Archive for May, 2008
Christian Blogs: Developing Your Value Added Proposition
May 26th, 2008 Categories: Christian Blogging Tips
Why should Christians blog anyway? What’s our end game? Are you blogging to spread the news about Jesus, or are you trying to add numbers to your church? Are you trying to liven up your current church website, or is this just a side project to give your Pastor an online presence?
If you’re writing for recreation or to kill time, this post really isn’t for you. I want to focus on those Christian bloggers who are attempting to grow their churches through the anointed application of technology such as blogs and social media (Facebook, Myspace, etc).
What is a value added proposition anyway? Simply put, a value added proposition is your articulation of what makes you better than your competition. In the business world, it’s an answer to the question, “Why should I buy your product (as opposed to buying somebody else’s product, or buying nothing at all).” In the world of Churches and Christian blogs, it’s an answer to a much better question: “Why should I attend your church (as opposed to attending somebody else’s church, or no church at all)?”
Can I answer that question and remain humble? I don’t know, can you? It depends upon your view of provision, grace, and anointing. If you feel as if you are the reason that your church is awesome, you should probably leave this post alone and go find a nice scripture about pride and repentance. If, however, you believe that the Lord has blessed you with certain gifts, talents, and visions for expansion, and that these things are not a product of your awesomeness, but God’s, then we can move forward.
What sets your church apart? Developing a value added proposition is very similar to brainstorming a question and looking for a creative answer. You need to know what your church is good at, and then you need to phrase it in a way so that people will care what you have to say. Sounds harder than it is. The first thing you need to do is ask the above question, “What sets your church apart?” For instance, our church embraces technology, loves worship, has an awesome band, and really thrives in the area of fellowship. When you walk in, you can tell that the people really love one another with the love of Christ. What is your church about?
Now, blog it. Start writing articles that support your value added proposition. For our church, in support of the value added that I talked about above, I might write some articles with titles such as:
- Three Reasons Why You Should Attend Our Monthly Cookout
- Worship: Why You Need It More Than You Think
- Electric Guitars are Not From The Devil
- Love: It’s A Noun and A Verb
The idea, of course, is that when people read our blog about our church they begin to immediately see what we’re about. This should have two effects upon your readership: First, if they have never attended your church, it make make them curious enough to poke in for a visit. Secondly, because they know what to expect when they get there, you should be able to create a much higher rate of return for visitors.
I should say, as a note of caution, that if your value added statement doesn’t accurately reflect what your congregation is about you’re going to come off as phony and weird. People will read your blog, hear your “voice,” and expect it to be consistent with what they see when they walk through your doors. That’s your responsibility.
We Build Blogs
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Three Must Read SEO Tips For Your Christian Blog
May 25th, 2008 Categories: Christian Blogging Tips
SEO companies have some dark, ugly little monsters hiding in their closets. They do everything that they can to make you feel as if you need them. They want you to believe that their advice is the difference between having a successful web venture or not, and that SEO is so complicated that you can only hope to navigate it through the advice of a seasoned SEO professional.
My buddy Jim Cronin over at the Real Estate Tomato has a saying that has become a favorite of mine:
“When it comes to blogging, SEO consulting is like cold medicine. When you catch a cold, if you don’t take medicine you are going to be sick for seven days. However, if you do take cold medicine it’s only going to be a week before you get better.”
What the heck does that mean?
It means that paying for SEO advice for your blog makes about as much sense as an Italian man in a see-thru tank top. It might make you feel better about yourself, but it’s not going to do you any long term good.
Instead of shelling out bucks to an SEO consulting firm, even a nice, Christian SEO consulting firm, consider doing the following:
1) Write blog posts. No, seriously. If you’re not writing daily, or at least every other day, then you’re really not going to be in any position to improve your standings in the search engines. Google reads content. Meta tags are a part of that content, but blog articles compose the lions share of what get’s eaten by hungry bots. More importantly, if you’re not prepared to invest the time to write on your blog, it makes no sense to invest your money on SEO advice. By contrast, if you invest lots of time writing on your blog, you’ll find that you don’t need SEO advice.
2) Write on-topic blog posts. Notice how the theme of this post continues to swirl around the idea of simply writing blog posts? Yeah. Well, this takes it a step further and says write about something that’s relevant to the google hits that you’d like to be pulling in. For instance, notice how many times I’ve managed to weave the words SEO, advice, and blog into this post (that’s once more). I even managed to get a couple of them in the title without annoying you. It’s an art.
3) When all else fails….. Write another post. Seriously, content is king. I don’t know how I can make this any more plain and simple. You need focused, on-topic content on your blog. Once Google has an idea what your blog is about, they can begin to send people in your direction. It’s as easy as that. Don’t make it more difficult than it has to be.
I can feel the SEO consultants cracking their knuckles and getting ready to take a shot at me. This should be fun.
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3 Reasons Your Christian Blog Loads Slower Than A Snail Race
May 24th, 2008 Categories: Christian Blogging Tips
So, you’re probably noticed that you can read through War and Peace twice before your blog is fully loaded, right? The slow loading makes your blog feel as if it’s not user friendly, and as far as blogs are concerned, this is the kiss of death. If you’re all about ensuring that new visitors never return to your blog again, go ahead and keep doing what you’re doing. If, on the other hand, you would like to attract new visitors and compell them to keep reading, press on.
The problem with slow-loading blogs is that very few people know why they are slow loading.
Fortunately for you, the Kindom 2.0 is one…ehr, several….of those people. With no further ado, here are three reasons why your Christian blog is loading slowly, and how to fix it:
1) Image size. It’s not the size at which the image appears on your blog that matters, it’s the file size. So, clicking on the corner of your image and dragging it to the appropriate size in your browser does nothing to reduce the file size and improve the load time of your blog. You actually need to resize the photo with a program such as Irfanview.
2) Javascript. Running too many javascript applications on your blog is like pouring sugar in the gas tank of your Shelby Mustang. It just doesn’t make any sense. We’re talking about widgets, chiclets, and data gathering tools (stat counters) that are based on javascript here. The problem with javascript is that it instructs the browser to look on another server in order to gather information to be displayed on your page. Any time you make your display speed subject to a server that you can’t control, you’re jeopardizing the surfing experience of your readers.
It’s gets more hairy than a sasquatch on rogaine when you try to load multiple javascript applications at once. The solution is to kill the widgets, m’kay. Do you really need them to enhance the users experience? I think not. Lose the blogger bling for sake of the faster load time and make your readers happy.
3) Length of the Homepage. How many articles are you displaying on your home page? If your front page is longer than Gone with the Wind, you need to make some adjustments. Every platform is different, but somewhere under the “Options” or equivalent, it’s going to give you a choice for how many articles to display on the front page. I suggest using a number that is 10 or smaller, depending upon how long and drawn out your writing style is.
In addition, if you’re a well-trained blogging machine, you’ll already know about the “more” tag. Use it liberally to reinfoce fast load times (although I could do with adhering to my own advice on this one).
Now, I fully admit that I shamelessly stole 90% of this information from my good buddies over at the Real Estate Tomato. Why? Because I got a question in my inbox to this effect, and it was easier to rephrase what they had already written than to engage my brain housing group into thinking of another (probably inferior) answer. Plus, I already know they won’t sue me.
We Build Blogs| Discussion: 1 Comment »
How Much Is A Good Blog Worth?
May 23rd, 2008 Categories: Christian Blogging Tips
The question, really, is how well are you using your Church blog? If you’re using it to project a coherent, compassionate, and Christ-like voice into the internet world, your blog could be priceless. If you’re using it to rant about your latest emotional outburst or announce a bake sale on Wednesday, it’s probably not worth anything.
First, let’s examine what constitutes a good blog, in my personal opinion:
1) Quality, professional design. If you want a blog that looks like anybody designed it, you should probably go with the lowest bidder. If you want a blog that looks like it was designed by a seasoned professional with major talent, you’ll probably have to shell out a few bucks to get that result. It’s the law of supply and demand. The best designers are in the greatest demand, and therefore cost a little more dough.
2) Awesome, prompt technical support. If you know everything that there is to know about a Wordpress blog, then don’t worry about this one. If, however, you think that you could or might break your blog, need help resolving an issue, want to install something that you don’t know how to do, or need advice on making your blog sing for Google, you probably want quality technical support. Tech nerds cost money. It’s one of those things.
3) Quality writing directed at your target audience. If you have trouble composing emails, writing reports, or spelling your name, you’re also going to have trouble blogging. Does that mean that you shouldn’t blog? Heavens forbid. It means that you need training. We have some of the best blogging consultants on the planet all set to lead you into blogging bliss where your flock will devour every word that you write, but blogging consultants cost money.
Bottom line: If you want a free blog, there are lots of blogging services out there. Many, many people have taken the time to learn about the medium, apply the technology, and write hard-hitting articles all by their lonesome selves. Keep in mind, however, that a free blog looks and acts like a free blog. It’s not custom. It’s not optimized for Google. It’s not pretty and cutting-edge. If you want those benefits, it’s going to cost you a little (but still not as much as a custom website).
Case Study: My pastor will tell you what an impact having a blog has had on his ministry. Our church will vouch for the value of the content offered on our blog, and will tell you that the price was well worth the end result. We’ve expanded our communications network, informed our people, trained and made disciples, all through the reach of our internet ministry. Still, what we’ve done so far doesn’t even hold a candle to what we’re capable of doing in the future with the new technology and programming that we’ve implemented here at the Kingdom 2.0, and that’s priceless to me.
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3 Reasons Why Christian Blogs Are Better
May 21st, 2008 Categories: Christian Blogging Tips
Oh. I knew you couldn’t resist clicking on this one. Most of you probably showed up to bash the Christians and say how ridiculous it is to insinuate that a Christian blog could ever be better than a secular blog in any way. If that’s you, Jesus loves you.
For those who are actually interested in my take on this topic, keep reading as I lay out three good reasons why Christian blogs are better:
1) We’re using technology for it’s highest purpose. As with anything, there exists a hierarchy of purposes for any and everything in life. Take sand, for instance. You can go down to the beach and get a bag of sand for free. Take that same sand, process it a little, and glue it to some paper and you have to pay $5 bucks for it (sandpaper). Take that same sand, process it a lot, and turn it into a computer processor, and now it’s worth $300. Is it still sand? Yep. It’s just serving a higher purpose. So it is with the Christian blog. We’re serving the highest purpose in the universe, the cause of Christ.
2) An overwhelmingly positive message. There are so many gossip blogs out there, and political commentary, and war correspondents, and so many other negative things. A Christian blog, barring some of the obvious exceptions who write just to condemn other Christians, exists to express the positive and uplifting message of Christ. It kinda makes me feel all warm inside.
3) Our overwhelming sense of design and extremely talented writers. Ha, ha. Maybe if you got your blog and training from the Kingdom 2.0, but we’re working on making the internet a better place to write and read. Nobody’s perfect, but we sure do try hard.
OK. Let the onslaught begin.
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