Keyword
  • Topic
  • Location
  • Type of Audience

Build ads to target those people. If you’re not sure where yo start, start with Facebook with $5-10/day for a few days. If you’re seeing results, continue the campaign.  If it’s not getting the results you’re looking for, adjust and retarget.

Focus on sending those people to a specific ministry, not just generally “come learn about us” but “come connect with this group that is addressing the issues you’re looking for more information about.

 

Looking for more information? Here are a few blog posts from Ryan about Facebook and google advertising:

 

Have a church communications question you’d like answered? Ask it here.  We’ll reply to all of them and pick a few for our podcast!

 

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Categories
Marketing Podcast Tools

Podcast 007: What to ask during a Church Communications Interview

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This week’s tool: Backup Buddy

 

Schedule and save your wordpress website backup to a secondary server (Backup Buddy subscription includes space on their own “Stash” storage server) and seemlessly duplicate or migrate your wordpress website from one domain to another.

Kyler asks about what questions to ask at a church communications interview.  Here are a few ideas:

  • Ask for clarification on any items that may be vague.  Words that are descriptive could mean something to you that means something different to them.  “Flexible hours” – Could mean I can work 30 hours this week and 50 hours next week, or could mean that I work 40 hours every week, but I get to choose if that’s mornings, evenings, weekends, work from home, etc.  Are the flexible hours my choice (I can set my own schedule) or are you meaning that at the beginning of each week, the employer will tell you which evenings and morning you’ll be working and the employee has to be flexible with their hours?
  • Why is now the time to fill this position? Is it the first time the position is open? Has someone been promoted?
  • Before your interview, secret shop the church, and bring some ideas to the interview.

Have a church communications question you’d like answered? Ask it here.  We’ll reply to all of them and pick a few for our podcast!

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