REACHRIGHT Podcast

If you want people to find our church online, you must create great landing pages. 

A landing page is a page on your site targeting people looking for a specific kind of content. 

But what kind of landing pages does your church need to create? 

We aim to answer that question and much more in today’s conversation. 

Table of contents

• Plan Your Visit
• Watch Online
• Prayer
• Recovery
• Support
• Coaching
• More On Church Landing Pages

Every church website should have a plan-your-visit page. This is a page where users can learn everything they need to know before showing up on a Sunday morning. 

A good plan-your-visit page should help visitors understand what to expect, what you offer for kids, and call them to action.  

Ask your visitors to fill out a form to let you know they are coming. This enables you to prepare for your guests, and in our experience, makes them much stickier. 

The pandemic forced a lot of churches that had never had services online to start filming. In our post-pandemic world, every church website should include an easy way to watch online. 

A good Watch-Online page will include more than just an embedded video. It should have opportunities for visitors to interact, respond and give if they desire. 

A prayer page is one of the most effective landing pages a church can build. But it has to be more than just a prayer request form. 

Take the time to tell people why you believe in prayer. If you can, create a short video about it.  

When it comes time to ask people for their prayer requests, make sure to spell out what you will do with these requests. Who will pray and what should the submitter expect next?

Recovery ministries present one of the most significant opportunities for churches to reach people with the Gospel. But let’s face it, if you are in need of recovery from addictions, walking into a church can be intimidating.  

And often, when people are in the middle of a struggle, giving them options, 24/7 can be a good thing. 

A page about how Jesus can help those in need of recovery and a form to ask them to take the first step can be compelling. 

In addition to recovery, many churches offer support groups for the community. Divorce Care, Cancer Support, and Single Parents groups are just a few examples.  

A landing page that helps people connect and get support when they are going through life’s challenges can help your church be an asset to your community. 

Finally, Coaching or Counseling opportunities make for great landing pages. Many churches offer Financial Peace, Parenting, or Marriage classes that can greatly impact people’s lives. 

Build a landing page that helps people in your community gain access to these resources. Be sure to include info on how they can jump into any training opportunities coming up. 

• Everything You Need To Know About Church Landing Pages
• Seven Keys To An Effective Online Prayer Ministry
• How To Make Online Prayer Better For Everyone
• The Rise Of Online Prayer And How It Helps Your Church
• Why Sheep Follow A Shepherd

Most churches have a front door problem. The fact is that they just don’t see enough people come through their doors to replace the number of people that are leaving. That’s why according to Lifeway, 6 in 10 Protestant churches are plateaued or declining in attendance and more than half saw fewer than ten people become new Christians in the past 12 months.

If you are serious about seeing your church grow, you need to find a way to get more people to visit. And like most things in 2021, the best strategies are digital ones. 

If you want people to find your church on Sunday, you need to make sure your church is found online.  

Here are five keys to make sure your site is found locally. 

Table of contents

• Claim Your GMB
• Optimize Your GMB
• Claim Local Directory Listings
• Ask for Reviews
• Speed Up Your Site

The first thing your church needs to do is claim your Google My Business (GMB) listing. Google is the king of search, and people use it every day to search for terms like “Churches near me” or “Best Churches in Boston.” 

Google’s algorithm ranks the results, and in most cases, it uses the info in your GMB listing to create that ranking.  

Don’t assume that Google has all your information right. Get in there and claim your church’s listing. 

Once you have claimed your GMB listing, you need to take the time to optimize it. Make sure your Name, Address, and Phone Number are exactly right. Slight variations here can cost you. 

In addition, you need to get your service times, office hours, web, and email address in there.  

Photos on your GMB listing are critical. Take the time to submit great images. Try to include people caught in the act doing the values of your church. 

An essential factor in your church’s local search ranking is how many citations your church has online. The primary way to gather those citations is through online directories. 

Did you know there are over 70 local directories where your church can be listed? The more of these directory citations you have, the better. 

There are two ways to get listed on those. You can go to all of them and create an account and build out a profile. It would help if you kept an eye on those profiles because they have a way of changing over time.  

Alternatively, you can use a service to do that for your church. If you need some help – REACHRIGHT has you covered. 

Asking for feedback may seem counterintuitive, but reviews are a vital part of how Google creates its rankings. The more reviews your church has, the better. 

We find that it helps to think of reviews as testimonies. They are people sharing their stories online. 

If you can get members to share their experience with your church on Google, Yelp, or Facebook, it will go a long way to helping your church be found. 

Finally, site speed is an essential ranking factor in the Google algorithm. Make sure your website images are optimized and ready to load quickly. We recommend that churches use a free service from Cloudflare to speed up their site. They offer lightning-fast DNS service and great caching options to make your site blazing fast. The faster it runs, the more visitors will find you in search engines. 

• Nine Reasons Why Your Church Doesn’t Show Up In Local Searches
• Google My Business For Churches – Everything You Need To Know
• The Secrets To Better Local SEO For Churches

WordPress is the world’s most used Content Management System (CMS). Recent research shows it powers 40% of all websites on the internet.   

The CMS is also the best choice for churches looking for a tool to power their website. 

Here are seven reasons why your church can’t go wrong with WordPress. 

Table of contents

• Price
• Theme Options
• Ownership
• Ease Of Use
• Functionality
• Development Community
• Compatibility

For most churches, this is the chief concern. Like any organization, getting the best bang for your buck is vital. And the great thing about WordPress is that the core software is 100% free.  

Like any other company, there are add-ons to give users a better experience, but the freemium model makes it an excellent choice for ministries.  

While you should expect some cost for hosting and plugins, saving money on the CMS itself is always good. 

Because 40% of the internet is on WordPress, more people are designing on WordPress than on any other platform. 

In WordPress, the design of the site is called a theme. Think of a theme as your church website design starting point.  

On ThemeForest, the leading site for website themes, there are over 11,000 themes available for purchase. And that is just on one site.  

There is truly no limit to the design possibilities with a WordPress site.  

With most Hosted CMS solutions, the site you design belongs to the company that hosts it. You can’t take your Squarespace site and host it yourself. 

WordPress is truly an open system. The site you design is yours, and you can host it anywhere you want to. 

The reason WordPress gained the market share it has today is because it is effortless to use. The technical expertise needed is about the same as what it takes to edit a Word document. 

For churches, this is important because, in most cases, volunteers are the ones running the site. There isn’t a technical barrier you need to overcome when you recruit, and just about anyone willing to learn can do it. And because the network is so extensive, there are thousands of YouTube videos to help you learn more advanced WordPress hacks. 

Churches have a very specific set of requirements for their websites. They typically need a way to deliver weekly sermons, handle online donations, and help visitors get there on Sunday. 

WordPress passes all of these tests with flying colors.  

It does this through the use of plugins. These are easy-to-install programs that add functionality to your website. WordPress has several plugins that do a fantastic job handling sermons, church calendars, and small group management.  

Because the network is so extensive, there is an enormous community of developers that are constantly improving the functionality of the WordPress platform. Having worked on WordPress for eight years, the software we use today is exponentially better today than it was then. At no cost to you, the world is making a better platform, and it shows no sign of slowing down. 

WordPress plays nicely with others. Whenever a software company wants to make their software compatible with web platforms, the first one they develop is the WordPress plugin. Chances are your church management software has a WordPress-friendly code or plugin, and your online giving software has an easy way to integrate with your WordPress site. Linking Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms is easier on WordPress than on any other platform. 

WordPress truly is the easiest and best CMS for churches. If your church needs help launching a site on WordPress, REACHRIGHT has you covered. 

• 6 Tools To Ensure The Safety Of Your Church Website
• Is Your Church Website Secure? How to Tell & What to Do Next
• The Best Plugins For Your Church Website
• 7 Top Church Management Software Companies
• Church Management Software – Best Apps For 2018

Your church has a YouTube channel. 

That’s great.

But how can we actually engage people on YouTube?

The key to connecting with people on YouTube is to create great content, and that is where so many churches get stuck. 

In today’s episode, we answer the question – What Kind of YouTube Content Should Your Church Create?

Table of contents

• YouTube Intro
• Sermons
• Sermon Clips
• Testimony Videos
• Bible FAQ
• Behind The Scenes
• More On YouTube For Churches

The first piece of content you create for YouTube should be an introduction video. This is where you introduce your channel and tell people what kind of content they are going to find on it. Most of the time, people will pin this video to the top of their page. Be sure to ask people to subscribe in this video, as that will help them see future content you create. If that feels cheesy to you, you’re not alone. But it is proven to work and will help your channel grow. 

Most churches already put their sermons on YouTube each week. If you are recording sermons but not putting them on here, you are missing a huge opportunity. In most cases, we do not recommend loading your entire service, including your worship time. Unless you have invested a lot of time and resources into it, making live music sound good is very hard to do. When you load the sermon, make sure to take the time to include notes in the description. 

In addition to full-length sermons, it makes sense to clip those down and add shorter clips to your YouTube page for most churches. If you have a 3-point message, in many cases, you can turn that into three separate clips that can stand on their own. Keep in mind that the algorithm prefers videos over 5 minutes, so if possible, set that as your minimum length per clip. 

People love to hear stories. Testimonies are just that, and they are encouraging stories about what God has done. Video testimonies are powerful content for any church YouTube channel. But remember, this kind of content takes work. Producing a quality video testimonial is not something you can throw together in a few minutes. In most cases, you will get what you put into it. 

If you have pastored any length of time, you have been asked a few hard questions by people inside and outside your church. What happened to the dinosaurs? How can a good God not let everyone into heaven? One of the pieces of content we love is when church leaders take the time to answer some of those questions on YouTube. Q and A format videos do very well in the algorithm. 

Finally, people love to catch glimpses of what church leaders are like in real life. We can give people a taste of that with behind-the-scenes videos. These help to engage your audience and build trust with them. The more authentic you feel to your viewers, the easier it is to build trust. 

• The Ultimate Guide To YouTube For Church
• Mastering YouTube SEO For Churches
• Seven Social Media Schedule Ideas To Help Your Church Stay Consistent
• Church Video Statistics You Have To See To Believe
• Social Media Trends For 2020 That Boost Engagement

Before the pandemic, most churches were offering online giving. As a new reality set in March of 2020, all of the stragglers got on board to allow members of their Church to give online.

But online giving is more than just a link on your website.

We see churches making some of the same mistakes over and over again when it comes to online giving.

Here are six online giving mistakes your church is probably making and how you can avoid them.

We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. 

Table of contents

• Online Giving Mistake #1 – No Inspiration
• Online Giving Mistake #2 – No Explanation
• Online Giving Mistake #3 – Discouraging Credit Cards
• Online Giving Mistake #4 – Not Accepting Bitcoin
• Online Giving Mistake #5 – Not Asking For Donations
• Online Giving Mistake #6 – Not Sharing Testimonies

If we want people to give we need to make sure that we give them a reason to give. Your online giving section needs to include scripture and other encouragement that will help people get over the hump of giving for the first time.

In addition to inspiration, people need an explanation of why they should give. People want to know what they’re giving is going towards. Some churches are afraid that if they share too many details it might discourage giving but we’ve found the opposite to be true.

Often we see churches make the decision to discourage people from using credit cards in order to save on fees. In most cases, this won’t benefit your church. Credit card fees range from two to three and a half percent of the transaction but the last thing you want to do is have people worried about that when they are making an online donation.

Only a very small percentage of churches today accept Bitcoin donations. This represents one of the biggest opportunities for many churches. While it’s true that most of your church probably doesn’t use cryptocurrency, those that do may want to give in that form. Receiving Bitcoin is easier than most people think and there can be huge tax savings for the donor.

As is true with most things, you will get what you ask for.  Many church leaders are tentative when it comes to asking people to give.  You don’t need to be afraid to ask people to invest in the kingdom. While it should never be the main focus of your website or any other online presence, it is important to ask people to give online.

Many church leaders underestimate the power of testimonies. This is especially true when it comes to testimonies about giving. if you hear someone share a story of financial victory at your church take the time to have them share it with the rest of your Church online. Written is okay but video testimonies are even better.

• Seven Social Media Schedule Ideas To Help Your Church Stay Consistent
• 8 Creative Nonprofit Advertising Campaigns That Work
• 8 Sources Of Pastoral Discouragement
• 8 Church Tagline Mistakes You Need To Avoid
• 9 Church Branding Mistakes You Need To Avoid At All Costs

Every church needs to get serious about how easy their church is to find online. 

And one essential way to do that is to make sure your local SEO is dialed in. 

Sadly, we see many of the same mistakes when it comes to Local Searches for churches. 

Here are nine reasons your church isn’t appearing in local searches

Table of contents

• Incomplete Google My Business Listing
• No Church Reviews
• Not Responding To Bad Reviews
• No Local Directory Listings
• Stuffing Keywords
• Inconsistent NAP
• Slow Site
• Bad Image Quality
• High Bounce Rate

Get out there and claim your church’s Google My Business listing. Once you have it claimed, all you need to do is complete all the information fields available. Add service times and office hours. Don’t forget the pictures. 

Most leaders feel weird about asking people to review your church online. Think of them instead as testimonies. Ask your members to share them online. 

At some point, you will get a bad review. Don’t panic. The most important thing to do is to respond to the review in a way that acknowledges the concern and doesn’t encourage more people to comment. 

Being listed on local directories is a key to being found on local searches. Did you know that there are at least 77 different directories on which you can build profiles? Consider using a service to make sure your church is listed in all of them. 

It used to be that you could just use the name of your city and the word “church” a lot on your website, and you would come up in searches. Now the algorithms are wise to that trick, and it will hurt you. It’s essential to use keywords but naturally use them. 

NAP stands for name, address, and phone number. You must include that information in the same format everywhere on the web. Minor variations can make search engines think they are dealing with multiple organizations, which will hurt your rank. 

Site speed plays a critical role in all SEO efforts. Do everything in your power to speed up your church website, and you will see an impact on your organic search traffic. 

Bad images also affect how often search engines will deliver a link to your site. If you use grainy photos and images that are not sized correctly, it will hurt your odds of being found. 

A bounce rate is a metric for the number of people who get onto your church website, see only one page, and then click off the site. It is an indicator that they may not have found the content very engaging. When you have a high bounce rate, search engines will deliver your content less often, and it will hurt your Local SEO performance. 

• The Secrets To Better Local SEO For Churches
• 13 Signs Your Church Website Isn’t Performing Well
• Six Local SEO Tips Your Church Needs To Know
• Dealing With Negative Church Reviews Professionally
• How To Handle Negative Church Reviews Like A Pro

Every church leader wants to expand their reach, and one of the best places to reach people is on social media. 

And the largest and most used social network is still Facebook. 

In today’s episode, we share the seven tips you need to know to help your church get more likes on Facebook.  

We hope this conversation helps you reach more people and grow. 

Table of contents

• Build a Complete Facebook Page
• Use Amazing Photography
• Choose The Right Name
• Include Links Everywhere
• Post Consistently
• Engage Consistently
• Pay for Likes

If you want more likes on your Facebook page, you need to make sure to include all of your information. Spend the time to complete your about page fully. Include your web address, social links, and all of your service times and office hours. The more you complete on your about page, the more likely you are to be found. 

Photos are more engaging than text, so make sure your Facebook page is full of great photography. Most importantly, make sure your profile image and background image stand out. If you don’t have great photos of people caught in the act doing the values of your church, now is a great time to make that happen. 

When you set up your account, you chose your tag, URL, and church name. It might be time to revisit those. In general, you want these to be short and consistent across all social channels. If your church has a long name that you rarely use, don’t use that on Facebook ever. Generally, you should use the most common way that people refer to your church. When you get up to give announcements and say welcome to _________; That is the name you want to use. 

There are so many places to include links to your church Facebook page. To name a few, you should include your Facebook link:

• On your website
• In your email signature
• On your other social channels
• In your youtube video descriptions

Any place you have a digital presence is a great place to link to your Facebook profile. 

If you want to start to grow your reach on Facebook, you need to post consistently. If you decide you will post when you have something interesting to say, you will find that you rarely post. Come up with a schedule. For Facebook, we find that posting once daily seems to be about right. 

Just posting isn’t enough. You need to engage with those that interact with your church on Facebook. Never let a comment go without a reply. In those replies, try to ask a follow-up question. This is how you make social media a social exercise. 

Finally, you can go with the easiest way to get likes. You can pay for people to like your page. Don’t ever, under any circumstances, pay a flat rate for a certain number of likes. This is just vanity and winds up hurting your page in the long run. For some churches, it might make sense to pay for Facebook ads targeting a particular audience in your community that may be likely to engage with your content.  

• How to Choose Compelling Church Website Photography
• 3 Proven Facebook Strategies Your Church Should Be Using To Grow
• What’s In A Name – Everything Apparently
• Why Your Church Facebook Page is Missing the Mark (And How You Can Fix It)
• How To Chose The Perfect Church Domain Name

Every church leader knows that social media is something they need to take seriously. Most churches have done something to give their church a social media presence.  

But as we have talked with church leaders across the country, we have found that very few are satisfied with their social results. 

In our experience, it’s because most churches don’t have a coherent plan. 

In today’s episode, we do a deep dive into how your church can build a social media plan that will get results. 

We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. 

Table of contents

• Recruit a Champion
• Choose Your Platforms
• Find Your Frequency
• Create A Schedule
• Pick Your Tools
• Build A Response Team
• More On Church Social Media Strategy

Your social media plan needs a leader, just like any other area of ministry. Many churches mistakenly believe that social success happens organically, all by itself. 

We find that many churches make the mistake of not having a specific person with specific responsibilities in place. The buck needs to stop with someone. 

While this person should be tech-savvy, an essential attribute is that they are open to being held accountable to execute the strategy. 

The next step is to choose the social media platforms that are the right fit for your church. 

While your church should probably be on more than one channel, you don’t need to use every social network you have ever heard of. 

In most cases, your church should be on Facebook. In addition, you should look at Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin. 

Don’t forget YouTube. That’s a social platform too. 

One of the next things you need to determine is how often you would like to post. With frequency, remember that consistency is the key. 

While most churches post too little, you need to know that you can post too often as well. 

We believe the ideal frequency is daily for Facebook and Twitter, three times per week on Instagram, and Weekly on Linkedin and Youtube. 

One of the strategies that successful churches employ is to have consistent schedules for posting. 

An example of this would be throwback Thursday, where you include a weekly post with an element from the past. 

Most churches will post a sermon on Sunday or Monday every week. Some will include a day each week with a scripture graphic. 

Building these schedules will make your job in creating content more manageable. 

There are many tools that a social media manager needs to have in their tool belt. 

One of the first is an efficient way to make graphics. It used to be that a team member needed to use Photoshop to create decent graphics. Now there are tools like Canva that can help you make graphics in a couple of minutes. 

Also, some churches like to use post schedulers like Buffer or HootSuite. While we prefer to use the native posting platform, these tools can make it easier for your social team to post consistently. 

Finally, you must have more than just one person on your Social media team. While have one is essential, you need an army of people to help carry the load. 

Most importantly, you need people to like and comment on your posts. Sometimes having one person comment helps to get the ball rolling. 

Also, when someone new interacts with you on Social, they must interact with a real person. Remember, it’s SOCIAL media. 

• The Best Social Media Platforms For Your Church
• 8 Tips To Using Social Media To Build Your Church Online
• How To Write The Ultimate Social Media Strategy For Your Church
• 5 Social Media Mistakes That Are Hurting Your Church
• 7 Ways Leaders Can Blow Their Influence On Social Media

It used to be that sermons were preached once, and that was the end of it. 

Today when pastors share a message, it is recorded and can live on forever. 

For most churches, your past sermons are one of your most valuable assets. 

But getting the most out of your recorded messages is a challenge for many church leaders. 

Join us as we discuss how your church can repurpose your sermons and give them new life online. 

We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. 

Table of contents

• Five Ways You Can Repurpose Old Sermons and Reach People Online
  • Build A Searchable Sermon Archive
  • Use Short Clips on Social Media
  • Repackage Some As Topical Series
  • Have Them Transcribed
  • Turn Them into a Podcast

If your church has weekly services, you are probably recording 52 sermons every year. That means in a matter of years; you will have an impressive media library. 

Your church must make that library a useable archive on your website. 

A good sermon library will be searchable by date, speaker, topic, and passage of scripture. 

Do this, and your library will become a helpful tool for members and anybody online looking for answers. 

Many churches struggle with creating content on social channels. Often we become paralyzed trying to think of the perfect thing to say. 

In many cases, you have already said the perfect thing in a past sermon. 

The problem is that a 30-minute video does not make the best social media post in most cases. 

Instead, consider finding one point in a sermon, clipping that down to 60-90 seconds, and using that as a post. 

Add some background music, and it can even work as a Tik Tok video.  

If you’ve pastored for any significant amount of time, chances are you have talked about some topics more than once. 

For instance, maybe you have shared three messages over the last year that focus on prayer. 

Consider taking those messages and packaging them as a series on prayer. 

You could build a landing page on your site with a prayer form and use that to connect with people online. 

One of the challenges with online sermons is that they are not easy for search engines to categorize. This is because most churches don’t include enough text content when they upload their sermons. 

An easy way to add text content is to have your messages transcribed.

The average English preacher will speak 150 words per minute, so a 30-minute message will contain about 4500 words. That makes for a lot of searchable content that helps your church be found on Google. 

One of the best ways to repurpose old sermons is to convert them into a podcast. 

You can use the current week’s sermon for the podcast, but churches should consider delivering more content than just one episode per week. 

If you have six years of recorded sermons, that will allow you to do three podcast episodes per week for three years. 

Podcasting is one of the most significant opportunities for churches to reach a new audience. Put out content regularly, and you will be able to reach more people with the Gospel. 

If you have been in ministry for any length of time, you have had some people say less than flattering things about you. 

But when they do it online, it can sting. 

In today’s episode, we unpack some of the tools in our arsenal when dealing with negative church reviews. 

We hope it helps your church reach more people and grow.

Table of contents

• Remember It’s Normal
• Delete The Review If Possible
• Flag The Review For Consideration
• Respond To The Review
  • Apologize if you can
  • Offer to have a conversation offline.
  • Do not criticize the reviewer.
  • Do not debate the issue.
  • Do not respond more than once
• Ask For Positive Reviews 

We all tend to get bummed out when someone says something less than flattering about our church. But if you do anything for any length of time, you will have some naysayers online. Take it as a confirmation that you are doing something right. 

In some cases, you will be able to remove a review or negative comment. This is always the best option. Don’t feel like you have a responsibility to be authentic and give your haters a platform. If it is in your control to remove negative feedback, do so promptly.   

If you can’t remove the review altogether, your next best option is to flag the review if there is some violation. Sites like Yelp will allow you to do this if the review mentions someone by name and they are not a public figure. Once the review is flagged, the site hosting the comment will take a look at it, and if they decide it violates their terms, they can remove or suppress the content. 

If you can’t get rid of the comment, your next step is to respond online. Don’t ever ignore bad reviews. If you do, other people will comment, and it can quickly turn into bashing. Here are some of the best practices when responding. 

If any fault lies on your church, a well-written apology can go a long way if you made a mistake. Be clear in naming what you did wrong, and if you have a plan to keep that from happening in the future, let them know. Do not apologize for something that you did not do wrong.  

If there is hope for reconciliation, offer to talk to the person with negative feedback offline. This serves two functions. It allows you to connect and hash out your differences. It also lets those who see the negative review know that you are open to feedback and outside concerns. That is a good look for churches. 

Do not make the mistake of attacking the person leaving the review. Remember that those who read the comment are usually not aware of all the backstory and context. Criticizing people online is a bad look for churches. 

Often, people are tempted to debate an issue brought up in a negative review. This is almost always a bad idea. A debate will always invite more people to comment on the review, which will only bring more attention to the original complaint. 

While it may be challenging to let it lie, it is essential not to go back and forth with a negative reviewer. This will only give the comment and the subsequent disagreement more visibility. Your best bet is to follow the steps above and offer no further comment. 

Sometimes when you get a bad review, there is just nothing you can do to fix it. In that case, your best bet is to let it be and ask for more positive reviews. Reviews tend to stop ranking on search engines over time. If you have five positive reviews since your last negative review, people won’t even see the bad ones. And if they do, they also saw what your fans had to say. 

• Dealing With Negative Church Reviews Professionally
• When Facebook Gets All Nasty About Your Church
• Learn How To Say No Nicely