Despite web development and social media advancements, some things will not change. These unchanging principles help us keep some important things in sight. In an earlier post, Engage, Respond and Answer, we explored the principle of engaging people. In this post, we look at another Online Presence 101 Principle: Basic Information. The number of rebrands and freshening up content doesn't change the fact that information is still important. ... Read More
Online Presence 101 Throwback – Engage, Respond, Answer
"Having an interest in how churches leverage tech could've made me more sensitive." That's one of the thoughts I had after an experience with a church online. This experience? Because I couldn't find their website I searched for them on Facebook. I asked for service times until 363 days later. No kidding. Two days shy of a year, I got a response. I chose "response" because it wasn't an answer to my simple question: "What are your service times?" ... Read More
Switching To Long-Form Writing
If you have been around ChurchMag for a while, you may have noticed a changing emphasis in the last year on different kinds of writing. When ChurchMag was in its hay day of 2-4 posts a day, sometimes many more than that, we were getting a lot of short-form articles. If you are dedicated to looking at our content daily, we still have that once or twice a week. But we have been switching to long-form content more consistently. We want to be an authority to writing, and that doesn't happen in ... Read More
ChurchMag 2019 [Podcast #244]
You can read a personal note from Eric, here, as we discuss big changes coming to ChurchMag this year. Do you have any comments or questions? We would love to hear from you. :) ... Read More
Creating Content [Podcast #230]
This week on the podcast we talk about the process of creating content. We talk about the process of creating content here at ChurchMag, but also the general concept of content creation. We hope you enjoy the conversation and become a part of your content creation journey. ... Read More
ChurchMag TBT: Jeremy Smith
["ChurchMag TBT" is a 'Throw Back Thursday' on all things ChurchMag. Inspired by an upcoming ChurchMag podcast episode, we are looking back at personal -- and public -- throwbacks of ChurchMag.] My very first article on ChurchMag is titled Facebook Timeline: How This Will Impact Ministry. Ah... looking at this article, I notice so many different things. First off, I actually wrote the article nearly 7 years ago. If you look at all of my articles on ChuchMag, you will find older ones from when ... Read More
The Major Issue With Blogging in the Church at the Moment
Blogging has really evolved a lot over time, especially since I first got into blogging about seven years ago. I remember following lots of blogs via Google Reader and finding great ideas and advice from people who were all running their own blogs. More recently though we’ve seen the move towards “professional blogging” and now businesses. The personal blogs have almost all but died out and I believe that is a shame. ... Read More
The Shift From Comments, To No Comments, To Comment On Facebook
In days of old, you know, when blogging started, the number of visitors and views mattered most. The next important thing was the number of comments. For many, comments are an important way of measuring engagement and success. An important part of the engagement. Over the years, we've had 'successful' bloggers and marketers emphasize their importance. Then, some of the same, sang a different tune. They disabled comments on their blogs. After some time, commenting made a comeback. Now, there ... Read More
Blogger Guidelines for Blog Repost Permission Requests
Blogging is a very difficult medium to do effectively. Simply getting your ideas onto a website is not easy. Then you have to make sure you work hard to capture an audience, market well so people see your content, and optimize your blog with SEO so Google clearly sees it and posts it to the top of certain web searches. (This is so important, we dedicated a 1,140 word post to the topic of marketing a blog post as well as a "what next?" after you write your blog article.) One quick way to do this ... Read More
What’s Your Church Blogging Strategy? [Podcast #172]
This week on the podcast, we start off talking about blogging style, but in the end, we talk more about blogging strategy. Blogging as a hobby, blogging as a business, or blogging for your church, let's (mostly) talk about blogging strategy! Join the conversation by using #cmagcast or email us at [email protected] ... Read More