Kingdom View of SEO

The Big-Picture, Kingdom View of SEO

This year, shortly after the launch of the new Christian SEO Guys blog, Kurt published an epic post titled The High Stakes of SEO for the Kingdom of God that conveys the big picture of why search engine marketing is critically important to all Christian churches and ministries. He wrote:

When a young woman searches for ”unplanned pregnancy” in the search engines, do you want your Christian pregnancy center to show up at the top of the search results of planned parenthood? …

People’s eternal salvation may depend on SEO. It’s a big claim, but take a look at the screenshot to the right. Those are the search results for “church near Colorado City, AZ”. Three out of the top four results (including the top two results) are Mormon or Jehovah’s Witnesses churches.

A lot of people have the misperception that search marketing is all about organizations acting in their own self interest. It’s businesses trying to improve their rankings so they can get more customers than their competitors. It’s First Baptist Church trying to get ahead of First Presbyterian Church so they can get more members.

We need to have a bigger, kingdom view of SEO

• What difference would it make in your community if the top 10 churches listed in Google were Christian vs cults?
• What difference would it make in your community if the top 10 counseling centers, pregnancy centers, food banks, life coaches, and more were Christian vs not Christian?

Now multiply that time millions of communities around the globe.

• What difference would it make if the top 10 search listings for “Who is Jesus?” were Christian vs not Christian?

Now multiply that times thousands of related phrases and hundreds of languages.

4 Action Steps To Advance 

the Kingdom View of SEO

We have a real opportunity to spread the gospel and advance the kingdom of God through search engines. To do that, though, we need to take action and seize this opportunity. Here are 4 things each one of us can do

1) Raise awareness. We need to help more and more Christians understand the critical importance of search engines. Talk about it regularly with your church leaders. Blog about it, tweet about it, Facebook about it. Share articles showing how Christian organizations are changing lives after people find them in search engines.

2) Optimize your own sites. Do your part to make sure your Christian church, school, ministry, or business is as prominent as possible in search engines. That’s probably not going to be easy. You’re probably going to have to learn a whole lot about SEO or get someone to help you with it.

3) Connect with others … who recognize the importance of SEO on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Linked in. Help others by sharing their content, commenting on their posts, guest blogging and publishing guest blog posts on your blog.

4) Share your insight. Search marketing is constantly changing. Search engines are changing their algorithms, developers are creating new SEO tools, SEOs are experimenting with new techniques. Instead of hoarding knowledge, let’s help one another optimize better.

That’s what we’re trying to accomplish. That’s the motivation behind Christian SEO Guys.

What do you think of this bigger, kingdom worldview of SEO?

Which of the 4 steps above do you feel motivated to act on?

Taken from: http://blog.ourchurch.com/  Thanks a lot to Paul Steinbrueck who is co-founder and CEO of OurChurch.Com, elder of CypressMeadows.org, husband, father of 3, blogger. You can follow him on Twitter at @PaulSteinbrueck

Satan Hates Life / Satan odia la vida

Satan Hates Life

En el año 2007 el ministerio Lifechurch.tv llevó a cabo una campaña publicitaria bien agresiva con el eslogan: Satan Hates Life. Les comparto la información de la creativa estrategia de Gospel Marketing. Está en inglés!

Lifechurch.tv launched a new billboard campaign recently that's pretty creative. I've seen billboards for churches before and I've liked, well, none of them. This might change my mind. The time spent behind the wheel is definitely a great time to try and set people's mind on Christ, as they drive (hopefully) without too many distractions. I've just never seen it done in a way that was either thought-provoking or non-threatening. Check out the whole campaign.

Church Saves $268,000 By Going Green

The First Baptist Church in Springdale, Ark., which has about 6,000 in attendance on Sunday mornings, implemented an energy savings plan in the last year and managed to save $268,000. The plan involves simple, practical things like shutting off the lights, powering down computers at night and turning down the thermostat over night.

"We tell our [staff]: Hey, act like you're at home," says Ben Mayes, the church's executive leader of finance, explaining how simple the changes are. "I think biblically, you're called to be good stewards of what God blesses you with, and I think that's the underlying reason why you do it."

A few things we can learn:

• They partnered with a company called Energy Education. Churches partnering with things can be a huge win and a great show of what God calls us all to.
• They focused on two types of stewardship. This is an issue about the environment and the economy. This encourages people who care about each of these things. (Although, of course, people will still find a way to get upset.)
• They taught. They did this, but they let their members and other church know about it to spread the word that they can help too.
• They made sacrifices. The thermostat settings changed throughout the week (but not on Sunday), and people cut back. This helps make the goal personal and, in a small way, encourages people to live a life of sacrifice.

In the end it's easy money saved in a tight economy that can be used for something more important. And it communicates your church's priorities. Remembering to turn off the lights to do more missions--that's good marketing. (via Monday Morning Insight)

Do you want to kow strategies about Green Marketing, visit: http://thegreenmarketing.blogspot.com/

Thou Shall Twitter in Church

“Thou Shall Not Twitter in Church.” Says who?!

I haven’t seen that anywhere in the Bible. 

But I have seen Twitter in the Bible:  

“Like a swallow, like a crane, so I twitter…” 

(Isaiah 38:14 NAS). 

In all seriousness, there are many people who believe you shouldn’t tweet in church. As a pastor, I would say, “Get Your Tweet On!” As a matter of fact, I say “Tweet and tweet often!”

Many times “church people” can look at a particular methodology or technology as a negative thing. Technology is basically neutral; it’s what you do with it that allows it to have positive or negative implications. I know there are some varying opinions about texting and utilizing social media during church. Personally, I use the YouVersion Bible app on my iPhone during church and it has this great option of sharing scripture instantly with the Twitter world. Not only can you share scripture with YouVersion, but also any person sitting in any church service around the globe can share thoughts, points and notes from sermons as they are happening.

Today, we live in more shared world than ever as information access and connectedness just happens. The beauty of this world is that people can engage with God, engage with their pastor and share pieces of those engagement with the world, all at the same time. There are entire real, living, breathing online church services where online congregants share information throughout their service. These services are just as real and God encountering as a physical building. Again, I say “Tweet and tweet often!”

Here are 5 Reasons To Twitter During Church:

• 1. You have the opportunity to be a real-time extension of your pastor’s voice while he or she communicates God’s Word. You and your pastor can do some tag team teaching while you are being fed all at the same time.
• 2. If the pastor shares something that moves you, inspires you or changes your life, there is a good chance it will have the same impact on the lives of some of your Twitter followers as well.
• 3. When Jesus said “Go into all the world and preach the gospel,” ‘all the world’ applies to the Internet world, as well as the Twitter world. Do your part by going into all the Twitter world, tweeting the good news.
• 4. You will have a stored database of your compelling thoughts and notes from your favorite sermons. Use a hashtag to keep up with the information that you share. We could even implement a universal Twitter In Church hashtag. Any suggestions?
• 5. Many times people suffer from (SADD) Sermon Attention Deficit Disorder. So instead of just wandering off into space, simply wander off into the space of the World Wide Web. It’s better use of your time tweeting great thoughts instead of drawing on the back of offering envelops.

Some people, including pastors, get upset and complain about these techie people being a distraction when they are using their mobile phone Bible and tweeting in church. I think doodling on the offering envelopes is more distracting. Hmm... I haven’t seen a big push to remove those offering envelopes from the pew.

Thou shall Twitter in church! Remember God’s omnipresence applies to Twitter as well… get your tweet on!

By Scott Williams, Guest Blogger of churchmarketingsucks.com

Infografía: Twitter en Papel

Twitter es todo un fenómeno en Internet, el cual ha llegado a tener un registro de 300 mil nuevos usuarios al día y una enorme cantidad de búsquedas y tweets, por lo cual te traemos esta infografía con los números hasta ahora de Twitter.

¿Y si cambiáramos la palabra USUARIOS por la palabra ALMAS?