In working with business owners, especially if they have had their business a number of years, is to get them to think in terms of a single department or even a single product. After all the owner has been going on a 'wholistic' strategy of marketing the business as an entire entity, so why start to 'break it up'?
The answer for your church blog is the same as the answer for the business owner. In this digital age we all must learn to think in terms of divide and conquer. A single retail buisness could have as many as 4-5 blogs (or more) extolling the different aspects of the business. A church with as little as 100 members may have at least two or three blogs--at a minimum.
What Do I Write About? How Do I Present It?
One of the fascinating things about those who consider themselves writers and those who declare themselves to be non-writers is that both groups occasionally get stuck. If your preferred ministry within your church is, say, the nursery, you have a plethora of subjects at hand. There can be the approach of working with nursery volunteers, recruiting volunteers, separate private sections for nursing moms, safety issues, how sanitary your nursery is, working with new families and so on.
There are some questions and tasks you need to think of as you prepare for (or jump into) blogging.
1. Have I done some research on my niche or niches on Google, Bing and the other search engines.
2. Is my niche TOO narrow so as to not generate enough interest? Remember, your niche has to be broad enough to pique the interests of others.
3. What is my approach going to be? Am I going to write from personal experience or through the eyes of another. (One creative way that seems to generate interest is writing from the 'eyes' of a key part of the ministry, say from the thoughts of a Christmas Shoebox, a nursery room, a guitar or piano belonging to the Praise Team, a crock pot in the church's kitchen and on and on.) There is no 'right' or 'wrong' approach per se.
4 Write in your own style. Again, God threw away the mold when he made you. You are the world's foremost authority of what you think, feel and how you act. Blogging has made a wonderful outlet (and outright living from monetizing their blog--more on that coming up) for literally thousands of bloggers. People want to know what you think. You need a fairly thick skin because once you get your opinions in black and white, there are always folks who will be disagreeing with you.
5. Interview others with a similar interest/responsibility in other churches. As Proverbs tells us, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another' (that refers to ladies as well!). Only when we submit ourselves to allowing the Lord guide us and even correct us through His Word, through others and through circumstances is when we can grow. Seek to grow in your speciality as you blog! Even a true authority 'guru' in a particular field is going to constantly be prepared to let the sunshine of new thought in on their expertise (at least if they want to stick around!).
We will be getting into some blog templates (outside of Blogger) that you may wan to consider. This will allow you, if you wish, to more easily monetize your blog(s).
Feel free to run things by me if you wish. I always love to hear from folks who once thought that they could not impact the growth of their church from now--and now their light has been turned on to blogging of their interest! My personal contact is Steve (at) ExecutiveProductivity (dot) com if you care to write.
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