Category: Website

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Tools Website

Stage Announcements and my new Ebook

I’ve been silent for a little while… no blog posts, email newsletters or podcasts coming from the “Church Marketing Ideas” world. It’s because I’ve been reading “Be Known For Something” by Mark MacDonald and it shook up my perspective of what I can contribute to the church communications world.

The short version is I haven’t been making an effort to focus on one strategy – one thing I’m specifically good or – one thing I could be known for. I was trying my hand at social media how to and branding and photoshop tips…

As I was trying to figure out what I could be known for, I posted a video of me doing my church’s announcements, and within a few days, it had 6000 views on Facebook (watch the video about how I saved my wife from the world’s largest cockroach here and what does that have to do with my church’s announcements?!)

I started to realize I may have a handle on presenting stage announcements that inspire a response, and that other churches may share this same frustration I had just a few months ago: nobody responded to our stage announcements.

I’m launching a new blog: StageAnnouncements.com and a simple (and free) ebook called SnorkelFork: This book title is confusing. Your church announcements don’t have to be. It walks you step-by-step through how to prepare, present and reinforce your church’s stage announcements to inspire a response.

What does this mean for Church Marketing Ideas?

This blog will stay live. It’s been a resource for many churches, and my Trust Glue Ebook will still be available for download. I’ll still post ideas there now and then, but my main focus is going to be on StageAnnouncements.com to help church communicators give their people the information they need to impact their communities.

Our Facebook group has been helpful for a lot of people, but more and more, I’m finding people are cross posting in the (significantly) larger groups. With a larger pool of people to pull from, there is more discussion and engagement in the larger groups.

In the best interest of pointing people to their best solution, I’m going to close the group and suggest a few of the larger groups that I’ve found to be helpful. This really is the best solution for people looking for input on their church marketing, branding and visual strategies.

Have a question? Send me an email: adam@churchmarketingideas.com

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
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
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
Branding Graphic Design Website

5 Point Checklist for your Church’s Website

Your website is more important than ever in representing who you are as a church and attracting people to you.

Almost 100% of the families that joined us for the first time in 2016 say that they checked out our website before visiting.  Some found Life Church by searching on Google, others heard about us from another source but still checked us out online before visiting.

Here are some must-haves so your website can keep up in 2017 that ANY church can implement (these aren’t just for churches with full-time designers on staff).

Contact information on the home page above the fold

A big majority of people visiting your website are coming to find out how and when they can connect with you, like what time are your services, where are you located or an office phone number or email address.

‘Above the fold’ is a term that means that something appears on your screen without having to scroll.  With long-scrolling website styles, its tempting to make your home page REALLY long with more and more sections of content.  That’s fine if it’s done strategically, but keep your contact info available before someone has to scroll.

 

Represent yourselves accurately

If you haven’t yet read me an ebook about building trust.  Download it free here, and read the section about your website.  Since your website is digital, it’s WAY TOO EASY to misrepresent yourselves using stock photos and text descriptions.

My suggestion would be to use actual photos and video of your building, your services, your people and let the size and demographic speak for itself as much as possible.  Even if you hope to be something (ie. larger, more diverse, younger, older, etc.) give the impression that you welcome that diversity, but don’t give the impression that it exists.

If you need to use stock photography then be sure it still represents you accurately.

(here’s an article from Brady Shearer at Pro Church Tools with some alternatives to clipart and stock photography)

Reduce your load time

Believe it or not, websites haven’t gotten faster proportionate to our connection speeds – we just find more things we can now do in light of our connection speeds while our websites load, so keep in mind that just because high speed internet exists doesn’t mean you shouldn’t focus on what you’re putting on your site and how it will affect load time.

Keep your load time to under 4 seconds.  You can check with this free tool: tools.pingdom.com – It will tell you not only your load time from a secondary server, but will show each process and file that loads on your website and which are taking the most time.

Images: Reduce them to 100KB or less – full screen images I try and keep around 200 – 250KB.  When you export form photoshop, click “Save for web” and play with the quality and size until you get it right.  If you’re going to be using an image at 500px wide, then output the picture at 500px.  Resizing a larger image down to a smaller image requires your site to load larger files, then scale them all as part of your load time.

Video: As much as possible, host videos on YouTube or Vimeo and paste a frame or shortcode in your website.  This causes large video files to load on their server instead of loading on yours.

Audio: Same as video, when possible, host somewhere else.

 

Don’t just have a mobile website, have a responsive website

If your site isn’t mobile, stop here and get that fixed…A mobile site means that when someone loads your site on a mobile device, it loads unique content and layout just for that device (ie. the website says ‘hey, this is a cell phone. I’ll load the cell phone content that’s narrower).

Responsive means that you have a single site and the content automatically resizes itself based on the browser window (large or small browser window on a desktop / laptop, tablet, small phone, plus size phone, etc.)

When your church website is responsive,  it thinks ‘hey, this browser is 823 pixels wide, I’ll make the content match. The next browser window is 1834 pixels wide, and now the content will match that.)

With a growing number of devices, screen sizes and manufacturers, a responsive site has become a necessity (with the added perk that if you change information, it is that same info on every device – you don’t have to update both a desktop site and a mobile site)

The “responsive’ qualities of your website are usually built right into the template.  If you use WordPress, look for a responsive theme. If you’re stuck on your theme, but it’s not responsive, consider a mobile version of your site until you can replace it with a responsive theme that works.

 

Have a color scheme that’s not named “Rainbow”

Pick a background color, text color, heading color, and menu color – THAT’S IT! (and it’s okay if one of these is white).  When you add in accents like buttons or highlights or quotes, use one of the 4 colors already in your scheme.

If your website has even color in the rainbow, you’re not going to be viewed as credible – trust me.  Even if you had a committee approve your website, they all have smart phones that are 1 color with an accent color, use Facebook or twitter or instagram with really simple color schemes.  If you’re wanting to use more colors to create energy or excitement, try using colorful photos – people relate to faces better than a barrage of colors.

Need some color scheme inspiration? Try Coolors.co or if you’re looking for something premade, Google color schemes for websites.

 

Post your website link in the comments so we can check it out! (Business or church!)