Media Outreach

The number of visitors on your website relates directly to the number of visitors through your church’s front doors.  For as important as eye-popping graphics are in generating initial excitement among your visitors, even more important is getting your visitors to return time and time again.

To state the obvious, not every page on your website can be the most compelling material that keeps people coming back.  Your youth pastor’s bio page might contain a great story about the mishap with the shaving cream balloons, but more than likely, the overall story will remain the same, with only a few details that change.  Once it’s been read, people aren’t likely to return time after time to see if his birthplace has changed.

So, take a moment and think about your personal homepage.

• Why do you choose to start your internet browsing experience there, day after day?
• It is probably a safe bet that your homepage is your homepage because it has something that makes it especially useful or relevant to your purposes when you get online.
• I work as a technical support rep – it is crucial that I am aware of emerging technologies, new software, and other information relevant to my work.  For those reasons, my homepage is a blog that features regular updates about the subjects I need to know.

Thinking for a moment, you can probably pick three or four reasons that people are part of your church – the things that keep them coming back each week.

• Why not highlight those aspects on your website?
• Is your church full of socialites? Post the latest social news on your homepage.
• Are your congregants feverishly devoted to besting each other in a game of name that scripture? Post interesting tidbits about a different verse of the week.
• The most important thing is to make your website the online destination for whatever it is that your church does best (and making it easy for people to find that information on your website).

Many churches today have a variety of different web venues – from pages on MySpace and Facebook, to the official church website.  Resources like Share This make it easy for you to synchronize your MySpace with the latest update on your website.  More importantly, by cross-promoting, you increase your website’s visibility and dramatically increase the probability that you will get new visitors on your site.

For other ways of highlighting and promoting your latest site updates, ask your Account Manager about adding our latest tool, the Inside Page Dynamic Sidebar, to your site.