Having a website, a space on the internet, is vital to any church in this day and age but it is only one part that makes up a much wider mix of your communications strategy. The notion that if you build it and they will come is a misconception that many have, with so many websites to access, people need to know that yours exists and you also need to keep it relevant so that they want to keep visiting.
There are a number of ways in which you can make your website noticeable but you first to need to consider who your target audience is. Once you understand who you are trying to engage with, the task of promoting your website and making sure that it contains relevant information will be clearer.
Below are some universal course of actions that will help you in promoting your website:
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Search engines, such as Google have become increasingly integrated into our daily lives, however just creating a website does not automatically imply that you will be found in searches. On our website tips section you will find a number of techniques that will help you to optimise your search ranking.
Social Media - Just having a website in today's media saturated culture isn’t enough, to really get your message out there, you need to have a presence on the platforms that are being used everyday by those you are trying to connect with. Social media is also a great way to create backlinks to your website. Think about ways that you can encourage people to you website, for example, if you are running an Alpha or CAP course, then make sure you point people to your website in order to find out more, or to enter their details on a form placed on the website.
Email Newsletters - Our website platform allows you to easily add forms to your webpages, these are a great way of capturing contact details, which you can then use to email out any news or updates. This will help to remind people to revisit your website so as to find out current, up-to date information.
Word-of-Mouth - All the above aspects are great tactics that you can use in order to gain more visitors but each of those website visitors can help contribute to spreading news about your church with those in their own circles of friends and peers. Word-of-mouth is possibly one of the strongest methods of increasing your website visitors and increasing awareness about your church. The best way to get people to do this online is by creating ‘shareable content’. Whether it be on your website or on your social media pages, creating something unique that encourages people to share it will help to increase your audience levels. Our website platform allows you to add social media share buttons to your website to aid this, but you can also create content directly onto social media, containing a link to your website in order for people to find out more information.
These are just a few tips to help you make the most out of your website, however, our team of website experts are happy to help you further if you have any queries, so please don’t hesitate to contact us, our help and advice is free.
You can call our team on 0121 651 1120, or email hello@churchedit.co.uk