The Summer Games is fast approaching and are you still looking for a sermon series to preach on this occasion? Every preacher knows that there is a need to be relevant in his preaching and to make the message hit home, it must be abreast with the current events. You don't need to be an expert in Christian marketing to know this and for this reason; we have made available the Go for the Goal: Becoming a Spiritual Champion Sermon Series CD. Here are some of the advantages of preaching this sermon series:

1. Impeccable timing with the Summer Games - The Go for the Goal: Becoming a Spiritual Champion Sermon Series CD is can be preached in tandem with the Sumer Games which will start on July 27 and end on August 12. You will be preaching the most relevant and most up to date sermon series and for sure, this will have a great impact to your church outreach and congregation because they can absolutely relate to what you are talking about.

2. Leverage the media attention with your preaching - Preachers are always on the lookout for outreach ideas. The Sumer Games is expected to have great media coverage and to be able to ride on this wave will be a great advantage to your out reaches efforts. While your hearers watch the games on TV, they will remember your preaching on the topic. And do you know what this will amount to? Impact!

3. Solid Scriptural base - This sermon series is based on Hebrews 12:1-13, which is a very solid springboard to preach a series of messages on becoming spiritual champions. From July 27 to August 12, you will have a ready message that will encourage your congregation like a huge athletic team.

If you will order this sermon series, you will have in your repertoire a toolset that will inspire your hearer to have that champion mind-set. They will have that enthusiasm that will mobilize them to win the world for the Kingdom. So what are you waiting for? Order your copy of the Go for the Goal: Becoming a Spiritual Champion Sermon Series CD or contact Pathmaker Marketing for more information. 

A prayer wall is a web application where you can conveniently post prayers and pray for others as well. It’s so easy to use and the convenience will put prayer chain to shame. Updates on past prayers are easy to do; you don’t need to send hundreds of emails to keep people informed. Talk about Church outreach ideas, this is the best there is. Here is how to use it:        

1. Post your prayer request like a tweet - The best way to post a prayer is to make it concise so that those who will pray for you will not have a hard time remembering your request. Added to that, there are also details that you want to intentionally miss out especially if they are too personal. You can think of this as a tweet except that it’s a prayer.

2. Post a prayer for others too- Don’t just pray for yourself, pray for others as well. Intercession is a virtue that is highly encouraged in the church and what better way to help your brethren than to pray for them and encourage others to pray for them too? 

3. Avoid correcting the prayers of others  - If you disagree with other peoples’ prayer request, there is no point in correcting them. You have to remember that the prayer wall is a public environment and making a public correction to someone else’s prayer is just too insulting.

 4. Avoid gossips in your prayers requests - It’s easy to fall into this trap. What was intended to be a genuine concern that needs to be prayed for progresses into a gossip. If you think that a request is a gossip in the making, you can flag it as such. The admins of the church website will then remove it from the prayer requests and decide if it is indeed a gossip. Just like other Outreach Ideas, this too has to be protected from misuse.

5. Truly pray - If you want to pray for a request, all you need to do is press the “pray” button and the number of those who prayed will increase. On the downside, you can actually just press the button without actually praying and the person on the other side will actually believe that the number of those who prayed are actually a lot. This just defeats the purpose of a prayer wall and should be avoided. We have to remember that we are accountable to God and dishonesty just doesn’t pay.

 A prayer wall is just a web app that makes the job of prayer warriors a little easy. This will encourage more prayers and a great way to see your ministry being fruitful. All you need to do get in touch with Pathmaker Marketing and have it installed in your Church's website or ministry blog. If you have any other Church Outreach Ideas, we would like to hear about it too.

5 STEPS TO SUCCESSFUL BLOGGING

Blogging is an excellent way to use the Internet to promote you and your business, church or charity.  As with any “tool,” however, to be most beneficial it has to be used properly.  Below are five basic thoughts you need to keep in mind when using blogging as a effective internet marketing tool.

 1)      Write About What You Know About—in Detail!

Blogging helps you establish yourself as an expert in your field.  As a result, you will want to concentrate on making sure your posts demonstrate your areas of expertise.  The key is to share in-depth on a particular topic rather than addressing a lot of topics without sharing any real information.  The catch phrase here is “Depth is more important than Breadth.” Be as articulate as you can, because for many prospective clients, your blog will be your first impression to them, and you want to demonstrate your areas of expertise.

If writing content is a real challenge for you, you may want to opt to have someone ghost write your posts, either someone on your staff with more flair for copywriting, or by retaining a professional. You could constent to be interviewed on your topics of expertise, so your specific thoughts come through in the final copy.

 2)      Be Genuine—Not Promotional!

This is not a time to “hype” yourself and/or your company.  Share real information regarding the topic you have chosen.  For example, if you are operating a sporting goods store and are blogging about the five best flies for trout fishing in June, elaborate on the various merits on the different flies, not on why everyone should come to your store to purchase them!  If your blog is a ministry blog, then make your outreach real, not just hype or hyperbole, If you share valuable and valid information in your posts, people will be drawn back to your blog and, eventually, to your website or online store, or even to the phone meet you in person and get more information—and, hopefully, the five flies too!

3)      You need to be Consistent—and if possible, Prolific!

Blogging is often like exercise—we know we should do it, and have every intention of doing it—when we can get around to it!  Also like exercising, it is only truly beneficial when we do it consistently.  A minimum of one to two blog posts per week will give you the kind of content quantity you need, but if you can ramp up to three-four a week, that would be even better. In other words, be consistent first, then increase your volume over time. One rule of thumb to consider is that Google will start to notice your blog after about 50 posts, and then revisit you for updates. Once your blog is initially spydered and ranked, you can train Google to return more frequently, by posting new content consistently.

4)      Choose the Right Blogging Tool

There are two basic blog services you can use—fee-based tools like Compendium and free blog tools like WordPress.  While the latter has the upside of being free, the former may be far more beneficial for your needs.  Understand that a major goal of blogging is to win “Page Rankings” in Google, Yahoo, Bing (and lesser Search Engines) on your target terms.

It's important to remember that tools like WordPress, Blogger, Typepad may require you to manually search engine optimize your posts to puruse your page rankings, while a Premier Blogging Service like Compendium is engineered from the ground up to optimize your posts for targeting  keywords.  Based on return on investment in getting you search engine rankings results, Compendium is generally a better blogging tool than WordPress, even though it costs, because of the fact that it helps you search engine optimize your blog posts while writing in order to succeed at getting your desired page ranking results. In other words, a free blog tool is a great deal, only if you are getting ranked in the search engines, or you can generate readership independently. 

In truth, our company uses both, with Compendium being the premier blogging service tool we lean on most, and consider to the best blogging service out there, while WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, LiveJournal and others are also used frequently or judiciously, when budget or other reasons need to be carefully considered. See a side by side comparison I did recently on the topic recently.

5)      Pick the Right Terms to Blog About.

Using the right search terms by targeting keywords in your business or ministry blog posts will result in increased page rankings in the search engines.  This is accomplished by determining your winnable keywords via careful and comprehensive keyword research, and then incorporating those words and terms into the text as you write.  You can do this keyword research on your own, using the Google keyword research tool (Google: Google Keyword Tool), which is one of the best keyword research tools to start with. You can also retain a pro services company like Pathmaker, that is adept at the process, to ensure you get it done correctly. Once proper research is done, any company can usually identify a total potential keyword pool of about 1500 terms to pursue. Then you have to rank those terms by winnability: determining their potential for you to win a page one ranking on each of them. Some will be winnable. Others will not be winnable without an enromous budget.

And here's one final bonus step to Successful Blogging:

 
 6)  Protect Your Content

WordPress has a documented habit of just closing down blog sites if they determine that the user has violated their usage standards for one reason or another.  Unfortunately, bloggers often don really know what those “standards” are, nor do they give you the opportunity to change your content to adhere to their prerequisites, once your site is down.  This is one of the hidden little secrets to the free tools out there...you could lose all your content since it's hosted on their servers, not yours.

The best way to protect your content is to install a tool like WordPress on your own web server rather than on theirs.  Then blog away. Your content resides on your own servers, not theirs, and you can rest easier knowing that it's safer.  A simple task, this is truly a worthwhile endeavor as a precautionary measure to protect your content. Obviously, you should always have local PC backups too for all content posted on your company or church blog.

For more assistance with blogging, don't hesitate to call Pathmaker Marketing, LLC in Phoenix, Arizona at 1-623-322-3334, and we'll be happy to help you sort this out further.

            At the request of my Pastor I created a 20 Step program for Marketing our Church on the Internet. To make it as inclusive as possible, I recruited the assistance of Randall Mains, CEO of Pathmaker Marketing LLC. Realizing that the results of our efforts would be beneficial to a number of churches, charities or small companies, I decided to do a 20 part series and place it on the Internet so as many people as possible could benefit!

            I trust that as you read my posts regarding launching your blog, doing comprehensivek keyword research, and SEO-ing your website, that you have come to realize that the Internet really can work for not for profit organizations, and that the Internet is also a pretty good church outreach idea. A church blog is a major part of this, as it as it allows you to be targeting keywords. 

           The next thing I want to discuss with you is how link building serves well as a church, charity, or small business marketing strategy. After all, church marketing 101 teaches us that a church is, in fact, a small business and therefore the Internet business marketing promotions that work for companies work equally well for churches.

            Have you ever noticed that invariably some of the most important things we need to do are also the most time consuming and the most boring? That is exactly the situation with your website and link building! While an excellent way to strengthen your website's rankings in the search engines, the process of link building back links is often laborious at best. 

            “Why,” you may be wondering, “is link building relevant to our church, charity or small business?” 

Actually, there are two significant reasons that you should plan on making link building a part of your core Internet marketing plan. The first is somewhat obvious - - the more listings you have with backlinks to your website, the more opportunities exist for people to find your website in various locations online, thus bringing you qualified visitors. With a dynamite website, each time someone visits your website you have the chance of having them become a visitor to your church, charity or company.

            The second reason deals with the fact that a well-developed and properly implemented link building campaign will increase your page rankings within Google search results. This, of course, is clearly to your advantage, so link building should be an on-going part of your search engine marketing program (to be discussed in a subsequent post), thus allowing your website to be that much more available online.

Your next thought may very well be, “How do we develop a link building battle plan?” Well, there are a number of techniques that you can use. First, get your company placed in as many relevant directories as possible - - national, local, and “niche.” The purpose of this, of course, it to then have your listing in these communities, and get it linked back to your website, driving traffic in your direction from those sourcs.

            Work diligently to ensure that you get linked in relevant areas. To be listed in places just because they are available may be a waste of time and, in some cases, may even be counter-productive. As in any form of marketing, you need to identify your target market and pursue them with your link building efforts and dollars. 

            Next, establish links on relevant blogs, community sites, and forums. These are excellent places to establish your church or charity as a leader in your community for providing services that individuals may be looking for, as you will have the opportunity to interact and dialogue with those individuals who visit the sites, thus making their arrival at your church that much easier. 

            With social media being the latest buzz, it shouldn’t surprise you that you should be incorporating links from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter into your link building rogram as well. In as much as your Facebook account reaches out to untold thousands, the ability to link back from there to your website should prove to be a major hub in your Internet marketing program as well.

            You may have found that there is more to link building than you ever imagined! I trust that you have also discovered what a viable tool this is in your over-all Internet marketing strategy!

Search Engine Optimize Your Website      
                        
            At the request of my Pastor I created a 20 Step program for Marketing our Church on the Internet. To make it as inclusive as possible, I recruited the assistance of Randall Mains of Pathmaker Marketing LLC. Realizing that the results of our efforts would be beneficial to a number of Churches, I decided to do a 20 part series and place it on the Internet so as many people/churches as possible can be Blessed by it!

            To date we have discussed launching a blogging process and doing keyword research. Today, I want to discuss search engine optimization - both what it is and why it is important to you as part of your church marketing program. As we discussed last time, the paradigm shifts in our society mandates that churches utilize small business marketing strategies, and an effective website is an excellent church outreach Idea!

            In a nutshell, SEO is used to receive Page One rankings on Google, Bing and Yahoo which facilitates more people to “click through” and find your website and all that you have to offer. As many people think they know a lot about SEO, there are three myths that I would like to dispel at this point in regard to the topic:

            MYTH #1: As long as you Google your Church Name and come up “#1” you are in fact, search engine optimized.

            The reality is that the major search engines treat your church name as a  "gimme.” As a result, this means that in the realm of search engine optimization, this gives you virtually zero clout! In fact, if you don’t get page one ranking when you type in your church name you have a real problem!

            MYTH #2: Search engine optimization can be achieved quickly!!!

            Actually, nothing could be further from the truth!! It is a long, slow, and sometimes tedious task that leads you to the finish line in this race! There are, as you will learn, several steps involved, each time consuming in their own right. BUT the results are well worth the effort! As you schedule your SEO Program, you will want to allot at least six months to accomplish the task!

            MYTH #3: You can accomplish SEO for Free!

            The confusion in this realm is the fact that visitors come to your site for free, but the competitive nature of SEO mandates that you either hire professionals to achieve the rankings you desire, or that you plan on investing huge amounts of time and energy to accomplish SEO to your satisfaction!

            The myths aside, SEO can be a tremendous boon to the success of your church. If you, through your SEO efforts, you can attain a #1 ranking on a Google search you will get a lot of click through traffic! This may lead to visitors  who will, of course, greatly “enhance the chance” of your church growing!

           Understanding that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of words related to a church, your goal is to make sure that yours shows up for as many of these words as possible when a potential parishioner is searching them, and that is where your keyword research that we discussed in Part II comes into play!

           While the Internet is evolving daily, SEARCH ENGINES is one of the two items that tends to remain constant. Being well positioned allows people to discover exactly what it is that your church has to offer. To better understand this concept, consider the Internet a Super Highway with millions of people zooming along it every day. Your SEO program serves as a  billboard, advising them of what awaits if they will take the “proper exit” and wind up at your place! Unless they can find you, however, they will always be “potential parishioners ” and never “your parishioners!” If you aren’t showing up in searches, you don’t have a Billboard!  The first step is to conduct a keyword research project, which will allow you to find the rigth terms in order to have a website that is optimized!

           As you can see, targeting keywords can lead to more visitors, which strengthens your church outreach. I know this may all seem overwhelming, and would suggest that if you have any questions that you e-mail Randall Mains at randall@pathmakermarketing.net, as he is more of an expert in this realm than even I am.

            At the request of my Pastor I created a 20 Step program for Marketing our Church on the Internet. To make it as inclusive as possible, I recruited the assistance of Randall Mains, CEO of Pathmaker Marketing LLC. Realizing that the results of our efforts would be beneficial to a number of churches, I decided to do a 20 part series and place it on the internet so as many people/churches as possible can be blessed by it!

            In the first installment I mentioned that it would be wise to launch a blogging process. In that, I alluded to the fact that you need to Target Keywords that are winnable, and explained how to do so. The next thing I think you need to concentrate on is doing keyword research.

            Knowing that comprehensive keyword research is the foundation of an effective search engine marketing program will allow you to understand that, basically, you need to “chase down” the people who need the services and programs that your church offers and lead them to your website. The whole idea is to ensure that your church comes up when people type in their search terms.

            You may think that there aren’t all that many words and/or terms, but actually quite the opposite is true. The typical comprehensive keyword search will yield a minimum of 1500 or more keyword variations! Through a variety of filters, you can narrow the number down that you will want to concentrate on regarding your website and your blog posts. The key, of course, is to find “winnable” words, and then prioritize them for your benefit.

            While I certainly can’t list 1500 words/terms here, I will give you an quick example of what I mean, using the top 20 terms found when using Chicago churches as our local example:

churches
bible study
catholic churches
orthodox church
youth ministry
church chicago
church in chicago
willow creek church
willowcreek church
chicago maps
churches chicago
churches in chicago
bill hybels
catholic churches in chicago
catholic churches chicago
baptist churches in chicago
catholic church in chicago
churches chicago il
churches in chicago il
church chicago il

Once you have your list composed, you will want to chose the terms that best describe your ministry, whether it be to teens, seniors, street people or other. These are the terms you want to concentrate on as your church Staff compose their blog posts, and as you “tweak” the copy and contents of your website!

That brings me to my next point - - once you complete your keyword research and acquire your final winnable keyword list the real task has just begun! It will take months - probably six or more - to get you to a point that when an individual types in a term/phrase on your list that your church will come up. Remember I said that this list is the “foundation” of an effective search engine marketing program? While the list is the foundation, the “structure” you will build on it will be all the blog posts that you and your staff write! It is those Church Blogs that will help you acquire page rankings from Google, Yahoo and Bing, and that is what will drive people to your website and eventually your church, making the internet an effective church outreach tool for you! 
                While it may rankle us to have to admit it, “Church Marketing 101” is one of those paradigm shifts that we just need to learn to live with, and Targeting Keywords is one of those internet marketing ideas that will, in fact, allow this to be a viable church outreach idea.

            In closing, I would suggest that you read Part III, as we will deal with SEO - search engine optimization - and how to ensure that your website will, in fact, get Google, Yahoo and Bing page rankings!

          Floyder - - I don't even know what a bloghead is!

          Jim looked pretty pathetic, to say the very least. Somewhat loud, though never obnoxious!, Jim is truly a sensitive soul and that is why the comment that had been leveled at him had been so devastating. It seems that last Sunday, in front of a whole group of people, his pastor slapped him on the back and exclaimed, “Well, Jim, why don’t you head up the committee for Internet presence. After all, you’re the biggest Bloghead in the congregation.”

            “Floyder, will you call Pastor and ask him why he would say something like that about me?”

            His puppy-dog brown eyes made it impossible to say “no,” so I gave Pastor a call. I surmised, and verified, that all Pastor meant was that Jim used Blogging as an Internet Marketing Tool for his business more than anyone else. The fact that “Bloghead” sounds suspiciously like “Blockhead” had made Jim feel like he was being ridiculed, which, of course, was not the case. Finishing up with the call, I explained it to Jim.

            A visual sigh of relief crept across Jim’s face, making it as placid as a crystal clear lake. As I watched, however, the metamorphosis continued, and the placidity was replaced with a look of total confusion. I waited, as I knew another question/ request would be forthcoming.

            “Floyder, is there such a thing as a Church Blog?” indicating by the question that he was accepting Pastor’s offer to head the committee.

            “Certainly, Jim,” I assured him.

            “Well, what does a church Blog about?”

            “Oh,” I explained easily, “there are several ways a church can use a Blog as an outreach tool. They might want to simply employ Christian Blogging to post content that is relevant to members of their congregation. Or they might want to develop their blog into an outreach tool, so that in that case it actually becomes a Ministry Blog.”

            “How would that work?”

            “Well, it could actually take several forms. For example, they might use the Blog as a discussion forum to facilitate small groups discussions on the pastor's weekend sermons.

            “They might also use the blog to feature and highlight the special ministries a church offers their community, such as children's activities, helping the homeless or their outreach to military families.”

            "Or they could use the blog as a vehicle for outreach, discussing subjects that matter the public at large, with a biblical point of view.

            Jim cogitated on what I had said for a while, and then asked,

            “Floyder, should I seek Pathmaker’s help?

            Jim was referring to Pathmaker Marketing, which promotes a Premier Blogging Service for churches (LEARN MORE >>). Jim and I have discussed numerous aspects of Internet Marketing, and, on several occasions, he retained Randall to help him with suggestions.

            “Well, it wouldn’t hurt.”

            Jim smiled and went to a world of his own where he was contemplating his course of action. Me, I was just glad he no longer looked pathetic!

      I marvel at how often clients come to us at Pathmaker Marketing and do not have a firm grasp of exactly what they want us to accomplish for them.  This seems to be as true for those companies who are seeking a small business marketing strategy as those charities who are interested in non-profit fund raising. 
     For whether they are looking for an online marketing tool, church outreach ideas or search engine optimization services, their goals are often murky and poorly defined.  An example would be those who put together an internet ad without having defined how to evaluate the results of the advertisement, or measure its success.
     First, as you develop your online ad you need to know what, exactly, you are expecting it to accomplish for you. 
     There are basically a few strategic things that you can hope to receive from your internet marketing endeavor - - a list addition, a lead or a sale.  Typically, your product or service will determine which you should expect.  For example, if you are selling your services as an Architect for Church Expansion, you will undoubtedly pursue leads, not sales. 
     On the other hand, if you are selling a $49.95 product titled “6 Steps to 1,000 Perfect Sermons,” the end result is more apt to be a sale than a lead. 
     Once you fully understand your objective you can better measure the results. Making this determination will allow you to decide whether or not your advertising program was a success.
     Second, as you determine your objectives you will find that they may be different depending on whether you are prospecting for new customers or selling to your current ones.  Example: is the list email you are using an “internal” or “external” list.  For an internal list, one where you are contacting current/past customers, you may decide that for a thousand dollar investment you will want to realize $10,000 worth of sales.  It might be more, it might be less - - you should be able to determine this because you will already have a track record with those individuals. 
     However, with an “external” list, a list of potentially new clients, you may be pleased even if you don’t break even!  For the same thousand dollar investment, a return of only $750.00 might be acceptable because you are acquiring new names/clients for future upselling to your internal list.  These individuals will have ongoing upsell potential and a “life time value,” which may be very significant.
     It is vitally imperative that you define your objectives, for without doing so you cannot determine if your campaign was successful or not!  Too, you may want to set up a “scale” of probably/possible success.  If your “goal” is to glean $10,000 on a $1,000 investment, and you only glean $8,500, you might decide that the program was, albeit short of your expectations, still a success.  As with any goal, not reaching the ultimate goal does not mean you failed.
     It is possible that you may need help in defining and refining your objective, and we at Pathmaker would be more than happy to assist you in this.  However, before you invest in an internet advertising be sure you know what you expect it to do for you!
     Give us a call if you need more help to find ways to win on the web.

What you really want out of a premier blogging service is to see it deliver results, right?

Well, consider this.  With four posts to this compended, Keyword Blog system, I've already gotten to a Top 10 position on Google for this Keyword phrase: Premier Blogging Service. And I intend to stay there by talking about all the merits of this keyword marketing, compended, premier blogging tool.

For one, it flows my blog posts automatically onto the appropriate keyword blog categories. That saves me a ton of time and effort that I get to spend in other areas of my life. This unique feature is called compending. Said in another way, it auotmatically "populates" each appropriate keyword blog every time I post to my main blog.

Secondly, it search engine optimizes all my blog posts, guiding me to create content that makes the search engines, like Google, Yahoo and Bing, very happy. Plus the content is targeting keywords on the internet.

Thirdly, I can have unlimited users on my system so other friends, staffers or colleagues can help me in the blogging process. That doesn't cost me anything extra. And I like the extra help. It gives my blog the edge in developing ongoing, relevant content.

Fourthly, it allows me to generate content that gets flowed all across the internet. In doing so, it finds me new friends, who like what I have to say, and want to consider further the services I have to offer.

Fifthly (is that a word?), I can autoflow all my blog posts from this system onto my other "free" blog accounts.

Finally, it's so easy to use, I just love it. And it comes with complete tech support so that if anything ever goes wrong (which it never does), I'm covered.

If you'd like a Free Demo on this exceptional internet marketing tool, (which can easily become your church blog, ministry blog, church outreach, christian blogging tool, christian marketing tool, non profit marketing tool, or small business blog service), please call me today at 1-623-322-3334. Ask for Randall Mains, and I'll be glad to share my enthusiasm with you about this fine product that you can take advantage of too.

Link relevant content to search-centric promotion.

The reality of communicating with people online, and particularly via email fundraising, is that you have to constantly collect new email addresses. The typical growth rate in 2008 for any ministry list was 25% per year, which was comprised of 5% new names, less 3% name loss to unsubscriptions and bounces (mostly bounces). Said differently, if you’re not prospecting for new names constantly you can expect to see a 3% per month attrition in your email lists. Since people will move on for one reason or another, you need to replace them with new friends.

How to do this? Populate your website with relevant content that’s consistent with search-centric promotions that you conduct online. Relevance is key. If someone is searching the Internet for a church in Dallas, and you are one, that’s relevant. But if you’re a homeless shelter in New York or Dallas, that is NOT relevant. You need to start by targeting keywords: determine the Internet search streams that are relevant to what you offer, and then optimize your site to those searches via your site content and code. That way, your website is more likely to pop up in a Google search and get you qualified traffic from people who are looking for what you have to offer. That also means you must regularly update your website to relate to changes in relevant search terms.  You might call this keyword marekting.

Practical Tip: Search engine optimize your site.
So let’s talk about optimizing your website so that you can be easily found when someone looks up terms relevant to you on Google, Yahoo, Bing, or other search engines.

If someone searches a topic such as “how to help a troubled teen,” your site can get listed in the results. But unless it’s in the top 10 results, or on the first page, it probably won’t get many visitors from those search results. There’s a whole science to getting your site listed at the top, which again is too detailed to go into here, but the basic process—known as keyword marketing via serach engine optimization—is something you should know. It involves finding the search terms related to your ministry, including those search terms in relevant content on your site, optimizing your site copy and code for the search engines, and finally submitting your site to the search engines. In most cases, this core process will result in you getting ranked higher in the results, thereby driving more qualfied search traffic to your website.

Here are some examples of what organic search term results look like:

Google: How to Help a Troubled Teen


Yahoo: How to Help a Troubled Teen


Bing: How to help a Troubled Teen


Google and Wordtracker offer free keyword online marketing tools for finding common search terms:


You can input your own keywords to see how many people are searching those terms. Don’t get tempted to expand your terms if you see people searching on a topic that doesn’t relate to your primary goal – instead, stick to what you know, and your outreach ideas will be the most effective. You won’t be sorry if you put your effort into thinking up and searching for the search terms people are looking for that relate most directly to your ministry.

What do you have within your organization relevant to what people are searching for that you can develop and put online? This is a new level of site content depth – deepening the relevance of what you’re saying overall. You may have a particular niche – maybe issues related to teens, or matters of the heart for women, or guy stuff. By deepening your content in these areas, you establish a deeper focus that is really relevant in a particular area, and then you develop it and make it search-centric.

For example, you might learn that a lot of people are searching for “war in Iraq.” If your ministry doesn’t have anything relevant on this subject, you wouldn’t want to develop it just because someone’s searching for it. On the other hand, when The Presidential Prayer Team learned that many people were searching for “soldier’s prayer” because of the war, PPT developed a printed version of a soldier’s prayer, entered into a pay-per-click advertising agreement with Yahoo and Google, and then, when people clicked to the site to get the soldier’s prayer, asked them to adopt a soldier to pray for. Visitors also could sign up for the Adopt Our Troops e-newsletter. The strategy did a great job of building their Adopt Our Troops email list.

If people find your site through a search, they will quickly leave if they don’t think the content applies to their needs. To have a better chance of helping them see your site’s relevance, avoid the common mistake of talking too much about your needs, such as ushers and gifts. Visitors want information that addresses their search needs, and that’s what you should give them.

Once you’ve learned how to get listed in the search results, your qualified site traffic will take off, giving you plenty of new friends to build relationships with. So, optimize your pages so people can find you through search engines, and then make sure your pages are relevant to those search terms. If you need assistance, Pathmaker Marketing provides search engine optimization services that will help your website rise in the search rankings.

If you are using a Premier Blogging Service, like this compended marketing tool that I'm promoting here, for your ministry blog or church blog, you can also autoflow your blog posts across the internet for maximum church outreach and internet business marketing promotion.

Once you've got your core blog services established and you are blogging away, consider the following process for leveraging your content across the internet.

1. Establish a new account with ping.fm
2. Establish a new account with twitterfeed.com
3. Create a new feed in twitterfeed that pulls content from your source blog and autoflows that content into your ping.fm account.
4. Choose the accounts you want to establish in ping.fm

For example, blog acounts include: Wordpress, Blogger, Xanga, LiveJournal and Vox.
Social accounts include: Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo, Linkedin, Jaiku, Tumblr, etc.

Doing this will populate your blog posts into your free blogging services, and into your social networks, without any need to spend extra time.  You can then begin to implement efficient, effective internet marketing.

You can also just use the ping.fm account on its own.  This is relatively simple process but it requires you to create a simple message every time you want to flow content out. So it's mildly more involved but still a superior method than updating all your accounts one by one.
I like to autoflow my blog posts across the internet, then use ping.fm for additional messages that are not part of my blogging process.

If you need professional help to get this done for your church outreach or small business, don't hesitate to call me directly at 623-322-3334 and Pathmaker Marketing will be happy to perform the process on your behalf. 

Installing an effective ministry blog or church blog can be a simple decision.  Do you want to go the free route, using a service like Wordpress or Blogger, or do you want to go with a premium service like Compendium which costs something but is a real marketing tool for your ministry?

I would argue to go with the premier blogging service first.  Then add your free blog services later.  Let me explain why I feel that way. 

The compended blog tool that I use is a superior outreach and promotional vehicle for my company and could be for your ministry, church or small business as well.  It gives me the following advantages in effective internet marketing:

1. It allows me to establish multiple Keyword blogs. (See my Category list down the right sidebar of this column). Each of these Keyword blog terms has been carefully researched, then run through 2-3 serious evaluation layers, giving me a high degree of confidence that my Keyword Blogs can bust into a Top 10 listing on Google, Yahoo or Bing.  As long as I stay committed to developing relevant content for my keywords, this tool assures me a fighting chance for a Top 10 listing on my terms. It could do the same for you.

2. It populates all my Keyword blogs automatically as I create my primary blog posts.  This saves me a hige amount of time and energy.  It effectively leverages my writing effort dozens of times over.  For example, once I finish writing this blog post, the system will automatically "compend" it to these other relevant Keyword Blogs (Blog Services, Ministry Blogs, Church Blog, Premier Blogging Service, Ministry Blog, Christian Blogging, etc). Do you get that incredible advantage?

3. Each Keyword Blog is also fully Search Engine Optimized on that term for Google, Yahoo and Bing.  That begins with each blog having a unique URL. It also includes a nifty color bar tool that enables me to create each post in a way that my copy is fully optimized for my terms.  I would have to do these steps manually otherwise, a time-draining process at best, even for a marketing firm like ours.  For those who don't understand the SEO process at all, this advantage would be out of reach. If you paid someone to Search Engine Optimize your blog, it would cost you hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars of income.  It might even be money well spent, if it gets you a top listing for your blog, but the point is, I don't have to spend any money on SEO with this tool, because my blogs are already optimized for every keyword in our system.  Yours would be too.

4. It allows me to have unlimited blogger accounts. I can open up the blogging process to as many staffers or writers as I 'd like, at no additional cost to me.  This gives me the advantage of getting content from multiple sources rather than just relying on myself or a few dedicated writers. If you're a church, for example, you could have your Senior Pastor, Associate Pastor, Youth Pastor, Worship Leader, C.E. Director, even Deacons and Elders all blogging ont eh same system, under one account.

5. It notifies the search engines each time we update our blog.  This process, called pinging, keeps Google informed that there is new content available for evaluation. It does this step so you don't have to.

6. It is actively fighting to get me visibilty on my keywords -- it's a true marketing tool.  The compending and optimization process, by intent and design, is looking to establish a presence for each keyword in my blog in the Top 10 results of a Google search. This primary goal recognizes that if I get presence on my terms, I will get qualified traffic from those terms to my blog. Qualified traffic to my blog means qualified names added to my email lists, new leads to my church, new sales for my business and/or gifts to my ministry.  This system is prospecting for new customers for me even as it establishes me as an authority in my areas of expertise.  It would accomplish the same strategic objective for your company.

7. It allows me to autoflow my content to the free blog services.  Once my premier blogging service is installed, then I also have the option to begin flowing my blog content automatically into numerous other free blog services like Wordpress, Blogger, Xanga, LiveJournal, Vox, etc.  This way I get all the advantages of my superior marketing tool and maintain a presence in the other blog services, without any additional effort on my part.
You would establish a substantial presence across the internet with this tool in your marketing lineup.

8. It allows me to control the posting process.  Each post that gets submitted from my bloggers goes into a qeueu waiting for my approval. This allows me to oversee the posts, perform quality control if necessary, and approve them before they go live. You would ahve the same measure of content control.

9. It comes with a superior team of tech support professionals. Although it's really a turn-key process, if you need help in getting to success using this superior tool, the Pathmaker Marketing team and Compendium are both available to help you.


For a Free Demo of these online marketing tools, call me today at 623-322-3334, and I'd be more than happy to discuss in more detail how this resource could be implemented for your church ministry, non profit organization or small business.

Social networking has grown up very quickly. It was just a couple of years ago that Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace were mainly used by high school and college kids. But as more and more people discover the ease and convenience of the Internet—whether it’s to connect with family and friends, stay up to date on news and information, or donate to their favorite nonprofit organization—social network sites are now firmly in the mainstream. So if you haven’t already incorporated this area of Internet marketing into your nonprofit outreach ideas or small business marketing strategies, you should give it serious consideration.

You might be thinking, “Well, most of our organization’s supporters are older. They prefer traditional direct mail, and probably don’t know what a tweet or blog post are.” Think again: According to the Inside Facebook website, the fastest-growing population of Facebook users is women over age 55. Over a six-month period, from fall 2008 to spring 2009, the number of users in this category rose by 550%, to 1.5 million.  

Many older people are joining social network sites to keep up with their children and grandchildren. Others are finding fellowship and community that they might not otherwise have. In a recent New York Times article, a housebound 73-year-old named Paula Rice, who spends up to 14 hours a day chatting online at Eons.com, says that the site for older baby boomers “gave me a reason to keep on going.”  

Furthermore, if your supporters are older, what better way to introduce your organization to young people—whole new generations of potential supporters—than by utilizing these sites?

“Okay,” you’re saying. “But we already have a web site. Why do we need to create pages on another site?” One big reason is for the new marketing channel.  If people—whether older or younger—are already spending hours a day interacting on Facebook or receiving Twitter updates, you can easily reach out to them right there. No need for them to make a special visit over to your site to see what’s going on. Non profit organizations are creating pages on Facebook and Twitter that allow followers to instantly see their latest news, ask questions, and interact with each other. Twitter is a site that’s quickly gaining popularity as a new channel for posting brief updates for your followers and supporters and allow them to respond.

Still not convinced that social networking sites are a must-have online marketing tool? There’s a Web site and an e-book (available for $5) titled The Reason Your Church Must Twitter. Perhaps its author, “technology evangelist” Anthony Coppedge, can convince you. (Disclaimer: I haven’t read the book myself yet, just came across it while Web surfing.) Aside from that, here are a few immediate examples of how not for profit organizations and ministries are harnessing the power of Facebook, YouTube, and other social networking sites:

Compassion International has a Facebook and a Twitter page. The Facebook page features profiles of staff workers, sponsored children, and children still in need of sponsors. The Twitter page includes updates, prayer requests, and posts that link to longer articles.

Compassion Facebook
Compassion Twitter

World Vision posted a short video that graphically illustrates what it would be like to only have dirty water available—the situation facing millions around the world. The video went viral and helped increase traffic to World Vision’s main site by 11%.

World Vision Facebook

Here’s the Facebook page of the Forefront Church in New York City:

Forefront Church Facebook

    If you have any questions about how to get started using social networking sites to spread your message, contact Pathmaker Marketing at 623-322-3334. As specialists in effective Internet marketing, Pathmaker can get you going in the right direction in no time.
Or for further information visit our Twitter accounts:

PathmakerServes Twitter account on church outreach ideas
_pathmaker Twitter account on general business marketing promotion online
RandallMains Twitter account on internet marketing ideas

Hard times tend to bring more people to church. According to a December 2008 article in The New York Times, evangelical churches around the country have experienced a swelling in their ranks by up to 50% with each recession cycle since 1968. This current recession is definitely no exception! So what can you do on the Internet to extend and leverage your church outreach efforts to reach both your new members and people looking for a congregation to join?

First, effective church outreach on the Internet necessitates a great website. That doesn’t mean bells and whistles. It means the site is easy on the eyes, offers simple and clear navigation throughout, and provides content that is both useful and fresh.

Useful church outreach content answers the question, “What’s in it for me?” Sure, people need to know your service times, who is the pastor, and when to show up for upcoming events, but they also need to know why they should come to your church rather than the one down the street. What is it about the pastor, ministries, and congregation that will help the reader’s family get though these tumultuous times with peace and tranquility? How does your youth ministry influence the reader’s teens to stay out of trouble and grow in Christ?  How are people helped through grief, whether by losing a loved one or getting laid off from a job they held for 30 years? You get the picture. Speak to the reader, not yourself.

Second, effective church outreach requires that people can easily find your site, and they want to keep coming back. Once you have a website that speaks to the reader’s needs, there are some simple online church outreach strategies you might want to try.

1. Sign-Up – You need an email list for the strategies below to work. You can ask people to provide their email addresses in various ways, including through your church bulletin. You can also invite people to sign  up online, asking for their first name and email address in exchange for some benefit, such as a free download of some kind … a special message, a regular eNewsletter, etc. The sign-up form needs to be located in the upper left of you home page because that's where people's eyes first go. The form needs to link to More Info on a dedicated landing page that outlines the benefits of signing up.
    
2. Traffic Conversion – once you get people to sign up, then you want to pull them deeper into the goings on of the church. You can get more contact information by offering to send something in the mail … a book, a bookmark, a prayer journal, etc.
    
3. eWelcome Series – This is an online church outreach version of your welcoming committee. The intent is to introduce people to your church and its ministries. You can send one email a week for 5 to 7 weeks. Each email introduces a different portion of the website or the church –all spelling out the benefits to the reader of the various aspects of your church, ministry, congregation, and church outreach.
   
   
4. Autoresponder Plan – Pathmaker Marketing LLC has worked with a large church in Chicago that challenged people to fast from wrong thinking for 40 days. We helped them set up a 40-day autoresponder system to allow people to participate in the fast from wrong thinking and receive a daily email message about a topic from which they would fast for that day. What kind of multi-day message could your church develop to minister to people during these tough economic times?
    
5. Prayer Walls – Pathmaker  has helped several ministries install an interactive Prayer Wall to their websites. This is an effective church outreach strategy because it specifically ministers to people in a non-threatening way, and it helps people realize that they are not alone. The Prayer Wall invites people to leave a prayer so others can pray for them – and of course to pray for others who have left their prayer requests and praises.
    
6. Blogging Tool – Pathmaker uses a blogging tool that is a powerhouse for getting your website seen in search engines. It’s based on extensive keyword research. We help churches and ministries develop keywords that are strategic to their church or ministry, and then help them develop a blog that will maximize their church outreach by multiplying each blog entry into several entries that entice search engines to, “Come find me.” This not only increases the visibility of your site in search engines, it provides ministerial content that can benefit readers around the world.

The tough economic and political times in which we find ourselves have people searching for your church. Your church outreach efforts can be extended and leveraged when you employ the strategies listed above. Pathmaker is experienced in helping ministries implement these tools. Call 623-322-3334 to schedule a time to discuss how we might help you.

So many people are talking about blogging these days … bloggers … the ever-powerful blogosphere …  that you may be wondering if Christian blogging can help you reach your church or other ministry goals. No doubt, Christian blogging is a powerful outreach tool! But you may want to start at the beginning, in case you're now too embarrassed to ask the question you should have asked five years ago: What’s a blog?

According to the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, a blog is a contraction of the term “web log.” The “web” part of the contraction indicates that your Christian blogging is done online - it’s a website. The “log” part of the contraction refers to the fact that a blog is basically just a log of entries – related or not. You could opine about your trip to Jamaica one day and then evaluate all 31 flavors of your neighborhood Baskin Robbins the next, and all your friends and family could keep up with your musings without you having to write to each one separately. And they can comment on your entries.

And that’s not a bad strategy if your blog is meant only for friends and family. But for church or ministry outreach purposes, you might want to take a more strategic approach to your Christian blogging.

1. Invest in a good blogging tool. There are several free blogging tools available, but I recommend a tool that will turn your Christian blogging into an outreach power tool for your church or ministry. People have to see your Christian blogging efforts for that to happen. Getting seen by people looking for a church or ministry like yours requires getting your blog listed on the first page of search results on search engines like Google and Yahoo. And that requires being strategic in your use of keywords that relate to what your church or ministry does. To do that, you need a “compended blog.” Pathmaker Marketing LLC blog uses an unique and powerful blogging tool. For a free demo on how this tool can help you in your Christian blogging, call for a free demo at 623-322-3334.
   
   Those free tools might seem like a good deal, but they don’t compile each of your blogs into multiple blogs and then optimize them to secure page one listings on search results. You have to do that yourself (and, believe me, it’s a lot of work!). This will make your Christian blogging easier, faster and more effective.
    
2. Invest in keyword research. When Pathmaker set up our blog, we gave Compendium a list of strategic keywords that people would search when looking for a service like ours. The Compendium tool automatically compiles our posts into multiple blogs under all appropriate keywords, not just the one into which we posted it. This work-leveraging feature also optimizes the posts to tell the search engines to, “Come find me.”
   
   Pathmaker helps clients select keywords that not only are used by people searching for their services but also (a) get a lot of searches and (b) don’t have too much competition for you to break into. We also help clients evaluate where they currently stand in search results for those keywords and then develop strategies to improve those standings.
    
3. Develop ministry-oriented content that uses keywords. Not only do you want people to find your blog entries, you want them to find the information useful enough to convince them to visit or contact your church or ministry and get the benefits you offer them. Christian blogging should be ministerial in nature, and you should provide contact information so people who need the ministries you offer can easily find you.

When you use the right kind of blogging tool, put adequate time into choosing keywords and develop concise but helpful content using those keywords, your Christian blogging can become an effective online extension of your church or ministry outreach efforts.

Choosing a Premier Blogging Service makes all the difference in the world.

The blog post that you are reading right now is part of a 50 Keyword, Compended Blogging system.  It's a high -powered outreach tool and ministry marketing machine rolled into one.  It could easily be adapted as your church blog, ministry blog or christian blogging system.  To see how this superior blogging tool works, review the posts on my page, notice the categories that are targeting keywords in the right sidebar, click on my calls to action, and enjoy the overall professionalism of this incredible ministry tool.

Consider this as an upgrade to your church outreach online. See it as a major player in your non profit marketing lineup.  Consider it thoroughly as one of your key outreach ideas.  Add it to your core set of small business marketing strategies. Use it as an outlet for preaching or teaching from your pastors, elders, deacons or lay leaders.

Here's how the blog services work:

1. I do strategic keyword research to find those golden search terms that I want my blog to appear in the top 10 results on Google, Yahoo or MSN.
2. I faithfully and thoughtfully blog about internet marketing ideas three times a week or more on my keyword categories (I add other users as I want at to help push up my weekly postings).
3. The compending system takes my posts and appropriately distributes them (compends and re-allocates) onto my 50 keyword blogs in a search engine optimized fashion, notifying Google about my new content, and saving me tons of time and effort.
4. After about 50 posts Google starts to notice me and display by blogs in my keyword results.
5. After 200 posts I'm getting seen as an authority on my subject(s) so I begin to get significant traffic on my target search terms. This goes on forever if I keep on blogging.
6. I work to convert the qualified traffic that visits my blog into lists, leads or sales through calls to action like Whitepaper Downloads, Case Studies, Webinars, Email Signups, etc.
7. I watch my business grow because my blog establishes me as an authority in my field and brings me qualified search traffic every single day.
8. I buy groceries and clothes and other stuff for the wife and kids.
9. I go to sleep happy as my business grows and I become more successful online.

Any Questions?

Call me at 1-623-322-3334. Ask for Randall Mains at Pathmaker Marketing. Ask about my Premier Blogging Service that is keyword marketing my business all across the internet. If I can do it, so can you. Call today.

In my next series of blog entries, I’m going to give you five principles that will propel your ministry forward in the area of strategic online communications and non profit marketing. In the last series, we learned how good non profit website website design will save you numerous headaches while enhancing your ministry and expanding its outreach. This next series of posts assumes that we’re starting with a well-designed website, and extends the subject further to how to implement the process of good website communication and non profit marketing.

In a nutshell, my key lesson for today is this: a strategic online communication plan will strengthen existing donor relationships while building new ones to enhance your ministry and expand its outreach. To repeat: A strategic non profit marketing plan will strengthen existing donor relationships while building new ones to enhance your ministry and expand its outreach.

What this means is that your website can perform double duty in the arena of online communication. First, it can strengthen the relationships you already have within your ministry – members, parishioners, clients, customers, etc. Second, your website can also be an extraordinary non profit marketing tool for finding and developing new donor relationships. I call that prospecting. In my experience with ministries, though, I have found that most organizations are short-sighted in this very important area.  

Let’s think of prospecting in terms of a highway billboard. For the most part, billboards just sit there, conveying a message and hoping people notice them. A billboard provides information, but it has no relationship with you. It definitely doesn’t know the names of the people who travel by it on the highway everyday. A billboard is similar to a website that isn’t working hard to achieve your online communication objectives. It may look nice -- even convey a nifty message – but it fails to be “hard-working” if it doesn’t develop relationships with online visitors.  

Many good-looking websites are launched and even adequately promoted. If you’re fortunate, yours might be seen by thousands of people passing by on the Internet. But if the site doesn’t capture their attention and engage them in dialogue, most of those surfers will move on to other sites, without any strategic, long-term value to you.

It’s also similar to a church. Why would any pastor be content to know that thousands of people drive by your church every Sunday? Wouldn’t we rather have them inside our church, experiencing worship, hearing the Word, and enjoying fellowship with others?

Don’t misunderstand me—your website needs to both look good and convey a solid message. But it also must be designed to interact with your site visitors and develop a pattern of communicating with them. This is how you will be able to use the web to expand your outreach and enlarge your ministry.

I hope this introduction has gotten you excited about developing your website to proactively engage visitors in relationships that will translate into ministry growth. In my next post, we’ll begin with the first of the five principles of strategic Web communication and non profit marketing.