Websites - The church / parish website and website management software are becoming one of the most important needs of a church marketing plan and forms the basis of marketing the church / parish. It is often where parish information is initially found.
The website is often one of the first places that potential families and parishioners get an overall feel and basic appreciation of the potential for their involvement in parish life.
Creating a Website - Background
Investigation in this area is critical.
The church will need expertise to create and then continually update a good website.
The initial construction of the website may come from staff, IT skilled parishioners, school IT staff or from outside consultants.
The continual updating would best be done within the parish. In-servicing staff for making these updates would be money well spent.
An option, I have found very beneficial, follows.
Management Software
Another option is to have the website embedded in to management software which allows for management of the site. This takes the site beyond the static and into the realm of continual fluid development – Web 2.0.
The expense of this option is not considerable and with negotiation within the field a reasonable monthly cost would be expected. I would suggest speaking with trusted others in deciding on the businesses offering this support. (See ‘Website Management Software Sample’ in 'Internet Applications...' chapter for a specific example.)
This software allows for various detailed reports of website usage. It could include:
• the whereabouts in the world of visitors to your site
• number of webpages they visited
• the content viewed from webpages and applications they visited
• where they entered and exited the website
• who is exploring your site, through IP (Internet Protocol) addresses
• the browsers they used to link to your website
• any commercial activities you may have as part of your website, etc.
This allows for the non-IT expert to update the website regularly, from uploading photos, literature items, to adding webpages, blogs, galleries of photos and videos, etc.
There are numerous other capacities depending on the management software.
More detail on the necessities of Websites for Churches and Website Management Software to successfully marketing the church may be found in the e-book: Church Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (2nd ed) 2010 by Bryan Foster.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Church Marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
To gain higher positioning at various search engines, church marketing personnel need various methods of SEO (Search Engine Optimization / Optimisation).
Website Viewers
Some churches and parishes aren't really interested in having their website visited from people all over the world. These worshipping communities are more interested in their local congregations. For these people SEOs are not needed.
Various communities might like their website to be easily accessible to people from various parts of their particular country but not necessarily beyond their borders. This allows for people transferring to their parish to preview what their parish has to offer. A suggestion for these communities would be to select a domain name which ends in their countries code e.g. United Kingdom .uk, for Australia .au, etc.
Other communities may be interested in having their church and their website open worldwide. SEOs would likely suit these churches.
Suggestions for SEO Improvement
Some ways I have found which I believe help with Search Engine Optimization are:
* The Domain name includes the church / parish name and suburb.
* Key Words such as the church / parish name are regularly used throughout the site, particularly in titles / headings, first sentence and last sentence on each webpage.
* Each webpage within the website would highlight something different about the parish and hence also include other key words associated both with the parish name / suburb and that webpage's emphasis.
These other Key Words may be: sacrament, parishioner, visitor, Baptism, Marriage, mass times, contact, parish priest, priests, parish kit, open day, school or welfare groups within the parish, etc.
* Each Blog's title, first and last sentences would include key words associated with that individual blog‟s message and that it eventuated from your parish.
*The more links coming to your website from other sources, particularly .gov, .edu and .org the better. Having other sites point to your website helps SEO i.e. having other sites have your Domain / URL linked live on their website.
However, it is best not to swap links with others of similar level e.g. .org. That is, if each site has the other‟s site linked from their site, this usually causes it to neutralize the impact for both sites.
Yet swapping these links may improve traffic to your site, just not higher SEO.
* Include links within your own site to various other webpages on your site.
* Another way of achieving the links from other sites may be achieved by developing various Blogs elsewhere which include the link to your website. (More on this in Blogs later.)
* Be careful not to overdo all these links and key words as search engines may penalize you for being overambitious in gaining notice for your website.
* Age of the website. Older sites have more credibility. Develop your website as soon as possible.
* Update your site regularly. A fresh, updated site is appealing to both visitors and for SEO.
These suggestions come from Church Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (2nd ed), 2010, by Bryan Foster
Website Viewers
Some churches and parishes aren't really interested in having their website visited from people all over the world. These worshipping communities are more interested in their local congregations. For these people SEOs are not needed.
Various communities might like their website to be easily accessible to people from various parts of their particular country but not necessarily beyond their borders. This allows for people transferring to their parish to preview what their parish has to offer. A suggestion for these communities would be to select a domain name which ends in their countries code e.g. United Kingdom .uk, for Australia .au, etc.
Other communities may be interested in having their church and their website open worldwide. SEOs would likely suit these churches.
Suggestions for SEO Improvement
Some ways I have found which I believe help with Search Engine Optimization are:
* The Domain name includes the church / parish name and suburb.
* Key Words such as the church / parish name are regularly used throughout the site, particularly in titles / headings, first sentence and last sentence on each webpage.
* Each webpage within the website would highlight something different about the parish and hence also include other key words associated both with the parish name / suburb and that webpage's emphasis.
These other Key Words may be: sacrament, parishioner, visitor, Baptism, Marriage, mass times, contact, parish priest, priests, parish kit, open day, school or welfare groups within the parish, etc.
* Each Blog's title, first and last sentences would include key words associated with that individual blog‟s message and that it eventuated from your parish.
*The more links coming to your website from other sources, particularly .gov, .edu and .org the better. Having other sites point to your website helps SEO i.e. having other sites have your Domain / URL linked live on their website.
However, it is best not to swap links with others of similar level e.g. .org. That is, if each site has the other‟s site linked from their site, this usually causes it to neutralize the impact for both sites.
Yet swapping these links may improve traffic to your site, just not higher SEO.
* Include links within your own site to various other webpages on your site.
* Another way of achieving the links from other sites may be achieved by developing various Blogs elsewhere which include the link to your website. (More on this in Blogs later.)
* Be careful not to overdo all these links and key words as search engines may penalize you for being overambitious in gaining notice for your website.
* Age of the website. Older sites have more credibility. Develop your website as soon as possible.
* Update your site regularly. A fresh, updated site is appealing to both visitors and for SEO.
These suggestions come from Church Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (2nd ed), 2010, by Bryan Foster
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
e-Book Helping to Bring People Back to Church
The Catholic Leader newspaper, the leading Church newspaper in Australia, this weekend featured the new Church Marketing e-Book by Bryan Foster in its hardcopy edition.
The Church Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (2nd ed), 2010, was released earlier this year.
Fr Dan Ryan PP and Sonya Slater, Parish Administrator, from the Surfers Paradise Parish on the Gold Coast, Australia, have bought multiple copies (10) of the e-book for their parish pastoral council.
The Catholic Leader featured Fr Dan Ryan's and Sonya Slater's thoughts on the e-book and how they plan to use it.
“I find Bryan Foster’s new e-book will help considerably with marketing our Catholic parishes in the modern world. I am especially drawn to the chapters on Parish – School relationships and the uses of the internet, in particular the parish website,” said Fr Dan Ryan, Parish Priest.
“From relationships with our schools to communicating with our parishioners through to web design and blogs, this e-book gives strategies for growth opportunities within our parish,”said Sonya Slater, Parish Administrator.
“I would highly recommend this e-book to other parishes as a tool which could be used in groups or by the Parish Priest or Parish Administrator.”
The e-book is available from either of Bryan's websites at CPM and SMA. Or by contacting Bryan through email at bryan.foster@optusnet.com.au and making other arrangements.
The Church Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (2nd ed) by Bryan Foster was this weekend featured in Australia's foremost Church newspaper, The Catholic Leader.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Blogs Essential for Church Marketing Plan
Blogs are becoming a very popular form of interactive, digital communication by internet users and hence have an important part to play for church marketing personnel. 'Blog' is the commonly used abbreviation for 'Weblog'.
Content may be brief or extensive. Blogs are used to allow interaction between the website's administrator/s and the website's visitors.
Churches could benefit considerably through the effective use of Blogs. These are ideal avenues to promote your church / parish and the various messages you wish to place in the public or private domain.
These days so many people wish to be valued through their involvement and feedback - blogs are one highly regarded avenue for them to achieve this.
Blog Posts
The website's / blog's administrators write a Blog Post (comment, information, news, challenge etc.) and publish this to their website's blog page. Blog Posts may also include photos, videos, audios and other graphic presentations.
The visitor to your website's blog page would then have the option to comment on your blog post's content.
Blog Posts may be of any length and literary style depending on the target audience. However, in most cases, brevity is the norm in these days of mass communication overload. Think newspaper article lengths for most blog posts. As a general guide I work on 200-300 words per blog post.
You need to make sure that the administrator has the option to accept or reject all comments posted in response to the blog post. If the blog post is available to the public, you need to be prepared to receive all sorts of comments, including spam (mainly advertising links). Unsuitable comments would then be deleted.
Church Marketers could use blogs in two primary ways:
• Parish website Blog
• External Blog sites, which you would point (link) back to your parish website.
Church Marketing Blogs are discussed in detail in the Church Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (2nd ed) 2010 by Bryan Foster.
Due to the enormous growth and interest in blogs, the church marketing personnel need to avail themselves of this unique form of internet church marketing.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
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