The conversation seemed like it wasn’t going anywhere and the general consensus and feedback I was getting was that blogging is hard because of the technical skills and time involved.

When I was able to convince him that writing a blog post is about as difficult as writing an email, I began to see some signs of interest.

The conversation covered some interesting points about Facebook and Twitter, but I really wanted to impress upon him the importance of having a self hosted blog that is autonomous of Facebook or any other social media site.

I thought I would share some of the ideas we discussed here…

• The blog would be a launch pad to promote an online bible study course at some point in time.
• The blog would give the college a national and global presence, giving international students an insight as to what they would learn from attending the college.
• The blog would be able to target a younger Christian audience that is already spending time online.
• The blog could be used to promote the college to other church members by posting regular updates on the progress of the students.
• The blog could also help the students set up their public profile, if they had a desire for an evangelistic ministry.

Many of the ideas discussed were only of the cuff ideas, and would need to thought out and somehow worked into a strategy, but the main concept of using a blog to promote the bible college was not lost.(I hope not anyway)

I believe when you combine all of the benefits of blogging, compared to the time and money invested, the college would be doing itself an injustice by not looking into the possiblities of how a blog could help build the profile of the college.

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• Googles Free Keyword Research Tool
• Blog Maintenance Day

I had seen a plugin that would do this about twelve months ago, but the plugin itself was no longer supported and had been that way for a couple of years, so making it work with the current version of Wordpress could become a problem.

Then I saw someone in my twitter feed tweeting about a plugin that would allow users to open external links in a new window called Target Blank in Posts and Comments.

I decided that I might give the plugin a try, but before setting it up I thought I would find out if there was a way I could manually code this function into my site without having to install another plugin, So I went to the Hybrid support forum and posted the question.

I can’t tell you what the exact response was because you need to be a member to read the reply, but the response I got made me wonder if I was doing the right thing by my visitors by forcing all of my external links to open in a new window.

I started looking into it further to see what other people thought on the subject, and seeing all of the responses, my attitude on the topic started to change.

But their was one comment in particular that really made me stop and think, and it was from Darren Rowse at problogger.net, his comment was…

My priority as a blogger is to develop communities of readers who have positive user experiences.

While keeping people on a blog by opening new windows for links might seem to make a blog stickier – I’d rather keep people engaged with content that they just can’t live without coming back to.

If they do leave the site and want to come back they’ll use the back button.

It was this comment that made me understand the responsibility I have in creating such good Quality content for my readers that they will want to come back to my site over again.

It also confirmed my desire to build community around my site among Christians wanting to use the web as part of their outreach and ministry.

To be honest I personally don’t have a problem with links opening up in a new tab, but after reading the comments and opinions of others I am inclined to see that the argument for opening links in the same window is a valid one.

Some of the articles which helped in making my decision are listed below.

Should Links Open In New Windows? Smashingmagazine.com

Should Links Open In a New Window? Problogger.net

Use interim solutions. w3.org

How Should Outbound Links Function. Wiliam.com.au

To most people reading this, having links open in a new or the same window probably isn’t an issue, but for me it’s about making my site usable for the majority, especially for the non technical visitor who expects links to open in the same window.

So I guess I have a pretty busy time ahead of me as I go back through each of my posts to reset all of the links I have opening in a new window.

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• Googles Free Keyword Research Tool
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But I’m noticing a lot of the comments I’m getting are without a picture of the person who left them, So I figured there are a couple of reasons for this.

One, The person leaving the comment wants to remain anonymous and doesn’t want to be recognized online, or…

Two, they haven’t set up a Gravatar.

I’m going to assume the reason for the faceless comments would be because they haven’t completed the second option.

This tutorial will show you how to get a “GRAVATAR” which is short for “Globally Recognized Avatar“.

So this means, whenever you add a comment to a Gravatar enabled site, you will see your beautiful happy smiling face next to your wonderful comments and encouraging words.

Follow along as we get you set up with your “Gravatar“.

Type into your browsers address bar the following URL,  www.gravatar.com and hit the “Enter” key on your keyboard.

When you land on the “Gravatar” home page look in the top left hand corner for the small drop down arrow, when you hover over the sign up link you will see a “Sign Up” option in the drop down menu, “Click ” on the “Sign Up” link to get started.

The next step is to enter the email address you will use whenever you leave a comment on someones blog, if you have more than one email address use the one you will use when posting comments.

You will now need to confirm your email address, Go to your email inbox and click on the link inside the confirmation email sent to you.

The email should look something like this.

The next step is to add your user details, when adding your username you will need to check it’s availability “Click” on the “Check” button after typing in your preferred username

Choose your password and click the “Signup” button.

Now it’s time to add your photo, you will notice a link in blue with the text “Add One By Clicking Here” I think this is fairly self explanatory, no need to explain what to do here.

You will be presented with a number of options on where you would like to get your “Gravatar” image from, I am going to upload my image from my hardrive in this example.

To upload your image “Click” on the “Browse” button to locate the image file on your computer.

After you have located your preferred image click on the “Next” button to continue.

Now you need to crop the image to make it square, Click and drag on the image cropping tool until you are happy with how your Gravatar looks.

When you are happy with your image “Click” on the “Crop and Finish” button.

The next step is to choose your “Gravatar” rating, I chose the “G” rating for my Gravatar. I thought I looked pretty harmless in this pic

And that’s it, you now have a Globally Recognised “Gravatar“.

Which means every time you post a comment using the same email address you used to set up your Gravatar account with, your beautiful smiling happy face will be next to your wonderfully encouraging and positive comments.

So before you go and tell me how much you loved this post, go and set up your gravatar so I can see who I’m talking to.

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• On A More Personal Note

I think as Christians in general and I’m also speaking for myself here, we have been guilty of not capitalizing on this medium. The world is changing and we need to change with it.

There are so many ways we can be using the web in our ministries…

But in this post, I thought I’d point out some ideas on how we can start using blogs as an everyday part of the church.

I guess the first thing we should probably consider asking ourselves is…

What are we going to blog about…

It would easy to assume that all we had to do was just set up a blog site and start preaching the gospel but will anyone actually read it, I mean the purpose of having a blog is to create conversation and community, so I suggest we step back for a moment and find out what real people are looking for when they’re going online.

The first step we could take is to find out what people are going to the internet for.

Their are a couple of ways you could look at this,

One; Get familiar with keyword research techniques- this means we find out what people are typing into the search engines when looking for information and…

Two; find out what people are actually publishing on the net.

A great tool I use for doing keyword research and analysis is Google’s keyword tool.

Its easy to use, all you do is type in any given search term or keyword, and the tool calculates what the average number of searches per month are for that search query. If you get a high number of people searching for a specific need you know that people are looking for information on that topic, which means…there’s is an opportunity to share with them what the bible says about their needs or wants. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Alerts…

You can also find out what people are talking about on the web by using a function in your Google account called alerts.

What this will do is, every time someone posts something about your specific alert you will be notified via email,  you can write your own blog post reviewing the information you received from your Google alerts.

As you begin to listen.

As you begin to listen in on the conversations going on around you, you will begin to see a whole new world of ministry begin to open up for you and some incredible opportunities to share gods word.

It’s also a good idea to establish an objective for your blog…

Some questions you could ask yourself when starting your blog could be…

• How can I most effectively use my blog in my ministry?
• How can I use my blog site to strengthen the relationships within my church or community.
• Who am I really trying to reach through my blog site?

Maybe you could consider having a couple of blogs for the various ministries your church caters too, for example older mature Christians have different needs than the youth and young adults.

Taylor your blog to suite the needs of who your trying to reach. Understanding your overall objective of your blog is very important and not to be underestimated, getting this right will also help in the planning and mapping out of your site and is a key factor when starting your online ministry.

Create a blog that is a resource of valuable information….

Your blog needs to meet the needs of your readers, People are looking to you for guidance in their spiritual walk, they want you to help solve their problems, your blog is an extension of you and people will visit your site because they see you as a leader and respect your opinion, give them valuable content. not just a “I had bacon and eggs for breakfast”and “I took my wife out to dinner last night” type content.

Your church is a community…

People also like to keep updated and know what’s going on within the church, so use your blog as a resource for relative and updated church news, let people know exactly what is happening in the life of the church, because it’s not just the people in your church reading your blog, your surrounding community is also watching and if your going to get them to come to church they need to see you as a worthy cause to be involved in.

It’s important to remember that your blog is like an open window of your church. People looking for answers will probably visit your site numerous times before ever coming to a meeting, so it’s important to remember that you are , even though you may not realize it , building relationships with people you haven’t even met.

Show your personality within your blog...

It’s also a good idea to remember that your blog is a personal reflection of YOU, be open and let people know who you are, let people see pictures of you and write your blog entries in a personal conversational manor. Churches are about relationships, with individual’s and with Christ, your blog is about building relationships with people.

Do you have video?

Use it. Video is the most popular medium on the web at the moment, ask your Church members if they will share their testimonial in front of the camera and put it on your blog, You tube, Vimeo, Revvor, Vidler ect..

Set up pod-casts, if your not already, start recording your services and create podcasts, your blog site visitors can download your talks and audio messages.

By taking these extra steps you are showing the community that your church isn’t just a building or a one day a week religion but you are real people who can share the hope and love of Christ,

Your image and how people perceive you is everything…

The majority of church websites out there are lifeless and to be honest boring, I recently saw a church website promoting itself with photos of an empty, cold looking church hall, the impression it left on me was, If I were to turn up on a Sunday, the only two people that would be there, would be me and the pastor, not good.

Set A High Standard

Set a high standard for your blog, but also allow for a personal touch, you don’t have to create the perfect video, podcast and website, if you do you will never get started but keep in mind that image does matter.

Use your blog to minster at all levels…

I think it is vital that we share the gospel and tell people what they must do to be saved, but at the same time their are some very real needs that you can meet on a less spiritual level (for want of a better word), for example if your church is helping a local charity tell people about it on your blog.

If you know of someone who can help the homeless, tell people about it on your blog. Just because you don’t offer specific help or need to the community doesn’t mean you can’t refer people to someone who does.

I’ve also noticed with a lot church websites, they don’t like linking to other church websites, for some reason there is a fear of loss mentality, they seem to think that they have a monopoly on someones salvation, personally I think this is stupid.

The great thing I like about my pastor is he realizes that not all people are suited to the same church, and he openly says “if you don’t feel comfortable in this church tell me, and I will help you find a church where you will feel comfortable”.

Your website should be the same.

If you see something that you know will help your readers then share it, send a link to it and write a review about what you have read and found to be useful.

Your readers will appreciate your ability to share highly relevant and useful content. and remember your sowing seed, you will likely start to see other sites linking to you, which will inevitable increase your readership and ultimately your ministry

Once you have established your site…

It’s important to make sure you keep your blog current and you continue to add content on a regular basis and at regular intervals.

As a pastor you should be adding a blog post at the absolute minimum once a week, even if you add your notes from your Sunday message it is still serving to minister to your church members and it’s keeping your site active.

A good rule of thumb for adding content to your site is between 2-4 articles per week.

Should you make money from your blog?

That is something that you will need to seriously consider also, I know that churches need money to operate, pay the mortgage, pay staff,  outreach and so on… but I personally wouldn’t want my church’s website or my pastors blog plastered with ads all over it, I would consider it to be a major distraction, But at the end of the day it really is your call.

I guess this comes back to the objective and the purpose of having a blog, If you really saw a need and you felt you could make money from your site and still reach your objectives, one way you could monetize it, without having flashy ads all over the place is to set up a category where you could review products you have used and you may earn an affiliate commission from, if your readers happen to purchase through your link, or you may set up a book store online and sell books, dvd’s, cd’s etc…

What is your comment policy?

Because your blog has the capacity to accept comments and interaction from your readers, you will need to determine from the outset what you will allow and what you would consider unacceptable from your readers,

Lets say for example that you had someone come to your site and all they wanted to do was argue about doctrine, we’ve all been there, it seems to be one of those things where everyone is right and no-one ever seems to back down, you could simply make the decision to delete the comment or you could see it as an opportunity to put your view forward of what the word of god says.

This is another one of those “you need to think about it” moments, I do recommend you allow comments, Just my opinion, again your blog your decision.

Make your comment policy one of your priorities when setting up your site, determine what it will be, and make it easy for your readers to find it and read it before posting on your site.

I hope some of these ideas have sparked some insights and revelations as to how having a blog can help in your church. I do like to see comments so please let me know your thoughts on my article by leaving your comments below..

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The main reason I emphasize this is;

One, it helps to clear your thinking and Two; it helps you to establish a clear and well defined Vision Statement for your website and online ministry.

By clearly articulating and sharing your vision and purpose for your online ministry, you will…

• Establish who you are trying to reach.
• Be kept accountable.
• Clearly inform your readers what they can expect from you.
• Remain focused in your particular ministry.

After thinking about my own vision and plan for this site, I thought I’d go back to the drawing board and re-examine my own “Vision Statement“.

Currently the site has a Vision Statement that reads,

“Strategies and Tips for Christian Ministries Online.”Now that isn’t the first vision statement I came up with, and to be honest I think it’s Ok but, could I do better?

Have I clearly targeted a specific audience, have I clearly defined my vision or goal, and is it just plain vanilla and boring.

How can I really make my purpose stand out?

I don’t want to leave any doubt in the mind of a new visitor to this site as to what they could expect to find. I want them to know very quickly whether the information that I have will help them or not.

So in trying to rethink my vision statement I thought I would ask myself the following questions…

• Who is my target audience?
• How would I clearly describe my purpose, vision and goal for this website.
• How can I convey my vision in a way that is short and to the point.
• Can I create curiosity and still clearly state my purpose.
• How can I express my enthusiasm for my Vision without it sounding like hype or being to over the top.

So far I am still toying with a few idea’s and will continue to refine and pin down my vision statement until I have really nailed what my site is about.

I think also that as the site grows I will need to revisit my vision and make sure I have remained focused on what I set out to achieve, and also be prepared to stretch and expand the vision if needed.

I guess your vision and perspective will change over time, so in order to keep growing and moving forward your vision always needs to be out of your reach, or how else will you ever strive to reach or fulfill your purpose and vision.

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• Setting Up The Site.

This article is aimed at helping you get an idea of some of the major steps involved when setting up your online ministry, This is not an all encompassing tutorial that covers every single aspect of building your ministry online, but more of a broad and general overview of the processes involved along the way.

But, before we begin trying to explain the overall process of building your website I would like you to try to Imagine that building a website is similar in the concept of building a real life bricks and mortar building.

It’s common knowledge, that before any structure can be erected there are certain steps that must take place before you can enjoy the benefits of your brand new dwelling.

Building your website is very similar,

In the concept of building your site, you will have to spend time on planning, choosing what services you will need to employ, how you will want your site to look, how are you going to get people to come to your site and then encourage them to stick around.

So with that said Lets Begin.

1. Defining The Purpose and The Objective Of Your Site.

Defining the objective for your website is an important step that you shouldn’t underestimate or gloss over, this step will help you to establish a solid foundation for you to build your online ministry on.

Some ideas that come to mind that may help you in deciding on the main objective for your site could be…

1. How would you describe the best possible outcome for your website?
2. Who do you actually want to be visiting your website? are you trying to attract non Christians, young Christians or mature Christians?
3. What is the main message you would like your site to convey?
4. Is your site intended specifically for disusing and debating doctrine?
5. Do you want to use your site as a means of ministering to your church?
6. What is the specific age group you are trying to reach?
7. Do you want your site to be used more for outreaching and showing your local community how your church is getting involved and supporting local events and charities?

Whatever your main purpose and vision for your site is, try and define it clearly and accurately so it describes your overall vision and purpose.

Getting The Ideas Out Of Your Head.

A step I find really helpful is to brainstorm and write out every possible idea for my website. I find, this exercise helps me to clear my thinking, and because I have written down my ideas, I don’t loose any of the Ah Ha’s that randomly pop into my head.

There really is no great secret or special method for this step, I simply get a pen and paper, or whiteboard and continue to brainstorm as many ideas that come into my head until I simply run out of new ones.

Organizing And Mapping Out Your Ideas.

After you have your ideas down on paper, It’s time to put them in an organized and structured format.

What we are trying to accomplish here, will determine the categories for our website. When deciding on categories, it’s important to remember there are two types of categories you will have on your site.

1. Top level categories
2. Sub categories.

I recommend you try to limit the number of top level categories to no more than six. The reason I suggest this, is it will keep your site looking tidy and well organized.

Once you have decided on the six main categories for your website, start placing each one of your ideas into one of the six Top level categories, these will eventually be your sub categories.

Your Sub categories will be where you place your individual posts, I never place posts directly in a top level category.

Choosing Your Domain Name.

When you are deciding on the domain name for your website, your are basically summing up your site in a single word.

That’s why choosing a domain name which is in alignment with your vision and purpose is paramount.

I recently wrote a post titled Choosing The Right Domain Name For Your Church Website, which goes into much greater detail on choosing a domain name, But just to add some quick pointers, you could consider choosing a domain name that is…

1. Keyword Optimized and Specific.
2. The name of your current ministry or church.
3. Specific to your local area.
4. Or
5. Specific to your targeted audience, ie; age gender, nationality etc…

Once you are happy in your domain name decision, you will now have to choose a domain name registrar to purchase your domain name from, Currently I am using Godaddy.com

Important; Make sure you check the history of your desired domain name. You can do that by using the Wayback Machine.

Choosing A Suitable Web Host.

Web Hosting can, and does play a major role in the success of your online endeavors, but with web hosting being one of the most competitive industries on the net you can get some absolute bargains when deciding on your webhost.

Some factors for you to consider when deciding on which web host you will use could be…

1. Price, you may be suprised how ridiculously cheap a good web host can be, how does $2.00 a month sound?
2. Support, I suggest and recomend you only choose a webhost who will provide you with 24/7 support. You never know when you will need to contact your web host.
3. Software, Does your web host supply you with any software to help you build your website, or track and measure the traffic to your site.
4. The control panel, I personally like to use cpanel I find it very easy to use and navigate my way around.
5. How much storage and bandwidth is available?
6. and…
7. How many Domain names and databases can you have on your web hosting account?

Currently this site is hosted with Webhostingpad.com which costs me around $3.00 a month.

You can pick up some web hosting plans for as little as $2.00 a month, and although a plan like this will probably need to be upgraded at some stage in the future, depending on the size of your site and the traffic you are getting, you can certainly sign up for a plan like this and save yourself a heap of money when your getting started.

You may even find that you will never have to upgrade your plan, and you will also be able to set up multiple sites with these accounts, so each one of your pastors can have their very own blog if they choose to.

Once you have your domain name and hosting sorted you will then need to decide on your site software.

The Building Blocks For Your Website.

There are tons of ways you can build a website these days, for example, You can set up your sites the old fashion way of creating a .html website and upload your web pages manually.

I don’t recommend you do this unless you are building a small static website and the content will almost never be changed, or you could use a CMS (Content Management System) for hosting your web content.

There are a few popular options available, the ones that I know of are Wordpress Drupal and Joomla,

I have only ever used Wordpress so I can’t give you any advice, opinion or help with the other website platforms.

The reason I decided to use Wordpress is because I heard very early on in my online education that Wordpress was the leader in blogging platforms, and, it has probably the biggest online community that supports the software.

Everything I will teach you about setting up your websites ( well for now at least) will be about Wordpress.

Wordpress is free to use, and the amount of free themes and plugins available online will simply astound you. so if your interested in following me on this site I recommend you use Wordpress.

How Will Your Site Look?

Start getting an idea of what you want your site to look like, what functions do you want your site to have, how easy will your site be to navigate around.

What color scheme do you want for your site? start surfing the web and bookmark any sites that you particuarly like the look of.

Always keep in mind your end user and remember, you want to make it as easy as possible for your information to be found.

Have a look at your favorite websites for ideas you can use when deciding on how you want your own site to look and function.

Some things to take notice of are, the sidebar positions and the location of the navigation tools, ask yourself, what are the functions that you find particuarly useful when visiting a website?

As I said before, there are literally countless themes for Wordpress freely available online. You can find plenty of great looking themes for free, or if you prefer you can buy a Premium theme, you could even have your own theme created specifically for your needs.

I suggest you use a free theme to start with, until you become familiar with your website and the different functions that are available, changing themes can be as simple as a couple of mouse clicks, but this can also be a time consuming exercise, depending on how much customization you do to your themes code.

Im sure you will find a free theme that will be suitable for your churches website.

Just a quick note when choosing your theme, in most cases you can easily change the images in the header, so if you find a theme that has everything you want, but you don’t like the header image, you may still be able to use it after you have made a couple of simple changes.

Wordpress Plugins.

Plugins are another important consideration when building your site, I won’t go into too much about plugins here, but I will mention that plugins help to extend the functionality of your Wordpress site, basically a plugin is a piece of software or code that plugs into your existing website.( more about plugins later)

Pages, Categories, Posts and Tags.

Deciding on your pages, categories, posts and tags will bring us back to one of our initial tasks of organizing and mapping out our ideas, When building your site with Wordpress you have the option of choosing either a page or a post, firstly let me clarify what the difference is between a page and a post,

Basically a page is used for content you do not intend on updating, for example I use pages for legal pages, privacy, terms, contact, ect…where a post is used for content that would be regularly added to your site and is relevant to the specific category topic you are writing about.

You can also organize your content with the use of tags, these are great if you have content that may suite more that one category, I like to keep my articles category specific, but I may use a couple of tags to describe what my article is about.

I only recommend using a couple of tags, at the most three per post, as you can be seen as keyword stuffing your content if you go overboard with tags and it does make finding specific content easier if your using specific tags for each post.

Building A Database For Your Online Ministry

Depending on what you want to use your website for, you may want to build a database of people you can contact on a regular basis.

Lets say for example you want to build a blog about Christian based business, and you are looking to send out a bi weekly or monthly newsletter with tips, scriptures that you find could relate to a kingdom based business or specific products that you may have, you could try sending out your emails using your regular email client, but what happens when your database begins to grow into the thousands of subscribers?

You can do this manually by adding contacts to your email address book and build your list this way, or you can automate the process and use what is known as an auto responder.

You can use an auto responder to send out bulk emails without the fear of being labeled as spam, or send emails on a sequential time period based on the settings you set up.

I use Aweber.com for my preferred Auto responder.

And finally To Wrap It Up…

Social Interaction And Creating Relationships.

With sites like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter becoming increasingly popular it is important that you consider taking advantage of these mediums as a way of getting known and generating traffic back to your website.

A great use of these sites is for posting and responding to prayer requests and testimonies, For instance, just the other day I saw a prayer request go out on Facebook and within a few minutes there were at least five people responding to the post. It’s also useful for building a sense of fellowship, you can really create a feeling of community with the use of these sites.

If you want to build an online ministry you must start using these sites. No question about it.

So there you have it, The entire process from idea to traffic in a fully laid out plan for you to use to start building your site.

Hopefully I have explained this in a way that you can begin mapping out your own website, in a logical and well structured manor for you to easily follow along. If there is anything you feel I may have missed or something I haven’t explained clearly please leave a comment.

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